Parties...

[Snafu]

It has been suggested that there might be a possibility for a new club on Nanny.

What do y'all think of this idea:

A club whose main purpose is to be a place to find who is interested in partying. If you're offline, ya aren't interested in parties currently. But if you're online, it allows you to see who might be interested in a party.

Improvements on the idea? Does anyone want to see this kind of thing? There currently isn't enough use of parties. We need to get parties back on the MUD and in full force.

Party like it's 1999!

/Snafu

[Yavathol]

I'd not only join, I'd actually participate in parties.  

Well, I guess I do party more than the average person these days anyhow, but I'd be game to find new party members.

[Maggs]

I think that that would work quite well, Snafu. Probably not for me
(and people that are cynical enough to think that they are completely
broken), but for newer players or players with a more open mind
(like Yav).

M

[dulcineea]

Nice idea Snafy.
 One idea tho. Could you make the line so that all new players join it automatically? It can be of great help to newbies cause they could find someone to talk to and ask questions. And as you said "if people are online it means that they wanna party".
 So count me in. I'd join, I'd party.

[Kymn]

Would be nice with a party club, wasn't the squad club something like that?
the current party toplist system is not sufficent me think, since only party leaders get
xp, and the toplist is very unstable

[Yavathol]

Would be nice with a party club, wasn't the squad club something like that?
the current party toplist system is not sufficent me think, since only party leaders get
xp, and the toplist is very unstable

Does that thing even work?  I've been partying a lot, and I mean a lot, lately and I know I haven't budged on it.
In any event, the squads were a bit different since they didn't help you find a party.  
Also, perhaps in the interest of being a club truly about bringing people together, maybe this club could forego the top list phenomenon completely?  Shouldn't parties be more about working together rather than competing with one another for top ranks?  
Just my thought,

[Kymn]

Shouldn't parties be more about working together rather than competing with one another for top ranks?  

I think so too, problem is there is no really good reason to party as it is now, for normal xp. Some games fix this with giving out more xp for each kill when in a party. The side-effect we would get in nanny is more reason for some to multiplay, but personally I think it's worth it.
A toplist, club line titles etc are safer ways of increasing the will to party.
Xp for a semi-support simyarin in a party is really not so good.

Perhaps it could be based on other things than xp, like you could get clubpoints for bringing down big monsters in a party, like pet, golden dragon, urbororo (spell check on that one hehe) etc.

[Yavathol]

Although I could see the use of incentives, I really doubt that the incentive of a toplist for partying would do much in the way for providing it to those who need it.  The reasons for that are plentiful.  After all, there already is a party toplist and the same people seem to keep ending up on it currently.
Another point is what would it use to rank, the obvious first choice is experience - again, the same problem as before, and let's face it, under the current system certain guilds have a much easier time accumulating experience than others.  
If we went by time then there would be a preponderance of idling people not really partying just trying to advance on the list, which kind of defeats the purpose of the club idea.
I'm more than willing to consider other ideas for ranking people, maybe have mission objectives for parties or something like that - along the lines of Alvis' requested treasures.
Still, I recognize that my guild was essentially built for parties.  More than half my skills are geared specifically to parties or at least work better in that setting.  I know that not all guilds currently benefit in experience from parties, but I hope we can find a way to encourage participation anyway.  Just as a guess, I don't think Snafu will be able to convince the admin to give exp bonuses to club members.  But maybe if enough others help him plead for it!  
In any event, I am still willing to lend my sword arm to parties on a fairly regular basis.

[Dain]

i'm in as well.

[Qwer]

Nice club.
Curious if it'd change anything. Not sure...

[Kenpo]

Hey guys, new in forum but I'll give it a shot.

The thing about partying is that:
You don't gain anything extra when you party.
Some guilds gain even less when partying than when going solo.

I was thinking about the things written here and came up with a suggestion that might be worth considering, compliments to the ones who came up with this before me. This might be sort a summary, but a bit more clear perhaps.

EXP:
Perhaps a ratio could be implemented that is based on damage dealt, hp/sp lost/healed, exp gained, gold gained, etc. From this ratio decide how much split there'll be in the party.
Example: Monks will have enormous amounts of hp/sp healed. But very little damage dealt. Sims will have huge amounts of SP spent. and damage might be a bit higher than monks. still a supportive sim that casts wards will spend lots of sp and therefore make up for the lesser damage dealt.

Hope you catch my drift here:

The ratio that you then get will be compared to the other members of the party. If you've got, say 100 and the guy you're partying with have 100 you get equal amounts of exp. If you've got 100 and the other guy 10, he'll only get a small amount. Will be working like the party split today but it would be corrected for higher monks/sims and others who don't do much damage in a party. So the more you party, the more you gain from partying. You can't leech exp like in the old days, but you can still party and raise you ratio.

More I think that you ought gain more exp when in a party. Say that you're 3 people bringing down some big monster, an equal split would be like 3k exp each today. Yes I know that it'll go quicker than when you solo, but the little amount exp make, atleast me, not want to party, since I can bring down the guy alone and get all the exp for myself. The monsters throughout Nanny aren't _that_ hard. There are some though.

So a multiplier on the exp and the ratio of the party and how many members could perhaps increase the amount of exp each partymember gains. The amounts may wary from person to person, since ratios will be different.

I apologize for a long note, and I hope that maybe a little bit of it was enjoyable to read.

//Kenpo, soon to reign Supreme

[Carrion]

Hey guys, new in forum but I'll give it a shot.

Hey K, good with some new blood in the forum! Your thoughts seem pretty good, but I'll let the ones actually partying do the assessment!

[Cathbad]

Hmmm - whilst there are no current experience benefits to partying, there are other benefits.  These are in terms of cost, mainly.  If you party with another player then you share the hits - and if you share the hits, you halve the healing (catchy sentence, huh?)

Obviously, in general theres no shortage of gold on Nanny so perhaps that's not a benefit that many really enjoy.  From an administrative point of view, however, it's unlikely that parties would be improved to give even more of an advantage than they do now.

Whilst I agree that it would be very interesting to split experience on the basis of contribution rather than share allocation I think it would make partying to help out new players pretty redundant.

Perhaps a better means of determining shares would be a combination of Kenpo's suggestion with the current implementation.  Each player could opt for high/medium/low shares and that would act as a multiplier to the shares given which would, otherwise, depend on the cumulative contribution.

Except....this also has a major drawback.  The drawback is how you gauge contribution. Kenpo mentions HP/SP loss, damage etc and that's all well and good.  However, it's tough to really tie in contribution for any particular adversary when it comes to "support spells".

A large amount of spells are cast away from battle.  People retreat to an adjoining room to heal, renew wards etc. How do you acknowledge that contribution to the party efforts when it comes to the death of the creature next door?  You're not in the same room, you're not in combat (especially in the case of pre-combat warding) and how do we really know if it's a "support spell" or just a needless creation of light?

I'm not a major party-player anymore. Circumstances mean that I'm often called awayfrom the screen for extended periods with little notice. It's good to see thought going into this kind of thing though - and excuse me for being negative but it's best to sort out teething problems with ideas rather than ignoring them.  Perhaps you've thought of this already and have the answers.

Let's hope so.

[Kymn]

I think Kenpo's idea would work nicely. It wouldn't be too much trouble to implement and it would be guild independent. Perhaps based only on damage delt and hp/sp lost, and some balance between those two factors.

I also think more total xp per monster killed with a party with modified with numbers of players in party would be great. The increase must be balanced on the thin line between good xp and good-enough-xp-to-risk-multiplaying-banishment.

Also, I think the split should be always divided between the members in the party equally, and then looking at the ratio to determine how much the member really gets. This to not turn partying into some contest (if it's hard to get to 100% ratio)

[Kenpo]

The ratio isn't a percentage of anything. More a summary of your achievments.

Two ratios would have to be counted, I've realized this now.

One for the overall partying statistics of a player and one for the current party your in.

//Kenpo, soon to reign Supreme