I think you're trying to squeeze toothpaste back into a tube here.

Trying to alter the game(ostensibly to add new players) really won't do much good and might alienate the players that are left.

Looking at things from the viewpoint of Joe Average(I'll use my scenario), a 16 year old kid looking for a time sink, what advantages does a MUD have over a MMORPG other than the low system requirements? Sure, Arctic is a great, great game, one of the best I've ever played, but it's for subtle reasons that the average person isn't going to notice and let's be honest; the lack of graphics is a big setback to drawing in players.

I started playing again after a few years of inactivity. Seeing 45-50 people on during peak playtime hours is a bit sad, but it is understandable. Arctic losing a lot of the older players through attrition and the pool for younger ones has seemingly dried up. That being said, 50 people on at any given point in the day? That's damn respectable.

I think what you're trying to do is noble, but I think you're trying to cure a terminal disease here. It's sad that more people don't want to play Arctic, but I think the staff has pretty much done everything in their power to make the game accessible as possible(via promotion on MUDconnector, MUD top sites, wikipedia).... people just aren't looking for this sort of entertainment anymore. I know there are other MUDS out there who have a larger playerbase than Arctic, but I can only assume they fall into Arctic's situation: a ton of older players grandfathered in who are addicted to the game, the massive technology jump of the mid-late 90s hamstrung their new player additions as well. Arctic's been online for 15 years, that's an incredible statement to the quality of the game and a testament to the people who gave their hard efforts to keep it alive. That being said, nothing lasts forever.

I think also that Drakantus needs to see a clan that distributes gear better. WNR's leaders are incredibly buff, and so they should be, but all of our top players have elite gear. Gear is carefully distributed so that everyone has a decent set, which is part of the reason why we have been so successful. It also means that people are happy to log on to play because they know they will get something for their efforts.

Also, progression by gear could have a serious side effect. If you hit a room and a spot of lag happens and everyone dies, which happens from time to time, if you only progressed by the gear you have, you might be pretty hard-pressed to go back and get your stuff.

Education replaces force with reason.

I think Drakantus might also be making reference to how your gear stays with you when you die on some of the games. On WoW, you never lose your gear or money... there are no DTs and other players can't loot your corpse. CR isn't a problem, because when you die you have the option of either running back to where it happened in ghost form, or you can resurrect in a safe place with all your gear (there's just a fee for repairing it, and a few minutes where your stats are lowered, but you don't lose anything in inventory).

Personally, this is one of the things that I don't like about WoW. A player with buff equipment is hard to kill, and if you do manage it they'll still just come back with their same gear. One of the things I like about Arctic is if someone is irritating you, thought it will probably be hard, you can kill them and take whatever they have on them. You know that for at least a few minutes, that player is pretty much out of the game and will need to get some things together to have a fighting chance. Either that or they have a ton of alts and you'd better dig in for a long fight.

Now just my 2 cents...

With regard to information sharing and knowing where things are, most of the time I just look things up for the quests on WoW... but the feeling just doesn't come close to some of the things I found out for myself just by paying attention to Arctic's game environment. I remember how excited I was the first time I worked out how to get to Mount Nevermind, and how to get into its upper levels, for example... or how the time of day affects what you encounter in terms of mobs or room descriptions in certain zones. When I found those things, a small part of me wished I had known about it sooner, but a bigger part said, "Hey! That's pretty cool, and I wonder how many other people know about it." It felt good to find those things.

There have been a few things that I felt information could have been more freely accessible for, such as where to find some of the low-mid (and even basic high) zones. Some of these zones I didn't find until I was leveling probably my tenth character or so... And a way to get an accurate idea of how much damage a weapon will do (not 3d6, but "This sword looks like it could deliver a mighty blow"). But as for me, I like the fact that game knowledge is how Arctic works. It gives the game a unique flavor. Come to think of it, with all the guides and FAQs available for the various games I've played, I can't think of a single game that has this element to it.

To clarify some, I just started this thread because I had some ideas rolling around, not because I expected any immediate results or changes. I certainly don't expect anyone to go back and change existing zones to make them more gear-based and less about game knowledge or anything of the sort, it was just my hopes that this could start some useful discussion and maybe down the line when new zones are added the designer might try some new approach.

Kapis and khelson bring up a great point. A game like WoW gets away with being gear-based in part because you never really lose gear once you get it. I am certainly not in favor of changing the death penalties on arctic, as that would destroy the atmosphere of the game. However, there *are* ways to increase the power of players that are not linked to gear. Specifically, there are skills, levels, and ranks.

Skills and levels are already a form of progression, and ranks to a lesser degree. Leveling as progression has been completely trivialized, for good or bad, so there really isn't any clan-based effort to "level to 30", it's something easy enough to do that anyone can do it solo given enough time. I don't see a good reason to change leveling, as trivial as it is I think it's just about right on arctic, it's easy enough for a serious character to get to 30, but at the same time it requires just enough effort to discourage total trash behavior.

Skills too are basically trivial to train up solo, and don't really require any help from a clan. This is the first case where things could be changed to altar the basic high-end progression of arctic. Consider an arctic where bash was trained only by a warrior trainer at the end of a particular high level zone, lets say DKO. What if rescue could only be trained beyond "poor" at some trainer in inner sanction or the end of draconian tower? What if weapon skills wouldn't train beyond "below average" unless you went to a special trainer at the end of forest shrine? Note that I am not suggesting super hard zones, because an extra consideration if any change like this occurred is that zoning in general would be harder because player skills wouldn't be trained as high on average, and some skills like bash might not be available at all to the average player. I'm also not trying to single out warriors, it's just the class I play most and so I am using it as an example, other class skills could be mixed up similarly, and for casters more of the basic spells they use could be put into books and in zones. I remember when "fly" was changed guilds at first and nobody knew where it was, those were fun days.

Basically I am suggesting that instead of books/spells distributed at guilds in locations arbitrarily, base the endgame around some of them, and do the same for some skills.

For example, lets say these are all endgame zones-

zone A- fairly easy, at the end there is an npc that teaches "silence" to all casters
zone B- fairly easy if you have silence, much harder without, at the end there is an NPC that teaches bash
zone C- fairly easy if you have bash, almost impossible without, at the end there is an NPC that teaches fly
zone D- fairly easy if you have fly and can skip certain tough fights, very hard without, at the end an NPC teaches fireball and ice storm
zone E- very hard without area damage and bash, but easy with, at the end an NPC teaches relocate and animate dead

Etc. With the game designed like that, you would have clear goals to progress through, but if your clan had a bad fight or mass DT you wouldn't have to start over completely, because you would still have the crucial skills and spells required to do the higher tier zones. There could even be choices, such as-

zone F- very hard without paralyze, npc at the end teaches resist cold and force bolt
zone G- very hard without resist cold, npc at the end teaches paralyze and darkness

Where either zone is going to be really hard to do first, but once you beat one of the zones the other one is easier for your group.

Then, on to ranks... ranks right now seem to be pretty much a continuation of levels. Which is nice, in that they add additional ways to make your characters stronger, but they are too limited to really serve as progression enablers.

To do that, ranks would have to be adjusted further. Something like multiple circles of ranks. 1st circle ranks would be about as strong as current ranks, 2nd circle ranks a little stronger, 3rd circle ranks stronger still. Most current rank mobs would only give 1st circle rank points. Very hard current rank mobs would give 2nd circle rank points. Mobs that give 3rd circle rank points would be nearly unkillable unless you have a full group with several key 2nd circle rank powers, and so on for 4th circle and up.

Power escalation would be an obvious concern, you don't want a situation where players with 4th circle rank points can just pkill unranked 30s without any risk due to overpowered abilities, so instead of just being pure +stat type rank effects, give them other aspects.

For example, 2nd circle rank powers might be things like improved feeblemind that goes through AMS, a bonus to pick locks that lets a thief pick some doors that are currently unpickable, a druid buff spell that allows the target to cast spells in nomagic rooms for 6 hours. And then you would design a circle 3 rank mob that is fought in a nomagic room and he is AMS and heals himself if you don't feeblemind him, and the door to get to his room is unpickable without the pick rank.

Just some crazy ideas.

Well, I've made my view known on this already, but I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees that implementing such a radical change could be problematic.

But I think Drakantus' own title says it all--his idea is already how WoW and everyone else does things. The crux of this debate is whether Arctic, being somewhat unique, is better for having a system that's different, and a competitive system based that different system, or that the reason everyone else does one way is because its intrinsically better.

Drakantus, more personal attacks now, right?

Well, I've made my view known on this already, but I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees that implementing such a radical change could be problematic.

But I think Drakantus' own title says it all--his idea is already how WoW and everyone else does things. The crux of this debate is whether Arctic, being somewhat unique, is better for having a system that's different, and a competitive system based that different system, or that the reason everyone else does one way is because its intrinsically better.

Drakantus, more personal attacks now, right?

That really is a confused sentence, I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say.

The reasons I made the post is because I could see advantages in a progression system based on game deeds and character development rather than the current progression system which is based primarily on the player's knowledge. I certainly didn't suggest that arctic should change just to be like every other game.

Did you? I must have missed your post.

Was typing at working, forgive the minor grammar mistakes.

Allow me to simplify. Many MMORPGs use a system like you propose, where equipment scales very closely with commitment and skill, and while I have no direct data, my general sense is that most gamers get exposed to that system a lot more than Arctic's quirky little competitive system. The central question is whether that system is prevalent because it's intrinsically better--in which case we should try to emulate it, and all the Arctic players will be grateful for the change--or whether Arctic's system has a unique appeal, one that is worth preserving and that attracts a niche of players that specifically prefer it to the prevalent system.

I see the same advantages that you do--in fact, one reason I like casters so much is because spells represent tangible, progressive character development that I don't lose if work or real life takes me away from the mud for a couple of months. And perhaps you've been conditioned to automatically see me as disagreeing with everything you post, and to disagree automatically in turn, but I'm actually not trying to argue either for or against your idea here. I'm simply pointing out that ultimately, public opinion on idea may reflect a more ingrained and arbitrary idea of what Arctic culture is, as much as it is about comparing the theoretical merits of each system.

You may have been too busy with the ad hominem attacks to hear what I said, but this was the crux of why I disagreed with your proposed caster changes. While I understood the logic behind your ideas of balance based purely on damage/healing/tanking as the primary criteria, I disagreed that the principle of creating distinct classes with highly individualized play-styles should be completely subordinated to that principle, because to me, the idea of having very distinct classes was central to what makes Arctic Arctic.

So, to use an example I KNOW you remember, I think druids should remain druids, so long as they're fairly well balanced with other classes and people enjoy playing them. And if they become highly unbalanced, or just become stale, then we should upgrade them while making sure they stay dinstinctly druids, or at the very least stay distinct, and only remodel them as a template variation of another class as an absolute last resort.

Ultimately, I feel this debate will be a lot like that one--everybody will discuss the relative merits of each position, the tangible benefits it will have to attracting new players, player retention, etc., and there will certainly be some newer players and pragmatists who will solely look at these factors in deciding what they think is best. But for most people, its more an issue of game culture, something that is ultimately a bit irrational.