Have fun damnit!

[Canzah]

lol why didn't I think about that? Withering has a tendency to push some people towards the (high end) quests within the Mist, when they are too withered to step outside and too poor/unable/unwilling to get cures.

[Damien]

Yeah honestly its the withering. This goes back to the problem of implementation tbh, while it is cool you are basically killing your character slowly if you even try exploring the island. From what I've seen on a few occassions people have literally ran back to the mists after doing a quest ((gnolls)) with little to no rp along the way.

It really needs changing or for some sort of actual protection to appear so people don't have to worry about the withering so much as the monsters that infest the island.

While on the topic of having fun there is one thing that is starting to get to me, efum is kind of small. :S

[Bonhomie]

Grey Pebl has literally pulled people off the streets to go to unexplored regions of Ymph and it was met with great enthusiasm by all. So it's not really about people not enjoying the walk, that much is clear.

What's stopped me from going lately (rare as it was that I could be online) was that the Withering progresses at a rate that I really want to pick my moments carefully to go do interesting stuff, instead of doing casual exploration strolls the way he used to. It's simply very taxing at the point I reached (and, rightfully so).

I can imagine the same goes for other players out there.

[GenerouslySupreme]

Walking around and discovering secrets of Ymph, although your character is not focused around that, then RPing with people along the way, while your character withers and die, vomits and slowly turns into a zombie, is not entirely desirable. And it makes little sense IC, too. Imagine you would be in the situation of that PC. Turn into a zombie in return for knowing some hidden lore of Ymph or talk to people about stuff you could talk nicely in a misty, wither-free area? No thanks.

Withering is a nice flavour to the background of the server, but it is the ultimate thing that sets boundaries for certain PCs and makes them unwilling to go further or explore. And it's not some sort of OOC cowardice. Those PCs just don't want to die. You can't tell players to "be brave" and ignore the personality they set for their characters. Even those adventurers/mercenaries won't go out and explore or do the hard quests if they feel there is not some sort of profit in it for them.

Without suggesting anything, exploration and hidden quests would be far more desirable without the withering.

[Egon the Monkey]

The problem is that players really do want to have fun and they are going to optimise their time to do so. I'm coming back after several months away and really don't want to keep getting killed biting off more than my PC can chew. I want supplies to be able to do interesting things like explore and pay people to pursue plots. I don't want to always be hovering at L6-7 stony broke because any time I stick my neck out, I get my head cut off. It's very easy lose all your levels and supplies if you don't ensure your team's up to whatever you're taking on. When this happens it's a fun-killer. I love the Char Advancement Bonus for L6 and wish there were more ways to get resources without hitting the same old grind. On that note, props to whoever thought up the shipwrecked crates.

The thing about the high level quests is that you can't do them without an optimal team. It's why I never make deliberately weak "RP" builds because doing so cuts me out of the RP to be gained by exploring the server or challenging the tough quests. EfU is harsh, and you need good allies to hit the dangerous bits. The quest balancing system doesn't care if you're bringing a L8 loremaster with 0 combat skills or a L8 minmaxed Fighter. I don't want to keep hitting Goblins, I want to find the secrets hidden in the esoteric quests! I want to poke around in the distant reaches. But if I don't have the supplies, classes or levels to avoid dying to Withering/Vines/Quest Problem Requiring X, I can't do it. If I take a risk in PVP or a DM quest, people notice and it moves a story. Most quests affect nothing, they're a machine that spits out resources and entertainment. I prefer to save my luck for where it'll do something interesting, regardless of whether I win or lose.

There's also the problem that the set of PCs who can do a quest is limited by stuff like "I can't work with the NPC's organisation" or "I can't enter Conclave Lands/Old Stones etc". I'd further agree that Conclave pursuit of Wiz/Sorc PCs is reducing the number of those we see outside their ranks, and that high level quests expect you to have high level buffs.

Ideas I think might help:

• Changing high level quests to not be limited by allegiance. The best example is that Johannes wrote an incredible, story driven quest in Old Stones that loads of PCs have never been anywhere near because they can't go there. 3-6 quests in restricted areas are cool. High level ones just favour elite crushteams of that faction.
• Cap respawn XP loss at 1 Level or something. Controversial, I know, but I can think of few positive points of losing a whacking 1/3 of your XP. It's especially damaging when it stops you being able to quest with your higher level allies, so you go on the easy route again. If PVP or perma happens, it happens. However, being driven off a PC by a fugue spiral is a crap end to a story and puts people off taking risks with quests. If the burden of XP loss is lessened, taking those risks becomes a more enjoyable idea.
• Give high level quests more reliable rewards. Random super powerful items are lovely, but PCs need a way of getting necessities like Healing/Gold/Blurs. If high level quests reliably provide these, they become a better choice than spamming the easiest ones you can do. See why ToM is popular even though it can have considerable risks.
• Disperse the reward throughout the quest. One thing I love about Coral Cove is that good loot chests are all the way through and you can even make a profit if you have to give up halfway in. That way if you aim high and miss, you have something to show for it.
• Fewer instakills or required classes. Iron Nails was avoided because everyone knew that one false move, lag or lack of a good rogue would TPK the entire party off one unremovable trap. Another quest pretty much requires that you knew OOC to prep elemental damage buffs. Pressure and challenge is great fun in a quest and lets you respond. Quests where the risk is death spells or uber crits tend to be metagamed or avoided as you can't respond to the danger, it just happens. Pressure from being outnumbered is fun. Random things that'll blow you dead are not.
• Chances to rest inside quests, at a cost. Often quests are avoided because it's impossible to provide sufficient buffs to last through it and it's not worth flinging supplies at the problem. An example would be a choice of paths in a hard quest. One leads to an armoury, the other to a bunkroom. A low level or hard pushed team would take the chance to rest. One that's doing well would pass it up for more reward.
• More intense, short quests. We don't all have the time to take on Hive, Sunken Enclave etc. Purple Crystals and Shadow canyon are favourites of mine as rare cases where offensive spells are actually optimal.

I am aware some of those come with their own problems, which is why I tried to come up with a number of thoughts to mull over. I really would like more chance to take on the cool stuff without knowing that it'll just jeopardise my goals or kill my PC. I went at the Ooze Tomb on Friday without the "required" buffs and it was crazy. I had a great team and it was some nail-biting RP responding to the Oh Shit Moments, but without the usual buffs it was bound to leave me worse off. That's not something you can keep doing if you want to get anywhere on a PC. I don't want everything on EfU to be easy, but I want to have the opportunity to take on the hard stuff and win without needing to grind.

[COLOR="Red"]tl;dr[/COLOR]
PCs grind for the supplies they need to do anything more exciting like exploring, major quests and PVP. If you would like to see PCs do stuff that's more of a big deal, provide options that don't require taking the easy road or having an optimal team. It's no secret that successful groups more often than not fuel themselves with efficient quest trains so they can afford the big stuff.

[Canzah]

Another idea regarding the withering-

For some quests it seems thematically right that perhaps there'd be an altar/sacred brew/something that can lessen your withering to an extent at the end, as part of the reward for taking on this challange in a highly withered area.

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

I had typed up a bit long post but it boiled down to 'try to be as inclusive as you can be for various quests, don't just clique up.'

Including people is always good.  Give a showcase for how badass you are by crushing beefy monsters in front of them, and highlight your awesome roleplaying skills to those who otherwise wouldn't see you.  Trust me, it can be fun to do, and is awesome to see.  Particularly if you're jaded by the grind.

[CakePlease]

'try to be as inclusive as you can be for various quests, don't just clique up.'

^ That, especially including people from early on in the lower level quests, its good practice for when you do decide to tackle the harder challenges. IC co-ordinating goes a long way as well. I like to shout stuff at people when they should be flanking etc and they're trying to take on five giant monsters.

[Egon the Monkey]

I agree with you there Nuke, and recently ended up having to split a party into 2 groups because we tried to take 6 of us into the mushroom grove quest :D. The trouble is there are a fair few quests where if you do the fun thing and bring a horde of PCs, you will kill off everyone because of scaling or need a truly excellent team to deal with the extra enemies. I would love to be able to bring an 8-man team on Oozes without it turning into the Charge of the Light Brigade, or a full pick-up group on ToM without half of them being useless due to narrow passageways.

If DMs are going over quests, I would suggest including ways for large parties to make the most of their numbers. If more of the loot is on monster drops than chests, that's one way to make the quest scaling to large parties worth it. Another is to fiddle with the layout a bit to ensure that everyone can be useful. Quite a few quests have a single narrow route through where all that a big party does is form a danger when the 2 PCs at the front try and retreat. As an example, an full team on Granary is great fun, but a full team on the poisoned well quest is both more dangerous and less interesting for a lot of the party that are stuck in a queue.

[Adhesive]

That being said however I've certainly learnt something from playing Walt - not dying on EFU is boring as fuck. Go out there and die people, you'll feel bad but not as bad as you will otherwise.

QTF so hard. I was level 9 for a while, and all I did was walk around in the Withered lands and do herbalism. Don't get me wrong, both are fun, especially just walking right past huge groups of undead while in stealth because lolranger, but now that I'm questing again, it's a lot more fun. I'm doing more interesting things, even if it is all scripted.

As for the more difficult, higher level quests, I'm unfamiliar with the more notorious ones such as Sinister Enclave and Zaturo's Ascent, and have no idea what the difficulty is like. Other ones, like the Morass Lizardfolk quest, scale pretty weirdly, and can get exponentially more difficult the more people you have, so that can also turn people off to quests as well.

Once I get level 8 back, though, I have every intention of running the vision quest up in the Unyielding Pass. So there's one quest gonna get done!

[Valo56]

Back when I played last, I was perma-dying a LOT. I would kind of just breeze through newbie quests until I was level 6, tackle some tougher quests until 7, work with whoever on whatever until I was 8 while simultaneously working hard on whatever I made the character for. Once I was 8, questing was done for me, as death would mean going back down to level 6, and 8 is a very comfortable level to be at (if I ever hit 9 it is off of DM XP).

I don't know about other people's preferences, but I'd rather be out raiding Mistlocke than raiding the Coral Raiders, or defending the Unyielding Pass from Conclavist/Numinous Order scum than defending Dead Orc Pass from orc scum, or enslaving savage pygmies instead of enslaving those kids at the end of the snake quest.

People quest to get to higher level, to get gear and supplies. Once they get that, they stand to gain relatively little and lose a lot if something goes wrong. It's just funner to go out and do the things you made your character to do (dominate the world, convert the masses, mug people, spy on your enemies, uncover ancient secrets, etc.) rather than go out and do some quest that, however epic it may seem, has most likely been done by someone else at some other point in time and however fun it is, isn't truly an accomplishment (unless you do something crazy like solo Sinister Enclave or whatever that quest was that Thomas' Orderswoman went on).

[johanmaxon]

I like the idea of shorter more intense quests, as I often play during the night/evening after school, and then I am often tired. Long quests are taxing.

[EfUA_undercover]

I think that several points come together here:

1. Certain quests within Mistlocke pay quite well gold and supply wise, while many of the quests outside of town already can cost supplies getting there. A good group will still profit from them greatly, but some random folks will have hell of a hard time doing this stuff.

2. The same quests within town mentioned above can get you to 8 quite easily while filling your bag with general supplies. So some people might just say: Ok, why risk my life to hard spawns, the withering and possibly other players out of town when I can safely powergame to pvp-heaven sitting comfortably in the square.

3. The withering. While it isnt that hard to treat once you have understood certain things about it, it is still discouraging to endure it as someone who already got problems surviving without it. Some people are happy to buy 2 blurring pots or to get to lvl6, now think of paying 150-300 gp just to leave town regulary or losing 150 xp every time you cure yourself. To most veterans this sounds easy, but it isn't for guys new to the server or people coming back from a long hiatus I am pretty sure. Folks struggled in EfU, folks struggled in EfU:A... and EfU:M hasnt become easier, just that we have a powerful curse on top now.

4. A general angsty mindset. I dont know who it wrote, but oocly awaiting that some sendings are a trap isn't going to increase your fun. If your character would go you go, pretty simple. If your character is a craven who has seen several muggings, well best hide behind the skirts of a barmaid (I know one who will likely enjoy more attention).

Well, I can't come up with a way to solve it, but I know that I am enjoying myself right now. And that is mostly due to being out there and encountering all the little surprises, be it something I havent found in all my time or encountering someone out in the wilds, be it friend or foe (which indeed has become rarer compared to EfU:A, despite or maybe even because of a more centralized player population).

Obviously reducing rewards for quests in town and buffing those out of  town would be a way, but it likely would raise some balance problems as a certain group  of characters would now be even better supplied than before.

[The Old Hack]

Yeah honestly its the withering. This goes back to the problem of implementation tbh, while it is cool you are basically killing your character slowly if you even try exploring the island. From what I've seen on a few occassions people have literally ran back to the mists after doing a quest ((gnolls)) with little to no rp along the way.

I honestly see no IC reason whatsoever to linger any longer in Withered land than you have to. Doing so would be akin to nuclear waste cleanup workers standing in the hot zone around a recent meltdown and decide to sit down, dig out the playing cards and take it easy for a while. I admit I do not know very much about the procedures involved in this but I would be rather surprised if that was common practice.

[RuinedDesires]

This is a problem that has been bothering me a great deal recently, it’s a problem that has brought me close to quitting a few times.

This is something that barely scratches the surface, of what is weakening what EFU is, and draining not only mine, but also other long term player’s fun factor.

While it has been said, that older players should be showing new players the ropes, I think that with the current lay out of the server and the general mentality of “I don’t want to die” it is becoming increasingly frustrating and making it nearly impossible to try and spark life into the new players.

Firstly Quests

EFU M is dramatically failing on the quest front, not because the quests are too hard, not because they are too easy. It boils down to something far more simple, location.

The Hub of our server is a small town, and while it is an interesting dynamic area it should not be the place where all pc’s can get everything they need up to level 8. Pc’s are not forced to leave the town, they are not forced to take risk, they can achieve everything they need. Gold, potions, xp, loot, there is no drive, no spark that people would have seen on EFU-A. Pc’s wont randomly come across other pc’s from the more evil setting. Bandits will find their marks, but instead of being around the same level and equally equipped they will instead be forced to fight high level high stocked and well equipped pc’s.

On EFU-A some of th greatest rp instances I have ever been involved in, where at low level. Where pc’s came across other pc’s by pure coincidence heading towards mid level quests, fights ensued, hostages where taken, and conflicts that rocked both sides of the docks and dominion became legendary.

My solution to this, would be to simple move the quests. On efu-A the lizards quest was well known as being a fun quest to take. Limited, or so people thought to the dominion. Pc’s often allied with the docks pcs took this quest and met them down beneath the city, Oldstones has much the same type of quest. In my opinion it should be moved, to a more neutral destination, which requires traveling too, but keeping the same quest giver location.

Muskroots apprentice- This a rewarding quest, XP wise and potion supply wise, it also offers some gold.  It does not need to be in Mistlocke, it is just another reason for PC’s to stay within Mistlocke and not leave the town. It could, in the very â€"least- Be moved to the outskirts of the forbidden forest. My personally believe, is that it should have the same distance as perhaps Harpies, a same level length quest which is now rarely used because of this and the next quest I am about to mention.

The well- This quest, is quite simple one of the most spammed quests I have ever heard of, it is a quest that grants massive amounts of XP at level 7, pays well and also provides a good supply of potions. Its location however is horrendous. Why should our new players explore and try other quests when we have this sitting right inside the town? Move it from the town much like Muskroots apprentice.

Some of you will be up in arms at my simple suggestion, but I will take this moment to make note. I am not asking Granary or any of the level 5 quests to move. In fact they are fine, perfect and ideal for pcs to use, and I have no problem with them at all.

The Noob run
A while ago it was mentioned, that EFU-M would be transforming its noob run, requiring players to explore more as they enter the server. This, in my opinion is a mistake, quite frankly a level 3 character can easily die while leaving the town. It’s this that forces new players to stay inside, to quest in safety and to only leave when they are level 8.

It’s time to return the old style of noob run, to give players a nice boost at the start so that they are ready for the proposed changes above. So that they have the gold to buy some nicer items, items that will let them live when they do venture towards the new locations of the quests.

Quest crushing

New and less experienced mechanical players often talk about how there are players who simply “crush” quests. Who know exactly whats needed to make an optimized party to break down any quest in EFU, to get the maximum benefits from it and level to absurd levels with insane supply.

It’s true, and its not something I agree with, but can we stop it? No. But, we can even the player field. While we do have players who love to relentlessly crush quests, we also have players who can crush them but are bored by the lack of excitement. Some of you are too afraid to look into the harder quests because you are afraid to die. The fact is, most quests on EFU can be completed by 1 competent melee fighters, backed by a group of misfits.  They are not that hard, you just need that one player to guide you.

I have spoken to a few of the older players who think like me, and we are more than willing to take new players and show them the ropes. To take them to those dangerous places on the server and say “this, this is why I fell in love with EFU” to share those experiences that we remember and reminisce about on irc.

I currently have an advertisement ic and ooc for melee fighters to come and take part in an awesome plot, awesome concept and to not sit back and watch, but be the fighter and do the great physical feats some of EFU-A’s greatest pcs where known for.

I can’t promise you that you won’t die, I can promise you one hell of a ride, which is what EFU is about. All characters die, what they did between creation and the fugue is the fun part.