Handful of Keeper changes

[Davairus]

This is what we are now looking at for Keepers , seems to be the next logical steps for us to take :

Forge weapon

As the response to this was mixed (some dont like it, others feel weapons are necessary to compete) I made some more adjustments. We just restricted it to non-store bought items, no magic weapons allowed. I want to j ust remind you that the point was so that we wouldnt have Keepers walking into a store and buying instant pimp weapons, they have to have some progression to avoid it feeling cheesy. That's why we are having the forge weapon skill.

it will also require a rare item from the vault to perform the forge, so basically the deal is whenever keepers forge weapons, rares get loaded back into the game. Rejoice and remember this is the same vault that things enter when they're sacced.

Atonement

Not boosted/scaled by gear anymore, instead atonement hit/dam bonus is scaled with level. More importantly, atonement is now active against the cabal Keeper is "at war" with, instead of against geared guys.

Uncompliant

The threshold is still there but it is raised VERY high, more or less everyone can forget about seeing it. This is only for the supergeared to worry about, not thews + a few rares, or dragonblood gamble stars. There is no atonement bonus from this anymore.

Deathmark

These get placed automatically for exceeding a certain "rating" threshold by killing, it basically tells the world that you are really hot stuff, and that makes you a dangerous extreme. I've set this high so that it doesn't make too much impact, knowing I'll eventually tune it down. You can also get it by killing mystics, and by the usual uncaballed raiding method. And it will enable the Keeper atonement bonus (*). Death removes the deathmark but if you kill/gain rating again it'll land you another.

Treant Thews

Removed vuln, nerfed all stats instead.

=
Look out for bugs/crashes.

(*) Future plan is remove or otherwise cripple protection money mechanics (perhaps something like all looted gold heads straight into the Legion bank while protected, I dont know yet) and allow coteries to rely on this instead for support , hopefully to improve the ranking opportunities for the universally despised Keepers, however this will need to be discussed at length with Resatimm first.

[Tepesh]

looks nice

[Ceridwel]

Love the deathmark idea.

It might be cool to explain a bit more about how the At War flag gets determined (and cleared). Though if you're keeping that quiet for mystique reasons I guess that makes sense too.

[Davairus]

Rating, and activity.

[Tiqa]

If the threshold is very much raised for uncompliant, does that mean that the coteries will be less restricted in the rares they hold?

[Davairus]

Yes,

I also put forge weapon change #1 because it gives you a reason to kill Keeper.... he's going to end up forging new weapons and that means rares released from the vault. Sorry for thinking that would be obvious.

[Voltron]

I'm curious if you're going to be made aware of your status? You haven't before so probably still not, but thought I'd ask. Will you know if you're uncompliant? At war? Or have a deathmark?

Also, with the new changes to treant thews, will the barkskin be changed also? Or will treant thews remain "as tough as bark?"

[Davairus]

[Davairus]

Waiting for feedback from players.

[Erlwith]

No need for confinement. Just 24 hour tracking skill. Tells you what direction theyre in.

[Erlwith]

Combined with that is endless moves for the keeper

[Ceridwel]

[Ergorion]

Perhaps the Keepers could have a multi-area confine skill?

The confine skills of the Knights and Legion place the prey in a pretty small area. Justice depends on the area, but then again, Justice gets the special guard.

I was thinking that with Keeper confine, it would trap the Keeper and his/her target within the area in which the skill was used and the adjacent areas. For example:

Keeper confines target Drkshyre. The target and Keeper are allowed in Drkshyre, standing fortress, and Haon Dor.

This would be a confine skill, but it would also place emphasis on a Keepers tracking ability to some extent.

Keeper confine could, on account of the larger number of areas covered, last longer than the other cabals' confines.

[Davairus]

The reason I don't like the idea of confine skill is that we already have them, and slight variations..well, they've already been done. I don't want to scrape the barrel for Keepers. Confines are skills that blow the other guy away. That said however, it would be sweet to have summonable guardians that block roads. ....maybe.

[Ozaru]

sorry Im not making a keeper so.... ask pip to make one or amo cuz no one is playing that cabal

[Dogran]

There are plenty of people willing to play Keepers. Your lack of desire to play a keeper means little to anyone. Keepers do not need a confine skill. They are supposed to be the cabal that kill the most dangerous. Obviously that is going to take some skill, confine or no that is what they will do. The idea of a guard barring their way sounds pretty cool though.

[Hrimoyan]

After mostly a month of watching, this is what I've noticed:

People get angry at Keepers bothering them for rares (always been this way), I've preserved the honor bit from Warlords, but at this point I'm going to get forced to send gangs at every situation. Only vets (ex. pip, slade) could take most of these situations 1v1. Why?

-Because Keeper armor is (still) expensive and rot deaths (I would propose one of those two situations be mitigated), This means in downtime all a Keeper can hope to do is farm gold.
-The highly used TT set is toned down (less reliable and making the next point more ridiculous)
-Atonement doesn't even apply against (Uncompliant) pimped enemies anymore!!
-Magic items simply can't be forged so bring on the giant rape. Having to purchase magic weapons makes Keepers extremely predictable for battle also.
-Now on top of being toned down, they have to risk putting back really powerful rares (if captured) in the attempt to get themselves a chance in these fights they are prioritized to engage in. (which is fine, I actually like the concept, except when the marginal gain means putting high level/end game eq back on mobs when we're AT WAR with whatever full cabal ready for a Winter group) This, along with the recent increase in rares, is going to make Keepers want to farm rares (which we know Dav won't support), which brings the next point.

- A change in Keeper culture will have to happen because simply put, an average Keeper can't 1v1 anyone decently equipped and competent at 50 given those prior conditions (and they are currently only allowed 1v1 in most cases) At best stalemates result from it. I think the PK stats help make that point somewhat. People have complained about Keeper since it's inception, but ganking has been a sensitive issue due to the prior Keeper powers and has been restrained in culture.. but that's going to have to change too at this rate.
- Dying is way more detrimental to a Keeper. While they can rearm simple equipment back, they aren't on scale with anyone after. I'm assuming TT has been reduced to a more Knight Armor shop like state, but then what? They've used their money buying armor that just rot deathed (or used their given allotment for the day), and forging = putting more rares back into play to get beat down by.

I understand things are still under construction but as most know I've been a Keeper for only around 5 months less than the existance of the cabal, and it's definitely at it's least luster to join right now.

Potential solutions:

-Allow atonement to apply to Uncompliant again
-Reduce the price of armor (because making it unrot death just means people wearing looted Keeper armor in small cases, and it'll likely result in sac'd armor in case of death anyway)
-Create a "set bonus" for Keepers wearing non-Keeper armor. (head through boots)

That's all that comes to mind at the moment.

[Hrimoyan]

Can't edit in Updates forum,

Those potential solutions wouldn't all be together. I think of them more of ala cart/"either or" solutions. I can change the culture myself right now, but I don't want to do that until Dav feels that his efforts are out of trial mode and the seeing the state of things when he decides that.

[Erlwith]

a la carte does not mean either or.

[Krakknot]

a la carte means you can pick or choose which you want.