104 replies to this topic

[Trevayne]

As far as an anti-sharing policy, I mentioned a clad iron anti-sharing theft solution months ago.

My bad then. It sounded like you had an anti-sharing theft solution.

Let me give a staff perspective on theft. Things that get stolen include characters, items, gold, and clans.

Of these, stolen clans are the easiest to spot and deal with since the clan sale is both not immediate and requires staff intervention.

Stolen characters are the next easiest. Characters are relatively easy to track as they move from account to account since all transfers and name changes are logged. Beyond that, players can often identify characters that are stolen even if they have been name changed from public data like their level, stats, and kill list. Since we now have staff on almost all of the time who can lock accounts, this turns out to be easy to stop once a problem is reported. Dividing up an account of characters fairly is also no easy matter and often takes more time than finding out what happened to the characters involved in the theft.

Items and gold are almost impossible to track down if a thief is motivated. They are the easiest things to hide, easiest to re-sell, easiest to distribute quickly to a variety of sources. Since my cobalt and your cobalt look the same, finding out what happened to all but unique items is very difficult.

Personally, I'd love to see your solution implemented. As a player, I haven't sold a character in the five years since I started playing and probably never will. I think people should spend more time training and less time just buying what they want/need. However, most players really enjoy the ability to trade characters so that they can either improve what they already have or try something new.

It seems to me that your solution adds significant complexity to one of the aspects of the game that many players really like without providing any real safeguards.

[Champion]

A new idea to help solve 2 things, player base un motivated and to much gold....TAXES.

Say every hour of game play on each of your crits = 100 gold or something like that...
I have a bunch of ideas to make sure you pay and penatlys for not buying but I woke up at 2am to use the bathroom and started thinkin bout how taxes for some reason then i thought of nightmist and BAM but yeah w/e, go ahead and shoot this idea down.

[Champion]

Quoting Mysticstorm..."Make it so crits are non transferable!!!!!!! Meaning, any crit you create in an account, it stays in that account period reguardless if someone deletes the crit or not!!! "

This was said not possible due to just makin an account for each crit, but i woke uup yet again with a new idea.....you can only trade lvl 10 and under crits? hahahaha

[MysticStorm]

Ok so you got me the clad iron anti-sharing theft idea.. but however.. my meaning of it was, that people could still share, but you really can't steal. Guess I"m the only one that gets the meaning of it and I just can't figure out how to put it in a way for everyone else to understand lol.

I think I could go along with the trading of crits under level 10.. just would really love to see someone have to keep track of multiple accounts of 1 crit cause I sure won't lol. But you still run into the problem of making 1 account and selling the arches reguardless of what the level cap is when purchasing crits.
Yeah, even though that crits are trackable because of logs, you also have to deal with the innocent by-standers who buy these stolen crits not knowing that they are stolen and lose money over it.

As far as the tax idea.. yeah it would be great to have a tax system, but then you have the new people that would be too broke to buy anything lol. So that wouldn't work.

I don't know.. i'll think of something, but still would like to see crits non-transferrable. I always say, if you can't roll it and train it yourself, you didn't need it in the first place.

[Gnarkill]

Wouldn't make sense unless nm was totally reset to start with, otherwise you still have all the past thieves and people who got hand outs still having what they aqquired from thefts/mooching. It would work with a reset and actually show us who can play and who can't by starting from scratch without being able to buy/sell crits.

[Champion]

Ive thought of a total reset many times. But it would be a huge gamble. Im sure a lot of people would quit if they lost all there stuff, but then again maybe new blood will come in if we get it around that its like a brand new game and everyone starts off new because then new people can think the have a chance to be one of the top players.

[Gaddy]

JLH has stated several times that there will not be a reset.
Lets just assume that isn't an option for helping the game and look at other ways of working on the current situation.

[Gnarkill]

I wasn't stating that we need a reset I know JLH's stance on things and frankly a reset wouldn't be the smartest thing because we would lose alot of people who worked hard and don't wanna do it all over again. I was stating that it would be the only way the idea that was proposed before it would work to weed out the past handing out and theft stuff. I personally think everyone should leave it be and enjoy nm as it is and let the new theft team take care of the "bad apples".

[Champion]

I have recently been VERY active in helping new players get ahold on the game, stopped many of people from pkin them over and over again, showed them shops advised them where to train and what class'es they need to train. But the main thing that makes our new player base go away is this, which I think should be found offensive and ruining the game by making those players leave half the town if a lot of people treat them like this heres just a log of something real fast....

Let's just say that this is a long post showing how ignorant and foolish some people are. It contains lots of language that I'll be happy to give a nice long in-game ban for if I see it. Oh, and if I see anti-social behavior like this, I'm happy to ban for that also. -- Trevayne

[Harky]

I hate to say I told you so, but.. ;p

[Redheart]

I have witnessed Much worse than that tbh.

Some people play nice with others and some don't
all you can do is remind the newbies not to sit at sgh/ngh and take harrassment.

Ignorepc works so well its almost the best thing ingame !

[eclypse]

well we all know how much i love being pesamistic esp on this game, but i totaly agree something drastic needs to be changed with this game!!!! personally i agree with most of what ryland or whatever his name is said... but i also believe one of the major problems with this game is that its so PK oriented, if that were changed and made so that it takes actuall skill to kill somebody i think the game would be considerd a challenge and more fun for everyone.


ps. please kill the following noobs if seen training

Fearless
Corrupted
Rave

[Raylen]

lol. thanks.

[Autek]

My solution

Keep this Nightmist up and running so that everyone who is afraid to lose there stuff can hold on to it.

For those of us who are looking for a better Nightmist, make a copy of the current Nightmist (obviously reset), but in a 1-Alt format, and tweak all the areas/bosses ingame to be killed by like 10 characters rather than 30. Anyone who played pre-reset knows a 1-Alt game is much better.

The economy would certainly run much smoother, we most likely would never have problems with it.

New players would definately be more willing to play it, as they are more accustomed to the 1-Alt system.

Pk'ing would not be a problem at all, seeing as there wouldn't be people on 10 thieves assassinating 1 person. This would also bring a funner, in my opinion, way to pk, in that to be surely effective, you would have to party up with fellow assassins etc.

The teaming aspect would be the best part about a 1-Alt game. On the current version of Nightmist, people can solo things on their 20 characters, and get all the gold/items for themselves. Can't blame them for not wanting to share. However, nobody in their right mind can say that it is not 10x funner to go on a boss run with a ton of friends rather than alone.


I'm sure there will be more popping in and out of my head on this, that's all I've got for now.

[deadman]

So basically you mean get NM2 up and running?

[Autek]

I don't think there is any need for a NM2, the current map and system etc. works just fine, only problem with it is alts.

[Trevayne]

One of the times that I say this it will finally sink in.

It will be faster and easier to build NM2 from scratch than it would be to make NM1 operate with one-alt or a small number of alts.

[Autek]

I probably don't have any idea what I'm talking about, but I'd imagine that there is a monster editor, and you could simply change the hp/dmg's like they did in the past when things were getting too easy for people. It wasn't difficult to change them in the past, I don't see how it would be any more difficult now, other than the fact that there are more monsters in the game.

As for the 1-Alt deal, couln't you just copy the pacifist code and put it in for all classes? Then just change it from saying "A pacifist can't be played at the same time as other alts." to say "You can only play on one character at a time."?

I don't know coding or anything, so if I'm just completely off, disregard this.

[Trevayne]

It's not just an issue of changing a few lines of code. It's also not the effort of going through the 650+ monsters that are now in game.

It's a matter of getting the whole world... all the monsters, item drops, shop items, PvP combat scenarios, spells and abilities, boss fights, events, and everything else to be fun and interesting to play on a small number of alts. That means basically doing redesign and re-balancing all aspects of the game and would take in the thousands of hours of work to complete. Even then, it's never going to be a well-designed system... there will always be hold-overs from the old multi-alt system.

On a completely different note... I don't think going to single-alt is the way to save NM. There are many commercial single-alt games that have tens or hundreds of paid full-time staff devoted to them. We'll never out-pace those games. We are (as far as I know) the most successful multi-alt game out there... if not the only multi-alt game. We should capitalize on that as a strength and a selling point rather than trying to remove it. If you want a good single-alt game, go play WoW or wait for NM2.

[Raylen]

We should capitalize on that as a strength and a selling point rather than trying to remove it.

I agree.

The question is, of course, how?

[EvilDognapot]

when that strength's primary function is to outpace other players and solo every attempt at forcing teamwork, why would you want to emphasize that?

"hey come to nightmist, train 20 crits at once, kill things over and over again, and then sit on one square with full knowledge that if you want to do anything at all, you'll need to log on 19 other crits so you might as well just wait for a mosh while you play WoW or browse the internets"

alts were a good run for awhile, but as we kept raising the bar we excluded a lot of players who aren't into playing this way. we used to have an appealing game for a lot of people, but it's more of a niche game for hard-core grinders who for whatever reason haven't gotten into korean mmo's and p2p games. can one crit kill the mayor? i don't know, it's just a key, but there was a time where one crit could kill the dg if he logged on at the right time. people who enjoy the alt race are going to enjoy the competitive edge more than anything else, we should find a way give people a competitive edge in a different way. i haven't thought about how, but emphasizing alts isn't going to make the game better.

[Raylen]

I killed DG the other day on 1 crit, with a lil help from a couple of pacifists I made friends with (there goes my street cred)

But yeah, if you wanna actually get anywhere...1 alt doesn't really cut it

[Julius]

The problem I see is that yes there are alot of new areas out, and yes there are alot of cool drops in them, but as nightmist grows, so does the distance you have to run your team to get to that area and do those things. Then if you want to do it over and over you need to spend all your time collecting keys and solving puzzles. As the game has progressed, so has the complexity and the originality of areas, however this makes it less interesting for people to do multiple times. Gone are the days of 15 players taking on the crystal giant. The old original bosses can be killed so easily its actually pathetic. You used to need rangers to kill the giant, then you could help them out with thieves with lower than normal damage, but now, its rediculous what you can do to him. Demonic general was given a little more help now, but his drop is next to worthless. There used to be a day when you would sit around for hours waiting for him to spawn because you NEEDED a halberd. Now they sit in vaults by the stacks. There was no content to those bosses. I would imagine it was around the time the Museum was introduced that there was a good amount of 'content' for high levels to go after. The necro tower is probably the best area that I know of for content, but it is hardly ever visited. Swamps is simple but fun. Now you look at areas though and you realize how much time and work it will take to bring your team through it, and it hardly seems worth it. Is that the only way to keep players from farming, making it so difficult and annoying to go there that you just say why bother?

New areas need to have a mix of content and puzzle, but not so much that its overwhelming to people. On one hand it is fun to figure out the story, but when you get stumped, you get aggravated and dont want to continue. So balance areas.

Here is what I would like to see and I believe it will help.

A low level area near nightmist that has a cap of 10-15, 3 alt limit and has decent monsters for experience and drops. Now when I say drops I dont mean swords with 150 damage and +10 dex, I mean pieces of armor that you can buy in town that can be used or sold to help new players and low levels build up. I have some ideas on how to do this and would be more than happy to work with a staff member to implement this.

[kstarnestrading]

I think that there should be a NM2 with graphics. The graphics do not have to be the best but just as simple as runescape. When I talk to friends about Nightmist and they ask how are the graphics and when I tell them it is textbased they laugh at me so I do not advertise Nightmist. I would not mind making a one time payment if the game had graphics and theft issued solved.

[Redheart]

Nightmist would be incredible if it was Graphic.
I can only use my imagination to visualize the different Towns and forests etc. I realise that the game will never be visual.
Im glad Im a fast reader to see typed descriptions.
I also think that is why people use it as a chatroom. I don't see people sitting around chatting on games with graphics. Since nightmist is a text game that is why people sit around and chat.

One idea to help new players get started would be to make it so low levels lets say 1-15 don't lose any experience if they are pked. Of course they would still die and end up in local pub, drop the inventory items and gold but they wouldnt lose any experience. This might help a bit to keep them interested.

[Julius]

The XP loss at low levels isnt even substantial, so that won't fix anything

[Crane]

Part of the novelty of the game being mostly text-based is that it plays on your creativity (assuming you don't only read the directions you can move!) and therefore the game can take on the form of an interactive story. But I realise that this does not appeal to everyone, so a graphical style of game, if the extreme server loads can be handled, may cover another range of players and bring another element of the game.

[Julius]

I dont think that JLH and Pandilex have the equipment, support, staff or time to develop Nightmist to be a heavy graphic game. There is little chance for such a small game to be able to compete with games like EQ, WoW, Vanguard, and all of the other mmorpg's that have hundreds of employees and millions of dollars of revenue.

Either enjoy the game as it is, or move on. I like Nightmist for the ability to mold in my head and play in my own little world.

[Redheart]

The XP loss at low levels isnt even substantial, so that won't fix anything

sorry i disagree.....
If your new to a game and decide to try to train your lil crit and some dude comes along and keeps
killing your lil crit, it tends to be a deterant. Chances are they don't come back to play again.
I have seen this happen.

[EvilDognapot]

some players are just retarded and never surpass a perpetual state noobishness. i've befriended some of them over the years, and if i hadn't taken them hunting, and leading them to BT, or what-have-you they would've quit sooner and less whining would have been had by all. i don't sympathize with that arguement, if doing the same thing over and over again doesn't work, you should be able to go back to the drawing board. i believe your newbies and mine are the same since they quit whenever things don't work and never evaluate their plight.