Shattered Kingdoms

I wish to wait and think more on Cannibal's suggestion before I comment on it, but my knee-jerk reaction is I like it. But the quoted suggestion is intersting but promotes abuse by paragons. That to me causes a greater problem then the one it is meant to fix. I don't mean the idea should be tossed but this problem needs to be addressed before it can be seriously connsidered.

Lei Kung

Not a good idea. It applies a non-RP mechanic to a strictly RP status, and it's not a particularly useful mechanic, either. Certain types of characters garner more enlights than others, just through style of play. You're essentially punishing characters that don't hang out with PARs all the time.

Back to the main idea, though. This isn't about how we can make people GM more slowly, it's about enchanting.

While you CAN get good enchants pre-GM, you're not going to have the best of the best until you hit GM. That doesn't change, with this or without. Incentive to get to GM isn't lost, it just makes everything along the way that much less tedious. Plus, anything that makes enchanting less of a pain in the [REDACTED], I'm all for.

It would only make the leveling faster for low levels. After all, once you hit mentor with a 10/10 weapon you're pretty much slowing down to our normal leveling speed now anyway.



and you have to convince someone as a lowbie to make that 10/10 weapon to begin with which requires either a lot of rp, or you to be cheating...i mean, who really wants to sit around and make a 10/10 weapon just for some novice to level? It's not easy enchanting them to that after all.

Ditto

Good idea, from one perspective, don't forget though that in SK, RP is not enforced.

I like Cannibal's idea, considering the fact that item level serves little purpose to my knowledge other than the level thieves. I have had average quality skins made into godlike quality armor. That is a bit too much, it IS after all the hide of some animal. (you get my point) Now, if item level was to be calculated into AC or something that would increase its use.

Reason this idea is bad is because some people just cant log in when there are people to reward them. 13 pars + 5 imms actively looking to enlight people gives a total of 18 people you need to interact with. The show boating in front of paragons would be shameless. Also it would lessen the impact of a reward, if you where expected to get five or ten while on your way to GM.

While it would be ideal to have a RP requirement to make it to the end levels, the reality just doesn't work. Once it's required, twinks will put on the pressure to get the necessary rewards and then pretty soon all the Paragons will also be twinks and life will go on for them as usual while everyone else just gets more screwed.

As for making enchanted items not go up in level - no. I definitely don't want to see your average Joe walking around with a sword enchanted to the level of Excalibur. I don't want levelling sped up that fast. And it would just make it more tempting for veterans to kill newbies, because they would actually have gear worth stealing.

I've been tempted to cap it so enchantments can't push an item above level 40, but I'm not sure that would work either. As it was said, that would still make it easier to get the final 10 levels that we want to be the toughest.

The closest reasonable suggestions that I remember hearing was to have some way to limit an enchantment to a level where the item would not be stolen for that character. But I haven't heard a good suggestion yet on an exact implementation for that.

One of the things to keep in mind. At least for me (and a few others I talked to), they tend to start loosing interest with their character about the time they GM. As long as they had the GM goal to reach, they continued playing. At least when it was quiet for them, they had something to do which would help them along in leveling. Maybe it was spamming heal, mass healing, or the like to get a tick or two and pass the time. Once they GMed, they started looking to play alts, or not long in as much as they used to. I found myself in the same boat. The minute I GMed, I realized that I had very little to do during certain times of the day, and was consequently less likely to log in. Because it took me so long to GM, (and I had a lot of RPees by now built up to keep it fun) I haven't gone anywhere, but not having the GM goal has sometimes discouraged me from logging in and playing during a quiet times.

Keep in mind though, this is a double-edged sword. For me, at least, I was willing to continue because I was making progress, but if GMing became too hard, I likely would've given up and lost interest that way and found myself deleting for something new or fresh - despite all the RPees I find myself in. So, lets not make it too hard.

sleeper

One way to stop it from continuing past X level would be to add an optional augmentation at the end of the spell.
Cast 'Enchant armor' [Item] [status level].
Would stop the level adjustment to the item once it reached the status level supplied. Mentor augmentation would cap-out when an item got to Mentor (1) level the spell would return a new echo. Perhaps grant the humming flag. [Item] Shifts violently in [casters] hands.
This would leave lower level enchanting still at a disadvantage because the mentor augmentation would never enchant just enough for a mentor (2-5) level char where master augmentation would leave a chance it could be stolen.

Once an item reached the capped casting level then with a few options;
1) From then on continued casts at lower level augmentation would not raise the level of the item, thus making it a lot more likely to explode/fade but continue to enchant it as normal.
2) Or from then on continued casts of mentor augmentation would cause a room echo and no enchantments are placed on the item. Optional risk of exploding/fading.

One foreseeable issue is trying to use an augmentation of a lower level than the item currently is. Either have the spell do nothing (version 2) with a room echo, or (version 1) have it act as normal with out increasing the level of the item.
It also makes the level indicator quality a little redundant. How ever it is still useful for working out what level an item starts at or how far away from the specified augmentation it is.

I see version 1 much like the cap of enchantments on items level 40 or above only level dependent of the caster.
Version 2 would likely leave a lot of frustrated people not being able to risk an item for extra gain. Also makes lower level items more valuable seeing as you can get more enchantments before they reach the level.
I like version 1 over version 2.

Stop thieves for taking stuff based off of enchantments. But, have the enchantments limited effect, based off of lvl. So basically, a fully spelled up weapon will get better as the person lvls.