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royston
ranger
Joined: Jul 14, 2007
Posts: 1217
From: Felixstowe, Suffolk.
|  Posted: 08-07-2010 14:50
Elsewhere in this forum, Turrican the Arch Wizard, has asked me to conduct a poll to find out what players want on a Thursday Night. I have tried to do a sort of ?straw poll? by casually asking players on my odd visits to the Tearoom. These have almost all been met with total indifference.
All forms of cultural exercise undergo constant change. This is invariably caused by a new generation bringing out new ideas that horrify the ancient regime. MUD is no exception. The most noticeable change in recent years in MUDii is a reluctance to engage in player-killing. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is just the spirit of the game undergoing change. The ancient players rage against the change, the newer ones shrug their shoulders. None of this would matter if the game was as popular as ever. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot less players playing MUDii now than there were a few years ago. The lack of support on a Thursday night is a sure indication.
So, let us start with by listing what is on offer, then trawling for ideas on improvements or for something new.
Thursday night is Event Night starting at 9:00pm GMT or BST depending on the time of the year. There are a number of events on offer:
1. MOBILE BASH.
This by far the most common event and played when no one asks for anything different. The object of the exercise is to kill all the mobiles in the Land in one set. This gives a reward of 3k points to every player who has made a kill.
2. SORCERER WAR.
Here everyone starts off as a temporary Sorcerer (known as a Sorcerised Sorcerer). The players fight each other until only one, who is declared winner, survives. It has been known for the winner and runners up to get a box of chocolates through the post, but there is no in-game reward.
3. QUESTS.
Quests are written by Wizards. A new bit of Land is created and somehow bolted on. There are usually new bits of Treasure to swamp and new Mobiles to challenge. But that is only part of it. There is always some sort of objective to achieve in order to complete the quest. You are not informed of the objective; you have to discover what it is from clues within the game.
4. CALENDAR EVENTS.
These happen annually according to the time of the year:
a) Easter
An Easter egg hunt where the eggs are guarded by homicidal bunny rabbits. This does not take place on a Thursday but always on Easter Sunday.
b) Halloween.
Dracula?s mansion appears miraculously overnight in time for 31st October in every set for one day, with extra treasure and extra mobiles including the fly-eater and the blood-sucker himself.
c) Guy Faukes Night.
Traditional bonfire and fireworks. As far as I know - no extra rewards.
d) Christmas.
This lasts the whole of December. Extra Treasure and extra mobiles.
There is also something called a SPECKTACULER (not sure of the spelling) but I have no idea what that is. There certainly has not been one these last three years.
Well that is what is on offer. PLEASE ADD TO THIS THREAD correcting me when I have got things wrong but also to suggest preferences or to suggest something new to attract players.
Personally I have two suggestions. Firstly, it?s s long time between Easter and Halloween and another Calendar Event would be welcome during the summer, possibly on the Summer Solstice. But I can?t get my head round anything more exciting that a Summer Fete or Festival, though someone else in the Tearoom suggested calling it a Rave. It might be possible to somehow involve Stonehenge, or better still our own Ring of Stones. My second suggestion is for an event that would only succeed by team work. The players are divided into two teams beforehand and given coloured armbands. Each team is given a piece of valuable treasure to defend, which the other team has to swamp. Certain rules would have to be made and enforced by the Wizzes, like not swamping your own T or hiding with it in small rooms.
I have no idea how practical such suggestions might be from the point of view of implementation. I leave them to stand or fall.
EDIT: Double negative in second paragraph. I rely on Blib, who usually goes through my stuff with the proverbial tooth comb, to point these errors out. He let me down.
[ This Message was edited by: royston on 09-07-2010 11:06 ]
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Armand
explorer
Joined: Nov 20, 2006
Posts: 532 | Posted: 08-07-2010 15:36
Nice post. The capture-the-flag idea has been done before I believe, and sounds like a lot of fun. Would probably need to be combined with sorcerisation to keep it going (and would also solve the small-room problem).
Here are a few other events which have been done in the past:
Treasure bash - variation on a standard mobile bash where the objective is to swamp all the treasure. A command similar to sv is provided which tells you how many items are left. When this event was held there was an interesting quirk whereby trinkets kept re-appearing so the last few minutes involved everyone dashing around swamping them over and over.
Competitive mobile bash - similar to a normal one, but players compete with each other and the one with the most mobile kills wins an additional reward.
Scavenger hunt - I ran one of these a year or two ago. I assigned point values to various items (mostly non-treasure) and players accumulated points by collecting and delivering them to me at the swamp (where I would remove them from the game). Turnout was fairly low (about 3-5 players) but that might have just been unlucky timing.
Wiz vs mortal sorcerer war - self explanatory.
I think a summer event would be a nice addition and would fill in the missing gap as you said. I have an idea but it would involve a fair amount of organisation. It is based on BL's Goatcup which was traditionally held once per year, and is a tournament-style competition. First there is a qualifier rounds where 3-4 players fight against each other to the death (tearooming is not allowed). 2 players from each qualifying group advance and then you have various 1 vs 1 rounds, with 1 player advancing from each until a final round. This would involve a lot of tweaking to make it work in MUD2 because of things like safe rooms. It would probably be best to run it as a sorc war so that safe rooms and QQing aren't a problem.
That is probably too complex for the sort of thing you had in mind though, and would probably need to be spread out over a few Thursdays.
[ This Message was edited by: Armand on 08-07-2010 15:39 ]
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royston
ranger
Joined: Jul 14, 2007
Posts: 1217
From: Felixstowe, Suffolk.
| Posted: 08-07-2010 20:52
Armand, Thank you for that input. I left a few out. Din't I?
Your suggestion for a Summer Tournament spread over a few weeks sounds good. It does however involve killing other players, which as I said seems to be unfashionable at the moment.
But what is a SPECTAKULAR?
[ This Message was edited by: royston on 08-07-2010 20:53 ]
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Vulnax
explorer
Joined: Oct 19, 2001
Posts: 648
From: North West
| Posted: 08-07-2010 22:37
A Spektakular is where players bring on a real personae, the game is locked ( so no others can enter ) , and the players fight to the death.
A bit like Sorc wars but using a real personae.
As the player numbers dwindle then the Wizzes move the players to more confined areas, such as a de-dragon'd Island ( to avoid people hiding in "safe" rooms just to pop out now and again - these players would find themselves picked up and dropped into the hottest action!! )
The last player standing gets a significant prize, based on how many players played / were killed. Maybe a permanant prefix and kudos in the land for a while!
Again, involves player killing.
I should have just pointed you to Richard Bartles Mud web site where he explains it all so much more eloquently and provides some anecdotes!
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/madec84.htm
*cough* my old claim to fame..  http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/wizlist.htm
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Vulnax
explorer
Joined: Oct 19, 2001
Posts: 648
From: North West
| Posted: 08-07-2010 22:44
We've had a few other events here, I can't recall their "proper" names, but included :
Pub Quiz night - yes, questions on MUd ( just WHAT is written on the tea chest, how many bottles are there etc. )
A sort of scavanger / treasure hunt- Eros ? sings a hint and players have a few mimnutes to collect the requisite items and return them to the Wiz running the event,
These may have beencovered above... there are a couple more but I need to remember them!
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royston
ranger
Joined: Jul 14, 2007
Posts: 1217
From: Felixstowe, Suffolk.
| Posted: 10-07-2010 06:59
We forgot Dragon Bash. Let's do one of those soon. They're fearsome.
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Zordell
cleric
Joined: Aug 08, 2003
Posts: 219 | Posted: 10-07-2010 07:55
There's normally a lull around Summertime- most people just are too hot or tired because of the heat to come on and play and it normally picks up in Autumn, if my memory serves me correctly.
People are aware that there are choices of events, Wizzes have made it clear that if you have something in mind just ask and they can arrange a quest to happen.
I reckon one week bash, next week a quest, bash, quest just to keep things fresh each week, but keeping the traditional bash still in mind just.. fortnightly
The forum's been lovely and active with lots of ideas bouncing about so it's not down to lack of people who care, just lack of motivation or the hot weather
Keep up the good work Royston, you are our Mr.Motivator only without the horrible spandex 
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Miek
pioneer
Joined: Aug 29, 2006
Posts: 315 | Posted: 10-07-2010 13:48
Heres a suggestion:
Sorc war championships.
They initialise another database (ie. p2) Where there is a permenant sorc war on between certain hours of the day, for a certain amount of time (say one week between 6-10pm or something).
The person with the most obit kills at the end of the week wins. Yay =]
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Armand
explorer
Joined: Nov 20, 2006
Posts: 532 | Posted: 10-07-2010 23:16
I remembered another idea which was discussed a while back but never actually done. A no-rules war. For one reset, you can do anything you want - multi-lining, looby, etc, with your real personae. Winner would be something along the lines of the person with the most kills (yeah sorry, another pking-based one  ). At the end of the reset, all personae are rolled back to their former states. So players have the opportunity to do crazy things with their stashed personae that they don't normally play, with no consequences. There would probably need to be preventative measures in place to disable wizzing (perhaps a cap of 204799 points) due to the huge point-value kills that would no doubt occur.
It wouldn't necessarily end up being an event worth repeating, but I think it would be fun to try once.
[ This Message was edited by: Armand on 10-07-2010 23:18 ]
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Turrican
Arch-Wizard
Joined: Aug 19, 2001
Posts: 346 | Posted: 11-07-2010 09:46
Quote:
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On 08-07-2010 14:50, royston wrote:
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A bit long, I don't think everyone will read all of it (Blib obviously didn't).
I was thinking more fundamental, e.g. I think players want points, knowledge, safety and maybe also novelty/fun/social. Mobile bashes provide points, safety (pking is particularly unpopular, help with strong mobs is readily available) and social. Though with repeated failures the players who are mostly in it for the points don't bother, leading to less players so more failures (which might be what's happening now).
My idea - a regular no pking reset (no mages allowed sorry), hopefully encoraging competitive play since it will be a limited resource etc. Probably just end up being a mobile bash though!
Quote:
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On 10-07-2010 13:48, Miek wrote:
Heres a suggestion:
Sorc war championships.
They initialise another database (ie. p2)
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That would split the active players over 2 databases.
[ This Message was edited by: turrican on 11-07-2010 09:49 ]
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Crazyfool
Wizard
Joined: Sep 16, 2001
Posts: 804
From: Llanelli
| Posted: 11-07-2010 17:58
Bring back Naked Mondays!
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blib
explorer
Joined: Jan 01, 2007
Posts: 533
From: N.London (just)
| Posted: 11-07-2010 18:53
Quote:
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On 11-07-2010 17:58, Crazyfool wrote:
Bring back Naked Mondays!
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That reminds me. When are they removing the tag CF?
_________________
Fleeing is for wimps !
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Magician
cleric
Joined: Mar 27, 2005
Posts: 160 | Posted: 11-07-2010 21:55
I love your enthusiasm Royston. I just seem to have a lot on recently, so, not had the time to play. I really miss playing but RL has taken over for a while!
I think, if we arranged something "special" say, every first Thursday of the month, it may be attract players who lives are a bit more hectic than they used to be!
There are plenty of good suggestions being put forward...I do like Armand's idea about a no rules set!!!
Great thread...keep it coming
JB / KC
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Gadget
friar
Joined: Dec 08, 2001
Posts: 88 | Posted: 12-07-2010 09:45
Don't forget that sorc war winners get to keep their persona usually...
Yeah something different would be fun, but to answer turricans question I'm after knowledge rather than points.
I think a lot of the accumulated knowledge that used to be around has been (or is being) lost.
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Turrican
Arch-Wizard
Joined: Aug 19, 2001
Posts: 346 | Posted: 12-07-2010 14:48
Quote:
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On 11-07-2010 17:58, Crazyfool wrote:
Bring back Naked Mondays!
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Ok, I'll make prefs disappear on mondays!
Quote:
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On 12-07-2010 09:45, Gadget wrote:
Don't forget that sorc war winners get to keep their persona usually...
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But not a huge incentive, winners usually are capable of making sorc.
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I think a lot of the accumulated knowledge that used to be around has been (or is being) lost.
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I'll keep a copy somewhere safe.
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