Changes

[Noliperus_]

Ok, first off, I'd like to say that I think most of the changes are pretty good. However, sometimes it seems that some changes are made just to change things. Change is generally good and all that, but I'm concerned that the Imms may be falling victim to that mindset.

Granted I'm not privvy to many, if any, of the behind the scenes things going on, but I'm not feeling that many of the good ideas brought up here in the forums, e.g. Heralds being able to restring eq, are being persued. Am I way off base here? If I am, maybe someone make alittle announcement here about things to come. Religions have always been way off in the distance...and that's the only thing I can think of right now. Maybe psis and druids being reworked. Seems like the time spent redoing titles, adding random areas, and altering eq would be better spent working on these more major and, dare I say, worthwhile changes.

Again, I'd like to say that the Imms are doing a great job, and I really do appreciate everything they make happen around here and the MUD is better for it. I just had these concerns that I wanted to voice.

[Davairus]

http://abandonedrealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2395

Read the disclaimer.


Equipment/ mob changes also count as day-to-day stuff, subject to change without notice. The most recent change was health items, so I'll address that one here.

Standardizing the hp items needed to be done before I can build areas and items to fill the holes. Here's an example. Take a look at the old elemental bracelet. 30 hp, level 20 mob, with a high cost because of its low level. It was better hp than even Iggilwiv's stuff, and that's just not right. It made every other item in that slot completely worthless. Fur jacket was a similar issue, weighing in at 20 hp on a level 20 non-limited item (that's about what you should find on a rare ten levels higher, if it was devoted completely to hp).

Wrist goes something like this:
brass bracers > elemental bracelet > copper bracelet / twisted leaves bracelet (wild alternative for chaotics, which is better than copper) > ebony bracelets > bracelet of magic ("end game" eq)

Its a much more sensible equipment progression.

Whereas neck goes like this:
diamond collar > brooch of life > pendant of vitality (new item) > rising sun/black sun medallion > nimbus of power ("end game" eq)
(I was kind and didnt make the brooch of life wild, although I probably should have.)

I'll let you dig up the items for the other slots, and the IDs. You'll find that the new items are in mid-range, and they aren't exactly hard to find.

For hp items, the singular max you are going to see on the "best" rares follows a standard 30 hp (which over 17 slots is + 510 hp, meaning even an elf should be able to pull over 1000 hp IF he devoted himself purely to hp in every slot, but I imagine he'd want to kill some of that hp with save breaking items, save vs spells, etc). Depending on the source, you might get 20 hp/saves, 40hp/disadvantage etc.


Why? Because we've made rulings that people need to park at low ranks for cabal applications. And thus we need to fill out the rares for those ranks. Also, when the decent equipment is on a mob that's actually kind of hard to fight, its not simply a case of who locates it first after a reboot and pops the level 20 mobs quickest anymore. Its a lot better this way. That's why this was changed.

As for Heralds gear changes, its a bit superfluous, I plan getting around to it, but that's a little specific. I follow a to-do list and that's definitely not the next thing on it - I have a couple things to do that more people can enjoy than a couple inactive Heralds. I found it strange that you were calling this a "worthwhile change" and adding areas, standardizing eq, you dont call one.

[Erlwith]

I'm really looking forward to the religion system for one. I have to agree that I've heard of a lot of stuff being done or in the works yet seen very little of 'it'. Upgrades to the noble system, the fixes in monks, religion, and so forth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very much enjoying the changes and additions that are being implemented but I just think it'd be better to fix what's broke, and well if it ain't broke - I don't have to finish that line. Then once there's a fully working product, or close enough to it, add more.

[Davairus]

Read the disclaimer in the link I gave. I'll probably just stop saying whats in the works from me if you guys are going to get impatient. Don't want to kill the pop.

Also, I figured I'd include this, for all you nerf-haters..

Why nerfing is good

Suppose you have four weapons.

a claymore (heavy two-handed, avg 15)
a dagger (light one-handed, ave 12)
a longsword (heavy but one-handed, ave 13)
a shortsword (light, one-handed, ave 30)


Now, as you can see in this selection, there's no point using anything except the shortsword. So here are our optional approaches.

Option 1: nerf the short sword

Bringing the short sword down to a more reasonable level renders all those other weapons worth consideration, for minimal effort. If we go too far, and nerf it too much, what is the damage? Well, we'll have 1 crap weapon, and in the meantime the other 3 are perfectly ok. And we can later give this crap weapon a tweak to make it better, once that is recognised. Not that it is a big deal with all those viable weapons there for your entertainment.

Option 2: buff every other weapon

Instead of gimping one weapon, another thing we can do is try to make every other weapon just as good. Is there a difference mathematically? No. But consider what happens when we make a mistake. Well, if we're in the process of buffing, and accidentally make one weapon too strong (the more complex the system, the easier this is), we're going to render every other weapon worthless again, putting us right back where we started. So since we've refused to use option 1, we have to repeat the process. Repeating this process leads to EQ INFLATION. As these weapons get stronger, the hp and armor items have to be made better to preserve the gameplay (unless you want to see 2 round rapings), so instead of nipping that one broken item in the bud, you've created a domino effect of buffing, highly likely to propogate more buffing.

QED.

So sorry if you don't like it to see it when equipment takes a nerf, but the idea of item inflation has been the ruin of many good muds, and I've shown you in this post why.

[Davairus]

Elaborate on that idea please, I'm not sure what exactly you mean by it.

[Erlwith]

I mean just... why are there no cross-realm communication forums in game? Like basically in game message boards to communicate with everyone.

My idea? Eh, well just put physical boards in special spots in the land. You can go there to read or write on them, and it would cost money perhaps to post on the boards and just enter the message board facility. A lot of gold, like upwards of 5k just to enter. Then maybe it could be 15k for level 10s to post and decrease as you level until 50.

I just think it would add to the flavor of RP of the game. People could post in-character messages to the land as a whole.

[Daodus]

I actually somehow like this idea ALOT, as odd as it may seem....
Of course it would have to be heavily monitored by the Imms......

[Ronus]

It's called the Theran Mystique. Make a Herald, go interview people, submit your writings, and the world will see what people write through you.

A free message board like you're proposing could be pretty damaging to the community. People could post quests (which is IC), they could arrange ranking groups (which would be IC), they could even arrange big gangbangs and have everyone log in at the same time. This isn't even mentioning the fact that someone would have to moderate the postings to make sure everything was kosher. It just seems like unnecessary work (not to mention the coding it would take Dav), and not enough rewards in the RP world.

Besides, you want other stuff to get coded first, right? If we start throwing things like this in the queue, then other stuff will just get backlogged more. It's not like there is a shortage of things to be coded - there is a huge laundry list. And I'm sure the IMP's could stop brainstorming today, and it would still take them many many many hours to code the stuff they have in mind right now. We have the Mystique for now, the content gets filtered through Torkalen and approved, which is about as good as its going to get.

[Erlwith]

Eh, a few problems with the logic here.

I'm not interested in becoming a Herald. I don't like to write stories or poetry. What I was suggesting was a message board, not a story board which is basically what Heralds have access to.

[Noliperus_]

Firstly, thank you for explaining all that, Dav. I understand your thought process and how you came to what conclusions. Basically it's boiling down to you wanting people to make a choice between saves, hp, and damage, correct? Makes sense.

About the eq restringing. From what I gathered from the thread that the idea was suggested in, this would be a service of the Heralds, kinda like protection or whatnot. You pay a certain price, say 15k or so, and the herald restrings the armor to whatever you want, within reason. For example, you could change 'a pair of traveller's boots' to 'shiny black leather stillettos' (Iriqeous), but not to 'boots of protection' or 'a pair of red Air Jordans.' Also, maybe make it so you could restring rare stuff, so when you 'look' it shows the restring, but when you 'examine' it shows the actual rare stuff, so you can't dupe people into thinking you don't have a nice sword that they want. It would take a bit of trust in the Heralds, but being as they're cabal members it wouldn't be unwarranted. If you do manage to get something that's unacceptable both the player would be reprimanded. So, in this case, I don't see that it would be just a few inactive heralds, but the whole realm benefiting. Also it would give Heralds something more visible to do than sporratic Mystiques.

Also, would you care to post that To Do list somewhere, so people can get a feel for what's comming soon, and what's down the road?