Exploring Zones

[Nostramazos]

This is an open invitation to immortals.

There are many decent players in arctic who do not seek to gain advantages by cheating, botting, pooping etc, because they care not for domination in the game. Give them access to work in individual zones and fix some of the hardest, most frustrating zone characteristics in Arctic right now. Let me explain.

The elephant in the room for Arctic is that several keywords have been handed down by immortals to their friends. This may be given as gift to a worthless player who cannot go from Solace to Kalaman or to a player who has spent a number of hours and days in a zone not being able to go past a point that some immortal thinks makes perfect sense to do in an obscure way.

So, why not built it up a bit to direct the player to a correct kw or make it so that they understand that they are doing something wrong. What I am essentially proposing is getting rid of (as much as possible) the dreaded Huh? bapt the Huh?!

Why not if the command is shove panel, we give an indication that the player is in the correct path when they use push/lean/kick panel. 'The panel budges but seems stuck'. Some zones do that already and these are the most fun.

These, (along some other things that do not make sense i.e. bashing a huge dragon should have a description about how futile the attempt is or a critical hit should get a different description as well) is detailed work but players can do it instead of over pressured immortals.

Think and decide!

Nostramazos

[Alecto]

The issue, of course, is that there are just SO MANY keywords in Arctic. The amount of time it would take to go through and put in spec messaging for other commands would be mind-boggling. That is assuming you already had a list of keywords and room numbers that needed fixing.

I think a better idea is that all low/low-mid zones should only use BASIC kw actions (push, pull, move,rotate); mid/mid-high could expand that somewhat (lift, slide, yank, shove, spin). High level zones should have harder kw, but I think they should be limited to action-object (e.g. stroke lever; implode skull) and should NEVER be three words long (i.e. insert gemstone earhole).

Similarly, the hardest 10 zones in the game (icewall, mystic vault, blood shoal, silvanesti, qualinesti, skullcap, time of the twins, ancient keep, etc.) should have the important kws changed every wipe. This would require a 35 or 36 who knew the basic structure, since the hints would have to be slightly rewritten.  This would allow people who figured it out before to follow the hints to the new kw and limit the gains of people who didn't earn the knowledge.

[Terk]

Not speaking for the active staff.

The easiest solution for this is to just post zone guides in an accessible spot for all players. Then, if you wanted to "cheat figure" out a zone you could have a resource.
Maybe "lorebot" could have a brother named "zonebot". Oligo would have to sign on obviously.

The stuff nobody knows, would probably not make it here, but I think the type of players Nostramazos is describing could find all the information they want if people contributed info. The only real issue is people would have to make it.

I have a feeling that the staff would not feel like it was essential to police this, and if they did they're only option would be to edit keywords in zones, since there's no real way to penalize someone for hosting this information.

[Gramm]

My personal thoughts about information are......

Anything required to attain legendary should be open accessible information and the spells required to legend should be straight forward fights, there should be no ridiculous keywords or hard to solve combinations involved in getting a character to legendary.
There should be more information given so that newer players aspiring to learn how to legend their characters can have a good idea of where to go.

Honestly it would maybe be a good idea to give directions to all the zones in help area so that people can more actively challenge and learn these zones. Obviously for some of those "zones within zones" thats not possible... but for majority that would be a really huge help for newer crews that are looking to just spelunk zones and enjoy this game and all that it has to offer.

help area druids nook for instance would say something like "all west from kalaman west gate, then all north."

that would be huge if you added a lot of directions to mid level zones for people. im all about helping the newer players here and thats a solid way to do it.

As for the zones that arent required for legending a character, they should have big gear and rank rewards and maybe those are where you can add all the tricky puzzles and combinations there.

these are just personal thoughts as to how we can make the game a little more learnable for newer folks. i myself like most of the other game leaders and clan leaders have access to hundreds of walkthroughs, logs and dont need it myself, but if you want to see more people learning and leading and starting crews and keeping this game alive, give them the same oppurtunity that myself and the many others that are group leaders have mostly all been given.

maybe post a few mid level walkthroughs or something!!

[blackmagus]

I have a feeling that the staff would not feel like it was essential to police this, and if they did they're only option would be to edit keywords in zones, since there's no real way to penalize someone for hosting this information.

Why would you want to penalize someone for hosting this information? Low, mid, low-high zones could benefit from having information that would allow a newer player to explore with a small group of 2-4 in order to learn the leading mechanics. Once you're familiar with how to pace fights, learning progressively harder zones is a low easier for newer players.

[Nostramazos]

This actually is a very important topic and I would welcome other peoples opinions.

Just think, even more than pk, what the idea of secrets has done to this game and also the prevalent idea that whoever is the dominant clan is because you get help from immortals. Secrets have become a huge part of mud collective consciousness and people are getting paranoid over them. But if there was some type of trail for everyone to be able to eventually work out a kw, then things would change. Even PK would not be so bad anymore.

If death in general has become such a hassle why would people spent time dying exploring or exposing their hard earned gear to pk ? I remember the first few rooms of umber hulk. When Maza did those we jumped to our death without consideration but then again we didn't have to CR since we were at the Bronze age then. Cring is not an option in that room for low-mid players and clans.

Nostramazos

[el conquistador]

I am in agreement with nostramazos.  when you know you have to move a lamp to open a secret, why doesn't 'move lamp' work?  instead you have to move, push, pull, pry, rotate, spin, turn, touch, rub, lean, heave, yank, pry, shove, press, break, shatter, smash, poke, nudge, the lamp.  and still none of those work because the lamp has a base and prod is a word.

it is especially bad because I have joined groups who are exploring a zone where after being stuck for 10 mins a voice comes from the sky and says 'you should try doing something to the base'.  when I have spent 6 hours stuck in a spot and the voice in the sky never gives me advice.

it makes me wonder any time I am stuck - did anyone really ever figure out this keyword?  or did they get lots and lots of help from someone who already knew it?  some of them I think I would Never figure out on my own.  and the only possible way to solve it would be to slowly over months and years become best friends with a person who already knows it. 

[Alecto]

Making friends IS important...and not just on arctic!

[Gotten]

As THE perma-newb and undisputed neophyte champion, I'd like to weigh in on this subject. My one main draw to this game is exploring, and leveling from 1-25. When I am not actively in an 8-man doing endgame content (Which in all honestly, Ill never have the capacity to lead) I am most likely exploring some low-end zone or DTing somewhere and then DTing again when CRing. Somehow, this wipe, I legended (?) my character, (the joke was that if I was able to legend a character then the game was broken.) But, honestly, I didnt have much to do with it besides endless skilling and being dragged around; which is fine, I enjoy the banter and camaraderie, its just that, as I stated above, I enjoy the low to mid zones, stuff I can solo myself. I also know there is a whole slew of zones I probably wont get to see because of crazy KWs with inconsistencies between zones, which is also OK, because  I've come to realize that Arctic is a hodgepodge of zones that have been pieced together, more like a patchwork quilt than a Persian rug.

TLDR:Would I appreciate zone information about low-mid zones? Absolutely! More information or a clearer, transparent system would enable me to continue to enjoy the game when the 8 man is full and 10 of us are on.

[Gramm]

or just bring back the 10man groups!, i bet if you made it 15 i could be dragging around 14 friends and we could all have a blast together!
i would be able to zone people that arent tagged finally instead of always saying group is full!, i wouldnt have to sit people ever!
as gotten said.... its camraderie thats keeping many people around and it doesnt harm anyone to let us have more in the group given that pk is currently removed does it?

at least once a day this wipe ive had to say sorry group is full and disappoint someone.

[Zozen]

Yes!! I have been waiting for this for over 20 years.

Take away all keywords! Take away all door(s), gate(s), shrub, tree, brush, window, grate, crate, boxes, stone, "opening", "space", "hole", "crack", "rubble", "debris", etc. etc. No more f'king spin rooms. Make all zones linear that I just have to walk from one room to the next. No need to write descriptions as everyone just uses option brief anyways. Tell Sanjuro and Terk to stop making areas please.


Cheers.

[Gotten]

Aha! Someone get this guy a gold star for participating in the conversation!

[Dagda]

Yes!! I have been waiting for this for over 20 years.

Take away all keywords! Take away all door(s), gate(s), shrub, tree, brush, window, grate, crate, boxes, stone, "opening", "space", "hole", "crack", "rubble", "debris", etc. etc. No more f'king spin rooms. Make all zones linear that I just have to walk from one room to the next. No need to write descriptions as everyone just uses option brief anyways. Tell Sanjuro and Terk to stop making areas please.


Cheers.

Don't forget take away all those nasty zones where they make you figure out a password for things too. That's super annoying.

On a serious note, for old people who can't remember how to get to A - I think the help area for zones should be a little more helpful for reminding us where it is. I'd love to figure out more, explore more but for the life of me some of the zones I can't recall where they are and now with ritual voyage I frankly never get a clue as to where a zone is because I'm ritted there.

Yes, yes I could go suicide mode and explore every path and I do that. But then my addled brain won't remember what's where and whatnot.

[Sanjuro]

Directive received.

[relethane]

My biggest problem exploring right now is the unreliability of the consider command.  There are way too many "little sport" mobs who can kill me in two rounds.