Policy Changes

[Lazloth]

Mastercrafter is defined in my post.  It's someone with a sufficiently high percentage in that skill that they can make something specialized.  You can email mud to find out if you qualify.  One item per crafter per month.

I think this is a nifty addition; if Salarr needs to generate a custom item, well, Salarr should hire some decent crafters, eh?  Adds dimension, gives some roles some nice (albeit ooc) worth, yada yada yada.

Only point I'd hazard is .. I can't see this reducing the volume of custom items much.  I could be off-base, I'll admit I haven't mixed with merchant houses in a while, but I can't really envision more than, say, four or five total "custom orders" per rl month game-wide, if that.  (Someone can dispute this immediately I'm sure.)  I can, however, foresee many more than four "mastercrafters" in the approachable future.

[proxie]

Firstoff, it sounds peachy to me. *silver shrug*
Nothing too revolutionary, nothing that's going to kill the rp on the mud.

My only thought is that perhaps the number two is too arbitrary when deciding how many changes to your pc you can ask for. (Well, you can ask, but will you get?)  However, long lived pc's, that go from teen, to adult, to elderly.... I bet the staff would recognize that suchandsuch's hair should now be white now or that bumblebleep the warrior got his ear cut off in one of Halaster's quests.... and act accordingly.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if it's important, it'll get changed, or you'll get that little voice in your head asking "Hey, would you like a desc change? You're kindof older than Tek just about."  

As for an arbitrary number... two might not be bad.... most pc's don't live long enough to move from more than one age group. Teen to adult or adult to elder...

By the way! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to whoever fixed the typo in my main description... You have NO idea how irritating it was for me to read it time after time for months... it was awesome to suddenly see that d put in. I was kicking myself muchly for not catching it.

Proxie

[Larrath]

I see two options in my pessimistic vision, regarding the matter of 'master' crafters:
1) Nobody uses any custom objects anymore, other than the odd hat or longbow every five RL months.  In this situation, seeing an irregular item will immediately point out that the said character is involved in a quest of some kind, since there will not be any other way to get that spiral-carved vestric tooth axe.  This will go doubly true for PCs who would have lesser access to the master crafters - namely the House Guards and Hunters.
"Come on, I know you got that dirk somewhere!  Stop playing games and just spill it!" is going to be a very bothersome line when you can't say it was a custom order and expect for them to shut up about it.

2) People realize that an RL month is less time than what custom orders take right now, and every Mercantile and/or Political clan starts hiring tailors en masse due to the vacuum created.  Tailors won't have to struggle worth anything, they'd just go "uhh, yes, I know a bit of stitching and I'm not all that good" and immediately get hired on terms that put Senior Merchants to shame.  House Borsail will have its tailor and Oash will have its tailor, and Kadius will try to get two in each city-state...the competition for warriors in clans will be nothing compared to this.
This is something of a doomsday prophecy, but people are not going to forget about their custom items.
Odds are, in fact, that they'll just write the same submission and send them to the crafter to send to the MUD.  With cheaper and faster submissions, this will just make imbalances between the clothing abilities of Borsail and Oash or Winrothol and Tenneshi.
This may also result in half-elf tailor PCs that are drowning in 'sid from day 4, since the House won't mind sticking them in a room with a thousand rolls of silk for them to train on.

Oh, and of course, let's not forget that clever little independent tailor that will charge noble PCs 15k+ 'sid for every runebane-dyed button on their new pair of pajamas.


These points are all taken to an extreme that is just past the point of plausibility, but I still think they should be considered.

[mansa]

One quick question:

http://www.zalanthas.org/ArmDocs/Community/current.html

Is that up to date, or should we only be using the link below:

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/current/

Or can we use both?

Email the MUD account and tell them that the first link needs to be updated to the second link.  The first one is old like cheese, and not meant to be eaten.

[Angela Christine]

It sounds ok to me.  It is only three months, not the end of the world.  After two or three months we'll have an idea about which of these changes actually hurt, help or have no noticable affect on the game.  Right now all we have is speculation about what might happen, and how these changes might have affected a few people in the past.  Wait and see, that's my motto.  

Hey, at least it isn't large groups of syncronized spear-throwing gith.  


AC

[Vanth]

I just want to add some input, as one of the new Kadian imms.  I came on staff not too long ago, and like all staff members, I have discovered that I like and dislike certain aspects of the job, and I tend to focus on those I like.

I like(d) making objects.  However, it's does take up a lot of my time, and I have been having to take up a lot of various HL/OL's time in approvals.

New or unique items are not inherently bad.  But I think the real opportunity with this 3-month moratorium is to take a close look at how badly we really need these things.  I don't think that roleplay will suffer; rather I suspect it will have to become more creative, and we will no longer have people's plots on hold while they wait for their custom item to come in.

There's probably 10k Kadian items in the database.  That's a lot.  There's a dozen different pairs of black silk pants alone, all slightly different, but honestly....don't we really just need 1-3 of those?  Which is why requests for anakore-embroidered black silk pants are really kinda silly, don't you agree?  Can't you just wear a plain pair of black silk pants and roleplay the line of dancing crimson-embroidered anakores along the waistline?

Basically I want to echo what other imms have said here: I want to be playing with you guys.  I want to be giving you shit with your IC superiors, flirting with you with an NPC bartender, playing the Bynner who is secretly part of a cult in a plot to overthrow House Fancypants.

Another thing that some of us will be concentrating on during the next three months, is perfecting what we have.  There is currently a backlog of several thousand bugs/typos/ideas.  That's not because we're lazy.  That's just what happens when you have so much content in the game.  Many of these things will take time to implement or fix, and I for one will be concentrating more on them.

I definitely value most of the input provided here.  I think a lot of good suggestions and points have been made.

Here's a suggestion of my own.  It's only three months.  You'd probably have to wait half that long for a special item to appear anyway, so just give it a try.  Give it three months.  It's not going to kill you.

[Ayashah]

There's probably 10k Kadian items in the database.  That's a lot.  There's a dozen different pairs of black silk pants alone, all slightly different, but honestly....don't we really just need 1-3 of those?  Which is why requests for anakore-embroidered black silk pants are really kinda silly, don't you agree?  Can't you just wear a plain pair of black silk pants and roleplay the line of dancing crimson-embroidered anakores along the waistline?

Does that mean I can put on a plain bone ring and rp that it has huge honking diamonds on it?

*ducks and runs*

Just being light-hearted and joking. Dont get offended

[Vanth]

There's probably 10k Kadian items in the database.  That's a lot.  There's a dozen different pairs of black silk pants alone, all slightly different, but honestly....don't we really just need 1-3 of those?  Which is why requests for anakore-embroidered black silk pants are really kinda silly, don't you agree?  Can't you just wear a plain pair of black silk pants and roleplay the line of dancing crimson-embroidered anakores along the waistline?

Does that mean I can put on a plain bone ring and rp that it has huge honking diamonds on it?

*ducks and runs*

Just being light-hearted and joking. Dont get offended

Sure, as long as you don't scream "abuse" when an NPC kills you for it.  (continuing in the mode of joking, for those who didn't get it)

[Hicksville Hoochie]

While I fear that this may cause a wave of spam crafting to become masterful, I can personally see the benefit to this three month period, so I don't feel too bad at all.

I did recently spec order an item (before the deadline fo rthis I hope, lol.) that I wrote up at the time of my character's creation, because I've personally not seen anything like it in the game, and it's part of how I visioned the character, so if I last long enough for it to be made, I'll jump for joy.

Touching on the above paragraph, this could be an -awesome- opportunity for independent crafters. You only get one item per IRL month? Open up the money purse and start asking for donations.  

Yes, I know before you could submit submit submit... But if you think of it now, such items are going to be metallic in their value, and to a merchant House, a master crafter might just be well kept for the service he/she provides. That alone will enhance the roleplay in the game with regard to the crafting system.

Also on the note of imms wanting to spend more time with the players in game... THANK YOU! In my past in the game, nothing's been worse than sending repeated mails to clan imms for weeks, and then expressing a wish to retire for not getting any help in areas that -do- need imm help and losing sight of my character. Especially when the character is beloved, and you are fighting to keep your love, while understanding the imms are probably very busy.

If this clears that problem up, then I will not complain one bit ever, even when I do decide I want to app my petrified mek bone, sephiroth sword with serrated steel teeth!  :shock:

[Kurano]

The special orders thing seems to be drawing a lot of attention, which is what I will address.

Firstly... there are like a bajillion items in this game. Seriously, people. I could probably load up an object every day from the existing database that 90% of you have never seen before and keep it up until the sun explodes. (Exaggerration, but you get the point.) Don't worry about special items sticking out now that they are very much restricted.

Anyway... my main point. How does this promote roleplay? Easy! I won't even go the route of saying, "Oh well immortals have more time to help RP via npcs, etc." ... no, it's simpler than that. Special orders and item submissions take away a vital part of the game. Zalanthas is a harsh, desert environment with little in the way of resources, right? We all know this. Special orders take away this vital part of the game (i.e. finding/securing resources) and places it into an OOC construct. What do I mean?

Let's say you're playing a noble. As a noble, you feel it is your duty to have a badass hat. You want the coolest hat ever. You want it to be made of silk, and be gold, and have a goddamn vestric feather in it. Your character is OBSESSED with this hat.

Under the old system your noble can talk to a Kadian merchant about this awesome hat idea. Then you would write up your awesome hat and send it in. Boom! Awesome hat! Amount of roleplay? VERY LITTLE.

Under the current system, well golly... you have to FIND YOUR AWESOME HAT! (btw - the feathered hat example was totally random and I just did a quick search for a hat of such variety in the gameworld - and no surprise, several already exist.) You have to seek out resources. You have to interact with PCs. You can hire people to go to tribal villages and strange netherworlds to find this awesome hat. Experienced rangers or other travelers can peddle their ability to wander the world and find stuff. It's great for everyone! And since staff members aren't fielding 75 e-mails a day (per staff members) regarding new, dubiously useful game submissions, they might even be there to play that tribal NPC whose mother has THAT VERY HAT YOU SO DESIRE.

Has there been a shift toward content? Yes. Not only yes, GOOD LORD YES. Is this bad? No, not really. But we want to shift back to roleplay. We're not saying "fuck you, players. Take your hard work and enthusiasm for helping the game and shove it!" ... we're saying, "you know, players... instead of sending us so many useful submissions, why don't you play the game and have fun. Don't worry about the database, or new items... don't run to e-mail every time your character needs something. Just play. And have fun."

[Anonymous]

I guess this means no 'a darkly tinted pair of quartz sunglasses' huh?

[Vanth]

I guess this means no 'a darkly tinted pair of quartz sunglasses' huh?

You're not by any chance playing a character named "Neo" who already sports a black trenchcoat, are you? (Joke)

[Anonymous]

I like the thought process behind these changes.  These changes don't bother me at all.

Not to be cynical, however, but I don't think putting the clamps down on the things listed will have a positive effect on roleplay.  The logic here implies that if people have fewer alternatives they will roleplay.  The correlation between custom orders, description changes and lowered roleplay seems tenuous at best.  Someone interested in roleplaying will do so regardless of whether there are more custom items, clans, etc in the game, if you ask me.

Still, I have to admit that seeing these changes is encouraging in it's own right.

[Kankman]

I'm going to send my lackies to find my the pimpin'est hat! Oh yeah!

[HardCarbon]

I'd hope that newbies might be allowed a little something   I've been working on skill XXXXX  and found a few things that I think are problems and might need work on..

 Now I'm not saying that staff should jump on my suggestions.. but a fresh pair of eyes and all that.


Oh and BTW how do you know if your a master at a skill?

[Vanth]

I'd hope that newbies might be allowed a little something   I've been working on skill XXXXX  and found a few things that I think are problems and might need work on..

 Now I'm not saying that staff should jump on my suggestions.. but a fresh pair of eyes and all that.

You're still welcomed (encouraged, even) to report any bugs, typos, or ideas with existing items.  How do you do this?  Suppose you have a pair of black silk pants, and there's something wrong with it.  Here's some options:

>bug pants These pants are only wearable on the "waist" location, they should be wearable on the legs.

>typo pants On the third line of the description, these pants say they are made from "balck" silk.  Should say "black."

>idea pants These pants should be sold in Tuluk as well as in Allanak.

For implementing new content, email MUD and ask if the submission would be welcomed and if an imm could sponsor it.

All I expect, is that after this...the immortals better be a -lot- more visible in working with their clans and the game world.

Or what?  Will you call the Better MUD Bureau on us?  Perhaps you could demand your money back.  I find the arrogance and egotism in a statement like this one of the best arguments for this policy.  We don't sit around thinking of ways to screw the players over, or enhance our characters, or god knows what else.  We spent a lot of time thinking and discussing the matter, it's based on a lot of factors that we can see and a few that players may be able to, and assuming that we're doing it for some nebulous benefit to ourselves and giving us an ultimatum that you'd better see a result because you're entitled to a certain amount of work from the staff is a little on the fucked up side.  Seriously.

Haha! Don't worry, whomever Sanvean quoted, many people think essentially the same thing. And it amuses me to hear her accuse someone else of arrogance and egotism, but I digress. Maybe not -exactly- what you posted, but I would say I hope the imms are putting all of their new time to good use, rather than say going on mudsex marathons or giving karma for good emoting in mudsex marathons etc.

I know recently, one imm took the time to mud mail me about my playing. This has never happened in my scant 3 years of playing, so I am suitably impressed. Thank you imm, I don't remember the name and I picked read and delete from mud menu on accident. I don't give a crap about special items, but the lack of support for new clans and such is bothersome. What about the old 'You can become anything' part? But as it stands, maybe it is a good thing.  I personally have seen more interaction.

[Comrade Canadia]

I would just like to say that reading player responses to this thread has only helped to fuel my deep, violent loathing of mud players in general.  

*logs on anyways*

*cries himself to sleep*

[Sanura]

I assure you, already the changes brought on by this policy have been noted. Why, the extra free time alone has led to such productive exchanges as the following:

Daigon: Sanura, you happen to know offhand who's handling Byn atm?
Sanura: Savak and...uh...
Sanura: That's all I know...and NO FURTHER EFFORTS WILL GET ME TO TALK.
Daigon: You will submit, under torture
Sanura: Negative. The new policy says there is a LIMIT ON SUBMISSION.
Daigon: Hm. Excellent point.
Daigon: I will have to devise tortures only according to the CURRENT PROJECTS BLOG. Hah.
Sanura: DAMNIT

...but seriously, this is a huge relief. I understand how it initially seems to be limiting freedom, but let me reiterate what others have said in that the item database is UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE.

As a side note, this is part of what makes crafting submissions take so long. Want to make a new kind of arrow? Okay. To be consistent, make a copy of the item for each different kind of arrowhead that's currently craftable. Then, make a version of each of those for each of the different colors of feathers people are likely to use in fletching. Oh, and if there are multiple arrowshaft types? Well...factor that in, too.

Yes, that's a unique crafting recipe and a unique item for each. You can see how this quickly becomes absolutely insane, even for something as simple as an arrow.

The other issue, which has also been mentioned, is that the staff is in a better position to gauge what's appropriate in the world and what's not. Yes, we could just say "no" to every submission that comes in that's somehow off; however, from my experience, we generally try to adapt it to be appropriate while maintaining the spirit of the submission as much as possible. There's some more time. Besides that, believe it or not, most of us genuinely DON'T like saying "no" to players. We were all players once (with the exception of Halaster, who was grown in a vat and prodded with sticks for most of his formative years), and we know how that feels. So instead, now we simply have the ability to focus player efforts more on specific areas (the "current projects" blog). Not only does this prevent us from getting foot-long sub sandwiches and M1 Abrams tanks floating around the game, but it helps us to flesh out areas that desperately do need more work instead of expanding upon areas that are already overflowing with unused content.

Lastly, plot stuff, especially with complex or long-running plots, is a -massive- investment of time and energy. That's not a complaint; personally, plots are my favorite thing to do. Big plots, small plots, burial plots...they all add a lot more to the atmosphere of the game, in my opinion, than yet another variation on "an obsidian longsword". Will you immediately notice a difference? Probably not. Will it be an improvement overall? I think so. Will I continue to answer my own questions? Undoubtedly.

If -all- of those explanations fail to satisfy you, however, simply reflect on how the staff is a capricious lot which, like the gods of Greek myth, often make decisions that are incomprehensible to mortal man and spend unreasonable amounts of time engaged in questionable activities disguised as swans, beams of light, etc.

[wizturbo]

I'd personally LOVE (I MEAN LOVE) to have the merchant guild get the ability to 'restring' items at a certain cost.  It would enable them to add a sentence or two to the end of the description of an item.

For instance, "An obsidian dagger"

A single piece of obsidian was meticulously chipped and flaked until a
razor sharp blade was formed along either side of its length, blades which
narrow to a fine point at the end. The handle has been wrapped with a
length of dark-stained leather cord.


A merchant with sufficient skill could add something to this however.

A single piece of obsidian was meticulously chipped and flaked until a
razor sharp blade was formed along either side of its length, blades which
narrow to a fine point at the end. The handle has been wrapped with a
length of dark-stained leather cord.  Branded into the dark-leather cord
is an image of a serpent coiling its way along the handle.

All such "additions" should be logged in the game, for one imm to just look over from time to time to make sure people aren't being 'twinkish' with this strictly cosmetic ability.

[Delirium]

Wizturbo: I like it, but how possible would that be code-wise? If an object in the database has a certain description, would restringing it screw with all the other loaded instances of it? I will admit I know little to nothing about code, but it seems potentially tricky.

Sanura: I humbly request that you post more often.

[da mitey warrior]

2) No more special orders
Too much time and effort are put into special orders, both on an ic and an ooc level.  I think taking this way would be a great thing.

3) Master crafters
I'm a bit confused, would items crafted by master crafters be unique to that pc or would it be generally craftable?
Also, I think it would be helpful if the staff clarifed if subguild skills have sufficiently high maximums to be considered 'master' crafters.

5) No new clans will be opened (or re-opened).
A 3 month ban might be alright, but I can't see how this would be a good thing in the long run.  The next Thrain Ironsword would be SOL.  Maybe raising the bar for PC run clans instead (I don't know what the bar is now, so it might be a moot point).

6) You may request a total of two description changes for a character over the course of her or his lifetime.

I think once per 6 months would be fairer.  Long lived pcs can run through their 2 chances quick.

And I don't think scars and caste tattooes should count, since as I recall all that's required is teleporting the pc to the dispenser npc.  I can understand this for desc changes, since it's almost like approving a new character.

I think the changes as a whole are good.  More plots, less items.

[Hicksville Hoochie]

Maybe not -exactly- what you posted, but I would say I hope the imms are putting all of their new time to good use, rather than say going on mudsex marathons or giving karma for good emoting in mudsex marathons etc.

You are like, so not even considering the hoochies! We gotta earn karma too ya know?! Think of who makes all those ugly bynners and human lubbin' elves happy!   :cry:

[Armaddict]

This might mean something if you had posted it on the GDB.  Instead it
means less than nothing, it isn't much more than a continued slam and
insult of what you've been posting.  It shows that you're more than
willing to talk thrash about us in public but then quickly apologize in
private in case something should come of what you've said to other people.  
Or people see you exhibiting second thoughts about the hard line you've
been taking.

Just voicing your opinion? You were making a lot of uninformed statements
as though they were established fact, accusing the staff of lying, being
lazy, and having some hidden agenda against the players.  Multiple staff
members replied to your posts asking what you thought we were lying about,
what you thought our hidden agenda was, and so on.  You replied to none of
them.

God forbid you get off your high horse for one second and talk about this
rationally with the people who have dumped almost a month into thinking
carefully about what was going to be done.  It would have killed you to
spend 30min thinking about what was posted and re-reading before posting
your concerns.  Instead you made statements that were either in direct
conflict with the posted policy changes or wild assumptions about things
you have absolutely zero knowledge of.

You don't have to apologize for being the voice of opposition because
that's not what you are.  You're the voice of knee-jerk reactions to
policy changes that you haven't taken the time to consider or understand.

Fuck me? Fuck you.
-Nessalin

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Tim Weber wrote:

> Greetings:
>
> To anyone that reads this, I just wanted to apologize for the way my posts
> sounded, in regards to the policy change.  It's not that I want to continue
> to have uber-leet gear.  It's just that I -have- seen -awesome- instances,
> in game, that came as a result of special items being made.
>
> Combine that with the fact that I, in my first-ever real leadership position, had some
> grand plans to improve and perhaps create a group and that I now will be completely unable to
> make some of the items that assist the role-play in that group, as well as
> work to set that group apart from any others within the clan or those
> without the clan, and I was -entirely- too frustrated that this change came
> -right now-.  As Xygax said, the belligerent sound of my posts came from
> frustration.
>
> The ending ones, talking about how I wanted to see how things ended up...I'm
> sorry.  I know it's probably untrue, but when I see posts saying that there
> were 'too many' emails in their inbox about special items, etc, and about
> how this is going to 'free up time', I just get the idea that you -gave up-
> on doing all the submissions.  It wasn't fun anymore, and you just wanted to
> do away with it.  That's still how I feel, even though I still know it isn't
> true.  It's just...me being frustrated, I suppose.
>
> So to any who thought I was trying to be a rebellious Delerak who argued
> with imms just to be a thorn in the side of authority, I'm sorry.  I was
> just voicing my opinion that this -is- going to take away from the game.  
> Maybe not on a huge level, but in a level that will be more and more
> noticeable as time goes on.
>
> I've not asked for special items for myself in a -long- time.  They've
> always been in order to either further a clan, represent something that will
> affect role-play, or to make my character a distinctive one in a common
> role.  My main example will be rangers.  Sure, a lot of them wear desert
> camo.  I'd be just another ranger wearing camo...but then I'd request a
> special item of a ragged, frayed desert cloak to show my character is not
> from a wealthy background, cares little for shnazzy looks, etc, but he
> -still- represents a desert-based character.  You see the sort of approach
> I'm coming from?
>
> Once again.  Sorry for being the voice of opposition to a thought-out
> decision.
>
> Tim Weber/Armaddict

[Armaddict]

As per the above post.  I apologize.