Shattered Kingdoms

I ask that you please keep your comments in this thread limited to this enchant armor proposal change or other possible enchant armor changes. If you have a comment on other ways to make the game less boring and more engaging, then the general "The Grind Less Campaign" thread is the place to put them. Thank you.

This is a long post. Please don't vote until you have read the proposal thoroughly.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I have in my head what I think is a good start to changing enchant armor while not making it overpowered. The main point of this proposed change, again, is not to encourage spam dying or to make the game reward "less prepared" players: It's really an attempt to make the game's enchanting system more approachable, predictable and less time-consuming to the average player, while still maintaining the ability for high-end players to enchant their suits out the wazoo if they spend the same amount of time on it.

The problem: As PvP currently stands in SK, the game is overwhelmingly tilted towards those who spend inordinate amounts of time enchanting their gear, having other people enchant their gear, or know where to find a bunch of greater mods to saves... and then having them enchanted. Even the most skilled player can instantly lose to a scribed charm scroll if he does not have at least 20 will on his suit in addition to a decent WIS score, at which point he must start over regathering his equipment and getting it all enchanted again. Because of this, the word "skilled" in SK has been replaced with "spent real-life hours enchanting his crap" or "never gets into a fight s/he can't lose."

The problem for me is that in the midst of all this, I honestly stop having fun and I'm finding it harder and harder to justify spending all this time enchanting things. The problem for new players is that there's no way to learn the ins and outs of PvP, because the cost of losing a fight with enchanted gear -literally- means that they can't "try again" until they spend hours getting everything re-enchanted. I would like to lessen this gap, and allow people to not only have things enchanted a specific way, but make it much easier to say, focus on only one save or aspect of enchanting armor.

To this end, I make the following proposal for enchant armor: The exact numbers are a bit of a moot point because if this is allowed to be put into the game, then D will surely never let us know what they are.



In the end, what I would like for this change to do is allow for people to enchant their gear with a specific save (or saves) in mind (I personally would go willpower on every character before anything else) while also making it incredibly difficult for a character to place, say, seven or eight protection runes on each piece. It would be much more advantageous and safer for a warrior to enchant his worn armor with a few runes of protection each, then place a couple of willpower and fortitude saves on them as well, while keeping his jewelry and stat mods focused on saves only, for example.

The average character has 16 enchantable pieces of equipment (18 if you count container and shield). I would like for any player to be able to casually obtain four enchantments of their desire on each piece, with five or six requiring more time, and upwards of eight taking considerable time. This allows for a player to easily obtain armor with 3 protection on each armor piece along with 1 or 2 saves on them, and jewelry with 4 or 5 enchants on them, mostly saves. In this way, a casual player can have a suit enchanted with 35 prot and 20 will or more with relative ease, if he desires to ignore the other saves completely.

Yes, I understand that this is MUCH easier than the current enchant system: That's my point. I want losing gear to hurt less, and death itself to hurt more, maybe then people will be willing to risk their gear and PvP, perhaps learn a few things, even. I mean crap, sorcerors might even have to learn more than c charm;wiggle;quit.

I actually really like this idea. Then again, anything that makes it easier fo r your average player to PK is cool. I also like the customizable enchants. It allows for you to make a nice suit, but not one immune to everything.

I haven't voted for this, but I almost want to because your chart is incredibly sexy.

I like where you're going with the first step, but it seems way overthought to me. I don't know how many people remember the taunt discussion, the idea of breaking that skill into two separate skills to lose the OP nature of it.Personally, I would like to see something like that with that done to enchant - ditch the entire original stock-mud concept of enchant and break the spell into pieces. I touched on it in another post, and it basically boils down to this:

Each class gets a piece of the spell, each piece adds different effects. For example, priests might get the Fortitude effect, Mages get the Resistances, Shamans get reflex, and so on. Mercs might get damage bonuses on weapons while swashes get the hit bonuses. And so on.

Fighting classes get it in the form of a skill, spellcasters get it in the form of a spell. The point of this is pretty obvious - turn gear powerups into a team-effort, and keep it from all being humped up into one spell where the caster that has it gets huge benefits over everyone else just grinding it out enchant gear, and everyone else is reliant on that just to keep from being insta'ed. Should spellcasters be considered deserving of more power in this, simply give them the better or slightly more effects.

Once all the skills are broken up, each class might be allowed a maximum number of "additions/modifications" to an object, with each object being allowed a maximum number of any kind of modifications, similar to original enchant code.

What that boils down to is people being able to make equipment do the things they want it to, making the skill a bit more friendly to players, and balance things out amongst the classes.

Yeah, I realize I am presenting an unasked for alternative here, but I do like some of the ideas you've presented, and would like to see them done differently. As is, the spell should change, IMO.

That's a very interesting idea, Seraphiction. In a perfect world (and a larger p-base, perhaps) it would be worth pursuing, but it seems to me like it would be just as likely to encourage more grind than anything else, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. In addition, it's hard enough finding different classes in the game with the current p-base: Making the game more dependant on finding varied classes for "enchantment" would more than likely encourage breaking of RP rather than sticking to it, at this point.

Not to mention I don't think that such a sweeping change would ever be done.

That's part of the point, really. Remove the attempt to grind by making it impossible to get as many of the enchantments as you might want, and cap the limit each enchantment can give.



Fair point, but it really doesn't seem to be that sweeping a change. Essentially what I'm talking about is eliminating enchant armor completely, creating x (# of classes) new "skills" that consist of nothing more than adding a modifier on to the equipment with a chance of fade/break. It's basically the same skill over and over again, with a different effect... similar to what you were talking about with the ability to focus on different enchantments. It could be considered "sweeping", but that's solely in the context of a single spell.

I know it sounds simple, but you're talking about creating seven skills out of one spell, nerfing priests and sorcs heavily, and buffing every other class that would get these skills. You're also talking about having to make a round trip to seven classes in order to achieve every save on your equipment, which takes time and people. I'm just trying to change the way that enchant works for the current classes that already have it.

I think that you're missing the most basic point here .... it's not going to be feasible for anyone but a completely insane grinder with more than a 24 hour a day schedule to even consider getting a "full set of enchants from every class". That takes things beyond grinding and into the realm of obssessively stupid. They'd be able to customize and modify as they like, and maybe max out a few, but it would be entirely impractical to go through a set of seven+ different people and constantly trash equipment due to the fade/breaks.

And yes, I am talking about a significant debuff here, but that is addressing a complaint we have in common, making it more approachable, less time consuming and ultimately level the playing field by making it so that nobody can get their stuff insanely buffed. If that ends up highlighting some problems with other OP spells, then all the better.

I think that you're misunderstanding my main point, then.

I'm not trying to make getting an uber suit with 100+ enchants, no resistance any harder. (This can be done with store-bought equipment in about 16 mind-numbing hours or so, give or take of course, from someone who is completely dedicated to enchanting and in an inn)

I'm trying to make getting a suit with MP and one save very easy (but still require time and some limited resources), MP and two saves difficult (But achievable with resources and time), and MP and three saves about the same as it is right now. More than anything, I'm trying to make enchanting less luck-based and time-consuming all-around because in my opinion, dedicated enchanting is boring as all get-out and requires no skill whatsoever, just time.

The problem is that the game rewards people who play the game for more than 30 - 40 hrs a week. You will always get your clock cleaned by those people, unless you catch them off guard, without any guards, and you outnumber them 3+v1. There is no incentive for the casual player to keep playing at this moment. Yes, there is the RP but if you can't effectively participate in the pvp, you are missing a good chunk of the game.

Just put a hard-coded limit of enchants for weapons and armor. Yes, the people who play a lot, will whine and complain, but this is about game balance and to keep casual players around. So many players leave this MUD because of that reason. If you are a casual player, you are completely screwed up the arse. If unique scripted items aren't good enough for them to hoard and use to give them an edge, then there will be nothing to appease them.

We need to keep the casual players, they make up most of the MUD.