Wanted: Plugs for Holes

[Jaethor]

Greetings,

In possibly futile hopes of keeping up the discussion on My loving and hopefully loved blog, I've decided to ask the burning question that I have had for the past few weeks.

As schools and universities get back into the swing of things, students across the northern hemisphere are disappearing. It's completely understandable and I expect you lot to study hard so you can make (akanbar) lots of money. However, the problem of time-relative surges of players throughout the day has been apparent even during the summer (Time-relative surges meaning that at 8am, no one is around, but at 1pm there might be 10 players logged on). It can largely be chalked up to the fact that a great many players are located in one time-zone, in which no one is on during when they sleep, then everyone is on when they are at home, but I'm well aware that Akanbar has players in many time zones across the world. In addition, it can vary from a hourly basis with players logging on en masse at 4pm, logging off at 5pm, logging back on at 6pm etc, so I cannot chalk most of it up to time zones.

What I would like to hear from you players is what features Akanbar is missing that stops players from logging on at varied times during the day. Certainly, we could do with more god-run events, but that wouldn't solve the problem of player surges and gaps, it would possibly do the opposite. Try not to get specific (no "I really think Akanbar could do with a leaf-raking system, just like the one in <random plug for a mud>). Give me broad things- more hunting areas, more pvp combat opportunities, more non-combat related things, more city vs city opportunities.

Signed,
Jaethor

[Jaethor]

Just as a note, the reason why a goodie two shoes hunting area is being put in is to replace Golgonath from hunting the undead one. Not because it's un-golgonian, but because it gives Forsaken a huge advantage. Now that I've put it out there, don't exploit it.

[Jaethor]

PVP combat:

Amusingly enough, we were working on what just got released before your post, so, glad we're in semi-agreement. As for arguments against an open pk area, there has been debates on if PK is too policed or OK. There are near infinite arguments for and against each, so I won't go into that- feel free to do so among yourselves- but I will explain that we decided an area that's more open than everywhere else would be a good compromise and we'll progress from where we are now. To justify it, we add in what we did, which I personally think is a cool thing (albeit, difficult) and I pause to brag a second as I say a few other non-mortals agreed. (I certainly needed that ego boost.... I expect they will now retract their excitement.)

Events you lot know my views on as I said such earlier.

The production bit Malic knows my thoughts on- against, but if anyone else wishes to debate it, feel free.

Armies will get looked into.

Detahn's avatar is cool.

Other things I think we could use:
- More detailed and diverse lore
- Some incentive to writing books/utilizing the Theatre, so people actually do these things
- The next Shrine competition

In order:
- I agree, but I honestly want to see players write damn things down first. There's oodles of lore you can learn from just paying attention, but no one does or if they do, they don't write it down for others.
- Like what? I'm surprised cities don't reward for adding books to their library. I wish cities rewarded players more for roleplay-oriented contributions, not just "lead a hunting party" or "protect against a raid", but "host a festival in honor of Lord Bralnok" or "write a book to teach novices about our city's history". Don't get me wrong, I'm OK hosting stuff when need be, but running the risk of throwing myself under the bus, players often enjoy things more when Police Officer Jaethor isn't there, looming, and instead it's fun and games between citizens. Stepping down from the lectern, I do genuinely want to know "Like what?" just to gain insight into ideas.
- Unfortunately, Knowledge shrine is where I step in. The next one is outside of my influence on when it is.

[Dimetrius]

- Like what? I'm surprised cities don't reward for adding books to their library. I wish cities rewarded players more for roleplay-oriented contributions, not just "lead a hunting party" or "protect against a raid", but "host a festival in honor of Lord Bralnok" or "write a book to teach novices about our city's history". Don't get me wrong, I'm OK hosting stuff when need be, but running the risk of throwing myself under the bus, players often enjoy things more when Police Officer Jaethor isn't there, looming, and instead it's fun and games between citizens. Stepping down from the lectern, I do genuinely want to know "Like what?" just to gain insight into ideas.

There is another problem we come to on this line of thinking, that being the only way a city can really 'reward' people is by doling out a promotion or forking over gold from the coffers. The first isn't bad, until you take into account that Elysium only has two city ranks, and Golgonath's are meant to be earned through other methods (but are typically just handed out when the Circle feels like looking important, let's not lie to ourselves here). The second...given that armies are at such a huge cost, I don't see this being embraced all that much.

What I really think would be a great incentive is power crystals. If there was a way they could be policed (if being handed out by a city, as opposed to by the divine), I would like to rekindle my previous idea of having a city cache. For the Theatre, perhaps there could be a system in place where people who submit plays (and perform, unless this becomes an issue due to the need for divine intervention) are judged by a sort of cultural council, which could consist of representatives from each city (and maybe Pyrok). If their entry is deemed acceptable, they're given crystals from the powers that be.

This would really help people like myself who have a want for power crystals due to the fun new housing opportunities, but are obviously in no position to hand off any percentile of their nonexistent income. Plus we have avenues previously left to rot being put to use, because people are greedy! It's perfect.

Of course the Theatre NPCs could just somehow be coded to deliver a nice bag of gold to a recent playwright, but that's boring. Maybe unique jewelry, I don't know. There aren't a lot of rewards to look into, really, which is why things like roleplay-oriented contributions aren't bothered with in most cases. The most we can hope for in regards to roleplaying is some useless points, or in the case of an event some nice opportunities to brush elbows with Jaethor until your event is over and everyone forgets it ever happened.