Glomdoring (and other orgs') Planar Collegium Quest

Lerad

This is ripped out of the Simple Ideas thread. This is a problem that's primarily affecting Glomdoring's newbies, and there's been a constant stream of (whispered) complaints since this problem was noticed in Glomdoring. Ssaliss brought it up again in the Simple Ideas thread, and there was some consensus that tweaking should be considered, at the very least. After a few days, I decided to issue this to bring it to the Admin's attention, but I was told instead that issues shouldn't be used in that manner, and that the IDEA command (lol) or the forums should be used instead.

I'm now making a new thread because apparently having a discussion about it in another thread wasn't enough. The following are some of the more important posts from the previous thread.

It's time to solve this issue, we don't have to standardize where every org's newbies need to go, but we should standardize what levels a newbie should need to go. For example, should they have to go to their Nexus World, 1 ethereal, 1 elemental, 1 cosmic, 1 astral, 1 bubble? How many of each type of plane should be considered reasonable? Either way, Glomdoring's needs a change.

Ssaliss said:

Could we have a look at the novices planar tasks, please? Right now, for Glom, they have to visit all but two places. So after visiting EtherGlom, Faethorn, Water, Earth, Celestia, Night bubble, Astral and the Nexus World, they still have to visit either Nil, Moon bubble or Crumkindivia. And they only get to those last three because of the political situation. What would happen if Celest and Glom had a bad breakup? We would be forced to visit at least one enemy cosmic plane or the Moon bubble, neither of which are very accessable...

Ssaliss said:

Okay, so this is how it used to be in 2010-03-03:

You sense that you have successfully planted seeds on these planes or bubbles:
---
* Glomdoring Nexus World (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Glomdoring (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Faethorn (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Earth (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Water (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Nil (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Celestia (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* The Astral Plane (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Crumkindivia Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Night Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Moon Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited

This is how it is today:

You sense that you have successfully planted seeds on these planes or bubbles:
---
* Glomdoring Nexus World (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Glomdoring (Value 20) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Faethorn (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Earth (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Water (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Nil (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Celestia (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* The Astral Plane (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Crumkindivia Bubble (Value 20) --- Not Visited
* Night Bubble (Value 20) --- Not Visited
* Moon Bubble (Value 20) --- Not Visited

Iytha said:

For comparison, Celest's is:

* Celest Nexus World (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Serenwilde (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Glomdoring (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Faethorn (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Water (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Celestia (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* The Astral Plane (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Cankermore Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Frosticia Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited

So Glom's should be something like

* Glomdoring Nexus World (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Earth (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Water (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Night Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Glomdoring (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Faethorn (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* The Astral Plane (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Nil (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Celestia (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Crumkindivia Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Moon Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited

E: Why is it doing this?

Ssaliss said:

Huh. I just compared it to Serens planar quest. Glom used to have 175 points in total. We now have 140. Seren currently has 185 points total. That's... a really big difference.

Svorai

Something happened today that highlighted the issue. Celina took a newbie to Nil (because it's either Nil, Moon or Crumkindivia -- easiest for her to get to, I suppose?) and then it was distorted. I wasn't involved, so Celina could explain, but from what I understand, it took whistling a ship to get the novice back to Prime.

If it wasn't Celina, and instead a teacher with fewer resources/skills... (without access to ships, no orgbix, no demigod), then it makes the Planar quest really difficult to do. 

Imo, it should be enough to visit:

• Nexus World
• Ethereal Glomdoring
• Faethorn
• Water
• Earth
• Night Bubble
• Astral

and a choice of:

• Celestia
• Nil
• Crumkindivia
• Moon

if for some reason you couldn't get to Water/Earth due to distortion, or Astral due to danger.

Xenthos

It's pretty simple; Glomdoring's shouldn't be any harder than any other organization's.

Ssaliss

I've also sent a mail to support, and haven't heard anything back. So I'm really not sure what's going on here... They're obviously aware of the problem since Lerad got a response to her issue, but I haven't heard back regarding the mail yet, and no one responded to the points raised in Simple Ideas. Sure, they could've just missed Simple Ideas, so perhaps this thread will get more attention from them, but please... I've said it before, and I'll say it again: More feedback please!

Rivius

It should be designed so newbies are able to do the entire quest themselves, imo. Don't really understand the point about not including all the elemental planes....

Ssaliss

I don't mind them needing help that much, frankly. I wouldn't mind seeing it go, but it's not an issue that needs solving.

Nocht

Yes, things can easily be passed over in a thread that constantly bounces around like Simple Ideas. If you feel something is a more urgent matter, like you obviously do about this, it probably is best to make a separate thread. Issues have not and will never be the appropriate place to bring this up. That being said, you are always welcome to send me a quick message alerting me to a thread or a complaint. I won't respond to OOC messages in-game, but I'll always look into the matter. Sometimes responses are going to be slow. I may want to collect more information on my end before responding to something, or I may just be busy. As much as I'd love it to be, Lusternia is not my job. It's something I do in addition to full time work and school.

As for the planar quest: I don't remember why Air and Fire were never added. My guess is, as someone else said, was so that someone couldn't finish the whole quest by just jumping into each elemental plane. I suppose we could add both if the point value for each plane was lowered. It's easy enough to add any area to the quest, so if Glomdoring could pick the areas and point values, what would you set them as? Would you just want an exact mirror of Serenwilde or another org? Keep in mind, we wouldn't want them to just be able to go through to Faethorn and do a quick trip around the elemental planes and be done.

Eventru

To answer the "why" of new elemental planes not having been added: When we added the new cities, it was decided we wouldn't add the old elemental planes nor add the new to the old quests, and instead would make Gaudiguch/Hallifax mirror each other while being like but different from the older city quests. We discussed adding them but the intent was to make sure people couldn't just go to Faethorn and quickly finish the quest - that they should need to visit higher planes and/or bubbles, and it would've required recalculating all six quests versus just following the existing pattern while adapting it appropriately.

I don't know what's different about Glomdoring's from Seren's (which would be the ideal opposite), so if someone could lay that out it'd probably help (I can't check at the moment).

Ssaliss

I don't think the "not adding Air and Fire" is the problem here. The problem is that, a couple of months ago, Glom's planar quest was changed. The first post has details about how it used to look and how it looks now. Just reverting those changes would, in my opinion, be enough to fix this issue.

Ssaliss

Oh, and if you want to just mirror Seren's (which is actually a little bit "better" than Gloms old one), this is how it looks:

* Serenwilde Nexus World (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Serenwilde (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Ethereal Faethorn (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Water (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Elemental Plane of Earth (Value 5) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Celestia (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* Cosmic Plane of Nil (Value 10) --- Not Visited
* The Astral Plane (Value 15) --- Not Visited
* Crumkindivia Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Moon Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited
* Night Bubble (Value 25) --- Not Visited

Estarra

Er, Gaudiguch has fire and Hallifax has air in their collegium quests (always have). I'm not really sure what the concern is over this.

Ssaliss also sent in an email with this concern about Glomdoring which we've been looking into. It appears what happened is that the Glomodoring quest was changed because someone found the numbers it was giving out didn't match the numbers in the readout so changed the readout to match it.

Anyway, we're going to look over all the collegium planar quests and make adjustments.

Ssaliss

Glad to hear you're looking into it! It would have been good to have gotten a response to the mail I sent though; something as simple as "We're looking into it" would have gone a long way, instead of me wondering if you got the mail, or read the mail, or ignored the mail, or read it and decided it wasn't a problem, or anything else.

And in regards to looking over them: If I can add one point to the wish-list, it would be that it shouldn't require you to visit an enemy bubble (i.e. Moon and Night) or a Cosmic plane. If we're looking at the current Glom quest as an example, if we had a bad breakup with Celest, we'd actually be forced to lead a newbie to either the Moon bubble, Celestia or Nil in order to complete the quest. I'd rather not have to visit bubbles either, given that they're generally somewhat non-accessible, but at least it's not enemy plane, and an org can create a travelship with a flashpoint to cover that part. Just my two cents.

Xenthos

As a note:
Support emails can take up to a week to get responses (for a while they used to be really good at always replying promptly, then there was a period of time where emails slipped through the cracks regularly, but they're back to responding to everything again; it sometimes just takes a bit of time).

That's why I suggested a forum thread instead, it helps ensure that more people see it and can draw attention to it.  So don't get too upset about the support email.

Support is best for when you have a "private" grievance that you'd like to settle / get information on, or something to deal with Administrative actions; forums work much better when requesting a game change just because more Administration staff can and do have access.

Draylor

I personally am not seeing the problem here. I did the Seren one in -minutes- quite literally. Having done most of the collegium quests, I would even state that the places to go for the communes are actually easier than for the cities.

Edit: Oh, ignore me. Totally was not paying attention to the values for each.

Xenthos

Yeah, Seren's != Glom's.  That's the problem. :P

Cyndarin

Oh yeah, I used the rift to get to Nil, and the plane was distorted so couldn't get back through the rift or anything else. Luckily there was a ship and the kid had portals. Otherwise we would have been up the proverbial creek. It was super awkward. I really don't believe you should be able lock down cosmic planes like that.

Akyaevin

Celina said:

Oh yeah, I used the rift to get to Nil, and the plane was distorted so couldn't get back through the rift or anything else. Luckily there was a ship and the kid had portals. Otherwise we would have been up the proverbial creek. It was super awkward. I really don't believe you should be able lock down cosmic planes like that.

Were you being attacked, or was Ripple up? Because you can still 'bix out, remember, it just takes 80s or so (so if it's rippled, it can be difficult to regen past it).

Also, to avoid being offtopic! Yes, I'd agree that Glom's should mirror Seren's at the least. As to avoiding going to an enemy plane, that's definitely awkward. From what I can see, though, that only happens if you're enemied to both Celest and Magnagora? Cities do need to visit a commune too, but the communes are much easier to get out of. So I wouldn't be opposed to bumping up Faethorn or Astral to 25.

Ssaliss

Yeah, I'm just talking about Cosmic here. Elemental planes are perfectly fine if you ask me (any newbie can do that on their own, but knowing where the rifts to Cosmic are/actually getting to the rift/having CosmicGate in Planar) is a whole other level for them. And it's more than just "if you're enemied to them"; it's also the whole politics thing. I mean, if I were found on Nil with a newbie, I'd probably get enemied for my troubles.

Phudmog

Ssaliss is teaching novices to raid!! Quick, get 'im!

Ssaliss

All your herbs are belong to me.

Silvanus

Ssaliss said:

Yeah, I'm just talking about Cosmic here. Elemental planes are perfectly fine if you ask me (any newbie can do that on their own, but knowing where the rifts to Cosmic are/actually getting to the rift/having CosmicGate in Planar) is a whole other level for them. And it's more than just "if you're enemied to them"; it's also the whole politics thing. I mean, if I were found on Nil with a newbie, I'd probably get enemied for my troubles.

Thats not true. I have often let newbies following someone go by and walk away freely, even if Nil is always rippled/distorted.

Also, just because IG politics are a certain way and organizations are at war with each other, that doesn't stop you from doing individual diplomacy and providing a little RP. You can easily just ask someone to notify that you are letting a novice in to pass your Planes quest, and work out a very quick diplomatic means. Unlike some people, we (usually) don't jump novices, and if a Mag does you can just refer them to me.

Cyndarin

Akyaevin said:

Celina said:

Oh yeah, I used the rift to get to Nil, and the plane was distorted so couldn't get back through the rift or anything else. Luckily there was a ship and the kid had portals. Otherwise we would have been up the proverbial creek. It was super awkward. I really don't believe you should be able lock down cosmic planes like that.

Were you being attacked, or was Ripple up? Because you can still 'bix out, remember, it just takes 80s or so (so if it's rippled, it can be difficult to regen past it).

Also, to avoid being offtopic! Yes, I'd agree that Glom's should mirror Seren's at the least. As to avoiding going to an enemy plane, that's definitely awkward. From what I can see, though, that only happens if you're enemied to both Celest and Magnagora? Cities do need to visit a commune too, but the communes are much easier to get out of. So I wouldn't be opposed to bumping up Faethorn or Astral to 25.

Was rippled.

Ssaliss

Silvanus said:

Ssaliss said:

Yeah, I'm just talking about Cosmic here. Elemental planes are perfectly fine if you ask me (any newbie can do that on their own, but knowing where the rifts to Cosmic are/actually getting to the rift/having CosmicGate in Planar) is a whole other level for them. And it's more than just "if you're enemied to them"; it's also the whole politics thing. I mean, if I were found on Nil with a newbie, I'd probably get enemied for my troubles.

Thats not true. I have often let newbies following someone go by and walk away freely, even if Nil is always rippled/distorted.

Also, just because IG politics are a certain way and organizations are at war with each other, that doesn't stop you from doing individual diplomacy and providing a little RP. You can easily just ask someone to notify that you are letting a novice in to pass your Planes quest, and work out a very quick diplomatic means. Unlike some people, we (usually) don't jump novices, and if a Mag does you can just refer them to me.

The few times I've bothered asking (which, granted, was a while ago now), I've been told I wasn't allowed to. I've since stopped even trying. I'll definitely keep it in mind for the future though.

Moi

Yeah, 99% of the time, if I ask an enemy Org to let me in with a novice, they'll either A] say no, or B] put up discretionaries and then attack me.

Everiine

When I have been asked to allow someone on Ethereal Serenwilde for planar, I tell them, no, the enemy cannot come--however, I will offer to pick up the novice and bring them myself, then bring them out safely. That to me is a fair compromise.

Ssaliss

For the Elemental (and Ethereal) planes, I just tell the newbies to do those on their own. EtherGate and ElemGate are below Liquidrift even, so any newbie should have those. Plus, it gives them both a sense of achievement and an added lesson in the layout of Faethorn.

Estarra

Unless there are valid objections, this is the proposal we're considering:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnAUuHWpOUS4dDhPWE1DNU1RdVhYcXlyMktMbEJSZkE#gid=0

Ssaliss

Hmm. If I calculated it correctly, it'd look like this for most:

Cities: Nexus world+Etherglom+Etherseren+Faethorn+Elemental+Cosmic=90
Commune: Nexus world+Etherorg+Faethorn+Elementals+Spiritbubble=100

Which leaves cities at a slight disadvantage, which they need to make up for with Astral (most likely, anyway). Perhaps change the bubbles to 20 and give etherglom and etherseren 10? That'd give them 100 without having to go to Astral, just like communes.

Ssaliss

Oh, and one more thing I noticed: Glom gets points for Earth and Fire, and when it comes to cosmics, Celestia and Nil. Seren gets for Water and Air, and then Celestia and Nil. Perhaps shift the Cosmic planes to match the Elemental planes they get points for?

Estarra

Ssaliss said:

Hmm. If I calculated it correctly, it'd look like this for most:

Cities: Nexus world+Etherglom+Etherseren+Faethorn+Elemental+Cosmic=90
Commune: Nexus world+Etherorg+Faethorn+Elementals+Spiritbubble=100

Which leaves cities at a slight disadvantage, which they need to make up for with Astral (most likely, anyway). Perhaps change the bubbles to 20 and give etherglom and etherseren 10? That'd give them 100 without having to go to Astral, just like communes.

Not sure if that's necessary. How hard is it for a city newbie to get someone to take them to astral with a nexus that connects to it? Not everything has to be even stevens!

Ssaliss

I'm perfectly fine with it the way it is now; just thought I'd point the difference out!

EDIT: Or rather, the changes proposed, heh.