Spamfunet Nanny Forum

How about opening a thread on Questing/QP reqs? I might if I get time to formulate my opinions on the subject and put them into words. Twisted words apparently  :shock:

Good subject, I'm looking forward to read it! (But let's face it, at least 90% of the existing quests don't take much except time and possibly careful examination of everything in every room.)

So, a good quest means when you have to play like 20-25 hours to reach its end and there should be a random password, like 12 chars long you have to guess and can try only once otherwise you lose all the items and have to restart the whole quest.
I like quests where you don't have to guess things, like exact commands and so on. Some quests seem to rely on specific syntax instead of having at least some synonyms for it. If this means I am not a good quester, then I'm not (not that I ever said I was).

And the new record for making the most assumptions from one sentence goes to... Qwer.

Seriously though, where do you see all that in what Carrion said?  I mean the type of thing you describe is an exagerration of the very same things I hate in a lot of quests, but I still don't see where Carrion came out in support of such things.

Just because he might be nostalgic for some of the older quests (many of which involved actually having to solve puzzles within them, work in parties, have some pre-existing knowledge or the willingness to research a topic) does not seem to imply, at least to me, that he is in favor of cryptic syntax that must be deduced or gotten through recieving *gasp* questhelp from another player.

Personally, I really don't enjoy doing quests due to many syntax problems and bugs.  The only ones I do enjoy are the ones that flow logically and have some type of inherent consistency.  I guess you could say I am in the other camp from Carrion when it comes to qp reqs, but I still don't see anything wrong with his criticism of many of the current quests.

In this 'my' thread, I take the chance of being not so damn politically correct and cautious about what I write, trying to be a bit of devil's advocate. But for you I'll clear some stuff up :)
* I like doing quests
* I want quests to be solvable without having to guess or coming up with the exact correct syntax
* I like having quests on different difficulty level, some 10 point quests are fun, some 200+ too
* I like old quests, I like new quests
* I think it's a shame that the QP requirement has been removed in lots of circumstances
* I think someone that has a lot of QP is a good quester (naturally depending on if he/she/it  solved it without getting dragged through it)
* BUT... I still KNOW most people could get a LOT of QP if they just take the time and have the stamina, it's not very difficult...

This is a good discussion but in the wrong thread. Please Snaf, move it to a QP reqs thread - please - pretty please - *hugs*

The way I understood, I would translate this into: 90% of the quests are too easy and not worthy to be called 'quests'.

We could say that everything is just a matter of time. But the time needed for a certain task is usually different from one person to another, and if someone accomplishes the goal much faster than anyone else would've, we can call him great. Also a quest can be great if it requires a LOT of time to solve, but obviously without getting bored meanwhile. A few good hours of exploring with many surprises can make a quest great, while some other quest that takes the same amount of time can suck hard because of the lack of imagination/time/patience of the creator.

I am wondering what the other 10% of the quests would need, if not exact syntax (suppose we have plenty of time). I know that a lvl 2 druid probably can't do the Hunt the Dragons quest, or a vampire can't do the 'Help Lorn'; I might be wrong and this is what you ment, dunno.

Anyway just in a few words, I would like qp req to return because I have so many chars just half-finished because the only thing I need is to advance in guilds usually, xp is coming anyway. With the qp requirements I would have just a handful of 'serious' chars, like paragons. Now I have only one, my monk, shrug. (I mean paragon with old reqs).
Also I'd like hard-pk system back. This new one sucks, imho. There is not much to say about it but I think that it is functioning way too differently than the old one, for my liking. It was a way of life, now it's a sport.

This whole forum starts to feel less and less enjoyable, the more I have to explain exactly what I mean (not that I really _have to_, but it's annoying when people interpret .. let's call it 'strangely'). No, Qwer, I meant that at least 90% of the existing quests really are pretty easy, not TOO easy, it's not the difficultness that makes a quest a quest, rather an easy quest gives you less QP than a more difficult one (well, that's the main idea anyway). So, just like getting tons of XP, or myriads of guild points, or endlessly much cash, it doesn't take that much to get a lot of QP. Some quests DO take more than understanding that a ladder might be used to get to high places, for example a quest where you have to solve a puzzle (that you can't find the solution for on Google)...

To get back to THIS thread, I am ALL FOR HAVING QP REQUIREMENTS BACK!!! As for PK, I have never used the new 'soft-PK' system, so I can't really tell (ooops, should get a thread on its own mayhaps...).

Puzzles are also things that you can solve with a little time (usually less than an entire quest), and if you examine everything. I, personally, think of puzzles as little quests. They are pretty much the same but usually too short and simple for a quest.

Heh, I almost thought you were serious :) Ok, ok, joke's on me, but I can live with it :)

Thanks for moving this Snafu *hugs*.

As I see it, originally, there were a number of guilds within which guild powers were distributed on a basis of game level. Thus, there was little reason to have many chars, as a level 19 char could skip in and out guilds and receive maximum powers at each step. Quest points were not required until the player chose to wiz at which point that was 'game over'.

QP reqs for levels were introduced to encourage players to quest at an earlier stage of their evolution (rather than at pre-wiz stage). This reflected the fact that Nanny was/is quest rich.

When guild powers were distributed on a guild point basis, however, the whole thing broke down. All of a sudden players were encouraged to have many chars, as guild hopping was expensive. Accumulating quest points for each char in order to advance game levels became a tedious task encouraging both cheating and scripters.

Personally I don't want to see advancement based on QP returned, but I do think that there should be a greater reward for going to the trouble of doing the quests. On this issue I defer to Slaktors assessment:

'Being a quester does not make a player great, but at least it demonstrates that they know a good part of the Mud'.

With regard to Carrion getting upset - people are allowed to disagree with your assertion that all it takes to mud (quest/advance) is 'time'. They are allowed to disagree no matter how many times you repeat it, or how many caps you use. Its just a discussion, after all  :)

Except for the last part, good post! (It _is_ just about time, and some endurance.)

Yep, keep on saying it. In a few days, weeks, years, who knows? someone may actually agree with you.

I, for one, am actually keen to hear what people have got to say on this subject, and I'm perfectly willing to be persuaded either way. Thats why I entreated Snafu to move the debate.

The fact that most quests etc. (you know what I mean, I've said it before) bla bla bla, doesn't mean I don't want to read what people think. On the contrary, the very reason I check this forum is to be able to see what different people think and do and act in different situations/aspects of Nanny.

On a side note:

One of the nice thing about puzzles is that you can make them quest-like, add a nice reward and not have to wait ages for approval. You also don't have to make changes to suit another's idea of what makes a fun quest/puzzle.

I'm sure my area isn't the only one with these.

Ok, I'll take the bait!  :wink:

I think in some ways Carrion is right, but in others not.  In simple terms, you could think about it as just having enough time and endurance. There is nothing to stop someone going through a quest, not using any brain power and just examining everything and typing in every word they can think of. In the same way as in theory, given enough time, you can get a group of chimps to type out the entire works of Shakespeare, there is a certain probability that it can happen, so given enough time it would happen.  :shock:

But, I don't think anyone plays Nanny like that! (of course I could be wrong!) I personally think that most people who quest like to actually get involved in the quest and figure it out using their own brain power, which therefore means that at some point there must come a time that no matter how long they try to figure something out, they just can't make the connection to solve it. I guess you could say that someone with a lot of patience would eventually stumble across the solution and solve it, but I am not sure this is true in all cases...

Of course, if someone has cheated and somehow got a solution to a quest, then it would be just a matter of time until they solved it, but that is probably off topic...  :shock:

Questing brings a depth to nanny that is unparrallell to the experience you get from roaming the countryside, slaying sheep and other critters.

While there is a very nice benefit of questing, namely that of getting permanent Nannypoints, I do think there should be more. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy having all my experience spendable for most of my chars, despite them being Paragons, it makes for comfortable play, in the unfortunate event of me dying ... but there is one thing in particular that could be added without making it too much of an advantage.

- All items requiring XP should require NP (people can have 3M+ NP and still not able to wield weapons requiring 1M XP for example, due to having a very high amount of questpoints and just 800-900k XP).

I don't know, I've given up on ever seeing an actual 'real' benefit of questing, so I haven't thought up any good examples of things to add ;)

This is most definitely true. People actually questing is probably relatively intelligent and can often be considered as good players, I myself takes pride in solving quests when I have the time (which last was in '98 I think...). (By the way, I am right in all ways.)

If time permits, I will definitely change some XP requirements to a mix of QP and XP (or perhaps NP straight). If you haven't done it already, use 'idea' in Nanny to highlight this possibility, sometimes it just takes one tiny 'idea' to get some action.

Nope, Your area isn't the only one with these. And I am happy to report that in spite of the fact that I find many of the quests to be internally illogical, buggy and simply lacking much common sense (not to mention lacking any significant incentive to do them); I feel very different about the puzzles and enjoy discovering those! I actually miss the the old woman who would tell you about how many puzzles you had done and would give a list of players and the number of puzzles solved (Used to be in vincent's area and was also the central part of one of his puzzles).

I remember that when new areas would open, Tirian and I would race back and forth to her to discern how many new puzzles were available. Then, we would try and find/solve them all.

To a certain degree I would even argue that puzzles take more knowledge of Nanny to solve since there is no central list providing clues to the existence of the puzzle, much less the location or what the goal is.

Hey! Maybe there should be a puzzle point requirement too!

Puzzles have the advantage of quests simply by NOT having the random element in it, not by default anyways.

Creators are not bound by artificial limits and other hampering rules when creating puzzles, making it both easier, faster and more encouraging to make fun, logical, captivating, thrilling, intelligent (I could go on forever) and wonderful mini-quests just like they want them to be, thus making them so much more fun to solve because you won't stumble onto inconsistancies created by above mentioned limits and rules, that breaks the otherwise, sometimes atleast, weave of the story.

I should point out that it isn't as if I never quest at all - it's just that it takes either a well -done quest or a worthwhile reward at the end for me.  Since, as a knight, I am rather equipment dependent, I do like to keep a significant amount of xp available so I can use certain items.  Nannypoints, as has been pointed out, doesn't help much with that.  

Also, as has continuously come up, many of the older quests are the ones that have been altered so much as to be problematic for those who never saw the original incarnation of it.
As a case in point - I did do Mirage's quest and found it extremely well-crafted, logical and without bugs or random elements (Kudos to Mirage!).  That was a quest worth doing because it was fun and because solving it gives a certain extra something that comes in handy for me.
I have already pointed out that I failed to complete a quest after combing the area many times over and it was only through this forum I learned it was because the wheelbarrow can NOT be found until you have progressed to a certain point.  

Now besides defying all logic, if you were not around as a player early enough to even know there was a wheelbarrow, this has just made the quest quite a bit more difficult.  Might as well let Wizzes shout "Guess what's in my pocket for 150 qp!"
Personally, I won't waste my time attempting quests like this - I understand it's not the creator's fault, but why should I become frustrated about not being able to solve the quest when I am not even allowed to see the pieces I should be making the connections with?  

I know that players who predated me see this from a different context, and I know some newer players who truly enjoy questing, but I'll just stick to the puzzles and exploring.  On a side note, if certain items were to become qp dependent, it wouldn't encourage me to begin questing really, not unless it seemed a reasonable amount to me.  Instead, it would encourage me to use other items.

Ummmmmm....actually....that's very similar to Profezzorn's quest: Inspire Profezzorn. He pretty much got the chance to give anyone he wanted qp with that one.

/Snafu :D

Doh!  Well, did you have to actually guess what was in his pocket - without any help of course since that would be quest help?

 :lol:

Reminds me of one of my Unreal Tournament key-bound messages: 'Is that a redeemer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?'... (Hard to imagine Prof, who's about 1.55 - 1.60 or thereabout, with a redeemer in his pocket though...)

As I said in another thread, Banshees' idea of making items appear only at certain points in a quest is not to my liking. There are, however, many quests like this (because she maintains them all).

Once you know that she favours this approach you just need to bear it in mind when questing. If you search something and get the message 'you find nothing' (or the like), then mark the area and try and search it later.

Its a shame if people are put off questing. Nannys quest are/were always great assets.

M

PS Puzzles are almost worth a thread on their own, I agree totally with whats been said so far.

Hmmm...if a quest no longer exists...and it is discussed in its gory detail...would that be quest help? ;) (much less wiz-info ;))

/Snafu :D

I miss that I used to be able wash my feet with the rag found in vincent's basement.  I could rarely find the mat on the porch to wipe my muddy feet, so the rag provided another way to get in. Nowadays when I try to do it it says I can't.  :(

Thanks for all those that replied - which wasn't many on the subject of QP reqs.

Personally, I think linking the acquisition of game levels to that of Quest Points was one of the stupidest ideas since the infamous 'lets try a PK week and see what happens'. People were forced to quest, and more experienced players were almost encouraged to 'help' younger players through quest help/sheets.

An ex-admin told me that (whilst mortal) he collated a _total_ set of quest sheets and sent them to new players in his guild because he thought it was helping. In a sense it was. In a sense it was flattering to Nanny that people still wanted to play regardless of the fact that it forced them into a play style that they disliked. In fact it killed questing as an achievement in the eyes of the admin.

To me, questing should be encouraged though reward in the Nannypoint system. The problem is, what are Nannypoints worth? I mean what can you buy with them? At the moment, they let you make paragon a little earlier, but thats really not much. The paragon club is just that - a club. NPs exist at game level and should be valued/spent/rewarded at that level. To me, the best way forward would be to scrap the paragon club and allow a much greater number of game levels, each bought with NP.

That way, players would be better rewarded (at game level) for Questing effort, and NPs would make sense.

M

The Paragon 'club' today is not what I think they intended. It takes the same place as the 'Top Players' list nowadays and the 'Top Players' list has been that way since they QP a requirement and linked to leveling. You had a bunch of powerplayers who would cheat (yes, a lot of them did...but not all) to get to the top by using sheets and other methods. In fact, most of the Top Players were multiple characters of same person(s). At one point, I believe half the list was just a handful of physical people. As for the level system. The level system as it is now is a holdback from the old days (thanks to its LPMUD heritage). Most 2.4.5 mudlib muds back in the early days had a leveling system of 1-19 for mortals and wizards after that. Nanny went a step forward in 1995 or so by implementing more Wizard levels and making it more defined. It took a good deal of coding to get that accomplished. Most code in the Mud, I believe, consider 20 and above for level to mean wizard. It would require a complete recode of not only the mudlib, but most of the Wizards' code to get a new leveling system in place. There may be other ways, of course.

It could be done, if there were enough admin interested in the idea to try to make it work. It would require looking over almost every piece of code on the Mud. (of course this is just my opinion - admin may know more than I do on the issue). I've seen other muds where Wizard levels didn't start until level 100 or on some, even higher. I don't think they anticipated needing more than 19 levels for mortals when the Mud was started.

I would like to see something like that implemented as it may make playing the game more interesting. But then comes the discussion..ok..if we raise the levels..do we raise the stats..and if we raise the stats..wouldn't that require raising monster stats, etc. This brings in a lot of inflation. It would require a lot of careful thought into implementation. I like the idea though. Good idea Maggs.

We do need some features put into the Mud which would not only bring new players but make the current/new players WANT to stay. Being a text game, Nanny has lost a lot of people due to graphical games and the MMORPGs that now exist. I, for one, stay on Nanny because of all of the interesting people I have met through Nanny (on Nanny and in RL). I will continue to come to Nanny out of loyalty to the game and to my friends.

/Snafu :D

Sorry Maggs, I'm off topic as always, just wanted to comment this...

Strange thing is that I _still_ love playing a mortal in Nanny, I still want to reach higher in the guilds, still strive after achieving certain things in the game. And I have never been especially social in Nanny, I am way too social in RL, can't stand too much chatting in a game, even though I find talking with some players very refreshing and a good spammage is also fun... I love playing 3D FPS like Unreal Tournament (check my avatar), but atm I prefer Nanny over UT!!! And I have not really had any blank intervals in my 12+ years of Nanny! I can't really understand it! Ffs, the people that lured me into this quit playing some 7-8 years ago! Damn strange! (Eh, perhaps this should be moved to Rant? 'twas Snafu's post that set it off though.)

Yes, I played Nanny for an hour or so last night and didn't want to stop. The only graphical game I play is NWN, and I find I get bored of that pretty quickly. I agree with Carrion, there is always something to strive for and enjoy.

Snafu's note really rocked, don't you agree?

Old Twat.

I understand it must be difficult if not impossible to keep the quest part of the game interesting for both new and old players...for old players it may look as too easy, for new players just totally overwhelming.

I dont know what the solution may be, but I know the game from the point of view of a new player compared to many of you talking here. I am not a quest solver anyhow, because I cant be searching in the same area once and again, but I can understand for a new player full of stamina quests are anything but easy. That's my opinion :roll:


And when I say old players, I mean old players who have kept active in the game through questing and all...I have read Carrion, and I would like to see him solving all the quests he hasnt if it's true he stopped questing in 1998 8)

I actually solved a quest or two (or three) just the other day. With a mortal, of course.

In a day several? You may be more intelligent...or you may have acquired some abilities from your previous playing...for some like me, quests are not like your are painting them :shock:

It would actually be interesting to 'snoop' (spy on) you when you try on a quest, just to see what you're doing different from me. Normally I just read the quest help, possible information in the tourist info, go to the area and try to investigate just about everything, of course holding on to interesting objects. Doing 'search' everywhere... Definitely no rocket science! Some quests involves killing hard monsters, that will obviously make it hard for someone not strong. But perhaps I have created this plan from past experience, and that a newbie will not do it this way at all, no idea...

Lately I am just lazy, but if one day I try a quest again I will tell you so that you can "spy" :D  

I never tried any quest in your area, though the newbie part I have visited very often.

No quest, one puzzle :)

only one? tsk :oops:  it must be that nice old man over there :D

and how many times did I die, can you see that? 8)