level dead zone mid 80s

Dragonknight

Azor said:

@Korben, I think what you say makes sense, but I predict a lot of rage if Achaea ever releases an area you have to pay credits to get to.

@Azor: You mean Skies?

Iocun

I'd rage too if there were more areas (besides gare) that you have to be a dragon to get to. Reducing the definition of "end game" to those who are interested in that particular kind of achievement doesn't seem entirely fair to me either, particularly since it's currently one of the few achievements that already comes with substantial benefits.

I'll be all in favour for it though if we get "end game content" for other aspects of Achaea as well (politics, exploration, combat, or perhaps even just having played for a long time).

Hataru

Well the trade off here is that either you give the dragons something to do that's dragon only beside a dragon version of wings or you give them something to do that gets them out of the typical leveling areas for 80-99.

There are still dragons I find in qurnok regularly, somewhere you bash in the 80s - somewhere that isn't Istarion or Annwyn and meant for those higher levels. The only way to get them out of areas like that, beside level capping areas (which would be dumb and hurt people on the lower end of the health scale who're bashing to dragon) is to give dragons more to do, we're at a point where we have more than enough active dragons to justify giving them their own shit so they stay out of the typical bashing areas.

I'm not talking about 'end-game' stuff, just stuff that gives dragons something to actually do and keep them out of wanting to go to these areas that should be about helping higher end of mid-bies to level, not gold grind for dragons who already met their leveling goals.

Iocun

But why would dragons move on to something different given to them, unless it yielded better rewards than what they're currently bashing? People who bash to dragon are often people who seek to maximise the output of their bashing, or they wouldn't have gotten there to begin with. There may be a few who'll go for something different, just for the challenge of it, but that's not going to last long if it's not as rewarding as continuing bashing the midbie areas. If the majority of them were to voluntarily bash challenging things for the sake of it, more of them would be bashing honours mobs instead of qurnok.

So "piling on gold and XP rewards" (or other material benefits) seems almost unavoidable.

Hataru

Being dragon =/= being able to bash honours mobs instead of qurnok, firstly. Honours mobs having no crits on them made them significantly harder to do. I've seen plenty of dragons die hunting them. There's also very few of them so that makes it less of a draw as well, the time in which it takes to kill an honours mob and the fact that you have to pay attention actively are major downsides to it versus bashing places like qurnok.

All you're offering is a "it can't be helped so don't bother" solution, which isn't a solution at all. An attempt to fix this, or even to tip it to be less bad than it is right now is still a good thing.

It would never be 100% regardless because these places will still be easy wiped out to drop shrines for essence but what I'm getting at is that I think that some sort of incentive to keep dragons out of these areas would at least help mitigate some of the issue with dragons bashing out places just 'because they can' instead of sticking to the areas really designed for higher levels at this point.

Nothing is going to eradicate dragons being in these places, but things could be done to try and mitigate it.

Rispok

Currently, as far as I know (and I do have some honours lines) the honors mobs don't really require much thought. Many you can brazier tag if you have 4k hp, the rest just require n dragons to kill. An example is Belladona. It's not a tough fight, you just get 4 dragons with svo to hit a few times, then run and pop back in when over 5khp. Most honours aren't even this thought intensive. Jeramun for instance? 5 dragons hitting gut equals zorch.

To restate what has been said already, please add more HIGH level areas, particularly ones that require some thought, like wyverns/prin. Dragon-only and instance may be good examples of directions to pursue.

Iocun

Of course things an be done to mitigate it. Adding higher level bashing areas with better rewards will do that. I was just voicing my doubts that such a thing could be achieved without adding more sources for material gain to the game. The gains do not necessarily have to be gold or experience, but if it's something else, it needs to be "useful" enough that it can draw a substantial amount of dragons - which will likely also result in power creep.

Hataru

We must be using different dictionaries if something requiring four or five players in the 'max-level' zone makes it 'easy' or playing brazier tag makes it 'thoughtless'.

(Not saying I don't agree with you, my point I was trying to make to Iocun was just that acting like honours mobs are some sort of great thing to dragons or even that people would bash them for a challenge for random funsies is laughable.)

Iocun

Hataru said:

(Not saying I don't agree with you, my point I was trying to make to Iocun was just that acting like honours mobs are some sort of great thing to dragons or even that people would bash them for a challenge for random funsies is laughable.)

That was pretty much my point, though.

Seftin

Brb and monoing every honours mob.

Mizik

Bit late. 

What is this thread selling?

More Dragons? Or just posted in wrong section?

Talonia

You could disincentivize dragons from hunting in lower-level areas like Qurnok by adding passive area damage that only applies to dragons - when dragons show up to kill villagers, the village really mobilizes and the archers (who aren't visible denizens) focus fire (500 damage per 4 second tick) and the shamans use their curses (unblockable loki every 4 seconds).

Kakotas

Kalvon said:

> I've always thought the gold standard for Achaean combat should be tri-trans + survival level 80.

This may have been the case in the past, but as the game ages, so do the characters and their power. With elite membership and more advanced scripts raising the bar as time passes, any gold standard is going to be a moving target.

> Achaea is not WoW. Achaea does not have an "end-game". You don't need to reach max level before you can start articipating in major activities. In fact there are no gameplay activities based around dragonhood - it's a reward, not an expectation. You only *need* to be around level 70 to have the health to compete in PK. I do think there should be high-level bashing areas, but I don't think they should be set up as rungs on a ladder to get people to level 99.

Achaea's end-game is player-driven conflict (i.e. pvp). Level 70 is definitely not enough to be anywhere near competitive, attributed to my point above. More likely, your idea of 'compete in PK' differs from mine. At level 101, I still feel subpar in many areas of combat.

> because the time spent needed to just make up for the loss seems disproportionate with how quickly I lost the XP

I think what Iocun said makes sense. Around these levels, perhaps due to the availability of hunting grounds or the exp loss per death, the risk/reward ratio is disproportionate for those who do engage in pvp. I don't think this is a problem for those not involved in major conflict though.

That being said if you are having to spend all your time bashing to meet requirements upon dying once your not going to be very active in other things. So there's a bit of give and take here and hunting is becoming more and more about speed which it used to not be. I remember taking 2 hours to clear azdun when I was a little paladin now people do it in 45 minutes. Introducing some better or just more hunting areas would be nice though.

Nim

@Talonia: that was probably not a serious suggestion, but what if villages did mobilize to defend themselves against tougher enemies? Like, if you're just some punk who can barely fight the guards, they might laugh it off, and comically sort fight you in single file (or at least not mobilize their entire army to kill you), but if you're a dragon or they just don't stand any chance against you, maybe it'd be cool if they did try to mobilize, or at least put some basic tactical effort into defending themselves beyond "oh no, an enemy is in the room, I should fight it!"

Obviously, this would only apply to organized sapients, eg villages, armies, etc. It might also be nearly impossible to balance properly (maybe they only call for reinforcements until they've evened the odds?), but I always thought it was silly that people get away with killing entire villages without much more penalty than them (maybe) hitting you first next time.

ETA: My mutation of your suggestion involves actual denizens, not an invisible magical effect, by the way. I thought I should clarify that. >_>

Penwize

Better and more hunting areas would address moving the dragons out of lower level areas, but ultimately it's still about rewards and that'll just push the issue off until later on.  There are enough dragons these days though that something dragon-only would be pretty interesting.  A thought, give dragons another resource to gather that provides desirable benefits (small artie-like benefits?  City buffs?  A new type of commodity used in crafting stronger things? Endless possibilities for this), and then put that resource in dragon-intended areas.  There is a clear opportunity there opportunity to make things interesting and revitalize a lot of people's interest in the PvE end of the game (which, honestly, will attract more players to the game), but I'm not sure the admin is interested in pursuing it.  I know Achaea focuses primarily on PvP, which it does very well, but it has a PvE angle to it that I feel could be seriously bolstered with some attention, and would be a pretty significant attraction beyond Achaea's already-great PvP.

Azor

Penwize said:

A thought, give dragons another resource to gather that provides desirable benefits (small artie-like benefits?  City buffs?  A new type of commodity used in crafting stronger things? Endless possibilities for this), and then put that resource in dragon-intended areas.  There is a clear opportunity there opportunity to make things interesting and revitalize a lot of people's interest in the PvE end of the game (which, honestly, will attract more players to the game)

Yeah, my only worry about more high-end PvE content would be that more high-level areas will result in more gold available to the market, and a corresponding increase in credit prices, to the point where only very serious bashers such as you, @Penwize, will be able to extract credits with any reasonable frequency. Something like the buffs or city defense benefits you mention would be necessary to avoid simply making the credit market inaccessible to non-dragons.

Naisar

Iocun said:

But why would dragons move on to something different given to them, unless it yielded better rewards than what they're currently bashing? People who bash to dragon are often people who seek to maximise the output of their bashing, or they wouldn't have gotten there to begin with. There may be a few who'll go for something different, just for the challenge of it, but that's not going to last long if it's not as rewarding as continuing bashing the midbie areas. If the majority of them were to voluntarily bash challenging things for the sake of it, more of them would be bashing honours mobs instead of qurnok.

So "piling on gold and XP rewards" (or other material benefits) seems almost unavoidable.

People kind of missed your point here @Iocun, which is unfortunate because it's a good one.  I don't think it's possible to to lighten the load of gold-rich areas without causing minor inflation.  Everyone needs a little gold just to operate, and as long as it remains the primary method of acquiring credits it's going to be a desirable currency.  Instead of bumping up the high-end gold generation, they could try and provide better midbie gold zones and restrict access.  I'm not sure I like that idea, but it's worth at least considering.

I believe that @Penwize has the right idea.  The trick is to provide something entirely different for Dragons to do, removing them from the pool of characters fighting for zones intended for the 80-98 crowd (or at least reducing the time they spend in it).  There are a few requirements for suitable activities:

1) They cannot have too large an effect on the rest of the population.  This is where significantly increased gold rewards fails: it inflates the economy and makes life difficult for non-Dragons.

2)  They cannot have a large effect on different progression axes.  For example, we don't want to institute a system that makes Dragons significantly more powerful in PvP.  PvP ability has its own rewards and progression, and suddenly making Dragon hugely important suddenly forces players whose only interest is PvP to participate in an activity they hate - bashing.  This isn't fun.  Similarly, we don't want to make Dragon supremely relevant to Orders, or politics, or exploration.

3) They must be rewarding, or else no one will bother.

4)  They must be able to handle players sinking ridiculous hours into them.  People don't get to Dragon without some serious dedication, and anything that's meant to hold Dragons' attention for an extended period of time has to be pretty fat.

So, what are some actual ideas? Real fast, because I have to go: faction relations.  Been done a billion times in other games, and it's kind of bizarre that we have a faction system already in place that does very little other than determine if things are aggro to you.  Cool mounts, items, areas exclusive to good factional relations achieved through specialized questing/bashing areas.  Easy, and I'm sure people can come up with something to give an old game mechanic an Achaean twist.

Dragon personalization.  It's weird how Achaea relies so much upon a player's desire for customization and uniqueness, and then the end bashing reward turns you into one of six identical options.  Just look how much people have been willing to pay just for a unique transformation/description.  Add areas with really fat mobs, so strong that by defeating them you can collect some form of draconic essence (don't smite me Delph, my specialty is in mechanics not lore) which you then use as a form of currency to improve yourself.  Could even add tiny combat improvements to this because Dragon's so freaking bland as a combat class, as long as you make an effort not to make them too impactful.  Like you spend x draconic essence, and now Dragonrain also gives fear to any non-dragons you hit with it.  And make it one of several mutually exclusive options, and to switch between options people have to refarm the essence.  Bam, bashing areas for Dragons that don't require gold to be attractive.

Anyway, I'll give this some thought later.

Side note for @Iocun & @Delphinus: Yes, people play Achaea for vastly different reasons, many of which don't include bashing.  I'd be happy to talk about ways we can improve these players' experience & give them more content to play with, but this isn't really the thread for that.  So for now, we're defining 'end-game' as reaching Dragon, even if for many players that's not their goal.

Nim

I'd like dragon customization, particularly if it was more abstract than just "add special features to dragon" but an outright sort of end-game customization. Or, if I wanna be specific, I'd like a way to be some primal creature with reality-bending powers without being a giant lizard - I'm just not a giant-lizard kind of person! Maybe draconic essence could also be spent on using non-combat powers outside of dragon form, or maybe there could be different forms aside from "everyone is dragons!"

I know a lot of people wanted that last bit. >_> Dragons kind of stop being cool when so many people have it, and so few of them even bother to really play it up.

Mishgul

Maybe the reason they let draons hit the 80-98  is to slow down the progress of other people. Imagine an Achaea where everyone was dragon! 

oh wait.

Blujixapug

Naisar said:

People kind of missed your point here @Iocun, which is unfortunate because it's a good one.  I don't think it's possible to to lighten the load of gold-rich areas without causing minor inflation.  ...  The trick is to provide something entirely different for Dragons to do, removing them from the pool of characters fighting for zones intended for the 80-98 crowd (or at least reducing the time they spend in it).

On this subject, here's a thing I posted somewhere else:

Here is this thing I came up with ages ago that I'll repost here because no reason. The basic idea is not to replace dragonhood, but to expand it, creating ongoing activities for post-99s to engage in that are limited to post-99s. Presently, dragonhood is sort of a reward that lets you do everything you were already doing, better.

1. New resource: quintessence (or whatever name).

The activities below reward a dragon with quintessence. Because experience becomes almost pointless to pursue once a person hits dragon, and splashing gold around in large quantities risks destabilising the economy, a new form of reward is necessary.

Quintessence is used for obtaining/using new dragon abilities (cheap), and expanding one's lair (expensive).

2. At level 100, dragons can opt into one of three different systems: Dominion, Conquest, and Erudition.

Dominion: The bashing one. A dragon declares their lordship over a single NPC village, eg. Adryn's Keep, Tomacula, Bagwar's Copse. They must first intimidate the villagers, and then protect their new domain. Other dragons can try to undermine your dominion and steal a village from you. Dominion will naturally slowly decay if you do not maintain it.

Villages tithe quintessence to their dragon overlord once in a while. Higher-level villages are harder to maintain, but tithe more quintessence.

Conquest: The PK one. Dragons of conquest may kill other dragons of conquest in such a way that the last drop of their life's blood spilled forms a bloodstone. Pretty simple: they PK each other. A bloodstone can be consumed for quintessence.

(The bloodstone thing is based on the one Geh'shya used to drop in Belladona's Keep. Its desc suggested that all dragons would yield a similar thing when slain. Pre-existing lore! Blammo.)

The trick is to set it up to train people into good PK behaviour, rather than trashy antics. It shouldn't be totally regulated and sterile, it shouldn't be a challenge -> accept arena duelling system, there should be some liveliness and unpredictability to it. But it also shouldn't reward sleazy killroom-type behaviour.

Erudition: The exploration/questing one. Ethian's Crossing casts a shadow over Sapience, and quintessence builds up in unexpected places. At random, semi-regular times, a couple of random rooms are chosen, and clues are somehow procedurally generated that lead to them. Find the room, get the prize. This one needs work.

3. New abilities

There are some new abilities in Dragoncraft which you can buy with quintessence. I don't know what they are. Maybe they cost quintessence to unlock and then are free, or maybe they have a quintessence cost to use.

4. Dragons get lairs.

A lair is a little pocket plane belonging to a dragon that they may enter through the Parthren Gare. They're connected in a similar manner to ships in a harbour, you'd LAIR ENTER CARMAIN, rather than through conventional exits, so an unlimited number can elegantly exist side by side. A lair is expanded like a subdivision house. You buy one for a million quintessence, then buy new rooms for more quintessence, connect them together, change their descriptions, change their environment, make them indoors or outdoors, buy ambient messages, and the rest of it, and bam: you've got your underground magma lake supervillain lair, or silver sandstone palace atop a wall cloud, or tumbledown ziggurat amid lush jungle surrounds, or creepy leather sex dungeon.

Lairs can be connected or shielded from communication with the Prime plane (like ships with commscreen) - if you buy the ability with quintessence. A dragon can bring others into their lair, and boot them out - if you buy the ability with quintessence. Wyvern minions - quintessence. A hoard, a glittering mound upon which to amass your gold and treasures - quintessence. Other upgrades and fixtures - quintessence. Imagine I had a great list of them here.

5. New dragon-only bashing areas.

Create a big one, maybe add more later on. Make them utterly inaccessible to sub-99s. Balance them for dragons. Very challenging, but also fun, with tricky mechanics on some of the mobs, rather than just Chenubis-style overwhelming damage and double loki on every attack. Make the bashing areas yield quintessence, but in fractional amounts compared to Dominion/Conquest/Erudition, for people who just want to bash and aren't interested in the conflict setup. This will ideally also tempt dragons away from other high-level bashing areas.

Katzchen

I want a lair.

Hunting one is confusing... do you hold sway over that village by killing the denizens the most? That doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

It'd be cool to see dragononly, and non-dragon only hunting areas, but can we make them accessible to everyone? Especially non-dragon only, since you are screwed if you're already dragon, and want to explore them. Make the denizens repel attacks by dragons, some sort of protective barrier their awesome magi has dreamed up to protect them from the strongest of attackers, or on the other side, a barrier that weaker players can't penetrate.

Naisar

I like the concepts.  Better mobs, jeezus yes.  Use the dragon area as a test zone and slowly roll things that work down into the other zones.  I've always been of the opinion that quality & density are better than quantity when it comes to game worlds.

Concerns:

1) Lairs are hot, and I want one along with everybody else, but they aren't that functionally different from houses.  People with nice houses don't have terribly much reason to work on their Lair, and probably aren't thrilled about reinvesting.  If Lairs are to be a thing, they have to perform attractive functions houses don't. In addition to this, like any private area, they divvy up the playerbase further.  More dragons enjoying their lairs mean less hanging around the cities & househalls.

2) Not all Dragons are into dominion over peasants.  You'd need several approaches to make it palatable to different arghpees.

3) Choosing one of the three paths seems unnecessary other than to curb negative effects from excessive population in the Dominion and Erudition paths.  Considering that the main point of this is to give Dragons something to do, is there any reason not to allow everyone to do all of them?

4) To prevent there being an incentive for kill-trading, or just playing recklessly, you'd have to lose quintessence when a bloodstone is formed from your corpse.

Katzchen

As long as all dragons don't become open PK to other dragons for the bloodstone thing. That would be sad.

Blujixapug

Katzchen said:

I want a lair.

We all want lairs.

Hunting one is confusing... do you hold sway over that village by killing the denizens the most? That doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

I had not thought that through in much detail. The whole proposal - not just that part - was very incomplete. The idea was based on the classic trope of a dragon swooping down across the countryside to cast its shadow over a Ye Olde English village, flying away with the cows and sheep, and the fearful villagers sending a virgin maiden to its cave as a blood tribute, so the village would be saved from the dragon's wrath for another year. But that was just a starting point, and all three options should be as accessible to benevolent Targs as malevolent Mhaldorians.

It'd be cool to see dragononly, and non-dragon only hunting areas, but can we make them accessible to everyone? Especially non-dragon only, since you are screwed if you're already dragon, and want to explore them. Make the denizens repel attacks by dragons, some sort of protective barrier their awesome magi has dreamed up to protect them from the strongest of attackers, or on the other side, a barrier that weaker players can't penetrate.

It depends how you execute it.

You could make regular areas, accessible to anyone, that are so much more difficult than the current high-level areas that only dragons can possibly survive bashing them. This is tough because balancing bashing is awkward, and it's lazy and uninteresting to simply turn the NPC damage and attack speed dials up by 30%, or flick the "afflicts with loki and blackout" switch up by a few notches. Plus if the area is too hard and unrewarding, dragons will simply go back to the regular areas.

You could make areas that, mechanically, only dragons are capable of entering, with a little "are you a dragon Y/N?" check on entering the magic portal to access them. As a non-dragon explorer with completionist tendencies, this would irritate me. But it would make the areas much easier to design if you knew only dragons would be there.

Or you could do it some other way that I have not thought of.

I don't see how non-dragon-only areas would work... considering that dragons can lesserform at any time. My approach would be to design areas for 99+ and make them so appealing that dragons don't want to keep bashing Qurnok/Prin/Tenwat/Mog/Tir Murann/etc. I find it a bit dumb that with a dearth of 99+ areas, the high-level areas are full of dragons, so the level 80s get bumped down to the level 60 areas, and level 60s down to the level 40 areas. I certainly feel awkward if I'm running quests in a level 40 area - because more profitable options in higher-level areas are camped out - and I walk past an actual level 40 trying to hunt there.

Nemutaur

Getting back to lvl 80 zones. They just need to make more places like Arcadia, great experience but horrible gold earned compared to other areas.

That should discourage most dragons, who are just out to make money, from hunting in those areas.

Katzchen

Easy... allow higher levels to explore the non dragon areas, but prevent the denizens from being attacked by those lvl 99+. Like I said, have them have some wizard who made up a spell to keep the strongest threats away from their village, or that defends against the dragon soul which is present in you regardless of form. (Or something else that allows only those under 99 to attack them)

Blujixapug

Naisar said:

3) Choosing one of the three paths seems unnecessary other than to curb negative effects from excessive population in the Dominion and Erudition paths.  Considering that the main point of this is to give Dragons something to do, is there any reason not to allow everyone to do all of them?

The idea was to create systems to appeal to the different types of MUD players: explorers, socialisers, killers, and achievers (socialisers and achievers got smooshed together for Conquest). I figured people would only want to go with one of the three. Maybe that is wrong though.

Dominion would work best as an opt-in system because then everyone who's part of it is free to cut loose on each other, without worrying about being issued or whatever.

For the other two, I just think there's a charm in making exclusive choices. The choice to be a Smaug, a Falcor, or a Dunkelzahn. If you can do both, then it does not shape your character to do either.

Iocun

What worries me about adding more dragon content is that it makes the goal even more desirable, getting even more people to bash towards it. This necessarily places a greater stress on the PvE aspect of Achaea (meaning more people will be bashing instead of doing other - perhaps more interactive - things), and will not serve to make the midbie bashing areas much emptier, because while dragons may move away from them, more midbies will be using them.

The thing is that bashing is already perhaps the only Achaean achievement which adds really cool and tangible benefits at the top end. Any form of adding more "end game content" for the dragons will thus serve to increase this effect and create a further imbalance.

It's sort of like adding new high-cost arties in order to make those happy who already have tons of arties and have nothing new to buy anymore. Sure, you can make those people happy by putting new, cool arties for sale (even if they don't add "power", but simply "cool flavour"), but it will still increase the dichotomy between the "haves" and the "have-nots".

I'm not saying adding "end game content" is wrong, but we have to realize the fact that such a thing never only affects the people who are already in that end game, but indirectly everyone else as well.

Naisar

@Blujixapug Yeah fair enough.  But that same article acknowledges that these are merely fundamental motivations, and that most players tap into more than one.  I'd be more inclined to give everyone access to all methods of garnering quintessence, and then allow them to distinguish themselves through investment.

Edit for Iocun:  Yes, which is exactly why I said that it's not appropriate to give benefits that heavily influence other axes of progression.  And let's say what you laid out is what happens- dragons move out, and other midbies move in, keeping the bashing saturation the same.  Good!  Heck, that's an easy problem to solve, add more midbie bashing areas.  Fixing a dearth of bashing zones for a certain level range is easy, it's the growing pool of dragons that are dipping into lower zones that's the problem we're trying to fix.

Averi

I don't see the problem with the current bashing system.  There are a bunch of places to bash as level 80-90ish. 

If more areas were to be added, I'd suggest adding more level 21-40 areas.  That seems to be the newbie lull where they die a lot as newer players or stick to manara and actar if they are alts.  Especially as some of the less bashing proficient without monotrans classes like jester and bard and stuff, this period is kind of difficult. 

The reason I don't bash past the 80-90's period is because I see no reason to bash other than to get a higher health pool.  Once I got like 4k of health, I basically stopped hunting completely, asides from the times when there was no one to talk to and I was watching TV.  I think that is part of the lull. We just got logosian so woo! The new credit system thing is a good motivation to hunt more now! 

I am not even sure if I am on topic. 

tldr I am confused.