Top 5 Improvements to TI

[Kinaed]

If you could improve five (and only five) things about TI, what would you improve?

Please, no huge monologues, just your top five and maybe a sentence on each. Thanks!

[Voxumo]

Hmm... *rubs back of neck* this is a tough one

1) Rp Importance. I find that when some characters enter a room the rp dies and instead it is focused on them and them only. It should not be this way

2) The way one can pool a skill. I will admit i would like to see alternative ways to learn skills besides use or sometimes teaching. For example Medicine, The only way one can pool it is if they use it or teach it. If no one is injured you can't pool it and not many need it taught

3) More background on the mage front. I would like to see more ic info on some of the greater mages such as the big five. Also Maybe some more mage friendly locations or secret spots

4) Natural Disasters to the game. Perhaps the occasional Tornado or even earth quake? Why must they only happen because a mage has some part in it?

5) Shorten inactivity measure. Seems like a guild leaders can be inactive for far longer than it should be before they are kicked out

[Dice]

This is as short as I could make my answers. Sorry...

1) The bugginess of code. This is not REMOTELY a condemnation of Az, who is continually working his butt off to fix the mess he inherited. Rather, this is just a feeling of mine that we would be well-served by a greater focus on getting the very bare-bones basic stuff working as seamlessly as possible.

2) Skill learning - something other than LBU for people who hate it, or as Vox says, for skills that are very difficult to train via LBU. I personally am in favor of a limited form of inspiration, but failing that, research as a new skill-wise paradigm might do it.

3) The guild system - fewer guilds, more explicit themes/missions for each guild that are geared solely toward generate RP, 1 GL slot per guild, more distribution of powers beyond just the GL so that we never hit that period of 'nobody's active who can guild seekers!'

4) Ease of creating bad guys. Ease being defined as 1) reduced loss (i.e., of your own invested XP; recommends don't help much when you get max 1 recommend per 'event') and 2) greater reward. Possibly through encouragement/expansion of the ST system; explicitly telling people they can play big bad NPCs via stories? Also more set-in-stone rewards for STing.

5) I'm a bit surprised to find myself putting this in the top 5, but... scripting (mprogs). Cedit is a good example of how easy it becomes to expand content and possibilities when a system is designed such that all staff can do things that once would have required new code. Give staff powerful scripting and suddenly a million things people want code for could very possibly be approximated by progs.

PS. re: Vox's RP importance point: ten bucks says those players of 'rp important' chars don't want it to be that way either. You don't have to stop RPing when the Queen walks in. Bow, engage her if your PC would/if she engages you, otherwise go back to what you were doing. Same goes for other nobles. 100% fine IC and OOC and certainly preferable for everyone.

[Applesauce]

Some of these things are neither code nor policy, sorry if the question was looking for more tangible changes.

1) Better separation of IC/OOC. It's one thing to say "if you happen to hear something OOCly, don't 'know' it ICly" but intentionally spreading major info about your chars is not fair to yourself or the people you tell.

2) Reasons to be afraid of mages/magic. The various demon and sewer events have been awesome in this regard, but in the course of normal RP there's little reason for a PC to want to turn in another PC they discover is a mage. With few exceptions, the response is typically "well, they're nice to me so I guess magic isn't that bad."

3) Reasons to be afraid of the Order. No, I do not want Orderites to be jerks, and in a way this point conflicts with the previous point, but IMO that's one of the main thematic conflicts - neither Mages nor the Order are necessarily "right", so neither necessarily plans for your char's best interests. I don't know useful steps to "fixing" this, sorry >.>

4) Fake a skill at a lower level. I actually thought this existed already, but say you're a master singer but want to intentionally sing like crap because the song/scene calls for it. Or you're a master swordsman intentionally handicapping yourself in a duel atop the Cliffs of Insanity. It would be cool to somehow set a skill at a lower limit which would affect all checks against that skill until the limit is removed.

5) More mob/room/object progs I love when people use NPCs and objects and stuff in RP, and between scenes it is nice to have some sort of solo interaction with a char's surroundings.

[Brent]

1) Skill learning. - There really needs to be some other way other than LBU or being taught by PC's to rank skills up. PC teachers aren't always available and eats time that would be more enjoyably spent in other RP scenes.

2) More non-mainstream substance. - What I mean by that is more history and information about in-character history that aren't 'look lore' based. Heretical books, books for each of the non-davite sects / religions / cults, etc. There needs to be a greater black market of heretical (or otherwise not publically accepted) goods. What happened to the relics of Dav and the various popular saintly type characters?

3) Magic User NPC's. - I'd love to see NPC's / Mooks able to use mattack or cast spells. Use of magic is a core element of the mud's theme. As it currently is all magic users must be PC played or staff played (embodying npcs via RPA). Mages should have the ability to hire magic user guard mobs as non-mages hire standard guard mobs. Threshold of Flesh or the lesser healing spells could be used by a 'healer' mage in the sewers for example in order to give magic users their own 'hospital' type place to be healed.

4) Greater global effects for magic - I'd like to see greater magic effects for magic users, perhaps in combination with 'research'. A high level mage could have large backlashes / negatives to using research such as accidentally summoning a demon with no circle present, maybe a momentary global 'aura' that reveals latents to other magic users, etc.

5) I can't think of a fifth but I'll take this space up with a huge THANKS to the staff. TI's staff goes above and beyond what most game staff are willing to do for their players.

Ric

[Gavin]

Here's mine:

1. More assurances of meaningful action. The feeling that players are agents of change in the world and can, even subtly, shift the trajectory of the game. That is, while obviously theme must be respected for marketing purposes, having assurances that well-orchestrated designs and plots could truly change the world is important.

In other words, "returning to the status quo," whether it means "rebuild the church immediately!" shouldn't be the default position. The natural state ought to be one of smouldering tension, not idyllic peace.

2. Better dispersal of quests. What I mean by this is that quests (and this includes coordinating player stories) ought to be rationed so that dull moments are reduced and that certain thematic elements are offered at regular (but not too regular) events. So, one quarter's quest could be magic-related, the following quarter could handle a barbarian invasion, and then the third quarter's quest could be magic-related again.

In practice:

I would like to see Staff hire a full-time quest/story coordinator who develops even a loose plan to ensure that events, both Staff-led and player-led, are smartly spaced out. This means working with GLs too, ensuring that their events are also properly spaced.

3. Identify and strengthen important thematic elements. What I basically mean by this is culling extraneous and outdated material, including helpfiles, that conflicts with the core theme (which should, concomitantly, be strengthened). Major shout-outs to Olivia and others for working on religion, but religion should've been solved 10 years ago on TI: the fact that the Erra Pater is the main religious textbook is, in a word, dumb.

Also, to support (2),

I'd like to see fewer but more meaningful holidays. Also, either slow down time during them, or ensure that they're lengthened, so that we don't run into the "Oh, this holiday takes place on a random Tuesday morning." This is what I'm trying to do with Golden Week: I made an OOC week the standard, because it lets more people participate.

4. Smarter dispersal of roles. We can probably all agree that when certain roles aren't fulfilled, the game suffers. We can also agree that forcing someone to play characters they don't want isn't fair either. But if we identify a distribution of roles (e.g., the Order should consist of one Cardinal, one GI, 1 high inquisitor, 2 archbishops, 3 priests, and any number of aspirants), even one that's somewhat ad hoc, we can use our tools -- experience, quest points, even outright asking folks nicely -- to maintain that distribution.

Thus, I'm advocating macro-levels of coordination on a cross-guild basis, which is implemented in a within-guild basis. First, it's "rank control": guilds that are either too top-heavy or too bottom-heavy don't function well. Each GL should work with Staff to identify their ideal distribution, and I strongly advocate the Reeve approach to ranks (which I admit I implemented): fewer ranks available, meaning that the likelihood of each rank having a PC in it was higher.

Second, it's providing adequate incentives to ensure that guilds can satisfy this agreed-upon ideal distribution. Awarding bonus XP to Orderites was one smart step in the right direction; so is the RPXP bonus that Freemen receive. We can do more like this.

5. Less grinding. It's been said, but I'm old and while I don't mind a slow increase in skills, I'd rather just set something to train and have it raise slowly than skill-spam.

[Amy]

1. Expanded wilderness - I want to be able to get lost in the wilderness, getting home then becomes an adventure.

2. ability to interact with our game environment via code/RP. Mine/work stone to make tunnels, use wood to build leanto's for shelter. build phomes on given lots, or negotiate building through player carpenters/masons instead of just getting through staff. Player farming could be awesome too.

3. being able to put unfinished items in containers. I don't know if that's really hard to do, but I think storing works in progress is reasonable.

4. Expanded wildlife - have things like mountain goats, boars, and perhaps other animals spawn for butchering/cooking other sorts of meat- this helps give validity to hunter roles, and encourages players to buy stores of meat from players instead of shops.

5. I still feel that wildlife should have a shot of permakilling players, but that's a minor thing, so in lieu of that, Annual hug a staff day :D

[Kinaed]

I just want to take the time to thank the people that responded. A lot of this was deeply intriguing to me, and your sharing means we'll be able to take these desires into consideration with our future planning.

Warmest regards,
Kinky