Why crystal accrual is crippling Akanbar

[Tsianina]

I can't see any advantage it would have over the BB for when you're truly AFK. On the contrary, the BB has the big advantage that no one can hurt you and no one can bug you. If you're AFK but not in the BB, setting aside the crystals issue, you're vulnerable to someone getting to you and screwing with you. Maybe that doesn't happen much or at all in Akanbar, but the BB is 100% protection against it, so why would you give that up? Also, no one can send you tells you're jnot there to answer, when you're in the BB.

The only purpose a CRYSTALS OFF command would serve, then, is to allow you to be around for the sake of meeting up with people, or being available in case people might want to meet up with you, or in case of people having questions or needing help you can offer; but without having any of the taint of "you're just scamming for crystals" hanging over your head. I can't see any other reason anyone would use it.

What good would that be? Well, probably none, unless someone like me could use it as a lever to try to get our cities to strike down or amend the "productivity" rules that are currently keeping me out of Akanbar for all but a few minutes a day, and will be for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, though, it would also lead to a longer-term attitude change about policing crystal-scamming idling that would make Akanbar more welcoming and more active, as people could feel comfortable being around, which would lead to people being around long enough to run into one another, and thus more interaction.

Or maybe I'm dreaming. Most people seem to think so.

[Pyrok]

How's this for a thought?

Instead of it being a toggle-able (?) command, much like the auto quit feature, if you are inactive for a certain amount of time, just for the sake of this example let's say four minutes, your crystal gain doesn't so much as turn off, instead the time stretches between crystals. I think the standard gain is something like one per fifteen minutes of online time, so you're inactive for four minutes, the gain between crystals doubles, another four minutes go by, another double... getting the idea?

Having said that, I realise that basing that on the auto quit feature its quite simple to just use a ticker to reset the counter, inputting a nonsense command, or something, just shy of the timer.
Could base it like city NPC generation, instead the less active you are, the MORE time it takes for you to get another crystal.
The only feasible way to turn the clock back, would be to do a quest, and to deter botting of some kind (i'm only saying this part because I know someone will say 'well, i could just bot a bunch of quests'), I have two ideas.

Idea one: the commonly done quests are usually the drum in the jungle, the hag's chest, heretics, syltovia and mordikhan just to name some. (ordered from most to least, interestingly.)
The idea goes like this, the items in the drum and hag quests (the drum, and axe) could become markedly more random, much like the wagon wheel. This would force you (one would hope) to actively find these things.
Yes this means that occasionally those items would appear in places that no mortal can get to, a potential work around could be a second timer that will reset the item to a new location if it has not been picked up for a length of time.
Obviously some of you are now thinking 'Hah, i could potentially do a quest twice!' not true, as it would only apply to one item, not the whole quest.
Example: The axe appears in Edge of Ysallyra by a mountain, you've figured out the timer, and grab it and kill the hag, smash the chest and get ready for the axe to reappear. Only to find that the original timer, the one between resets is now active. I'd explain more, but this example is getting long as it is.

Idea two: This stems off the shut off option for crystals. This time instead of a timer, once you've reached a new level, you are given the option to shut off your crystal growth. For people that have reached level 100 this involves dying once, and then leveling back up to 100. And if you 'accidentally' or otherwise turn off your crystals and want them back on, its as simple as leveling up once more, and getting the option to turn them back on.

Idea three: This one's simple. Stop being so paranoid about 'crystal scammers'. Look what it did, it made one of us effectively leave the game. Whether the effects of this paranoia are real or imagined, it's still unhealthy. Yes, sitting there waiting for crystals is in a way wrong, and 'evil', but for people like Tsianina who have mastered their skills, and have reached level 100, the thought of going and doing something is probably not that appealing when you're all by yourself.
What I'm trying to get at with this idea/rant, is that we need to tone down the paranoia, or this game will become a ghost town, and likely just have the plug pulled. I don't want that, and I'm pretty sure none of you reading this do either.

Idea four: Moving off the rant. This came up after typing level 100 however many times i did in this post, why not just increase the max level? It's probably the simplest thing to do, yes it's a bit of a bandaid solution, but still... its something right?

[Aaridan]

Regarding level, I always thought it'd be nice to reach level 100 and still get% up to 99 into level 100. So when one dies at level 100 they just don't go down to 99 all the time. So you're not going into level 101, but you're getting 99% to lose.

Regarding the rest, I really think it's being blown into a huge mess. I have played Akanbar since the later part of 2005, I have in my time within Akanbar struggled occassionaly to be motivated, but for the better part of Aaridan's life he has been able to keep actively busy. I do think there could be some changes, but at the same time I still find Akanbar to be enjoyable and able to keep myself busy. How one person decides to level and spend time is in my opinion their own choice, so if they mastered is their skills or find themselves unable to be here because of that, I am sorry, but I haven't found that to be an issue that will keep me from Akanbar.

[Xinia]

Just warning people ahead of time, I'm playing devil's advocate. So yes, I will be tearing it apart to a degree.

- If you make it like the autoquit feature:
A- If you have the autoquit feature on, you'll quit anyway
B- If you're sitting there doing nothing for 20 minutes, you shouldn't be getting crystals at all, not just at a reduced rate.

Could base it like city NPC generation, instead the less active you are, the MORE time it takes for you to get another crystal.

Good
- People who are around more often are rewarded, thus encouraging people to be around more.
Bad
- People who sit around and do nothing are rewarded greatly
- People with actual lives are discouraged from coming around for their usual 3 hours per day to do intense work before leaving for work/class/life

Idea one

We talked about this before, but just for the people who weren't... eavesdropping (no one was), so long as the items don't reset to places mortal's can't get to or inside cities, it sounds good to me.

The part I dislike is turning back on the timer by doing a quest. I'll invoke the name of Dunn (sorry Dunn, if you're reading this. You were just convenient). Dunn spends a good chunk of his day picking herbs and cooking. He gets killed by bears and tigers. Chances are he can't kill the hag. Elysium is also short on citizens, so doing the wheel quest or other quests that require multiple citizens would be iffy. So if he goes away for a day to go visit his sick grandmother in the hospital, he's being punished without a way of fixing it. Yes, I'm being a bit unrealistic, but hey, I already told you I'm playing devil's advocate.

Idea two

I'm not going to lie- I dislike this idea. Say you accuse me of idling. I'm not going to jump into a fiery pit just to make them happy. Furthermore, if I'm 50% to the next level, I'm not going to spend a few hours gaining experience because I want to turn on a mode OR spending a few hours gaining experience, not being rewarded with crystals for any of it.

Idea three

*likes*

Idea four

Not really a fan of this idea. They did that on other muds and it basically meant the already whoastrong people became even more whoastrong. I could see it being harder to reach level 100, but people already don't really try that hard. It took me what, four IG years to reach 100, and most of the players older than me aren't there. I get that if they want to get stronger, they should level, but people can't really be as... fervent of hunters as some of us are.

[Pyrok]

Clarification of some ideas.

Idea one: I said base it on city NPC generation, i didn't mean literally. Usually when i base something on another design i take an aspect of it that I find relevant and apply it to my idea.

Original thought clarification: People who are offline for lengthy periods of time would be unaffected by this, as crystal growth stops anyway when you're offline (if that weren't the case life would be full of people with unsurpassables at level 3...)
The idea was that people who are online would be affected by this and i was using the four minute timer as an example.
To reiterate: People who are online would only be affected by the severe rise in time between crystals, and it would not have to be four minutes, it could be several minutes, even fifteen. It was just an example.


Clarification of One: Honestly, Dunn was a horrible example, but that was probably brought on by a misunderstanding of what i wrote. I'm going to refine the idea, maybe it will be more clear.

Goes like this, the item in question; drum, axe, lanterns... whatever would now reset irregardless of whether or not someone comes by to pick them up. This adds an element of realism to, for example, the village item quests. I mean really, the only way the lantern should end up in the exact same spot everytime is if the thief is obsessive compulsive, bad use of the disorder but you get what i mean hopefully, or has some kinda modus operandi that dictates they put the lantern in the same spot. Every. Time.
This also prevents people from running a similar route every day, finding the items in the exact same spots every time they do it. Thus, something to do.
Hell, could even set it so that the more popular the item, either the more often it woud reset, or the more time it will take between resets (although you'd probably have to balance this with greater rewards.) A tad on the extreme side for that but it was a thought.

Idea two. Clarified. - I'm not saying you HAVE to go die when you want to turn those crystals off, honestly, you don't HAVE to listen to people accusing you of idling, and ultimately, you could just lie to the accusing party(ies) and say they're already off, tell them go jump in a lava pit.

Idea three: Yes, paranoid people should just keep those paranoid accusations to themselves, it only hurts others. Think of others for once, please.

Idea four: Reloaded. - I'm not a particular fan of this either, but it was a though brought up by thinking 'productivity. productivity. productivity.' and what people like bragging about. Everyone likes bragging about their levels in one form or another, this just gave fuel to that.
(About 95% of you who do brag in a way about your levels will now be offended and think i'm just a miserable sap who can't level. If you are offended by this, you probably bragged about it at one point.)

[Tsianina]

Just for the record, Tsianina is neither level 100 (she got to 68 before I found the grind too boring and unrewarding to continue with... which is odd, as in other MUDs I have been a better grinder than anyone), nor omniunsurp (I just got the important skills, and the remaining ones are mostly useless things that are inexplicably more expensive than the usable ones).

For what it's worth, the idea that turning off crystal accrual is a voluntary, not automatic, thing, is essential to my idea. As long as it's not in your control, someone can always accuse you of gaming the system to garner crystals, which means everything always has to be tainted by the adversarial relationship of Police and Suspects. Me being able to say "I turned it off" (and you being able to confirm that) defuses the entire situation entirely. Once that's done, the entire structure of paranoia and defensiveness will gradually fade away completely (or almost completely).

That doesn't mean that there might not also be virtues in an automatic slowdown or shutoff also being implemented, but that would be a separate proposal and serve a different purpose.

[Ilessa]

I was going to quote Pyrok's post and go through it idea by idea, but here's what I'm going to do instead. I'm going to focus primarily on idea three. Idling paranoia.

In the past, we have had players who have simply locked themselves up somewhere, activated all their shadow skills, and sat away with their tells off while they paid all their attention to something else. This is why shadow still no longer works the way a few still remember it did. This is why thieves occasionally pop up on people who have done nothing for ages on end. Some, including myself, have become extra watchful for those kinds of patterns to avoid those things continuing to happen.

In more recent days there has indeed been far less of that kind of behavior, and I've been more slack. A couple of you have been subject to my attention, yes, and though not many may realize, I can be understanding when things are brought to my attention in a respectful manner and not through namecalling, thinly veiled sarcasm, and general poor attitude.

I'm still working on a few ideas that will help thin out the general issue of "Let's persecute anyone who isn't constantly out and about slaving away for whatever purpose" as well as other things in general that are related to player activity. Akanbar is a place to have fun, and I do want everyone to enjoy their time playing.

If it's not clear enough: Akanbar's official rule on idling is to not be unresponsive for ten or more minutes. If you are sitting in your house, guild, a cave in the side of a mountain, wherever. As long as I can expect a response from you that doesn't leave me wondering whether you are just hiding in a corner hoping no one pays attention to you while you collect crystals, you are fine.

This brings me to another matter I'm going to address: Productivity laws. Akanbar is a game, folks. There are players that are here for the social aspect. That is perfectly fine. Not everyone has the goal to be the greatest fighter, or the wealthiest merchant, or the fastest quester. If you are enjoying the game, not hampering others' enjoyment of it, and are not breaking any game rules, you are in no trouble with me or any other god, though I would like to know that you do actually enjoy features of the game other than say and emote.

Now, that being said, if city leaders truly wish to implement productivity laws into their city lawbooks, I will simply say that is your own choice, whether or not I find it a wise decision to do so. I would much rather see citizens simply being more motivated to do things, rather than a law made to force them into it.

I will also say that for citizens who have stepped up to become a leader or other such position of responsibility in a city, it isn't unreasonable to expect a certain degree of productivity. You have, after all, volunteered for it.

That's about the end of my two cents, for now.

[Tsianina]

It's true some have volunteered for it, though in at least my case, only because there was no one else. However, when I "volunteered" to be Shamans GM I had every expectation that what I was volunteering for was things like giving the guild purpose and cohesion and a theme, developing a novice training program, and working on ideas for our skills. I started on some of those -- my novice training program has been well received, and I also put a lot of time into gathering wood and carving it into staves so we could give every novice a staff hand-cut by the Mistress of Earth, because I thought that would be a nice touch, that would make an impression on them.

Nowhere in there did I have any reason to think I was volunteering either to bash constantly, or to stay logged off all the time except when I felt like bashing constantly. Quite the contrary: I thought I was actually volunteering to spend less time at those things so I could be available for my guildmates and novices, when they were awake.

I sympathize with everyone whose actions and decisions led us to having these productivity laws. But I don't think it'll undo them to say that it's not one person's job, but another person's, to police against crystal-scamming. The idea of crystal-scamming as the ultimate misbehavior is too culturally entrenched. It needs a solid thwack to dislodge it.

[Ilessa]

Nowhere in there did I have any reason to think I was volunteering either to bash constantly, or to stay logged off all the time except when I felt like bashing constantly. Quite the contrary: I thought I was actually volunteering to spend less time at those things so I could be available for my guildmates and novices, when they were awake.

Well, honestly, Guild GMs are a different case, yes. I'd expect you to be there for your guildmembers, and doing things for the guild, whatever those things may be. Not necessarily bashing and questing constantly. No one is forced into those activities. I was mainly thinking about city positions, not guild.

[Ivan]

I had a conversation with a player the other day that I can tie in here. They were telling me how there are people in Akanbar who consider roleplaying to be idling or a waste of time. I would never consider roleplay as idling NOR a waste of time. But I can see that since there's so much emphasis on the competitive side of the game that the social side gets ignored, forgotten, and perhaps scorned by a few. I wish it wasn't the case, but hey, what can I do?

[Chyren]

Roleplay at them.

[Malic]

I'm not sure how someone could qualify this game as competitive. There is no open PK, no regular combat events, currently no wars or raiding. Many of the people who engage in challenges know their potential opponents so well that predicting the outcome is often easy, and thus don't occur very often.
I've been playing muds for near on 12 years now and I'd have to say Akanbar is one of the least competive ones that I spent time in. In fact I'd say the lack of conflict is one of the greatest things that is holding Akanbar back. Conflict between factions creates its own plotlines, it generates roleplay and avenues for intrigue. Every great drama has had conflict between the protagonist and antagonist.
It doesn't have to be open warfare all the time, and I'm not proposing open PK, but without some sort of faction based animosity the game will stagnate.

[Alearis]

What if every realm donates kegs of mending and warming salve to help with the crippling?