Encouraging PK/Activity

Hi guys,

Was going to put out a whole essay on possible changes to liven up the current environment at 50, instead now I think I will just do one idea at a time.

Current Situation (as I see it) -

PK at 50 revolves around a cycle, Part 1 You work your *** off to Equip yourself to a point where you think you are at an acceptable level of killer and survivor (during this time you will Pk very rarely). **Part 2 **Now you will battle but still you will be hesitant, you worked hard to get this EQ so you don't want to lose it (negative) but you aren't so decked that you feel overly confident owning people, therefore, you will only stick around in battles you are definately winning (negative). Once you do get decked, by this time you have probably gone through several Part 1's & Part 2's and you are now ready to hammer the Pbase into submission. Part 3 Damn! I did something stupid and died fully decked, I won't let that happen again!

Repeat Parts 1-2 and get decked but this time its different, I'm more cautious, I tend not to fight people recklessly etc etc etc.

People may disagree with this but I generally find it to be the case with most (there are always a few exceptions).

Here is what I would like to see happen.

Reduce Unique items to 1 only, Reduce Rare items to 2-6 only. In addition to this, reduce the inactivity time to which you lose rares, i.e. Rare purge on a weekly basis in which people must have been active for atleast 4 hours a week.

You say this sounds really unfair. But lets think about what we are trying to do here. We want to discourage the idea that getting decked is necessary to compete. What you will find will happen is that rares won't be as hard to find (and they are desperately hard to find at the moment, for melee's anyway). People that are decked with usually get ganged, and expect them to be, more activity and Pk. People will hopefully take more risks when they are no equipped, because there will be no other option, if the rares aren't on the mobs then they should be on characters who will be around much more often. It should literally be impossible for one character to really gain a full set, they will be too big a target.

This will also get rid of those people who have really lost interest in their characters but because they are decked, will keep them hanging around thus removing a tonne of rares from circulation.

I would say that shortly after these changes occured we would really see how advantageous such a change would be to Casters & Communers and there would need to be some changes to melee's to make them stronger, I have a few idea's along this line.

There are good and bad points to this..

Already we are talking about people not being able to compete well enough because of eq. I KNOW i can keep my hours to four hours a week - there fore I will always have my rares. Classes that rely on items and cannot make this will loose them, then they are going to die VERY easily because otehrs have kept their equipment.

You say reduce the number of rares being able to be held? No, impossible. Go fight an invoker with 3-6 rares and 1 unique and you will DIE. You will not survive. Battlemages will become king. They have enough AC boost too become unstoppable seeing as for a warrior carrying 3-6 rares means that you will have 0 hit dam eq if you want to keep some good weapons.

The idea is good, but its just the cycle of the game. Remove the ability to compensate for your short commings with eq and EVERYTHING will become unbalanced. People often forget that EQ acts as a BALANCER in things as well as providing an advantage.

Just ask Thicil how easy life would be as a human invoker without +mana equipment.

EDIT:

Just a thought - you are SUPPOSED to be cautious about your lives in battle. This isnt a mad hack and slash where you just run in and hope for the best. From and RP perspective you are not supposed to KNOW that your god will give you another chance at life. You are supposed to protect your lives (from an rp point of view) with everything you have. Taking every caution and back up - for IG for all your know it could be your last - (obviously from OOC you know when you are going to die for hte last time,)

• A good example springs to mind. Back when I had Dulanain messalantha attacked me in a ranking group when I was about rank 44.. By some miracle she died and got full looted. (she ran in without sanc.. Shrug) Equipment isnt the be all and end all. Albeit that was the only time one of my characters ever killed messa, the point is it can happen to any one of us, even the best.

I totally agree, and thus my statement that Melee's would have to be changed and I think this EQ change would force that which would actually be a good thing.

I do not understand why people think melees are weak. They may not be AS strong as casters/communers but they have power in their own right.

I merely think they should get some better boost from maybe warcry or another skill that will help them out. They have trouble gaining eq. which is their main fault. When they die they cannot recover as quickly. which is their real weakness.

But revamping the equipment system like this would mean that EVERY class would have to change. I can tell you now, you can do whatever you like with warriors, if I have a bmage with a voulge/any decent weapon you will not stand a chance - sharpmetal/sear plus the damage from that weapon and you will die. With 4 rares you will not be able to do a single thing besides run and hide.

Naked I could boost Tarandils ac over -250.. Add mithril to that and you are easily breaking -350-400ac. Take on a warrior with 150ac and 20 20 hit dam... Tell me who you think will win? The warrior would have to dual weild to get enough damage in. Ever seen what happens to a dual weilding warrior facing a battlemage?

I dont think he meant you can only hold 2-6 rares, but that the rare eq be that much rarer. Like only 6 pendants for instance in the whole game, so only 3 chars could have a set of two. That combined with the quicker purges would lead to rares becoming more valuable and easier to lose. I agree that it would also balance the high end eq discrepincies as well. The only real problem I forsee is that there would be a lack of eq for certain classes. If this happened some of the lesser rares would have to be made non rare I think.

I dont think he meant you can only hold 2-6 rares' date=' but that the rare eq be that much rarer. Like only 6 pendants for instance in the whole game, so only 3 chars could have a set of two. That combined with the quicker purges would lead to rares becoming more valuable and easier to lose. I agree that it would also balance the high end eq discrepincies as well. The only real problem I forsee is that there would be a lack of eq for certain classes. If this happened some of the lesser rares would have to be made non rare I think.[/quote']

You can't be serious? That would turn... Oh I dont know.. 5 players in the game into complete and utter power houses. It would only take someone some luck to get decked enough to kill everything, then no one would be able to kill them.. That would make the situation SO much worse as C&C dont rely on that much eq...

Yah, it would be ugly if a handful ended up with all the rares...but what are the odds of that... lol, seems like its always that way anyway. hehe.

Yeah, but its more then a handful... Instead of like 4 people there are now about 12 that are REALLY decked.

There is alot of underused eq that does a fair decent job - sure it might not be horrific skin but it has its own uses. And its easy to get too.

This is exactly the issue Aulian. The BM's need very little to be powerful, same with Invokers, Clerics, Shamans etc.

What is restricting at the moment is that the Melee's besides Blademasters spend most of their time running for equipment because they know if they work hard enough they can get it and it is their only way to survive, usually they are not pking during this time.

As I said in my first post, this is the beginning of several changes.

1. Change of 50's Culture to encourage fighting instead of hoarding and activity instead of inactivity.

2. Change Melee's reliance on Equipment (several simple ways to do this).

3. Lower Caster/Communer survivability while slightly increasing ability to kill.

Also Aulian, the idea is that if it is only 4-5 people decked, they will atleast be very active and I believe we should make it known that ganging them is fair game.

The current status with the lack of EQ is only temporary, since I believe not so long ago the staff did a huge inactive player purge (much to my chagrin when I wanted to log on some old characters to play:( ). Anyhows, in time when more new characters are made the rares will return to their old numbers.

This is exactly the issue Aulian. The BM's need very little to be powerful, same with Invokers, Clerics, Shamans etc.

What is restricting at the moment is that the Melee's besides Blademasters spend most of their time running for equipment because they know if they work hard enough they can get it and it is their only way to survive, usually they are not pking during this time.

As I said in my first post, this is the beginning of several changes.

1. Change of 50's Culture to encourage fighting instead of hoarding and activity instead of inactivity.

2. Change Melee's reliance on Equipment (several simple ways to do this).

3. Lower Caster/Communer survivability while slightly increasing ability to kill.

Also Aulian, the idea is that if it is only 4-5 people decked, they will atleast be very active and I believe we should make it known that ganging them is fair game.

So...

1.You believe that by reducing the amount of equipment about, it will make the MOST EQUIPMENT DEPENDANT CLASS stronger? Ah-huh..Have you also noticed that those people who are decked... Play quite a bit.. Off the top of my head I'd say about 20 hours a week. same people with the same deckedness - just now everyone else is worse off.

1. Warriors need weapons. Either we make a few REALLY good NON RARE weapons or warriors are screwed. Completely. Utterly. Screwed. A warrior (at pinn) needs a good two handed weapon, an axe, a spear/flail/mace, a glimmering staff, a whip/exotic... Thats five outta your possible 6 rares. Gonesies. Haha good luck with that.

2. Changing melees reliance on equipment - YES! but not by changing the equipment. Small changes to the class will do this and STILL BRING BALANCE to the rest of the playerbase.

3. Lower caster survivablity and increase power? - to what? Unspeaks through sanc for invokers because your saves will be SO great. Lets give them MORE power so they can dispel and hellstream you to death in the first 3 rounds.

4. Killing mobs. Can you tell me how YOU would kill things like.. Oh I dont know, the lurker, ritual killer, any of the plagues... With 6 rares and a bunch of mithril? Balinor start rolling healers now. You will be in large demand.

I agree that Segoy's solution is not quite right, but I do agree with the problem that he raises. so instead of hammering on his solution, I propose another solution. There is simply too much difference between a full suit of rares and non-rares. Its not that great a difference if you compare piece by piece basis, but when considering all the eq slots the small advantages really adds up. I see two solutions:

1. make non-rares more powerful, so that if you die as a melee, you will be able to get non-rares and only be down like 15 hit/dam from a full rare setup.

2. make some of the medium/lower powered rares non-rare.

2 seems to take less work to do so I'm liking it better. As a result of this change, rares will still be sought after since every advantage counts i guess but a melee will no longer live and die off his rares and will be able to participate in competitve pk a lot earlier from when they die.

This is exactly the issue Aulian. The BM's need very little to be powerful, same with Invokers, Clerics, Shamans etc.

What is restricting at the moment is that the Melee's besides Blademasters spend most of their time running for equipment because they know if they work hard enough they can get it and it is their only way to survive, usually they are not pking during this time.

As I said in my first post, this is the beginning of several changes.

1. Change of 50's Culture to encourage fighting instead of hoarding and activity instead of inactivity.

2. Change Melee's reliance on Equipment (several simple ways to do this).

3. Lower Caster/Communer survivability while slightly increasing ability to kill.

Also Aulian, the idea is that if it is only 4-5 people decked, they will atleast be very active and I believe we should make it known that ganging them is fair game.

Everyone ready? Not sure how long this'll be.

1. Changing of the 50's culture of making it blood thirsty and always fighting will do a few things. One, those people who prefer RP more may end up leaving because that's not the environment they want to be in because after all it's supposed to be an RP and PK MUD, not more PK than RP. Another possibility we'll gain more players just randomly enjoying 50 PK because now it's more common, but at the same time they're fighting people with more unbalances.

2. Yeah, Melee reliance on EQ does need to be changed to some extent. Either make spells by C/Cs more dependant on how much hit/dam they have or make melee's damage variable based on their hit/dam. Meaning that if they're in a basic suit and end up fighting some Invoker make damage from Invoker considerably less because of the fact that their opponent isn't as well dressed as them. If the Invoker were to be naked themselves, their ability to knock off high damage spells would be lessened because they don't have the armor to do their high damage. Even a basic suit would up their damage more than nothing, but it would only be for when facing PCs not your average MOB.

3. C/Cs ability to survive AND PK is already high enough on both ends. They don't need a boost in PK ability, all you need is a good weapon or two and your defensive spells up to go off and PK (some need a shield, but that's only two of the classes). Some of them can't survive as well as others (Invoker wont be able to last as long as a Cleric by any means). In fact they could use a decrease in both areas which would make them possibly more evenly balanced among the rest. Not to say that both should decrease in both, but depending on the class one or the other should be decreased.

Just because 4-5 people are active because they're decked what makes that different from the 12+ people who're decked now that get ganged? To be honest I think it should be against the rules to gang because it takes very little skill to gang someone and takes considerably more skill to either fend off a gang or even kill them. And often times I've seen it to where people gang with classes I know they could very easily tear up the person they're ganging with alone but still bring a friend to tag along.

Now with the limitation of 6 rares max per same item, what's to say if those mages that Melees have so much problems with end up getting all that armor? That basically means the Melee is stuck with your very basic gear to fight them which isn't even close to enough saves to protect him from the various spells C/Cs can do. This will basically hurt Melees far more than it would ever help them. Even if you were to take all the basic melee nonrare armor and bump up the hit/dam on them, you'd still be looking at C/Cs as being a threat since it's saves that help them against those. Then while facing other melees it'd be just who is better skilled over all with the same problem as we have now.

To be honest I like it how it is now, sure a few minor things could be tweaked, but overall it's more balanced than what would happen if were to change something as major as this. It'd take quite some time before it was virtually balanced enough to work properly. I'm sure people will disagree, but this is what I believe.

Let me throw my two cents in. What would you rather have? Keep it the way it is with people running around trying to get the upper hand on each other with equipment, or casters/communers getting the quick kill on any person with low saves/ac? Even if you could find some way to lower melee's dependence on equip, c/c's would still be powerful.

Communer/Caster = Very strong against melees with little eq.

Melees with good equip = The utterly neat pile of c/c corpses.

To be honest I like it how it is now, sure a few minor things could be tweaked, but overall it's more balanced than what would happen if were to change something as major as this. It'd take quite some time before it was virtually balanced enough to work properly. I'm sure people will disagree, but this is what I believe.

Thats the money.

Look at paladins. They were given that bash do affect skill (no idea what its called) along with DKs. Made the class alot more playable because they wont be doing nothing when bashed to death.

Thats all we need to do, look at some minor way we can tweak the melees so that they boost their preformance against the C&C's.

Tantangel your posts are very hard to read.

I use 6th grade reading level though.

6th grade reading level? Whats that mean?

Here in the States, we go off how hard something is to read. Basically the terminology used is mostly based off a 6th grade vocabulary and either rarely anything higher or nothing higher. Books that follow along these lines would probably be Harry Potter books, they're easy reads as you can understand everything in it (believe it's based off length as well, not quite sure all the stipulations on it, but that's the basics of it as I've seen).

I don't have time to read all the replies, so if I repeat what someone said, well, too bad. Anyway:

I agree with the problem, not the solution. Don't decrease the ammount of rares, just the gap between being decked and not. Right now, equiment plays a too big part in PK. The UBER rares needs tweaking.