Shattered Kingdoms

I think that it's best to keep the only reward for PK (Above the obvious aspect of getting your enemies' loot and winning) as the HERO flag right now. A successful PKing character should be indirectly gaining LTs through leadership and rewards in my opinion.

This is the type of statement that lowers the players opinions of you and the staff. You aren't getting to and beating these bosses if you need XP nor are you getting to and beating these bosses if you don't have a decent kit already.

You might be surprised how many non-GM characters have gotten to and beaten one or more of these endgame bosses. To say it does not happen is simply a nonfactual statement, and to base any conclusions on that is meritless. You may also be surprised to learn that, even if you do have a good kit, you can get an even better kit by beating them. Complete with many scripted items you can acquire from them and along the way, many of which did not previously exist. Now, on top of all that, you get access to even more rewards that I don't think anyone has even gotten at this point. I am happy to accept constructive criticism about those rewards from anyone who gets them. I personally think they're quite good, and give nice benefits to the characters who get them that elite loot alone does not.

If people are mad at me because they jump to illogical conclusions based on nonfactual misinterpretations of my statements, there's not really anything I can do about that. But, even though you claim people have a lower opinion about me and the staff because of what I said here about how there are new rewards for beating these bosses that never existed before, I have not received any complaints about adding more rewards in for beating all three endgame bosses, nor have I received any complaints about expanding the amount of equipment you can get from the bosses and throughout their zones, and updating all the equipment to be among the best you can possibly get. I'm not sure why people would be upset about me pointing out that you can get even more rewards for beating them now than the already good rewards of elite loot and, for the odd non-GM character, XP. Quite a lot of XP in some cases.

To sum up:

- Before there was less loot, and it wasn't as good; now there is more loot, and it's better.
- Before there was no additional reward for completing the Endgame Boss Trifecta; now there are additional rewards for completing the Endgame Boss Trifecta.

If you get mad about that, chances are you'll get mad about anything.

I don't know what this trifecta bonus you're talking about is.
But once the phat loot is taken from these end game areas, there is no reason to make the runs. Why would we go through all the effort to get out there when someone else already has the gear? Maybe to farm LT's for our future characters? Perhaps you would have players learning This end game PvE more often because the people who know how to run it want to do it more often?
Think about it.

I don't think I've seen Ephialtis', Somnium's and the GGI's gear all claimed at the same time. In my experience most people don't make the end game run because of time restrictions, lack of players to go, or lack of knowledge of how to even get there.

In my now 15ish years of off and on game experience, if a non GM character is going on this trip, it might be a singular GM character and they are going on this trip to get "xp" and level.



Obviously, thats why people do those runs. Its not the "fun" factor. Is it cool to say I've beat the GGI or Ephilates? Yeah the first time. After that it is what it is. You're going there for the loot. If you don't have a decently put together kit though, good luck cuz your dying to some BS before you get to the boss.



This seems generally cool, and I am curious what that reward is, and like I've said many times before I think OP loot good for the game. Almost gives a reason for people to waste 3-5 hours per run on a Saturday night to do something stupid like the "Trifecta" as you're calling them.



Nobody gets mad at more loot. People get annoyed and irritated with the staff when they pat themselves on the bac for tweaking an end game dungeon to make it "harder" or added more "phat loot" or "sweet reward" but only after you've completed 3-5 hours of mistake free play where if you and your group dies you get wiped. Don't believe me? Lets take a look at Tom Clancy's The Division: They introduced a dungeon without checkpoints and people got tired of wiping and getting no reward for 30 mins of game play AND they didn't lose any of their precious loot. Since that point in the late spring they have had to have 3 major patch updates to try and win players back. Hell the last major update they release last week was a quite literal complete overhaul of the mechanics of the game, the loot in the game, and they even went back and added checkpoints to the first raid.

Today's young players are different. They like a challenge but they aren't going to spend 3+ hours on one activity. Today's older players have jobs/bills/families/responsibilities and don't have 3+ hours of game time even if they wanted it.

You want to pat yourself on the back and talk about how great you are? Figure out how to streamline the Trifecta runs. Make them hard, and a challenge but get it under an hour. Then pat yourself on the back. Until then? We are going to roll our eyes at you when you say you can run the Trifecta for "XP" or the "sweet new bonus".

I think the idea of "checkpoints" is pretty neat. Something like the jo staff, if you remember that.

Yo, skaddict. You and I used to run around together a lot 15 years ago and we spent 20+ hours straight doing the old "end game" runs, There were times it was 36 hours of mountain dew and pizza rolls on a weekend. I don't see any reason now for putting the game on "easy mode" where a leet loot run takes an hour. It used to take longer than an hour just to make sure everyone was properly prepped with their 120 heal vials a piece, loot enchanted and finally made their way to the meeting spot.

I agree that real life has crept up on us, but if it becomes so easy and streamlined to acquire all the phat loot, then the phat loot will never be available. It should take a lot of time, effort and planning to obtain the best gear in the game. Besides, even if you don't get it yourself, you know you would love to pk someone who did put in all that time and effort in getting the loot and then rub it in their face.

Thuban has been doing a great job on building and expanding SK, without his and all the staff efforts it would just stagnate and be the same old stuff all the time. I am grateful of the cool new stuff in the game that gives us reason to go explore areas we thought we already knew like the back of our hand.

This is kinda getting derailed due to focus on Thuban's choice of words instead of content of his message. I don't think anyone seriously goes for the xp/gold, but after his first message it was clear we should reserve judgment on GGI/Ephialties/Somnium incentives until these new rewards have been obtained in game. Assuming that they're pretty excellent, it should beat LTs as incentive to go, and at any rate it's been made clear that LTs are not meant to promote PVP or PVE.

of my initial brainstormed suggestions I think we have the following:



I still strongly think that decoupling LT and leadership in favor of coupling Long-lived characters and LTs is a better way to handle the passive LT generation part of the system.

Alternatively if you want to make the leadership / activity portion more active, I'd suggest leaders gain 1 LT per character inducted (this is so easily police-able that I don't want to hear anything about level 1 or even level 25 alt abuse). This rewards them for doing 2 things that contribute to the game world --- first, leading a group that people actually want to join and second, recruiting actively instead of sitting around.

What you're asking for has been in place for over a year. If you take a moment from rolling your eyes and use them instead to look around at all the changes in the Outer Planes, you might discover how to get to and beat one of the Trifecta bosses in under an hour.