Spamfunet Nanny Forum

Something I've posted in Nanny too just not sure if all of you read that board. I pasted the same thing here. Nothing like great ideas I was just wondering about this under the shower right before.

I was just wondering. It certainly seems so, sometimes.
I think it would be about time to make some changes in Nanny.
Some big changes, not something like someone's few rooms area.
A major change.. for example, parties are next to dead also.
Wouldn't there be some way to improve the gains of partying?
If it would be worth it, I am sure most of players would play
in parties. That could get us some newbies, perhaps; it
could make the game more newbie-friendly too.
I just feel that the few ones that still play just go and kill
their preferred monsters, or train skills/spells; a very few
perhaps try to explore some, or quest. But, if parties would
regain somehow the popularity they once had, that would prolly
make more people to play, as it could make the game more
interesting.
Nanny is too silent. People just go on their separate ways
and that's not good, I think.
I know that a major change would need some devotated people
to work on it. But is it impossible? There still might be some
old wizards/high wizards that could make some time to work on
something that might have a chance in reviving the game.
I know that I don't even have proper ideas, but ideas could
come from both players/wizards, if anyone would ask them
publicly.
Admins, don't kill me for this. I just really think we need
something more. Some change, big enough to make players
curious and get them back to Nanny. Some change that would
make players happy. And I am not talking about tons of
exp/money, we have plenty of that. Something interesting,
fun, worth to try and play for.

I have brought up the issue of parties many times in as far as it relates to the monks guild. 'Brought up', in this instance, denotes mails to the admin, conversations with Brom/Mami and Barbarella. Brom changed the monks healing to try and compensate (a little) for this (the gaining of XP through Karma use).

The admin changed the party XP split originally because they perceived that players were exploiting it by using high chars (mostly khornes) to drag around new players for XP. I think you admitted to doing this yourself in another note.

They see this as a cheat, and as such, I don't see them changing the system anytime soon.

I agree with you that the game has lost infinitely more than it gained from the change, but that doesn't count for much,

Maggs (whose khorne away message was: 'Kirsty is away: Get your own XP!!')

Funny, mine was "No thanks, I don't need a monk!" ;)

I never begged for a party as a monk, I think a monk should respect himself more. There always were people eager to party. I only partied with my monk, never played alone (well ofc when solving quests). So I find little use of my monk. I have advanced him to a high grade and now I just look at him as he's close to useless.

I think it's an interesting point that is raised here.  On the one hand, I don't see how having more parties would bring more new players.  On the other hand, having more newbie friendly players would certainly help with the retention of new players.

I do agree with Maggs whole-heartedly about parties as they relate to monks.  There's a guild that was made to be in a party, and as such they added a whole new dimension to party strategy, structure and capabilities.  Now, although it is rare to find monks looking for parties, it does happen from time to time.  I imagine what there has been the largest decrease in is new monks.  With the current situation, monks is just not a guild cut out for beginning players.  Actually, now that I think about it, Masters may even be easier for some since they don't have qp requirements to advance.

Even with all this, however, I still do find that I party quite a bit, at least as much as before.  Oddly, I seem to party most often with players who have been on Nanny for less than a year.  You see, there really are new players out there - it's just that they aren't treated that way by most people.  In the last few months I can think of three completely new players that have logged in and that I have helped to start off - only to find that they have since drifted away.  I know some of them were more than a little initimidated by all the "Big" players running around them and apparently not that many people take the time to help out a new player.

If you really want to see more new players on Nanny, and a rebirth of parties, then start some.  Ask some younger players if they'd like to party.  Don't just worry about what your character can get out of it, after all, part of any game should be enjoying it and I can attest that my best memories of playing all include parties.  

I wonder if it's not so much that parties are a dead thing on Nanny or that the art of partying is falling out of favor.  If many players "grew up" their characters by partying with higher-level characters, than they may have different expectations about parties than I do.  To me, it is a chance to work together for some common goals, or just for pure enjoyment.  Nanny is a computer game, it will be what you make it.  It will be what we all make it.  Sure, the Administration will make changes from time to time, and we, as the players, certainly won't like them all - but we keep coming back, so there is something worthwhile to be found in Nanny.  Sharing that with each other is what parties would seem to really be about.

I would expect that most knights would be very open to parties, after all, the guild is built for it.  Some have discovered that and even go so far as to exploit the knights guild like human shields, and although we are good at that, there is much more that can be done.  

I suppose different guilds might have different takes on parties in general, of course, but this is mine.  I can't say it speaks for all knights, but I know a lot of knights that would take the same stance.  And, interestingly, I have never asked a Khorne for a party thinking I could benefit from it - quite the opposite, they often ask me.

Anyway, if you are looking for a party, and you see me on, give me a tell - just be assured that with certain guilds you will need a good reputation for me to join you, not as a player, but as having a good character.  Past experience has taught me that not everyone can be trusted, and maybe that - and not some administrative change - has caused the percieved shortness of parties.

I think a lot of us, even players with only a couple of years worth of experience, fail to see the real new players, as we most of the time think 'heh, yet another experienced player that starts a new char and tries to get helped as much as possible', thus failing to help the REAL newbies. This is VERY dangerous, as chances are those newbies won't continue to play, and it's not THAT fun to see the same 10 players in different disguises roam Nanny (preferably using speedwalks so they don't even see tells/shouts etc). Yav's standpoint is very sound, I'd say.

Thats not how I remember it. Being asked for a party 3 times between logon and the mainland chapel. Being begged for waters from your so called defenders.

Anyway, that was an excellent note from Yavathol, introducing a different perspective on things. Different from, 'it can't be any good because it wasn't like that in 1997' anyway.

A Quality note.

Give him some forum gold!!
Ah, wait, we don't have such a thing.  :twisted:
I miss parties. Now I just don't see much benefit of partying, that's what I rarely do it, just with my few chars. A few months before, when I have built a new knight, I was asking around the guildline for parties, usually noone wanted to party (except Yavathol or other guys sometimes, but rarely). And it was not like I was asking for free money, eq, or anything. True, as a low player my share of the dealt damage was pretty low but still I was trying my best to be valuable. And even on a decent guildlevel, I just rarely found someone to party with. A few years ago, when I played massively, people were partying all the time. So did I, and I miss that. But I don't party just to chat, if it isn't worth it for my char then I don't do it, obviously. It is only fun when everyone gains from it. And with a knight, I do find killing very boring alone.

Ok gotta run, late from work. :(

Oh well, if when a newbie shouts for help during a quest, ppl would refrain from shouting things like  
:oops:  "Stick it into your *** and wait, something will happen!"  :oops:
this would make nanny more newbie friendly without much coding effort, dont you agree?

My wiz was about to shoutcurse for first time in her life btw ;)

It was rather 'stuck it in your *** and wait to happen something !' which almost mimics human writing. Heck, isn't the first rule when you try to be funny at someone's expense that you don't say/write something more or less incomprehensible which just will make people laugh at YOU?!?!?

I can't speak for other defenders, but mine surely didn't beg for pure waters, I got my own smokey potions and real healing potions (no offense). Pure waters took up weight and you might be soaked already, too soaked to drink them, which was dangerous ;)

And my khorne ... perhaps once in a while to do Caerleon when I was out of kills, but I doubt your monk was around when I used to play my old daemon for real. I usually only partied with Sundaar, and then purely because he's without a doubt the best party member you could have, regardless which char he played. Because he knew how to party and we had fun like hell doing whatever we decided to do.

1. Smokey potions do use soak.
2. Monk potions can be total and non-filling.
3. I would bet good money that I was around Nanny long before you.

/me spanks Maggs and Kherec. Now, behave, children!

That wasn't the point, Maggs wasn't a high monk (ok, so I said 'around', not 'high') when I played my khorne, that was all I said.

And I didn't say monk potions used soak ... and smokeys didn't use soak back when I playerkilled.

But that's all irrelevant, the main reason I used other healing potions (such as smokeys) was due to the lack of weight, for said potions. I wanted all the weight I had for armours, weapons and fun pk-trinkets.

And Carrion, behave?! I don't want to behave, that's boring :)

Side note, if you want to know for sure you were around before me Maggs, I started in 95 ... even if that wasn't the point, there you go.

I know, I know :)

Surely 'relevance', in the context of this thread, refers to the issue raised by Qwer with regards to the current status of the game, and parties in particular. To that end, your contribution (3 notes) is?

I initially tried to contribute by recounting my relevant experiences, to which you chose to diss my guild. I would have enjoyed hearing this debate continue.

M

PS I would have won my money, not even close.

Totally off topic, but when DID you start in Nanny? Check (and contribute to) the 'Your First Day' thread in Nostalgia, I think I've got the 'earliest' start sofar, and I may be oldest player still playing mortals actively... Or?

Well...for now...but Peter was actually playing mortal a year ago...though I haven't seen him for some time now. And rumours have it...some of the admin may still play around...but I haven't confirmed it ;) *grin*

/Snafu :D

First off, I have not played Nanny for years. I can barely find my way to the RT chambers so I can read my notes...

But here is one way parties could be made more interesting: Each party member adds 1% to the xp gained when the kill is made. I am sure there are suitable ways to prevent some abuse, though certaintainly not all abuse. Maybe the 1% is only counted if the person has participated in the fight and remains in the room when the kill is made (or something). Maybe that will not do much for partying though, it sounds on a lot of people like xp is way too easy to get anyway nowadays.

In the end, I think that muds can not rely on their age and reputation any longer. There are way too many muds out there today for people to choose from.  Admins of any mud need to be much more active in promoting the game on various mudrelated websites in order to keep new players coming. Nanny is supposedly one of the oldest lp muds out there. But there are others... 3 Kingdoms, Batmud, Ancient Anguish. Those are about as old, but with a much larger playerbase. Promoting may not be the ultimate sollution, but I do see those muds more frequently being mentioned at the various mudsites then what Nanny is.

I think griefless permanent PK would be a nice change, that would increase the level of fun in my game experience anyways.

Oki... after a lot of pondering I'v decided I simply must write all of this...
hopefully it'll make things a little bit better for all of us.
(this note is meant to be both on Leowon's board for suggestions and on Snaffy's forum, so it'll contain replies to messages from both places:
http://www.spamfunet.com/nanny/forum/viewtopic.php?t=173&start=15
and also 9w,5n,enter hut from green :-P :-P)

No, Nanny is not dead, but it's players seem to get fewer and fewer :(
Here are some suggestions I thought about:
(I'll try to keep it as short as possible)

1.Advertisment. Yes, Nanny is one of the oldest and largest muds around, but that is just not enough... you can't count on that to attract new players! Someone should take the responsibility of advertising the mud in as many places as possible! Ofc, the admins' time is limited so, maybe a new admin could be elected to handle rather time-consuming task.

2.Newbies. As i said before: they should be treated with respect and encouraged to stay and have fun. A newbie line would be great (and, really, it can't be all that hard to implement). To avoid any problem of the sort: newbie asking for dirs to milkbar, getting the dirs to pet, only people who want to help join this line. And if someone wolunteers to help newbies just to do something like this... well, imho banishment would be a rather
soft punishment. Treat them with respect and they'll stay, otherwise they'll find other muds, for sure.
Also, helping newbies doesn't mean dragging them around in parties for them go gather xp they don't know what to do with. That is rather the opposite of help. The way I see things what newbies lack the most is some easy way to heal. The fact that money making isn't a problem for experienced players doesn't apply for a newbie... Thus healing is problematic for players who don't have wealthy chars to pass money to their low level ones. Perhaps this issue could be solved somehow... A way to borrow money from the bank with the obligation to return it later?

3.Parties. I think Lill's idea was just great. For those who didn't read it, check the forum. Other ideas to encourage partying are welcome!

4.Guilds&downcoding. With all due respect to the admins and guildmasters, the attitude so widely used in nanny (if it's good it must be downcoded, if it was downcoded and now everyone hates it maybe, just maybe, it'll get fixed sometimes in the future). I was away for a long while, but I can see saw some things like this for myself and I have read many complaints coming from other players. As I said before, the time of the admins is limited, but I'm sure that with a bit of patience and effort wizards with more time&eagerness on their hands can be found. Under strict supervision they could do the coding/recoding needed or requested by the players.
Btw, I don't actually know/understand what happened to the monks (I never played them), but I must say that I miss them. A lot!

5.Playerkilling. I for one am an adept of the griefless PK system. I hate dying and the idea of becoming a PK just so the older, experienced PKers can come and kill me over and over again just doesn't seem right. And, please, spare me the 'oh, but you can start over again with a new char anytime' routine... As if I have nothing better to do but to start over and over again hoping that maybe, just maybe I'll survive long enough to learn something new about PK. The removal of the penalty in Gxp when dying is a minimum. I can't understand the pleasure it gives to grieve someone... for me the thrill of the fight and the rush of besting a fellow player is enough. There are many suggestions regarding the penalties of dying in a PK fight... money and, maybe, eq sound rather enough to me.
Also Kadagar's suggestion of a free PK system enforced by players seems interesting.

I bother because Nanny is one of the 2 muds who have a special place in my heart and I really hope I somehow managed to make a difference!

Here is one of the best reasons for a newbieline: "Volo shouts: CAN ANYONEshout can anyone help me get started?".

And another suggestion I'd like to add is related to killstealing. It's a shame that on a mud so big there are such problems. Why not make a system so that all players can mark their kills and, in the event of killstealing, they can be informed on the spot? (Btw, the signs, are of no use, since people just steal the kill and then move on unhindered)
I'm just SO sick of killstealers!!! :evil:  :evil:

Ok, funny story - I responded to Volo.  He then told me "help get me out of here."  So, I raced of to rescue this poor newbie from whatever terrible predicament he had gotten himself stuck in.  Luckily, I did arrive in time and was able to rescue him from the Adventurer's guild board.

The sad thing is, he had obviously been to Blanka's newbieland already and he told me that someone had helped him by bringing him there and teaching him combat.  So, you may ask, how did he get stuck in the adventurer's guild?  Well, in the course of helping him learn combat, no one bothered to explain about exits or movement commands or even the basics like look, exa, i, eq and the like.

I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes trying to teach him the very basics of getting around and the game when he promptly told me he had to go and quit.  Well, maybe some of it stuck with him.  In any event, I don't think there is any argument against having a line for beginners and those who are willing to help them out, I just think no one has had the time to code it in (I have no idea if it's difficult to set up such a line that new characters would automatically be part of.)

Now as a side note, Sharky, aren't you a druid?  The Druid guild has what is possibly the best deterrent to kill stealing in the game with their owls.  It may not stop the kill stealer, but it sure can get frustrating for them afterwards.  For some reason I simply haven't had much of a problem with kill stealers lately, personally.  I do know of a lot of people who have though and I am left to wonder why as well.  But I guess, as some previously admitted kill-stealers have insinuated, they are just to lazy to do it all themselves.

Coud not agree more.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish...
you get rid of him for the weekend " ;)



No, healing is not that problematic for a low level... efficient and quick healing in order to make 100k xp in 1 hr maybe ;)
Simple natural healing means a lot when you have 70 hp and there are free healings around as well (milk cow, bunch of grapes, potions...) There are also a lot of free stuff around that you can sell. Ofc they amount to some hundred coins but remember that if you are a newbie your needs are not that high. And there are puzzles that dont require any killing and reward you nicely both in xp and in money...
IMO a newbie simply isnt and cant be a killer. He will need to kill from time to time ofc, but he is mainly an explorer.
So encourage a newbie to explore, explain him about nanny different areas, (First time i tried to map nanny i went almost crazy since so many areas tend to exist one over the other), give him hints about most rewarding places, explain him about puzzles, and dont forget to tell him most of it can be found in newbie booklet...
Help him to grow by himself and we shall have a new addict, give him free money and xp and he will get bored and quit in 30 mins ;)

This subject actually turned out rather funny... Because I posted the note with Sharky everyone naturally assumed he got kills stolen  :lol:
Actually the chars with 'problems' are my leper and my viking. As are all chars in guilds that don't have a guild specific way to claim.


I'm not talking about giving away tons of money to newbies... I only suggested the posibility bo borrow a sum of money from the bank (not too much) and be required to pay it back later (when the char opens an account the money he deposits are first used to pay the debt perhaps?).
And here's another suggestion to help newbies (the idea is from another mud, I'm not sure if it is or not implemented in Nanny, if it is pls let me know). How about making it possible for low level Adventurers to borrow an armour and a weapon from the adventurers guild at each login (these items can't be dropped or sold, they can only be returned to the guild). The eq received when entering the rabbit hole in the graveyard is great, but after logging out it's gone...

Ever tried the free eq in Carrion's newbie area? Its always there, its free and if you sell it when logging out you get 600 gc which for a newbie is a lot of money;) Drawback... you need some minor exploring ;)
And Carrion, dont even think of lowering its value ;) ;) ;)

After your post, I guess someone else will change it instead ;)

I was fearing that.

/Snafu :D

You can't advance to high lvls by exploring, you have to kill. And show me a newbie that finds and solves puzzles/quests and knows free loot etc. That's bs.

A (somewhat) experienced (LP)MUDder will probably just do that, search for free loot and try solving puzzles/quests, even though (s)he is a Nanny-noob. Well, someone that actually wants to play and not get dragged around anyway. But, which I suspect you're talking about, a complete MUD-noob would probably not think about those aspects of the game directly (but may hopefully get some pointers in that direction, that it's not ALL about killing rabbits).

Nanny was my first mud ever. Tried a few others but didn't stay. There might be other people also who just starts to play on a mud and stays there.

Just so you know, this was exactly what I did.  No one has ever accused me of doing things in a mainstream fashion, but after a couple of levels hunting rats with chopsticks I was eager to see the rest of the Mud, and I did.  I remember getting some good free equipment in Sindel's now closed area, and I still direct beginners to Carrion's and show them the falchion in Asp's tower.  Yeah, I explored, I found free equipment and I solved a lot of puzzles - when you are first starting out that's the only thing you can do as well as high level characters.  As far as getting to high levels, well I had achieved a level 12 character before I started having regular kills that I frequented.

It takes a while to get the grip on how a mud works, critical areas such as common logic in commands, what can be done and can't be done is needed to really explore much, and/or solve puzzles and quests, apart from a few here and there.

It's a natural evolution for some people (admittedly some just stick to mindless killing) to start questing once they mastered the art of simply killing. Oddly enough most people don't go there, which I find odd because questing, despite the rather low game-wise reward is still rewarding to me because it's mostly fun (except for a few oddly recoded quests) and it takes you, if the quest is good, all over someone's area, or even all across the mud (like with Help Lorn, Hunt the Dragons, Help servant etc).

As far as the free loot thing goes, that's more of an experienced mudder's mindset, as a newbie you don't think about how you can get free cash, it's more about how you can earn cash.

Here is my opinion, since I usually check this only when I hear someone mention it on the actual game.

I've read all the talk about newbies, the bitching and chest beating about who has been here longer, who knows what etc...who cares?

NannyMUD is dying because only dedicated players choose to sit down in front of the computer and play a TEXT BASED GAME for a couple hours. Now, I stress the text based game because I'm sure everyone knows graphic games are a hell of a lot more fun, if you're into that. We have lost tons of great players to shitty games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and so on. Thats the simple fact. And the very few newbies we do get on there, are probably getting bored with it anyway. NannyMUD was the easiest and best mud I could find back when I first started. Think of it like an old arcade you use to go to.

Speaking of newbies, I personally don't help them anymore. I don't mind answering questions, but I don't party. From my experience, newbies come and go all the time. They always have and always will. Its the very few that decide to take the time and get to know the game are the ones that stay for awhile. I'm tired of helping new players only to see them stop playing.

With all that said, I hope NannyMUD will continue to the time I have kids and I get a lot older and settle down. Its was once a great community, and it still is. Just because the numbers are down doesn't mean the charm of it has diminished.

- Deimos

Not sure what games you're talking about, I have probably not played them :) I know I get much more out of some 3D FPS in some ways (extremely fast paced action for example), but I still get back to Nanny and play a lot... I was a newbie once too, and there was even in those days graphical games that people thought to be better than text-based games, so I'd say there are still people who could get hooked to Nanny even though there are so many other games out there.

I guess I'm a bit odd in this respect, not going for the top games, the coolest games, the most |337 games, but keep coming back to Nanny over the years, enjoying myself a lot. And even if you do have a favourite game, you will probably not ONLY play that one game all of the time, but have some spare time for Nanny.

Anyway, I'll probably play Nanny as long as I can, hoping for some new players to join every now and then.

(Geez, can't really say I know what I'm trying to say here...)

I do think I know what you are saying, Carrion.. I was myself hooked on WoW (world of warcraft) for a while.. I wasn't playing Nanny too much before that either though, due to other things.. but I kept coming back to Nanny.. Even if I didn't play during that time-period, I always logged in to check things out.. and to say Hi to friends..

But as it is now, I dont play WoW and spend all my free time in Nanny.. I love Nanny and can not be without her.. Probably because it was my first MUD I've tried, tried others but they didn't get to me as much as Nanny did... I am not as 'old' as most of you guys are when it comes to Nanny.. I dont belong among the 'old farts' but Nanny has a special place in my heart.. sounds silly but thats how it is.. and hopefully a new 'generation' will grow to love Nanny as much as we do..

And as long we enter Nanny.. Nanny wont be dead.. Nanny has its charm, no matter how many players there is around..

I do understand what Deimos says too though. I have too helped many newbies just to see them leave and never return again.. and after a while we give up..

But as long as the 'Old Farts' like you and Grasshoppers like me is there, Nanny will live..

Ybs..

Well, I have not played Nanny for a very long time, except for the occassional logging in to read notes. :)

Anyway... I remember when Nanny used to have like 70-80 people online. I have some sort of faint memory about breaching 100 once when I was online, but I can be wrong about that. So the question, to me, is why has people online dropped? It seems like the amount of wizards online is pretty stable, so its the players one have to ponder why they are not around.

First, I think, one need to find out about this: Is there a pretty large and steady flow of newbies, but they just dont stick around (like someone said earlier)? Or is there a shortage in newbies too?

Personally, I think (and have done so for years), that one of the reasons is simply the lack of active advertising by the administration. There never was any active advertising going on at a variety of mud sites when I was active, just by the occasional player and that wasnt much either.

There are other muds out there that are same in size, age and have lots of interesting features, but that are not as good in many ways as nanny is. On the other hand: They can be seen advertising. So... *shrug*

/Lillstrumpan

One of the main problems is PR.
Another is the administration, some wizards and the general rudeness of many players.

As I have mentioned many times, updates in the game are infrequent, they are not always proprely announced in a way which is informative and interesting. Often news ingame lack the "spin" required to be an interesting sell.

I remember when the simyarin portal to Antharis opened, I think it was Gabe who posted a note about it.
It went something along the line of: A portal has opened in the lighthouse on Island Ganennon, you can explore it if you dare. I don't remember the words exactly.

Me being a newbie thought it sounded dangerous, I imagined that there would be autoattacking demons on the other side or something, because the newspost and the wording made it sound very threatening.

The whole spin and phrasing made me not want to explore it, which I think was the opposite of the intended effect.

I have often mentioned the nannyMUD homepage is neither attractive, updated quickly, it lacks much of the interesting information about for example the guilds, both thematically and about powers, spells and abilities.

For example, when I was still playing I notified the admins that the vikings guildpage was down, it took over a year to fix it and then it was merely restored, not made more interesting or more attractive.

Many of the clubs in nanny isn't on the club pages, more clubs=more PR, more attractive, more options, more exploring.

Many of the existing club pages look bad, they have some text, maybe a picture, sometimes not even that.
It isn't an attractive sell, which is bad PR.

Much of the information about the guilds is in the helpfiles ingame, but often you have to join the guild first to access them and sometimes have to advance ranks to find out more about the spells, powers and abilities you have.

Most of the guild pages look bad, look at the champions of Khorne guildpage or the Simyarins.

Like, the prophets have recently opened in the game, still I cannot see anything about the prophets guild on the nannyMUD homepage.

Again, not a good enough spin on it, not good PR, not good advertisement.

I think that many newcomers are put off by the uninteresting look of lysators nannyMUD homepage, seriously, what is up with those poorly drawn maps?

Very amateurish.

It just seeps of the old school MUD page philosophy.

Then there is the fact that many newbies who need help are greeted with an uncaring shoulder if not outright rudeness or hostility.

I'm not saying that even most players are like that, but they do exist and might make the new ones feel unwelcome.

Yay, found that landstinget isnt blocking this site! So I can post from work. ;)

Anyway... I do like the website though. I find it pretty stylish, but as you say, poorly updated and that isnt good. Otherwise, I think you have some good points that correlate with my own experiences. Since I have a wiz and can do pretty decent coding... I could work over at nanny. But since I feel some sort of indifference regarding lots of things from the admins, I rather code elsewhere and have also done so. Nontheless, Nanny is my original home and I still have lots of feelings and I would like to code there and help making it a nice place. But as long as things are as they are, it feels hopeless.

This is true. The decreasing player population doesn't exactly motivate much either.

I know there are not as many players today as, lets say, ten years ago, but is the population still decreasing?

I dont know really if it is still decreasing. But I am fairly certain that an active round of advertising by the admins would have a noticable effect on new players logging on. Then there might, ofc, be a need of other things to keep them online.

I think the best advertisement for a MUD can come from the players themselves, not from the admins. I don't mean putting up posters and that kind of stuff. There are way too many games now and many of them are far better at advertising than we can ever hope to be. Old players naturally pass on information to people they know without any conscious effort to advertise.

So I think that the best way to keep a game alive, particularly now that there are so many other competing games, is to make changes that will affect players that are at the top end. I had posted a note about this on the improvements board (with another char - Savitri) some time back suggesting adding more mortal levels, modifying existing areas so that some can only be safely explored by high level players (by boosting all the monsters in the area in some consistent manner), etc. No one really seemed interested in thinking along those lines, but I think that while the implementation that I suggested may not be practical, the idea is essentially sound.

Right now you can max most guilds within less than 2 weeks of online time. (And that includes sims and darks - gates and higher education spells make little to no difference to the game and so I think they don't count.) Yes, there is much to explore and over a hundred quests to complete. But not everyone likes to go through the entire game one room at a time trying out different syntaxes. I think there needs to be more meaningful content in the game at the top end even if it means that players have to "grind" to get there. That might involve making a lot more guild abilities, more dangerous monsters, etc.

Yes, that will involve some actual coding and not only in areas but also in every guild. Beldin's response to my note was:
"Make no mistake: I think you're right, I just think that fixing the problems you've described would be an engineering effort beyond the resources of our admin/wizard staff to accomplish."

I didn't really pursue this much further there because I didn't want the debate to drag on forever. But I disagree with this. I don't think it will take _that_ big an effort.  I mean, how big a change to the player object would it take to make more levels available? And to compensate, you could just tweak the stats of monsters in current areas to adjust their difficulty level. Make customized bits of code to make monsters do nasty things. For example, just how long would it take to write the code to make a monster chase a player? A few minutes? And even a simple change like that can make the game a LOT more fun. If Yogul started chasing people, wouldn't it take a lot more intelligence and perhaps a lot better powers to kill him? Maybe it sounds like a very patchy solution, but I think it will work fine if it is implemented creatively and carefully enough. It will take some serious work to convince me that this is an unmanageably huge task.I think the real challenge would be to add content to guilds at the top level - i.e. more meaningful and exciting powers for players to work towards. But again, I don't think we are looking at something that cannot be done.

I think the actual obstacle to this is not that we don't have anyone to code. I believe the obstacle is that any concept that will lead to players being more powerful is immediately squashed by the admins at its very conception because they are so scared of messing with the MUD economy.

I don't mean to just blast the admins. I think they do a great job in their own way and I greatly respect that. I think they do have the better interests of the game at heart. But I think there is something fundamentally wrong about their notions about the economy of the game. Of course, they do need to have a hold on the economy, but this looks more like a stranglehold. (I could give examples, but that will be too much of a digression...) I don't have any doubts about their intentions, but I strongly disagree with the policies.

I just noticed a note on the improvements board by Sadyc that says essentially the same thing about admin policies, though it carries a far more venomous tone than I think the admins deserve (well.. most of them anyway ;) ). I just prefer to disagree and move on.

Barbarella has an interesting response to my note on the improvement board:
"My only objection is the idea that 'Game Over' is a bad thing. You could always become a wizard and create new content - a whole new game, if you will, and one that doesn't have to mean 'game over'.  On the other hand, there are lots of marvelous games out there of which NannyMUD is just one.  If you're really into games, and you've reached the 'game over' part of Nanny, why try to drag it out with changes that may or may not make any difference?"

I am not sure how good a suggestion this is, but I took it. I found another game and moved to it. I am fairly certain that I will not be playing my mortals on Nanny again. I do plan to stick around and idle away with my wizard from time to time. I feel no motivation to code right now for various reasons. But perhaps I will feel motivated again some day. But my days as a mortal player are almost certainly over. I can't _play_ two games at a time and I am having much more fun elsewhere. So do my thoughts have any relevance? I guess not. But still, there they are.

Ereshkigal

Good note, Eresh,

I also think we should try to get some new players, just a few occasionally would probably do. But then it's important that Nanny really is fun to play as a newbie. There's a thread about that, and there are several nice ideas there.

Then it's also a good idea to have something more to strive for as a 'top player', there are also a lot of good/interesting ideas...

Then it would be great if 'someone' would code some top notch area especially for top players, forcing players both to have a lot of power, but also brains. AND there would be some extra nice bonus/equipment/whatnot to get in that area.

Unfortunately it's not as if I will do much myself, I still play my mortals and will probably do that until I can't do it anymore :)
I can't help it, I really like Nanny and still have a lot to accomplish there!

(There ARE some new stuff coming in my area and outside, but nothing fancy atm (any year now)...)

Well, Eresh... Not much to say, its a very good note and I pretty much agree with most of it. Maybe I think that admins is important when it comes to advertising the mud, but naturally are players important too.

Ok, after pondering a bit... What I mean with an active admin part in the advertising is the strive towards exposure. Nanny need to take more space, be seen more at other places then just the mud. This forum is one way... Another pretty cool thing that I saw for another mud is some sort of wiki about nanny stuff. There generally is loads of really cool stuff that can be done to enhance the mud a great deal. :)

I think you have a point. One of the most important parts of any online game today is a good community. And a good community is not only limited to the game itself. I think Nanny need an official off-line forum for players to meet. In that way new players can see that there exists an active community without having to log into the game (remember, not everyone has a telnet client and last time I tried I could not log on Nanny with Windows XP "out of the box"). The absolute best solution is to have a web interface for the in-game discussion boards. If you could read the boards from the home-page and even post messages from outside the game, important discussions would not get lost between the two systems.

I don't think a new player will continue to spend time on Nanny just because there are a certain amount of newbie areas. New players will stick if they like the community and the game concept. For my first characters I spent about one month advancing from low level to high level and then I spent ten years playing at that level. I didn't stay because there was a kobold cave close to Ingis lane, but because the community was much better than in other games I have played.

For me personally, the best way to make me play more would be to change the deposit lockers to keep equipment for at least one week. I would love to play more, but I only get good time slots for playing during the weekends. It is quite boring to spend two hours during Saturday to gather some good equipment, only to log off and do the same thing one week later. If I could save my killer non-unique equipment for at least a week, I could log on for two hours every Saturday and do something constructive with my character (and for the game). I would consider that to be much more rewarding.

Well, this is key to a successfull mud. A forum is just an extension of the community and if it manages to trap one innocent surfer, then it was all worth it.  :evil:

This was at 2:30 am(GMT -05:00). So it was kind of late, but still...

> who
============================== NannyMOS 1.17.5 ==============================
High    Titleist? (Troublegum)
High    Banshee the Master Chef (**********) (workaholic)
High    Mami's in the arms of an angel (Blessed)
High    Gabe loves Mami (forever)
High    beldin is writing off the world (with sloppy misspelled words)
High    Brom Non Plus Ultra (ARS MAGICA)
Elder   Profezzorn is back (Akasha's|Daddy|cryptic|enigmatic|get used to it|Google)
Elder   Whizz the Warlock (dwarven friend)
Elder   Earendil will meet the girl of his dreams Wednesday (when she and five other EMTs
  try to free  him from a hellish cocoon of molten glue)
Elder   Vulcan the Conjuror (spellbound)
Wizard  One way, the only way, Weronoop's way (Superfuncalisticdodaley)
Wizard  Contains: carbonated Lonewolf, caramel color, aspartame (tasty)
Wizard  Koff Koff Koff Koff Koff Koff (Sixpack)
Wizard  Zem the mattress (also known as Aeneas) (flolloping)
Wizard  Drelic is lost within himself (backtracking)
============================= Shown: 15 wizards. ============================
> wiz who killed all the mortals?
Wiz Aeneas: who killed all the mortals?

... silence.

Definitely too late for me... If I'm up that late I'm working :)

To revive this old topic... I have been logging on sporadically the last years, mostly to read notes. But is it just me, or has there been a definitive drop in mortals logged on? It was really long since I saw more then 10 mortals online, sometimes there have been only 2. Seems like no one is seeing this as a problem though because there has been nothing on boards about it and I have seen nothing on the wiz /rev either. Then again... There are really successful lpmuds out there like 3k, ancient anguish, bat... They are about as old as nanny, I cant help wondering what it is that let them thrive while nanny die. Because... I feel Nanny really has far more potential then those.

Well, there certainly has been a drop in the number of players over the last few years. No one denies that. Right now the number of mortals varies between zero to 10, depending on the time of the day. I think the most worrying aspect is that we rarely see any genuinely new players. I am not sure how many active players we have, but I guess there are about 20 people or so who play different chars, maybe less.

I think there is no discussion about this anywhere because most people have accepted it as a fact of life. A lot of people think that games like World of Warcraft have sealed the fate of text based games.

I don't think that is entirely true and I think it is unfortunate that not everyone sees that. It is true that text based games will never be quite as popular as they were in the past. But I think there are and will continue to be enough people who prefer text-based games for various reasons. As you pointed out, the fact that some muds continue to flourish seems to prove that.

Personally I believe that Nanny lost players because it became stagnant. Sure, we get new areas and new quests all the time, but those things don't actually change the "feel" of the game. Very little has changed in the mechanics of the game ever since I started playing. I don't really understand this degree of stagnancy. The game needs to be sensitive to what players want. It needs to keep changing accordingly. That doesn't happen much on Nanny. Just to give an example, let me refer to the note above by Opus. Yes, a dramatic increase in the amount of time for which lockers save equipment would help a lot of players enjoy the game. I don't think it will be very difficult to do this or that it would affect the game adversely. But I think the admins tend to be very suspicious of anything that would make the game "easier" for players. They are just terribly afraid that it will make the game too easy and break something. And so nothing ever changes.

That's why I gave up on Nanny, because I feel like players are never heard. I think this is because the admins gave up on the game ages back. I don't think there is any future for the game unless that changes. Just to give an example of how things could be done differently... a few months back the admins on 3kingdoms had a mud-wide poll about the kind of changes people might want to see. They picked six of the best ideas that were suggested and asked everyone to pick the one they liked the most. The wish that got the most votes was granted. As a result of this wish, players will be able to share questpoints between their seconds, i.e. if you do a quest with one char, all your chars get the qp. Is this "too good"? Sounds like it. It does make the game a lot easier in some ways. But that's what most people wanted and so the wish was granted. If Nanny were to become this sensitive to what players want, perhaps things could change. Or perhaps it is too late already.

I do agree that it is a shame that things have come to this. Nanny has some really beautifully done areas. But well... I got disillusioned with a lot of things and gave up on the game some time back. Now I keep logging on but that's largely because I have some friends here who have played a big role in helping me get through a difficult period in my life. I haven't played for ages.

Ereshkigal

Well... Not sure where to begin... Anyway, I think your right. I just didnt want to offend anyone by saying that admins have given up, but sure, I think you are totally right. I wizzed when Kittens were up, can it be some 8 years ago? Maybe 9, not sure. Back then already I had that feeling of admins giving up, nothing happening. Stagnation. What did I do? I went elsewhere. I have coded on 3 different muds since then, none of them where huge or had lots of players. One of them barely had players. But I remained and was motivated. Why? Probably because admins had a vision, a drive and the ability to motivate and encourage people. So how much code have I done at these muds? Well... Areas to a total of around 1200 rooms and that is areas with lots of stuff to do in them, fun items, cool mobs, etc. 3 quests. 2 guilds that opened. 1 that began playtesting. Coding on 4 other guilds, but nothing that never really led to anything. Clubs, stuff and lib work. Thats what Nanny lost due to the apathy I felt from admins. I still code a lot. Sometimes I think, maybe I should code some over at Nanny. Open some area and start work on a guild. Then I log on and check around, then I think nah... Why bother?

As for 3K... I happen to play there as well. :) It really is a great mud. But I think Nanny has a much better base. There are some stuff in 3K that is just so crappy. But there are also things that are so much better then Nanny. The wish thing was great... But what I think is the best thing ever to happen there is the skills. Not that they added skills. But how it got added! An admin decided to do something new and totally different and added skills without prior warning. Now, how cool isnt that? Is that a stagnant mud? Granted, if you ask 3K players... 3K lacks lots of stuff... But the wish and the skills show that things do happen there. The mud is not dead. And so they got loads of players playing there. They got players and wizards promoting the game. I think I have seen one advert made for Nanny on Topmudsites (or any other forum) and that is lots of years ago by Brom.

Anyway... To bad to see Nanny go. But I think that either Nanny will go down the drain fairly soonish or tptb should give up their fancy arse positions and hand over the power of change to those with ideas, motivation and drive to do something. Not lazyheads who have Nanny as a chatline at work.

Might be mistaken, but I've seen players last couple of weeks that seem genuinely new. I really hope they are, and will stay...

That would be great. If admins went out and advertised properly... Then I can promise you a quick burst of new players. Getting them to stick around is another thing. But if Nanny has something to offer, they will stay. The mud I code at is real small compared to Nanny, but when admins advertise about once a month... We see about 20-40 NEW players the next 1-5 days. Then we are too small for them to actually stick around. :)

http://mud.wikia.com/wiki/Nannymud

Advertising helps, and it couldn't hurt to have a wikipedia detailing this. Please help me edit this wiki. :)