Maphos had a good idea that a couple of us were knocking around at the fountain.

100 mpp to quest yourself. If you can roleplay for 100 hours to get the mpp, then you can quest.

Lets get some replies, a handful of us felt this was a very good idea.

So what you're proposing that if you want to quest you have to gather up 100 mpps to be quest eligible? May want to clarify it a little more.

Personally... waiting around for a quest in order to progress is more of a deterrent to not play for a few months opposed to feeling rewarded for it being difficult to achieve higher levels.

I'm assuming the infrequency in quests is to show difficulty in reaching higher levels... the only difficulty I see is continuing to play when you have little to do.

Everytime there's a quest limbo(period where i've quested and now have nothing to do till the next one) I find myself on hiatus, no drive to play or invest ideas. I generally pop on to say hi to familiar faces but do little else.

I know some others are like that, but obviously not everybody, i'm one of them, and I think the majority are.

If the waiting time required to be able to grow avatar levels was decreased... I think I would find myself playing a lot more and progressing more than one character. By this I mean automated monthly quests or something of the sort, or just having staff running quests once a month, even lower end staff like quest masters instead of requiring an implementer for absolutely every quest. No intention of ragging on implementers, but its sort of obvious by the infrequency of quests that the motivation to run quests doesn't come very often and the players are VERY eager for more than can be supplied.

Honestly what if even there were simpler, made up on the spot quests on a monthly basis for lesser things like the choice between 2 constitution points or 10 points that casts any spell of your choice or something like that. the quests could be more easy going, fun, require less of the player other than attention, be less difficult, and not be worth a level.

Dunno, feel like I'm going off on a tangent, maybe I need to just crunch out a stack of tasks on the build server. Not really sure where I was going with what I was saying, just sort of babbling my mind sort of, best place to do it I think.

Anyways, I think it would be cool to be able to get named avatar levels for MPPs like we could prewipe. People would RP like crazy, and with the no con loss on... guaranteed there would be TONS of mayham... DEATH... roleplaying... and vengeance/retaliation stories Also put something like a 2 month or 3 month timer where named level quests can't be wished for... or even possibly make it a one time thing for each player on an account... so you can pick any one named avatar level you can wish for with MPPs but after that never be able to do it again, quests only. That way it doesn't get overly carried away with every player having demigods in no time... but it also allows for every player on an account to be able to achieve hero without having to wait around for a quest and for those higher up waiting to quest it'll allow a chance to progress immediately.

Honestly, I really agree with most of what's been said about this. Let me outline the situation a little bit to help everyone understand where we are and where we are going and why. Please feel free to provide comments.

In general, I think we can all agree that the "specialized" Avatar levels are a good thing. The levels I'm referring to are the ones which result in a change in title (ie, Hero, Lesser Lord, Avatar, etc.). In order to obtain one of these levels you must partake in a roleplayed Quest which is run by a Staff member or more typically a team of Staff members. In order to run one of these Quests it takes a lot of planning, attention, time, and effort. In the (not so recent) past, I've put a fair amount of energy into creating and running quests and this resulted in players gaining levels and being happy. The problem was this was not sustainable -- the more players we had, the more quests I had to create and run -- so I started putting my energy into making it easier to create and run quests. That is what I've been doing with my time in the more recent past. With the addition of the quest editor the main thing we are missing is actually quests being built and people to run them. Some people have actually lined up to do this, but it requires significant knowledge of the game as well as a significant amount of effort, and progress is slow in the beginning. Sometimes people with the ability to run quests leave or become less interested in the game (typically because of some annoying player) and this slows down the general progress. I expect to add a few more new quests before too long here, but progress is slow because I'm trying to attack this problem on multiple fronts. Ultimately, I believe between macros and tasks we should now be able to automate quests to a significant degree -- the main thing we need to do is build the actual quests/tasks and macros themselves, though there are still some additional back-end code requirements.

So yeah, if you feel strongly about this, maybe you should be asking how you can learn tasks and macros better? Otherwise, you'll need to be patient and realize that significant effort has gone into this problem and will continue to go into this problem.

I'm sorry if it doesn't meet your schedule. Perhaps there are other things you could do to help? How much time do you spend trying to attract new players to DL (which would ultimately presumably result in more Staff/Builders)? Or how about helping new players when they do show up? Do you invite others to play the game? Ever recommend it to others in RP forums? How about just roleplaying to help encourage others to roleplay? What is being described creates a snowball effect ... people don't want to play because they can't get experience and move on to the next level... because they don't play, others don't want to play because there isn't much to do. What can you do to help break this cycle? Please provide (and if possible implement) your ideas. That's what I'm doing.

Warmest regards,

--Nezmar

good advice, i took one of your suggestions

roleplayed so others roleplayed... it definitely created a snowball effect, lol, the entire MUD flipped on their flags and had a wild story going. Kudos to Nez for ideas that work

now gotta work up that motivation to keep cracking on learning these tasks n macross

I just wanted to bring this one back to the top. The last reply really made it worth reading.

Waiting two months to quest ... counter productive if you want people here playing. I'm all for staffers running quests etc and learning macros but a required waiting timer is not something wonderful that'll make people so excited to spend hours here leveling their character only to wait two months to continue. It's not about making another character either because then staff wants people to think of another background and playing style etc for that character and then you get to wait two months to progress with that one too. All the while not rp'ing with your 'main' character and not creating any background rp story with him.

A purge... whatever, I'll be here along with all you text gaming fools cause I'm an addict. I hope to see some wonderful changes in DL again and bring back the staffing fun that we used to have. I just don't want there to be any hindrances to leveling such as a waiting timer. Everyone hated the timer and it turned so many people away. I can remember hearing about a quest and then suddenly seeing a surge of 10 people on sitting around just waiting for a quest. They'd level and get to the next rank in a month or two then get to sit for a few months being bored and complaining that they just wanna play and level.

I look forward to all that Nezmar is doing for this game.

I really only enjoyed this part of the whole thing Gydin.
Read IN BETWEEN THE LINES! and have a sense of deduction. The truth is all that remains when you cancel out what you already know.
Aight holmes.

Reading in between the lines isn't something people should have to do all the time and I have no idea what you're talking about. Just be straight forward and tell people what's going on ad encourage others to reply with ideas.

I post the obvious, sorry. RP timers were lame and people stopped playing until they heard about a quest. I do like the MPP to quest idea or something to do with earning MPP. Again, it's all staff based and we can't do anything as players unless ya'll want us to. So, even having the right amount of MPP or whatever the requirements are... unless staff are ready for it, nothing will happen.
Other muds pander to the players more, which makes sense if you want people to play but whatever. I still click in and log on because DL is more unique than the rest and 98% of the time I really really enjoy myself. I'm excited about what's to come and the new staffers.