What is your opinion on the developing of MUME? Has the game become better than it was before? Or more important, is it more fun playing now than it used to be?

Seeing all those old logs at this page, I get reminded of how fun things used to be, and at least I really enjoyed it when Dain put up MUME VI for a couple of days. If he'd put it up permanently, which version would you prefer to play?

The game is going slowly downhill. They can't change it all at once because people would be shocked and would stop playing, so they're slowly changing it a bit at a time. The end target is for a solid rp game with barely any pk, if any.

It´s getting worse ofcourse, but then it´s natural that a thing you do a lot becomes boring the more you do it as well.

But, I mean, it´s still more then playable, eventhough they make some changes, it doesn´t effect the gameplay that much. But many small bad changes, will sooner or later make it a bad game.

That's the point, the changes are small enough to not make that much of a difference, but they add up. It's like the boiling frog.

Many changes are annoying. But still same theme is in every mud what gets updated. And even In Real life it is always so that grass was greener and sky slightly more blue. But actually grass is as green as it was before and sky is still blue, so no point of such threads.

Personally, I think MUME III is the best thing since sliced bread (*cough*) , but the question about changes should really be if they are excessive. For example, visible warpoints -- do we really need to have this discussion again? Fleeing changes of a few years ago weren't great, but we play fine with them now.

So question is if rent changes can/will be adapted too, or just suck life out of playing. The jury's out (and I don't know what will come of it, since all my chars have been retired for 2 months and going now).

Well, it's always the same. You're all nostalgic about those things you used to play and do. Then when you pick it up again, you often find out that it's rather crappy after all. I knew it was a mistake to rediscover the Amiga. MUME VI sucked big-time too.

I think current mume is better than old ones in many aspects BUT those unwanted/unneeded 'improvements' are the reason why it seems worse than older versions. Eg. In my opinion tick-based regen was horrible compared to current regen-system, but current bob, rent-cost, bandage/wound-system...

Just out of curiosity. What's wrong with current bandage/wound system.

Oh and current BoB is just fine too, it's just some people's playstyle which cannot handle it...

However, all these changes - bob, weight, etc have made MANY MANY characters unplayable (in pk). And often you cannot make them playable with the 100 points reroll either. Though, full rerolls for all old characters would be too much, perhaps 1 ~200-250 points reroll per all characters created more than an year ago would be justified?

Ok, take a lowbie BN. Get grievous wound from a sworm of flies, have no bandage pracced. Concider what's wrong with current bandage/wound system.... Yet another whine: feels like trolls can carry as much eq as BNs, I think it was 'RPish' as a troll to get a barrel and few corpses for a snack if going for a longer trip :)

Oh, just recalled: as a lowbie bn, learn 1 prac of bandage at island, get wound, move 1...5 rooms, fail to bind, fail to bind, manage to get 'loose bound wound'. Get mad, camp rent, become an alcoholic... :P

I didn't want this to be a whine discussion, but an objective comparison between what was better in older versions of mume and what is better today. What was so good about MUME III for example, Aredhel?

When Dain put MUME VI up for a couple of days I spoke a bit to him about it and asked him if he couldn't keep it up constantly. He said that he would rather make a new version of MUME that is fun to play.

How would you like such a version, that you play for nothing but fun. What things of this mume and what things of old mume would you want in it?

I hear a lot of crowing about how the old versions were so much better, but when prompted for reasons people usually only tell you things that made it easier to smite people down in bottlenecks.

I was actually being rather sarcastic. MUME III was the first version I played, and it will always have a warm place in my heart.

THE MUME IS GOING UPUPUPUPHILL! YOU FUCKING WHINING WHORES!

Tihi. Is a newbie BN dying from a critical wound
really enough to make you rent? What happened
to the days when BN's were tough?

The new wound system is in many respect far
superior to the old system. A couple of benefits:

o No more spam "first"
o Increased skill level actually makes you heal
faster and bind wounds faster
o Bandages actually worsen with time. How is
that not totally cool?
o You wont see all your group member groping
your hurt body trying to bind your wounds. You
let the one who knows what he is doing bind.

Is a newbie BN dying from a critical wound
really enough to make you rent?"

Well what else are you supposed to do, just bleed to death and then try and find your corpse again?

In the old days I could always bind my wounds, now I need a shitload of pracs in first aid just to make a binding that doesn't decay or still bleed anyway. Another lame change...

I love the way how critical wounds are more dangerous now! It was even a design objective when wounds were redesigned.

My advice, if you can't handle a critical wound, is not getting one in the first place. Another challenge to newbie BN's (who since M8 have become all too easy to play. Owning a legend BN used to mean something; I'm afraid it doesn't mean much these days).

However, if you argue that a swarm of mosquitos giving you a critical wound is unrealistic, I may find myself agreeing with you. The idea board is awaiting your input on wound generation :)

I'd get right on it if I should it would have a cat in hell's chance of being implemented.

I think the pick-your-stats system is a great improvement. Remember stat-hunting anyone?

Also, the floating-classes system works surprisingly well methinks.

Almost all major changes have been good ones, cept for maybe increasing citydefence around bree - fnst soo much. When I was a real newbie, my biggest and most motivationg experiance was getting killed by bns around bree(well, occationaly i got away). Labero ho!

One problem is that moveschanges screwed puke thieves and bn thieves. But maybe I just dont know anough and thats why I think so.

Another problem is the map, its more open, and safespots. Since its harder to hunt ppl down nowadays, ppl resort to trapping, bashtrapping and the like.

Another problem is populating rohan and lothlorien. Something has to be done to move the centre of gravity of arda a little bit, or those areas will just be embellishment. Then again, I met players who hardly know any area outside Lothlorien for example. Kind of cool. But PK should be moved closer to those areas somehow. Or they will just be boring.

The Good

Constant-regen
Actions illegal
Road =exits=
Doors marked
open/close exit

The Bad

Invisible warpoints
New practice system
Poor zone design


Honestly, the thing that makes me think that old MUME was better was that I really like the older zones. All of the zones designed since Dunland have been, for lack of a better word, sterile. Sure, they adhere to the writings, but that doesn't make them fun or interesting zones when it comes to making an enjoyable game.

The best zones are one with lots of twists and turns and complexity. They also need to have a reason for people to be there.

I think one of the big problems with MUME is that because of the global communication and easy movement, most of the time pk turns into a global arms race where all of the pk converges in one place, usually NOC or Brolg. Even when there are a hundred legends on, there might only be 2 major pockets of conflict at any one time.

My suggestions:

a) More zones, more zones, more zones. Goo ones, not a bunch of plains with fancy descriptions that nobody will ever read.

b) Remove tell/narrate

c) Remove follow. It seems silly to me that someone can lead a group of 12 people around without the other 11 people having to actively move themselves. Making every person in a group have to move themselves would make pk much more chaotic and unpredictable. It would also tend to limit the amount of hugegrouping since groups would be exponentially more difficult to manage.

I preferred MUMe as it was a few years ago, but I don't really mind the block/break and scrol changes for balence issues, altho it did signifgantly lessen the immortality of Erebos's backpack of bluescrolls.