Please.
The place was awesome and always bumping and the curse kept people away. Now with the "Curse" as it stands people avoid it outright, and the more time it goes on the worse it just seems to get. there's very little IC benefit to being in or around it, it's a wasteland, and the curse has just stopped being interesting.
Many a PC I've had get stuck there in exile and every time it is the same thing.
Even if you succeed your will save you spend a round confused and can attack NPCs. Even if you succeed your fear save you can be in a room full of lights and start clawing at your face like a madman. The Darkness is either easily manuevered by those who have been there and know the layout or OOCly a hinderance to people who have never been.
Suggested alternatives:
Quote- Get rid of the gimmicky darkness.
- Add "Maddened Thugs" that are low level NPCs that spawn like enemies crazed from the curse if you want a more hostile atmosphere. There are 0 NPCs on the top floor so a band of crazed marauders could roam and spawn there without causing faction conflicts.
- Fix the confusion or remove it, as it can bug the entire place hostile.
- Expand/Add more cool status effects about the hair on your neck and the other current ones
There are just a few I could think of off the top of my head at the moment but yeah.
Please do something with this gem of the server that has been tarnished for so long.
I agree 100% with the premise of this post, but I enjoy the darkness. The other side-effects that result in very awkward attacking of NPC's or friends I do not as much.
Basically, if you combined the darkness+the old curse effects, I think it would be preferrable to the current incarnation.
It could use some work to make it more attractive place to be for shadier PC's...rather than a place to briefly go to pretend to be using it. It's just so isolated and not a lot of stuff in there really.
I will agree with this without putting further thoughts into what specific improvements can be made. Likely because I am tired. w/e
The way the curse acts mechanically makes it near impossible to roleplay/loiter anywhere except in the small hubs of light. Perhaps that is intentional, yet the dark side of me feels cheated by it. Some concepts want to hang out in the darky dark yet the massive headache it can cause is a problem.
I agree 100% on every point raised. I appreciate what the whole darkness thing is trying to do but it's more of an OOC hindrance at this point than anything else. Maybe it's time the grue curse thing was resolved so we have an IC excuse for doing away with the darkness?
I will say this much, over the last month that I've been watching, PCs who get banished and try to set up camp in the Old Stones simply fade away. It's a shame that creating fun conflict and being banished basically means the death of your concept. Anything done to help improve the situation, draw people into the places where the banished reside, is a step in the right direction.
Ahem, get rid of the Sanatorium. Worst association ever. I played Creevy for a few months and in that time I never saw any Sanatorium pc's. I would suggest that you add another association in Old Stones that has to do with the criminal element ex: Cutthroats, Luster, Greasy hair men or something. Also the curse is really annoying. You end up attacking NPC's and the whole place gets bugged. Overall, Old Stones could use a little update.
In short, put it back to what it was at least. The darkness and annoying curses are more of an ooc annoyance than anything. The sanatorium is quite obviously abandoned, or nearly so, and should probably just fade away as stated.
I wouldn't say 'Fix', but certainly consider a rethink on the darkess / mechanics of the curse aspects. Endlessly tabbing and squinting at the minimap in an attempt to navigate about in the darkness is more OOCly frustrating than ICly immersive for example.
The darkness is very annoying, yes. If anything, just make the area dark. The darkness VFX is not too fun to navigate through or RP in.
It's not so much the darkness that's the problem as all the little things that seem to lay in some of those hallways and you keep running into despite heading the correct way, etc..
I rather like the darkness myself, I don't like the random things you keep running into. What might help isn't so much removing the darkness, but instead lifting the darkness at corners and doorways so you can maneuver at those places which are the most difficult. If you could see at these points then maneuvering wouldn't be as much as a chore as it often is.
Addition: As for the other effects, using a *spoiler* wards them off but the tremors that cause you to lose your *spoiler* tend to come too frequently to make then useful for anything other than quickly moving through. Therefore, make the tremors much less frequent and people will have a more sure means to ward off the curse and roleplay inside the darker areas of the Old Stones.
Now this doesn't help those PCs who wouldn't use a torch, admittedly, but maybe for those who earn it something could be created so that those PCs become effectively immune? For instance, the rogue perk "Shadow" could potentially make PCs immune.
As someone who has future evil-inclined concepts lined up, I would like to add my two cents on how the current implementation of the Old Stones curse is more of a hassle than fun for the many reasons others have previously mentioned.
Some of us are actively working at removing, or controlling the Old Stones' curse. Stay tuned, we might be able to fix it! :cool:
Quote from: DevilsnDemons;316181Some of us are actively working at removing, or controlling the Old Stones' curse. Stay tuned, we might be able to fix it! :cool:
The suggestions aren't about the removal of the curse, people like the curse. The suggestions are about how to make it so that people aren't avoiding the Old Stones altogether on concepts that make sense being there, therefore making the entire area a ghost-town.
I go into the Old Stones with fair frequency since my character lived there the last several years, but if I find someone in there to RP with 1 of 5 times I consider myself very lucky. If you can't find people to RP with you simply will go other places, which is only common sense and expected. And this trend is getting worse, not better.
Unsure about this, i've not spent much time there. I was under the impression that weilding a torch protected you from the curse, the urchin children and Higgins, not to get too spoilerized. I had spent a pretty long time down there though not longer than an hour in general.
I know it's unlikely that the others haven't figured this out so i assume i'm lucky. I've only once "blacked out" and i ascribed that to having no torch.
I agree that confusion around the NPC's without DM supervision is probably an accident or oversight, that should be changed to a DM spice rather than ambient effect.
Remove all the scripted effects of the darkness, but DM's spawn the grue more often. I like the darkness VFX, myself.
Quote from: Guttersnipe;316173It's not so much the darkness that's the problem as all the little things that seem to lay in some of those hallways and you keep running into despite heading the correct way, etc..
I rather like the darkness myself, I don't like the random things you keep running into. What might help isn't so much removing the darkness, but instead lifting the darkness at corners and doorways so you can maneuver at those places which are the most difficult. If you could see at these points then maneuvering wouldn't be as much as a chore as it often is.
Addition: As for the other effects, using a *spoiler* wards them off but the tremors that cause you to lose your *spoiler* tend to come too frequently to make then useful for anything other than quickly moving through. Therefore, make the tremors much less frequent and people will have a more sure means to ward off the curse and roleplay inside the darker areas of the Old Stones.
Now this doesn't help those PCs who wouldn't use a torch, admittedly, but maybe for those who earn it something could be created so that those PCs become effectively immune? For instance, the rogue perk "Shadow" could potentially make PCs immune.
Didn't read this, heh. OOC i assumed it was either torch or anything with "normal" light, as opposed to simply the torch which produces normal light. I wonder if ultravision works for this, clairaudience etc. It would be neat if it worked beyond the simple torch but due to scripting i am in doubt. Would appreciate a DM's opinion on this specific issue.
I really just meant that I do not like the PITCH BLACK where you can't see your PC or anything at all, the darkness that your torch doesn't fix.
I just hate the damned cursed effects, the darkness is no problem for me, but then again, I am one of those people who spent enough time in the Stones to know the layout.
The darkness effect itself is awesome, I will make my opinion on that clear.
As for the association ideas- Bring on the Old Stones gangs!
I think the darkness is cool in theory...and maybe I'm just being a whiny baby here but weird as this may sound to some the main reason I never really got hooked on original EfU was because of how literally dark it was. For me personally it disrupted the balance of what is fun/immersive vs what's just too OOCly annoying...maybe because I actually get headaches staring at a dark screen, I don't know. With Old Stones even cranking gamma up doesn't help and honestly there have been a few times I've thought about making a criminal element Old Stones concept but each time my conclusion is "meh, don't want to deal with Old Stones darkness".
Just my 0.02
I'm in the same boat as Zoe on this one. Unless you're in Grosse's the only thing you can see is the minimap and it's just.... a lot of strain that is easier to avoid. Not really opposed to any of the curse things, they're pretty cool, but my eyes are bad enough already y'know. Normal night darkness is enough that I hardly see more than arms reach in front of my character.
Aye, it's basically impossible to navigate in Old Stones currently without the help of OOC tools such as minimaps and tabbing. If the rule is WYSIWYG, then neither people nor NPCs should be able to identify who is walking down those corridors, which isn't really how it gets played out as. I too find the confusion effects and no-save fear effects to be really annoying in an OOC sense.
The changes to Old Stones are pretty cool the first time you experience them. I remember accidentally finding my way into Old Stones as Claxton after Khavenko had been set up in the place. I didn't have OOC knowledge of any of the ways into Old Stones and I was following someone under invisibility for other IC purposes. Getting stuck in Old Stones was probably one of the most suspenseful and nerve wracking situations I've ever been in, with or without other players or DM's.
It's lost a lot of its luster, though, and it keeps losing my interest with each subsequent visit. Once you overcome the initial shock of the place, it becomes more of a nuisance then a source of anxiety. There's a set of bookcases that makes it frustratingly difficult to navigate onto one of the top floors because the minimap doesn't afford much of a solution to get out of the little nook that the book cases create. The darkness just seems really unnecessary at this point and a bit gimmicky, especially with the other curse additions.
I wouldn't mind the darkness so much if torches weren't so shortlived. It's a bit of a drain on the already slim resources for Old Stones PCs, especially exiled ones.
Excellent !
I can foresee a renewal of the activity in old stones as a result of these change.
Quote from: ShadowCharlatan;316326And the most debilitating effects of the curse system have also been turned off.
I hope you guys are keeping the whole "you wake up somewhere else covered in slime" thing, cause that's led to a few cool situations for me, at least! Namely having to rescue someone who'd woken up within a locked cell - it's sinister little touches like that that make Old Stones intriguing.
WHAT? I am out for a few weeks and you guys turn off the coolessness of the place? -.-
it's not pitch black to me... you need to learn how to adjust your graphics.
and I RPed for hours as Miss Biterips at the place with all the effects taking place, WITHOUT A TORCH. you just need to learn how to live with them. ok, being exiled and needing to buy torches had made me the poorest PC in all realms, having to hear a beggar laughing at me about it... even so, I see no reason to change it. I am going to read the previous messages and try to gather some sense then.
Quote- Add "Maddened Thugs" that are low level NPCs that spawn like enemies crazed from the curse if you want a more hostile atmosphere. There are 0 NPCs on the top floor so a band of crazed marauders could roam and spawn there without causing faction conflicts.
I'd love to see some vermins spawning from the room with the corpses too ^^
aaand... about Sanitorium, it's something that PCs can organize to get it cleansed. if it's something the DMs approve, then it's just a matter to make it easier.
yes, I finished reading things. I am not sure it's due to the current scripting of the curse that people are avoiding, but due to the lack of knowledge of its ways, maybe.
I think myself that the biggest issue of Old Stones is the lack of payable quests. there is one with a BIG coin reward, but it's the one that needs the best and most equiped party to handle. as Biterips I have been having troubles into keeping my coins on hand as I spend a lot of them with sendings and torches, not having many ways to get more as she's no merchant and usually has issues into keeping a group around her for many reasons that don't matter here.
Rather than removing the effects entirely, what about giving residents bonuses against the grue and darkness? Something like, the more resets you have your spawn point there, the more resistant you are to the mind-effecting effects of the curse?
Perhaps for different classes, giving them unique bonuses when they adventure there: bonuses to Hide/MS for Rogues, + neg energy damage for Fighters, a bonus spell of Ultravision or Darkness for arcanists, bonus spell of Inflict Wounds for Clerics. Things of that nature, little flavorful additions for long-time residents of the Stones.
damn, I love that idea! no need to nerf, let's improve!
give me perma ghost visage, ouais?
DM's now remove the Sanitorium and add another cool Association dealing with the thugs and stuff.
Quote from: morva;316532DM's now remove the Sanitorium and add another cool Association dealing with the thugs and stuff.
Agreed. We're lacking those in EfU:M!
There is an association dealing in thuggery at the moment, but it doesn't operate (purely) in Old Stones. Maybe soon, though!
The removal of the clawing self to death was sorely needed.
In regards to the Sanatorium though, like all factions it is what you make of it, and sure it has earned a very specific reputation in the past with its origins and all the PCs who have shaped it, and still lives as a reminder in those PCs who attended the infamous tournament in the chamber of chains.
With that said, I think it has great potential, with just the right flavour for the Old Stones. I have had some excellent interactions in there and I think it would be a shame to see it disappear without a trace. If you have had issues in the past with it, especially if the are OOC, abandon them a moment and give it a new chance, maybe with a PC who volunteers or is involved in asylum related concepts. I know I have kept that association in mind for sometime, awaiting the right moment to see it shine.
There's just nothing quite like an insane asylum... to play in.