Dark Legacy MUD Forum

i think the next patch that is put in after these ones, should be more focused towards the expansion of Dark-Legacy, and not the alteration... like more areas, better mob AIs(or at least a more diverse mprogram option set), more quests, the option of questing to level, rather than gringing(repetitive killing of mobs) to level. And being able to have new quests available to you once you dual class and tri class would be excellent, to help you get to that triav level again.

I mean, grinding is fun the first time around, but it gets boring, fast.

And, whats the word on "Harax's Baby", I know Harax isnt online that often, and if he is, then well, im shocked. but, I am curious to know of the evolution of this, or if it has been dropped entirely? because DL is in drastic need of something new, and not just alterations to what we do have, why do we have to keep changing what the players are getting used to, instead of adding more diverse content, that would let us players do that much more, or enjoy our time on the mud that much more, instead of having that much more of a hassle.

Don't get me wrong, i love the ideas of the new patches and I am strongly anticipating them, but really, it's just the same old thing, with a twist, that makes it slightly harder for all of us accomplished players to get used to, and to do, when we spend so much time building characters for something that can only be used for about two years, then gets dropped.

All those people who mastered jewellery crafts way back in the day, they accomplished something, and now, well, anyone who mines for 8 hours can go and master jewellery. see what im trying to get at?

Harax's baby was Highmoon, which is now released.

Nah, Harax's baby was more that highmoon, it was a VAST amount of areas, there was supposed to be something like 20 some areas, and a new map, and you couldnt get to highmoon by astralling or anything like that you could only get there by travelling through a mob. there was supposed to be the option of being born on either continent, there was supposed to be a lot of things to come along with it that ive never seen.

Oh right, you are talking about how highmoon was going to be the capital of the other continent, etc etc.

I agree, more areas are definitely what DL needs, i've played here for over 2 years now, and in that time i've seen only 2 new areas come in(Highmoon and silver streams), compared to 3, 4, 5? new patches that changed various game mechanics and systems. While the ideas in Cele's patches are very good on paper, mostly, they create a great deal of stress for the older, established players, so regardless of their intentions, what ends up happening with each new patch, is that we lose some old players who aren't willing to adapt to the new system just to run the same old mobs. Perhaps if there were new areas to explore, quests that actually WORKED to run, to coincide with new patches, it would give older players an incentive to stick around and learn to adapt.
I also think that it would be more prudent to fix the broken quests/areas/etc before bringing in new patches...seriously, can someone name me a quest that is actually fully funtioning and can be completed? Maybe i'm out of date a bit, as i've only come back to DL a month ago after being gone for 6 months or so, but as far as i know, most, if not all, quests are either broken, or outdated(i.e. Geresh's quest)
I don't know HOW many ppl have asked me about the Star Gem quest just in the past few weeks, there is obviously a great interest in that particular quest, and it's been broken as long as i've played here.
Doesn't it make sense to fix the things that are broken FIRST, then create new things that will need to be fixed later?

you don't understand what the patch is, and yet you are jumping to the decision that we are introducing new things, and leaving everything as it is.

Did you consider for even a moment that the patch entailed more than that?

To set the record straight, everything is being overhauled, it's a 'big patch'

and no, i'm not telling you much more than that.


It's possible that the patch might be installed in stages, adding one part at a time, but the overall 'thing' being worked on, is an overhaul.


As for losing old players because of patches...If you want to play on a mud that doesnt change, play somewhere else. This mud changes, ideas are explored, they are improved upon, and eventually replaced with new ideas. It's an evolution that will continue for as long as Celeborn has interest in it.
We don't lose old players to patches, everyone who has been around since we started changing things around, is still here. (in one form or another) It's possible you are thinking of the banned players, who cheated. Some of those players had many accounts to their names, each with big names that many people would have considered unique individuals. When we ban them, all their accounts go away, we don't mind losing them.

Your right, things are getting overhauled, and your right, we dont know whats going on, because we only know what we've been told.

We anticipate what we've been told, but, however, the diversification of what has been previously implimented is whats being changed and "overhauled", and i guess, in its own way you could consider that new content, but what about areas? sure, we've got 3 or 4 newer areas since the mud started, and we've had some that zeraphin built, and well, korus, you worked on most of those yourself.

Thats right, ive seen the mud evolve, ive been there for EVERY patch, from when you could run the dragon isle and walk away with 20-50k in your pocket every time for a 5 minute run, and when castles were in the areas, when you had to pay to have your castle on that one spot you thought would be uber kewl to have your citadel at, etc.

I've seen many people play this mud and get banned, Ashelby, Binkly, Wraif, myself, and so many others. I've sat this through, because DL is the only mud that I care to play, and I /have/ cheated on DL, I was one of the 6 that got banned for duping, as everyone knows a while back. When everyone of us were using a different dupe method(exempting those who were trusted with the method i discovered, and who were helping me dupe.) Remember, quoting Celeborn in another 1/2 hour i would have had gold in the billions.

That isnt what im talking about, im talking about more areas that we can explore, with more content, ive been through every area in the mud that my characters could explore, not with one character alone, but with the collective 12+ triavs that i've had. ive fought most mobs, ive claimed most equipment. Back in the day i had a level 13 single-class dueler that was taking people from levels 13-50 out in a matter of minutes.

Hrm, nevermind, I'll find Celeborn on MSN and have a chat about this with him on there.

i have no arguement with you on areas, if i had my way, not only would i begin building 24/7, but i would hire an entire staff of builders and storywriters to build new areas and content.

i think there are memory constraints holding us back.

areas was my main arguement there, thats what i want more of, and if we cant get more areas, why not /new/ areas? swap out the old for the new.

Ditch what the DIKU came with, and go for the gold, and originality.

If Dragonfly worked, I'd be making areas that are questbased left right and center.

i've tested the waters in the past, and started some discussions on area replacement, and the overall feedback from the players was that they relied on old areas, and did not want them removed.

When the areas get removed, the objects get removed with them, so if someone has a 'tiggy's wooden bow' from the area called 'tiggy's place' and the bow was given to them by their old friend 'Hilda' who doesnt play anymore, and then i remove the area, the bow is gone too, then the player is like OMG you @!?!@ this item had sentimental value to me.

been down that road before, unpleasant.

What if you switched areas that aren't used much anymore...such as graveyard, dragon exports..? i know the only thing most people use dragon exports for is intelligence and wisdom drainables..why not have a bunch of them in a newer area? and graveyard is a good spot to level a low level character but theres not many good things there that someone would get mad to lose..

well some old areas just have one or two good item from a quest or something good we can get, other then craft eq. Old areas have a weapon/armor that can help us level a bit faster. Maybe we can learn more about old areas and the mini quest they might have in them

I've strived against pwipes since the beginning of DL. This limited my ability to fix fundamental design problems and has made balancing, testing for issues and good area building horribly complex. Each patch is just dancing around the same old problems of balance.

For example, Levels and epic levels are so horribly split it makes it hard to accomodate both properly, and no area building for epic levels are possible. Armor and attack code goes so many interwoven legacy levels deep even the smallest problem fix unbalances everything else. And memory usage is growing to insane levels, just because so much old junk is retained.

Maybe some of you remember the Petal versus Blade Mud I started working on, it was my attempt to do things with good coding practices; and from the ground up. I came as far as the design and then realised i'd never have enough time to complete it before 2008 Plus people started screaming for fixes on DL . So instead I decided to implement those ideas (and coding practices) into Dark Legacy. as far as possible anyway.

I wanted unique areas since the beginning of DL, but i've never been able to inspire the building community enough. I did code two windows programs that made building areas and quests easy; problem was, within a month those programs became outdated and I found it too much work to keep them updated. The current state of the in-game building engine is even worse. Building in a text environment is horribly slow, even more so when half of the building functions are broken and everything is undocumented.

Currently, i'm documenting all the features of the game engine into a wiki for the builders so they actually KNOW what the game engine can do. I'm still pondering an easy way to code a building engine which integrates all new features (webbased is looking promising).

If you're really really sick of all the bugs, want no more core functionality changing patches, PLUS new areas, help lobby for a pwipe so I can properly remove all legacy problems. I'll never force a pwipe on an unwilling population though.

i vote nay on the pwipe XD

Thats the thing. This way I'll keep dancing around the legacy problems forever. But thats what I've always told everyone they could expect, no pwipes but loads of changes. Best thing I can try is polishing the building engine for a bit and hope that'll help. Or do a mud split and start Petal vs Blade on cleaned up DL code (which would mean hardly any time for old-dl, not something i prefer at this time).

I have never thought of it this way before. Perhaps after you fix building and such, and enough of us make a bunch of wicked sweet epic areas...You can delete pre-epic levelling altogehter.

I know you asked this question before (Should non-epic levelling be deleted), and most people said no...

I now think you were on the right track. Those levels are not needed. 'Newbie' Levels could be e1 - e50. The dungeons could be mostly replaced by epic areas. Epic levelling could be slowed down a lot. Etc etc. I am sure you have pondered this before, and I now agree with you.

If killing pre-epic levels makes things easier on you and system resources, I say go for it, once the MUD is ready.

What Weems is saying makes sense...epic areas would be way better than epic dungeons ^^

yes, and worldmap encounters and extra-planar encounters could also be made a source of epic levelling.

we also have the ability to 'place' encounters in a set section of a map, such as making guards to an area enclosed by mountains, the moment you enter the entrance, bam, encounter.

i've never used that feature much, except when doing quests, but encounters could take over for much of the levelling. (it could use some upgrading to make it a little better)

(such as using color codes to distinguish between level ranges while on worldmap, helping you to avoid encounters left by other higher level players)

and having old encounters which have been abandoned disappear after a set time.

That sounds interesting Isabelle, BUT, it also sounds a lot like the epic dungeons. Just big open areas with mobiles of your own level.

to a degree yes, you would pretty much always gain experience for a fight then.
(although, if i had my way, experience gain would be //seriously// lowered, so that it would even out)

but, this is all just theory, 'what could be'

if this happen what %percenage% are we talking about? basically from 5000exp we get like 32exp? if you wanted lower then 1% which is 50exp what is the formula?

it hasnt been created yet, so there is no formula for it.

celeborn was just saying that it would exist if everyone said yes, maybe if you were epic 1000 currently, you might become level 50 in the new system, but maybe with the new system you would have all sorts of nifty new skills and abilities. Who knows, it would just simply exist, and would be the same for every player, so you would get something.

Celeborn doesnt care how much experience you have, or what level you are, etc, he just wants new code, but to achieve that, everything would have to be changed.

(such as multiclassing disappearing, levels changing or disappearing, races being changed, items being replaced, areas being replaced, etc

I havent read the whole thread so forgive me if i'm repeating something.


I think the next patch should focus on REPAIRING the mud as it is now. You know the bug report system? well there's about a million unresolved bugs there that, if they were fixed, would improve the game. You dont have to CHANGE the game, just FIX what we already have, and THEN you start to add onto the game, otherwise problems can compound into larger problems that will take more time and energy to set right again.

You see the problem is we already have troubles, and all people want is to make the game bigger, but al this does is create new problems that take precedence over the old ones.

I also beleive that we shouldn't be adding new areas, rather, we should update the ones we have, you know, bring them up to speed. For instance Hocheyena has a quest to save the village, which people have probably beaten a million times. I haven't, because so much was tweaked with the game that you can no longer finish the quest, since an old area you needed to get to as part of the quest was removed. And if everyone has completed the area a few times, then that quest should be done and a new problem should have to be introduced and solved so it looks like life actually goes on in the areas of Alora.

I strongly favor my motion to fix what we got and then move on from there. It should be the #1 topic at this point in our DL careers.

Please agree with me......

Celeborn has ALWAYS fixed every bug he could in the bug list before implementing changes, so don't worry about it.