Massokre's Classic Discussion (split from Warning about graalians.com)

[Tyhm]

Ease of questing is a fallacy. If the quests are as easy as Walk down this hall and pick up your equipment, there's no sense of accomplishment - and nothing to defend.
But difficulty is not an end unto itself either. If you set the bar too high - and the Magic Quest very nearly did, I barely survived it myself - you scare off the newbies. The quest should be long, but not necessarily deadly, and more importantly it should have a number of acceptable Outs. You should be able to get the gloves and go PK - maybe not on even footing with the Lizardsword Lizardshield 20heart oldbies, but not so badly that you'll be squished. "You need the L3 Sword" because it does 3 times the damage of the newbie sword when wielded against other players - I don't know that that's exactly right. One more heart means it takes something like another 2/3s of a hit to force a respawn, but being able to cut down a 3heart newbie in 2 slashes verses 3 slashes with the axe or 6 slashes with the training sword...that's a big leap. Fortunately, the movement system has the capacity to narrow that gap. Or perhaps more to the point, perhaps there should be an Alternate Quest? The Bloodhoned Blade, you have to sell your Graalian soul to dark powers to gain it and forever surrender your place as a possible Hero (at least until you reset), and it grows to the Lizard Sword based solely off kills? Hell, while we're at it why not harness the bloodlust - Heroes literally view these PKers as Baddies when they're not in the common (noplayerkilling) zones. Not in the quests, as a particularly gifted PKer could make a quest infinitely harder, but the Quest to Run to the Swamp becomes that much harder...

[Inspiration]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

Ease of questing is a fallacy. If the quests are as easy as Walk down this hall and pick up your equipment, there's no sense of accomplishment - and nothing to defend.
But difficulty is not an end unto itself either. If you set the bar too high - and the Magic Quest very nearly did, I barely survived it myself - you scare off the newbies. The quest should be long, but not necessarily deadly, and more importantly it should have a number of acceptable Outs. You should be able to get the gloves and go PK - maybe not on even footing with the Lizardsword Lizardshield 20heart oldbies, but not so badly that you'll be squished. "You need the L3 Sword" because it does 3 times the damage of the newbie sword when wielded against other players - I don't know that that's exactly right. One more heart means it takes something like another 2/3s of a hit to force a respawn, but being able to cut down a 3heart newbie in 2 slashes verses 3 slashes with the axe or 6 slashes with the training sword...that's a big leap. Fortunately, the movement system has the capacity to narrow that gap. Or perhaps more to the point, perhaps there should be an Alternate Quest? The Bloodhoned Blade, you have to sell your Graalian soul to dark powers to gain it and forever surrender your place as a possible Hero (at least until you reset), and it grows to the Lizard Sword based solely off kills? Hell, while we're at it why not harness the bloodlust - Heroes literally view these PKers as Baddies when they're not in the common (noplayerkilling) zones. Not in the quests, as a particularly gifted PKer could make a quest infinitely harder, but the Quest to Run to the Swamp becomes that much harder...

As I said, your ideas would have been fine 4 years ago. The playerbase no longer lends itself to this sort of thing.

If given the choice, 8/10 times a new player will pick the server with the easy quests and high player count.

Very few people feel quests are anything more than an annoyance. This is a multiplayer game that lives off it's community. Single player quests are not what people want to do on it.

[Tyhm]

Originally Posted by Inspiration

As I said, your ideas would have been fine 4 years ago. The playerbase no longer lends itself to this sort of thing.

If given the choice, 8/10 times a new player will pick the server with the easy quests and high player count.

Very few people feel quests are anything more than an annoyance. This is a multiplayer game that lives off it's community. Single player quests are not what people want to do on it.

Then Classic's doomed. If the playerbase is entirely unwilling to even kill their way to the best weapons, there's no longer a world on which to advance, even hypothetically.

Although, if we're going to insist that newbies not be burdened with the responsibility of questing for their stuff, we can just disallow all the "optional" quest items in PKing. Every sword does a newbiesword worth of damage, and everyone has a seperate PK health bar. :-P