Looking For Ideas...

[Ravel]

I actually like the idea of having psygems implanted into your body for an experience cost. Player supplies the gem it get's implanted. If it takes up a slot, for example you implant it into your wrist, you can still put all of the psygems there so you only lose one slot. If it doesn't take a slot then it works the same.

First implant could be 75k -- implant a ruby; second implant could be 150k -- implant an opal; third could be 225k and so on. I believe there are 5 different channels, though one is admin only.

[roushguy]

After having seen Golgor's traps in Brimstone Keep, forever ago, I was suddenly seized upon by the idea of having a kobold fortress somewhere near the mines. Kobolds would keep in Dusk's ultralite fantasy theme, being hyperparanoid trap masters. All I'd really beg to see in the area for certain though, is a ladderpult.

[Ravel]

A think a change to the experience economy would be welcomed and greatly appreciated by new players and old alike.

Npcs would grant 100% Exp to Rank 1(no exp loss on defeat)
Npcs would grant 50% Exp or the natural drain amount to Rank 2 (250 exp loss on defeat), whichever is the higher amount
Npcs would grant 25% Exp or the natural drain amount to Rank 3 (1000 exp loss on defeat), whichever is the higher amount
Npcs would grant the natural drain amount to Rank 4 (2500 exp loss on defeat)

Grouping take the above formula for the highest member of the party and then splits it like normal.
two r1's and an r2 beat up the whaler captain worth 318 exp (currently below the 50% mark), so it gets buffed up to 400 and everyone gets 133.

This will help new players especially, as well as new characters for the older players, in getting the experience needed without it being a horrible grind fest. But it'll also keep r3's and r4's from farming massive amounts of experience.

Alternatively:
While talking over how the exp economy works with my wife, she came up with a suggestion I was rather found of.

Make the Exp Economy be on a character to character basis. It still encourages characters of all ranks to train on a diverse group of npcs, but just because Emily (love you) want to farm the slaughterhouse to 1exp each, doesn't mean she ruins it for everyone else.

As far as grouping, each player gets what they normally would have then it's divided for how many players are in the group.
Example: Ravel and Jakobi are in a group, a slavedriver is worth 200 exp for Ravel, and 150 exp for Jakobi. After winning Ravel gets 100exp (200/2) and Jakobi gets 75exp (150/2)

Any comments?

[Ashteroth]

Interesting ideas, for sure. I am somewhat drawn to them because grinding get's tiresome, but we grind to skill up as well. He'd need to address both problems, because it doesn't resolve the entire grinding problem. Skill system would need an entire revamp on how skills are gained, kept, distributed, etc. Also, should blood dusk return to a former glory or better, the current system would rock-it-out because it would encourage groups and sometimes large groups to do some dirty work. Then again, I've never felt 'encouraged because we'd need to grind the tough areas to return the exp to weaker npcs.

For now, I wouldn't mind making the exp spread more quickly from tough areas to weak areas. For instance, Everyone in town is grinded to 1xp each. So everyone leaves them alone and xp begins to trickle back to the weaker npcs over time. Also, should we go to Judan's lair, every enemy defeated there returns 50% xp to weaker areas. Several thousand experience could be returned to weaker areas in a single run. I think this would create a greater desire to run tougher areas to bring xp back to town. We'll know we can 'change the world' dynamically with a trip to these monsters.

[Helix]

So I've noticed a few new guys roll in and quickly lose all interest. One even said he felt too much like a sailor...So I was thinking that if there was a way for the "Newbie Notes" to lead players off towards other preselected careers to show that we're all not a bunch of drunken d-bags throwin down in the local bars could be a good thing. Just an idea.

[Basbury]

So I've noticed a few new guys use standing desk chairs and roll in and quickly lose all interest. One even said he felt too much like a sailor...So I was thinking that if there was a way for the "Newbie Notes" to lead players off towards other preselected careers to show that we're all not a bunch of drunken d-bags throwin down in the local bars could be a good thing. Just an idea.

Did this community try Discord as an idea to try to revitalize the player base?

[Anasou]

Guado here, I believe an easy to implement improvement would be to bring all the help files and information about some things that take large amounts of time to understand up to date with factual information. I know many of us that have been off and on for over ten years know the ins and outs of how the maturation system works, what contributes to certain rolls and requirements for the matures to occur. But, I believe that this should be common knowledge. I appreciate the rogue-like elements of this game, they give it the unique flavor, but hiding information behind an experimental "what does this do" wall cuts off the new player base and let's face it there isn't as many people on who can provide the information like in previous times. Some help files are incomplete, the website itself no longer correctly displays the images of careers on the appropriate page nor stats that are influential, most career help files do not explain why certain stats are important for some careers (looking at you supporting roles), and while I enjoy the content of some activities, like rerolling the 4th mat and the crow in the cave in the east woods, hidden behind investigative work there should at least be some help file referencing vaguely how to go about it without relying on someone else being on to assist.

A couple of non-help file related changes:

Players picking up other careers to "block" abilities has always seemed to me like a gigantic waste of time, we should either eliminate the abilities no one ever picks, eliminate lower rank abilities showing up in r3 and r4 slots, or allow the ability pool to refresh every time a player drops and regains a rank. If anything is changed from this sub-list please do this.

I also think we should fix any broken content before we create anything additional. I understand that most of this is probably code written by someone else but a decision to refactor or re-write should be made. In the case of starting over the changes could be incremental like the arena could be a weekly event to give the player base something that isn't static and allows the users to interact with each other and with the admins. The biggest draw for me when I started was the community and how we got together to tackle situations and, even though we usually failed beautifully, it was always an epic drama that involved anyone who logged on.

I always wished the faction houses had a predefined space to dig, so you don't have to worry about buying a house only to have limited expansion.

[Anasou]

On the same topic of enhancing our ability to handle stronger opponents like those found in the Northern Rooftops and Artificer's Tower perhaps we could take a look at altering our current "multi-char" policy. The policy currently states that players using multiple accounts as a means to have two or more characters logged on at the same time will be met with harsh punishment.

Perhaps we could change the policy to allow a maximum of two characters to be logged in and controlled by a single player at any given time. This would a) allow for us to have more "players" on at once increasing our chances of handling areas such as the two listed above; b) it would allow for us to synergize our characters resulting in more effective skill-sets; c) create more opportunities for roleplaying and faction business.

I know that a lot of people aren't necessarily going to be super excited for a change like this but I just don't see our player-base expanding to the amount we need without a change like this one.

I thought we have been allowed to multi-log two characters for quite a few months now? I can't remember where I heard/read that but can someone please let me know please.