Some random thoughts

[Stiehl26]

I will preface my ideas with the statement that I have not yet reached the pinnacle of rank and I may very well not be understanding things correctly, so please correct me if I am wrong or not seeing the "big picture".

1. I would like to see rares dealt with a little differently. It seems now, that if someone gets all of the best rares, logs off and then never again actively plays that character again, that the rares or limiteds or whatever are not going to be returned to the realms. What this leads to, it seems, is that someone may get such good items that they are afraid to log on and lose them, and are content in merely logging on once every couple of weeks and then loging off as soon as the game allows. I have seen some characters, and I honestly dont remember names, that I have never seen before, log on, I ask them to rank together, they refuse, I get a look at them and have no idea what half of what they are wearing is. They then log off and I may never see them again. What I propose is to have (this may already be in place) the rare timer be altered to be a bit more stringent. Meaning that a person needs XX amount of hours every 2-3 weeks or the rare will go *poof* and immediately get back into circulation for the players that actually play. The timer should reflect realistic play times, not that they simply logged on for 10 minutes during the month, but rather something like they need to play 2-5 hours every 2-3 weeks. I use 2-3 weeks because that allows for people who go on vacation or just want a break from that toon for a bit. But if they do not put in their 2-5 hours (whatever would be deemed appropriate) they lose their limited rares and eventually all rares. This would allow for the newer players or newly created characters a chance to have a shot at some of these items...it also gives the Keepers something more to do (I am not a fan of keepers in the least...as their logic seems flawed...but they are here so lets give them a more active roll)

2. Login timers for Cabals are currently 30 minutes I believe. I completely understand them having a longer relogin time, but I propose making this 20 minutes rather than 30. I typically play later at night - early morning and there are rarely people on within my range to rank. I admit, I may not be training as much as I should be, but I am trying to have fun. I believe that a 20 minute time would adhere to the spirit of the reason to have login timers for cabals, especially, but would also accomodate the fact that the mud is not near as active as it once was. It would also allow me to do my duties for my cabal, by logging that character on first, do my thing, and then log on a different character who I can see myself accomplishing something with (meaning being able to get a level within an hour or 2)

3. This may be a stretch, but I would like to see some of the xp requirements for races lowered slightly. Again, with the lack of a consistant playerbase (I'm voting yes I am) perhaps some of the race/class combos that were considered uber powerful are not actually so powerful. Giants in particular. They are powerful to a point, but with certain stats being so important to defenses, and these stats are not prevalent in giantkin, they have, in fact, become weaker and have not been modified to take into consideration the "changing of the times". I am not propsing a drop from the 500 xp requirement to 0...but perhaps simply 350 or 400 would make enough of a difference without affecting game balance.

4. Xping in general. I know this has been discussed and I know Davarius shot this down quite a while ago, but I would love to see xping get slightly more effective for solo or duos. At high levels it is an arduous grind to get anywhere and for me, the cost of potions, coupled by the lack of team mates, makes xping basically such a chore that it gets to be not very fun at all. I know it is supposed to be a grind, and it is a weeding out process, but I fear that it may be weeding out perspective newbies (and midbies like myself) with the incessant grind. I know the surges have helped me tremendously when I can catch them, but I am married, and while I greatly enjoy the game, I can not live my life around those times. I typically play when I dont have anything else going on or if I get that "urge".

Those are just some things that were rambling through my brain. I only ask that the responses that get made to this are made in such a way that they can be constructive. I am sure there are reasons as to why things were a certain way...I only ask that we look to the fact that the mud simply isnt thriving like it once was.

NOTE: Some of you may already be aware of this, but I just found this out. If I vote before I log into the forum I am then also able to vote once I log into the forum, effectively doubling my voting power. Thanks for your folks time and I am sorry this is so meandering and long.

[Vanisse]

can't really remark on the other points, but for #1:

as far as i know the logon requirement time for rare purging has already been increased. it's still monthly though. btw, keepers are not supposed to revolve primarily around rares - it was designed firstly to keep cabal powers in balance. in fact the rare problem is the last on their priorities list. so they should always have something to do since cabals are never completely equal.

[Vevier]

Mercs can help you rank, and I know that you can run through some lower level mobs for low exp, but quickly and with little risk to yourself. If you're going at it solo (+pet/merc) then potions become more affordable. (Hint, has someone with haggle to buy them for you too.) Also, guild rewards can be amazingly useful if you time them right. Also some quests will give exp bonuses as well so timing those for when you have a group would help. (It might take a few characters before you remember which quests will provide the bonus, but its part of the learning experience!)

And I hate to shoot down what you must be totally excited about, but voting before you log in doesn't do anything but reset the script. I'm fairly certain that the voting timer script is completely independent of the mud-vote-tallying sites, and are just there to let you know when a vote from your ip can count again. (And to guilt you into clicking on them.) So voting before and after you log in won't make a difference but voting from more than one internet connection (home, work, school) can.

[Erlwith]

Leveling is really way too easy anyway imo. And I'd say except for certain race/class combos like gnome illusionists who have a terrible time soloing, soloing is pretty straight forward too. 1 rank a day or at higher ranks every couple days really isn't that bad. The best part about soloing, is you can do it whenever and cut out the wasted time finding a group, and dealing with darkelf ninjas who don't dirt kick or half-elf warriors who tank with two handed weapons and forget to quaff potions. I think ranking, made any easier, would only further decrease the worth of lvl 50 characters.

[Vertas]

On purges, for some reason there have been times where i've had ten hours on a character, and i log in three days later and all my rares are gone...

[kento]

I'm pretty sure it takes like... more than 15. Or nearly that.

[Davairus]

1. agree only on the point that it needs work, modern programming methods could be taken advantage of, the only thing I am sure i wanted to add to rare purges was that it isnt fair to purge people who's rares are available in circulation... there's no point doing it to them..

2. only reason we have a timer is people sharing mentality like pip/m1co/clifton /etc, you are thinking of yourself and not of the detriment griefing players bring to the game with shorter timers... not that they arent getting a who list off aim anyway I suppose

3. no
4. no

[Vertas]

Actually while I'm here and Dav might respond I have a few comments. First of all I love the new combat module, not necessarily because combat is more than just dirt and whoever has a no disarm weapon wins combat, but because all stats are more or less important. And it makes sense, wisdom for guessing when an attack is coming and constitution for making the block. I like it, now I would like us to re-examine the spell save system, I was telling a friend of mine about ar, and he was used to the D&D model of spell save, where apparantly you get a base save and then bonuses and penalties based on stats. So constitution would affect affect maldictive saves, because constitution would help resist certain poisons etc, wisdom would effect mental save, and dexterity would help affect afflictive, or something to that extent. It makes sense to me, and I'm not even saying that a change for balances sake is needed, but it just seems to me that it makes sense.

[Davairus]

That was already put on the table, I'm pretty sure, if you read the helpfiles they've already (wrongly) stated that there are things like con having an affect on mal saves. All I can tell you is Burzuk plans to implement that someday - he actually wanted it added on the pwipe of 1998, so thats 10 years ago - I don't know when he is going to implement that, I don't know what he is thinking, but I'm sure he thinks about AR and doesn't feel it is necessary without a lot more spell changes going in. He would have had me enter it into the game with combat module A if it was a big deal to get it implemented. That's the problem with that ... it really isn't. Its just more confusion than we really need with the magic system considered as a whole. There's saves/savebreak gear, vulns, mana efficiency worries, casters trying to regain ticks.. those are things that matter to players. Having your human strength gives you +2 more save-afflictive than a slith really wouldn't do that much for you 99% of the time. But having it suddenly make hobbles and other weakens soften up your aff save, well, that's the sort of thing that means reviewing all the debuff spells in the game for things like that. And pretty confusing to suddenly need +str gear vs shamans incase they land something, instead of wearing +save. Its not something I want you to worry that much about.

[Vertas]

ok i'm not worrying