Zone Writer Advise

People have lots of ideas about do's and dont's for zone writers.

Post your ideas here!

Help future zone writers learn from the mistakes of the past!

Rareload mobs are a stupid concept that should be completely eliminated. Skill plays no part in hunting a rare for one month.

One or two rareload items in zones is useful, and makes going to the zone more enjoyable.

Do not confuse rareload items with random items in a zone. (See SPOB)

Quests should yield greater rewards than items gotten through zoning.

Quests should yield items better than those turned in.

Quests should use items from other zones, never just from the zone itself or from only one other zone.

Quests should yield items with stats, that can be used immediately, not items without stats that are used for other quests only.

If a mob has a quest, the very definition implies that he wants you to do something for him, so the dialogue should be easy enough to understand, as well as the items he needs.

Quests should follow logic. If a mob wants 3 swords, the reward should somehow make roleplay sense.

Farming mobs for rareload items is....see #1.

If a mob is a human male, always give him keyword man. Vice verse for females.

Mobs should ALWAYS also have the keywords of their room description.

ALWAYS give mobs their race as one of their keywords.

Simple ANSI is elegant.

Certain mobs should have a sufficient amount of money on them.

"Vaults" should have money in them.

Items with anti-alignment flags and anti-race flags should only have them if the item name in question fits said flag.

There is no such a thing as a level 50 bat.

Mobs should do damage relative to mob-type.

Make hard fights, not hard mobs.

The !id flag is stupid.


So basically Donny, do the opposite of CM.

Im ong it!

I laughed my ass off reading this...sad thing is...it prolly wasn't meant to be funny.

HI5 Adriorn.

btw Greetings Everybody.

Some good advice there for sure.

One peev I have is how a zone is layed out to be mapped. Keep a consistant room size for the most part, and lay your zone out ahead of time in either the Zmud mapper or on paper etc. Rooms should never overlap.

Make the theme of your zone appropriate for the part of world you are in while using geographically correct and documented Forgotten Realms information to make that world come alive.

I'm surprised Adriorn didn't mention spelling/typos/or the typo in the title of this post.

makes zones for the whole mud not a select few..

hehe evil zones ftl... neutral zones that are evil friendly ftw...

dont use shopkeepers as questmobs, this always leads to problems

if you have something that is bound to be farmed and eventually end up clogging locates make it's keywords either completely unique or the item !locate

do not give your items the following keywords: door doors gate gates portal. that is just plain annoying when you have to consider what you're wearing before going anywhere cause it might interfere with commands.

make sure your mobs dont cheat: if you have to artificially raise your mob's hit/dam because the fight is too easy then you're doing it wrong. consider adding a mob or two to make the fight more challenging. 1500 hp crits are cheap shots.

when making a quest, make sure the items actually make sense so that the end result doesnt look like you took everything you won in the past as a pc and dumped it into a quest without thinking it twice.

if at all possible make sure your mob races make sense, for example there is no reason why a balor would have 4 abishai followers just like a pitfiend wouldnt be surrounded by halflings.

traps are fun and all, but you have to take into account that while someone disarms the traps the whole group is just sitting there doing nothing, this ruins the fluidity of the zone.

traps are under-used therefor people think they have to put in the hardest settings on their traps to increase the difficulty of the zone, rather, having low-moderate difficulty traps spread throughout your area or randomly loaded traps will add flavor to the zone without being a total timesink, but that isnt to say there shouldnt be difficult traps, just make sure they make sense to have

hmmm what do you mean by this?

make sure your quest mobs have drop commands... like keprum does... really nice when figuring out the right items to turn in.

Aka do this in your .soc

MOB: vnum TRIGGER
FLAG: 1
CHANCE: 0
DELAY: 0
TRIGGER: 341 * tug
ACTION: 60 * drop
all
~
DONE

When writing up quests please take into consideration that some of the players here has english as their second language.

I have to disagree with Adriorn about the farm quests. They are great for non-established players that hasn't found their group to play with yet.
When you combine farming with really hard to get zone items/rareloads is where the problem begins...

/Koxa

traps are under-used therefor people think they have to put in the hardest settings on their traps to increase the difficulty of the zone, rather, having low-moderate difficulty traps spread throughout your area or randomly loaded traps will add flavor to the zone without being a total timesink, but that isnt to say there shouldnt be difficult traps, just make sure they make sense to have

hmmm what do you mean by this?

I am a huge fan of this .. the problem is that several, er *most* types of traps .. either Don't work .. or are really poorly documented .. and its a huge headache to troubleshoot it for this reason.

I guess, if you have a ton of patience and can figure it out .. let me know!

Exp tokens, or high exp yield from mobs in zones would be hot. Once my chars reach 50 I don't ever want to have to exp out of zones again.

I want to see fights requiring more tactics to beat, make us think. Make us use more skills. However, zones shouldn't be limited to the point that they can only be done if a specific class is available for them.

A fight/zone doesn't have to take 15 people to be difficult. You can design a zone around 4-5 people and still make it challenging. If you can make it challenging without limiting it to a very SPECIFIC 4-5 man group I'll give you mad props too.

Alignment/Race bits are just annoying, and should be used EXTREMELY sparingly, and should have a very good reason for their use.

There should be a lot more options for gear. There should never be a clearly defined "Best in Slot" item, there should be a lot of items that can be swapped around. Allow people to be more customized to how they like to play. Also, As of right now we are at a point where the gear available is pretty damned good. For a while I'd like to see more sidegrades than upgrades. The one-upmanship sometimes is just annoying... a nearly identical item with 1 more hp for example, just lame. If you have 2 items 1st item stats (25hp 3max_whatever) make a sidegrade, (28hp 2Max_whatever) or (22Hp 4max_whatever) etc... OPTIONS.

Prot gear, everyone should run around with at minimum PFC, PFF, PFA. As part of the customizability I stated in the last point there should be more options for these prots, I'm not saying to toss them on everything, I'm just saying that I should be able to find more prot gear that fit the build I'm going for. Also there needs to be more PFG/PFL items, they're just sparse.

I really would like to see more content geared towards small groups or have loads determined by number of players in the zone. If a boss fight can yield at random 1 of 3 pieces if you have 4 people (smaller fight too), 2 of 3 pieces if you have 7-10, and 3 of 3 pieces if you have 13-15, it would be much more interesting.

Twinking isn't a bad thing. Some of the most fun I have is trying to figure out how to do a fight with a much smaller group, it increases rewards for all players involved and also is just more fun because of the challenge.

Saves... I would like some more information on what the hell some of them actually do. But that being said, having fights that require you to wear saves from time to time add to flavor, but also require you to make said saves available.

Anything that requires 1 person to do something while 14 others stand around with their thumb up their ass waiting is just retarded. I.E. traps that just take way the hell too long too disarm. Cut that shit out.

Anything that straight up kills you is just stupid. There should always be a chance to avoid it.

Ohh, one more thing. Things that are ridiculously rare are retarded. I'm ok with rare, but things that are so rare that in 5 months of checking they've never been seen that's ridiculous. And farming a specific mob over and over and over and over and over and over for a hidden rare that is less that 1% doesn't add difficulty to a quest, it just makes it annoying.

I will agree with Traps - they are a huge headache to debug and get working right. Even when you have a trap at an extremely low level they can be a headache for players, unless used properly. I'd say if you want to use traps in general don't have them be unlimited charged, unless it's directly on a chest or door. Allow players the option to take the hit of the trap and move on.

Also a huge agreement with Kegor - Research, research, research Forgotten Realms. Each zone should be unique, at least in that it takes an aspect of FR and makes the most of it. At the same time though, put your own spin on things so that players can't just assume they know what the reaction/quest/layout is going to be of any given thing.

Personally I enjoy a zone that has a plot to it. SPoB is a good example. Twisted Rune (though I could be biased)...at least have some 'reason' for the PCs to be there, other than "let's go kill stuff."

hmmm what do you mean by this?

both load and inventory issues, plus the inability to give a shopkeeper a drop command.. its just bad zonewriting if you must have a quest in a shop, make another mob to handle the quest separate than the shopkeeper mob



as for traps i'm not saying they need to be easy i'm just saying that you better make sure there's something for the group to do while the rogue is busy disarming the trap. like for example traps that spawn fights are ideal you fail horribly and oh shit here come a bunch of mobs

Oh another issue we seem to run into is putting multiple quests on 1 mob that require cash....

2 examples are..

Bryn blacksmith had 2 quests both involving ore and cash and if you didnt give him all the cash all at once you would get arrowheads instead.

Conquest armor - multiple quests requiring cash, instead of getting item you keep getting conquest armor info.

As much as id like to see qeusts be a cash sink... id rather not see it done through quests.

hmmm what do you mean by this?

both load and inventory issues, plus the inability to give a shopkeeper a drop command.. its just bad zonewriting if you must have a quest in a shop, make another mob to handle the quest separate than the shopkeeper mob

Lili did well with shopkeeper quests, as for a drop command why not? lili made the sm shopkeepers put all their shop items in a bag, wear the bag, drop all, remove the bag, and take all their stuff out of the bag, or something to that effect i forget and cant check with the mud down, but it works just fine... as for inventory space you just have to make sure the mob doesnt sell too much stuff leaving room for the quest items, and have a consent trigger for heavy items.. as long as its done right theres not a single problem with shopkeeper quest mobs, though a secondary mob would be an interesting thought, ie: blacksmith/eq seller tells you to give materials to his apprentice

Save yo cash for dem wenches! YAR!

I would like to point out that a lot of people seem to be pointing out traps as a zone problem, while in fact it is a coding problem. Traps are done very retarted as a skill and as an object as far as all of that goes. It should be looked at on a coding sphere level not on a zone sphere level. Thanks and party on.

I concur, with Kegor. Traps are an integral part of this kind of milieu. The way they are dealt with and streamlining that process is a design problem that areas creators have no sway over...I assu people are mainly thinking of KV when contemplating this topic. It's as pointless redundant stretch of that zone, I'd suggest mid-way have a full invasion type pop, with bigger mobs than kobolds joining into the fray. That particular stretch of zone is just annoying if that...Beefing it up with reinforcement spawns and making on huge lengthy obstacle halfway (and then eliminate further traps or something) if there are going to attempt to overwhelm with numbers at least make it overwhelming.....I don't know it just seems kinda lame to have to dispatch a horde in 10 seconds every couple rooms...the challenge imo would be in what happens after all the casters are spelled out for several rounds and there are still a fair number coming? Either fight it out melee and give the warriors in the group a turn or force a contingent to protect casters while them memout if this can be acheived....

As for bulling thru trapped areas....I would hope the penalty to have a good chance of fatality, not neccessarily from the traps but from what those traps are guarding, traps with anti-coagulant poison that are purely organic in nature and effect that leave victims with "bleeding out " for a not-so-easy fight at the end of the gauntlet would grant these obstacles more respect and therefore increase a vital and underutilized char skill.

Another Thought. Give the invaded zone group options as to what path they want to go down as far as applies to difficulty. It would be cool to see a zone that has "choices" in it you have to make that determines the difficulty level of the spawn strength and rate... This way smaller group could foray into said territory, of course the risks should determine the possible gains .

Give Epic quest mobs the ability to offer "side jobs" or "side quests" and those certain junctures where a resonable expectation of waiting on rarer load may exist.
These "side Quest" could rotate as well possibly cutting down on the unrealistic nature and other affects of rare hunting....a fork in the road so to speak.

Stopping here. Ideas? Agree/Disagree? There's a problem with what what?

i wasnt actually talking about kv when it comes to traps, its a trap zone and you adjust accordingly. plus the effects there are not felt as largely as say the stupid hard trap in jot invasion, or those two or three traps on the chest at the "end" of twisted rune, in both of those cases your group is stuck there sitting with their thumb up their asses waiting on the rogue to disable the trap so they can either leave or start the final fight(s) meilech chests are not as bad mainly because the group can keep going while one rogue disarms, but in those other cases the fights require your full damn group to go well.

i do agree that traps need work as a code issue, but since we only have the one coder we might as well think on a smaller scale and see what areas can do about it. it's up to the area writer to keep the fluidity of the zone, and if the code doesnt allow for it you're gonna have to find another way.

I disagree. Adding more forgotten realms themed stuff to a mud that is almost 90% or more ... forgotten realms = kind of predictable? I guess its cool to see all your forgotten realms heros and play in that world, but personally I would rather create unique concepts (if possible). Having said that, I do admit to spending a lot of time on forgotten realms wiki .. because the real challenge is adapting an original concept to the overall fabric of toril .. which happens to be forgotten realms themed.