Quest Classic Suggestions

[MageBill]

Being that Jouser has mentioned this as a possibility:...

I'm going to give it a shot trying to bring up an older server and client....

I'd like to make this a place for suggestions related to Quest Classic (as I've taken to calling it).

• Remove the +5 MP/Level from all races besides Elf, Galin, and Wiban. This removes any reason to pick one race over another because of the trivial difference in starting stats. Also, remove the ability to put points into HP. Instead, derive that the same way MP used to be. Where MP was based on how much INT the race base was, HP could be how much Def or Str they start with, or Stat/2, which would help keep numbers smaller. That way a Race such as an Ogre wouldn't be a completely retarded choice that only a newb would make. Instead it would be a strategic one to give the type of character they want to build an advantage. This also maintains the usual balance with RPGs. Warriors are low damage, high health, while mages are the opposite.
• Adjust the Armor Ratings so that 85% is the max. This will keep PKing doable at higher levels, since people would be able to do 3x more damage. (This also means monsters would do 3x more damage, which would increase the challenge and longevity of the game.) Armor powers would have to be changed as well.
• Change Magic skills so that increasing beyond 100 gives benefits, such as decreased MP consumption or increased damage. (The first would need to be a decimal value, while the second could be more noticeable, perhaps as high as 5 damage per level with the Lv65 spell.)
• Change melee skills so that crits/crit.5s/double crits are never 100% likely. Instead give damage increases. 1, 2, or even 3 per level. Melee skill should still affect the likelihood of crits and the like, but they should never reach 100%. Perhaps cap at 90% for crits, 80% for crit.5s, and 60% for doubles. This would be somewhat balanced by the complete removal of Magic crits.
• Keep jewels, but change how they work. Limit 1 jewel per item with 95% success rate, items don't get destroyed. Jewels for every level of rare. Jeweling an item changes the name, so it'd be a Jeweled Wand of Noslin, instead of a Rare Wand of Noslin.
• Also adding new jewels would be good, so there aren't just jewels for each stat. A Wizard's Gem could add MP and INT, though not as much as an MP or INT jewel would. Warrior's Gem adds Str and HP, Rogue's gem adds Def and Dex. Something along those lines. Of course adding anything that increases Int or Dex into the old system would require a rewrite of the formulas. I volunteer to rewrite the Spell ones, since I spent quite a bit of time deriving the old ones anyway.
• Put a limit on the witch so that a players stats cannot be reallocated above 3L, where L is the character's level. This prevents exploiting. Also make reallocating cheaper. Add a feature to trade HP for MP (limits - a range of [2L, 3L] for HP and [3L , 5L] for MP) with a rate of 3HP = 5MP. The ranged limits prevent Mages from trading HP for more MP and Warriors their MP for more HP. Instead it provides an option for Mages to add a little HP and warriors to add a little MP.
• Keep the ability to melt down rares into Jewels, this would be a good sink for rares of all level. And if you don't get the Gem you want, sell it to someone who does want it. Also helps keep the economy flowing, though the lucky ones will still end up with the most coin at the end of the day.
• Add in rewards for beating NPCs and/or just add in some of the bosses. Depending on their strength their items could be the equivalent of a Lv3-Lv8 Rare. Still requiring people to find Supers out of luck.
• Supers need to be more rare than previously. Not much, just noticeably. Perhaps 1/150,000 for Noslins. I don't remember the exact fractions for lower level rares, but making them about 5-10% less likely to drop would be effective in stemming the tide of Rares.

I plan to elaborate on some of these (and group them together by category somewhat) in subsequent posts.

[MageBill]

On Jewels...

• Keep jewels, but change how they work. Limit 1 jewel per item with 95% success rate, items don't get destroyed. Jewels for every level of rare. Jeweling an item changes the name, so it'd be a Jeweled Wand of Noslin, instead of a Rare Wand of Noslin.
• Also adding new jewels would be good, so there aren't just jewels for each stat. A Wizard's Gem could add MP and INT, though not as much as an MP or INT jewel would. Warrior's Gem adds Str and HP, Rogue's gem adds Def and Dex. Something along those lines. Of course adding anything that increases Int or Dex into the old system would require a rewrite of the formulas. I volunteer to rewrite the Spell ones, since I spent quite a bit of time deriving the old ones anyway.
• Keep the ability to melt down rares into Jewels, this would be a good sink for rares of all level. And if you don't get the Gem you want, sell it to someone who does want it. Also helps keep the economy flowing, though the lucky ones will still end up with the most coin at the end of the day.
• Supers need to be more rare than previously. Not much, just noticeably. Perhaps 1/150,000 for Noslins. I don't remember the exact fractions for lower level rares, but making them about 5-10% less likely to drop would be effective in stemming the tide of Rares.

I. is pretty self explanatory. I would also suggest adding a line in an item description that tells what kind of Jewel was placed into it. Such as Jewel: Rare Wizard's Gem ( 8 ), indicating that it was a Level 8 Wizard's Gem. Super gems could be indicated by L for Llirrem, R for Rothar, etc., or S1, S2, S3 (Llirrem, Rothar, Velgrad, etc.).

II. This would help diversify the way a character could be built. Not much more to it than that. I wouldn't be hurt if this one went ignored.

III. If I Mage using a WoN finds a BloN, he'd melt down the BloN hoping to get a INT Jewel or Wizard's Gem, but if he doesn't he could either try to morph the gem (decreasing its quality by one level) or sell it. This adds another point. If you melt your BloN down into a jewel that you didn't want, all is lost, right? Wrong. Instead, why not try adjusting the jewel's properties (via the witch, perhaps). This art is not perfect and reduces the quality of the gem (would be a Velgrad quality instead of Noslin after that), but it gives you a second chance. This would be random so that you might get a jewel all the way down to a level 3 jewel before you get the right one.

IIII. Super Jewels should be even more rare. Perhaps 2x as rare as Super Weapons/Armor. The reason for this is that a Velgrad or Noslin Jewel would be easily able to beef up a Lv8 rare to the strength of a Llirrem or Rothar super.

EDIT: 8 + ) =  

[MageBill]

On Character Stats...

• Remove the +5 MP/Level from all races besides Elf, Galin, and Wiban. This removes any reason to pick one race over another because of the trivial difference in starting stats. Also, remove the ability to put points into HP. Instead, derive that the same way MP used to be. Where MP was based on how much INT the race base was, HP could be how much Def or Str they start with, or Stat/2, which would help keep numbers smaller. That way a Race such as an Ogre wouldn't be a completely retarded choice that only a newb would make. Instead it would be a strategic one to give the type of character they want to build an advantage. This also maintains the usual balance with RPGs. Warriors are low damage, high health, while mages are the opposite.
• Put a limit on the witch so that a players stats cannot be reallocated above 3L, where L is the character's level. This prevents exploiting. Also make reallocating cheaper. Add a feature to trade HP for MP (limits - a range of [2L, 3L] for HP and [3L , 5L] for MP) with a rate of 3HP = 5MP. The ranged limits prevent Mages from trading HP for more MP and Warriors their MP for more HP. Instead it provides an option for Mages to add a little HP and warriors to add a little MP.

I. is just a common sense thing. It never really made sense to remove the advantage of being a 5MP race. Instead there should be benefits to the other races. That in itself would bring things a long way toward modern RPGs. The system in NuQuest just adds up numbers too ridiculously quickly. I mean, Fingolfin hit me for 58k damage earlier in a PK tournament... That's just wiggedy-whack.

II. This is to prevent people from breaking the 3S/Level ratio that long ago we Questers concluded must be part of your super secret formulas for Dexterity and spell damage. But it also prevents people from leveling up 3Str1Def1Dex, then turning around and reallocating those Def and Dex points into Strength, thus breaking the 'limit'. Having a range like so on the MP and HP keeps Mages from having ridiculous Health, since most would be getting 5MP/level. They would only be able to reallocate a bit of their MP into HP. Likewise Warriors would only be able to put a bit of their HP into MP.

[TenaciousD]

Isn't the whole point of wanting the old version online because of it's simplicity? Bring it back AS-WAS, if you want to update stuff, do it to the new version.

[MageBill]

The new version is a clusterf*ck, IMO (no offense, Jouser/Dlorak). My suggestion for it would be to roll back. So I'd rather post suggestions to improve the game along a different path. A fork in the road if you will, with both sides continuing to develop.

[Jouser]

The new version is a clusterf*ck, IMO (no offense, Jouser/Dlorak). My suggestion for it would be to roll back. So I'd rather post suggestions to improve the game along a different path. A fork in the road if you will, with both sides continuing to develop.

No offense taken.  We don't have resources to go down two roads at least until I get my sh1t together.  Jewels, that's not exactly what I would consider a rollback --- weren't they a rather recent development?  First I need to see how easy it is to rollback to any random version and then we can vote where to Quantum Leap.

[Hitme]

Quantum Leap.

To be able to do that you must be directly related to both Einstein and Hawking.

[fingolfin]

or Scott Bakula, also, jewels aren't exactly new, version history says July 2008 versino 5.0, been a ton of new versions/wipe/bug fixes since then.

[Sora]

When I made that posting suggesting this in that other thread my whole concept for it was so I could play doing the following:

Press Left Arrow (or down)
Press Right Arrow (or up)
[repeat until in an encounter]

Once in an encounter:
Press 1 (attack hotkey)
press 2 (heal hotkey)
[repeat until monster is dead]

All this while paying no attention to what I was really doing while waiting for a response in chat/more ppl to come on.  I believe this is also what others where thinking, not having to worry about items breaking, having to jewel stuff, or any of that sort.

Edit:
Just wanted to add that when I VERY FIRST started to play it was for the game, but as time went on the game aspect didn't matter as much as the chat client and Quest became an Old school http chat room, with something to distract you while waiting for ppl to get on.  Kinda like chathouse.com (i really hope I am not the only one who remembers when this is was the standard for chatting) except with something to do during downtime or unpeak hours.

[Hitme]

Aye, the good ol' days. Btw, just because Bakula can make an intersect, it does NOT mean he can even compare to eistein and Hawking :p.

[fingolfin]

Sora- you can currently do that in this version

[MageBill]

Jou Jou, check ya PMs.

[Jouser]

Try this:
Quest 5.11
Port: 27013
Client: http://www.questrpg.org/download/old_clients/questfullrt5_11.exe

[Hrothgar]

is there no characters or because my name is taken >.<

[Hitme]

Offline?!?!?!

[fingolfin]

5.11 isnt really old Quest. The supers in that version were nothing like old supers, there were still all the new offensive and def skills, DEX was already removed, DEF is the same as it is now, Jeweling is around, lvl 9 mobs, etc.... I think the version that people are asking for is in the version 4.4.0. to 4.4.6, nothing after 4.4.6 though

[TenaciousD]

Yeah back in the 95 total defense days. That's what we want!

[fingolfin]

95 ttl def, only 3 item slots- Weapon, Armor, Potion, Supers that were actually super, etc..

[Mighty_Mite]

I get the server is offline with that port. hmm
what to do, what to do.

[fingolfin]

That server is down, the regular one is still up though