Shattered Kingdoms

That is more of a player population issue than a class balance or time sink issue. The effort required to get enchanted gear as a melee class:

Finney: Hey, Nightwing, you are going to enchant my gear and brew 20 heal and 5 recall vials for me. Oh, yeah, hail and well met and other RP stuff.
Nightwing: I'd be happy to, Finney, cause you are so damn sexy.

I log off and go watch CSI: Miami (insert David Caruso catch phrase here), play some arena on WoW, do my laundry and then make dinner. Meanwhile, the poor sap that decided to play a caster class with utility is slaving away on enchanting my gear and brewing potions.

The alternative version goes like this:

Finney: Hey, Nightwing, you are going to enchant my gear and brew 20 heal and 5 recall vials for me. Oh, yeah, hail and well met and other RP stuff.
Nightwing: Go to hell, bastard! Enchanting and brewing is tedious and time consuming.

At this point, I realize that I won't be effective in PK without enchanted gear and potions and to borrow a quote from an otherwise lame Matthew Broderick movie: The only winning move is not to play. Consequently, I log off and go play a game that doesn't require time sinks to be competitive.

I personally think that all classes should have a limited amount of self enchanting. For instance, let swashies enchant their weapons with a +parry enchant for finesse weapons. Let Barbarians enchant their weapons with a +dmg when furried. Mercenary's armor can be enchanted for +def while wielding spec weapon. Bard's can add sonic dmg to their swords/whips...etc.

Mayyyybe I am abit out of subject, but this was looking like a good idea.

We need to have payed npc healers with 'enchant weapon,armor' option.
1 gold per level/per cast?

That would make it:

1 gold at level 1 for 1 cast
5 platinums at level 50 for 1 cast
So in level 1 to enchant all your equipment would cost you about 10 to to 50 gold?
While in level 50, 5 platinums to 26 obsidian?

I am not sure about the math here, but you get the point

Maybe make it so, that you can't enchant things you can't hold on to due to level,
and raise the stored gold a bit.

The only thing I would add is it would have a cap, so that if you really want to enchant it heavy, you will need to find someone to enchant.

This is the point at which whatever weaponry / armor you asked for (or provided) gets junked, or given to someone else.

I've never intentionally abandoned a player who was actively helping me improve my gear, because that's about as dumb (selfish / insert favorite epithet) a move as you can make. Misery loves company, even if to get an opinion from the recipient as to whether they are satisfied with the job up to that point. And that is why it's a double time-sink.

The problem is finding someone that both can and will do that for you.

The much easier method of enchanting armor is just gathering extra armor that starts with decent enchantments and intermittently trying to get people to put 2-3 more enchants on it. That's not much time sink on either party. As a caster class, though, there were only a select few people I would actually gather -and- enchant armor for: If I enchanted for anyone else, they had to bring their crap to me. Putting a few spells on them until they fade is rather minimal in time required.

I have spent countless hours enchanting and I do not ever recall asking, much less requiring, the person I am enchanting for to sit there while I enchant. They bring the armor to me, I enchant it. I send them a tell when I am finished - they either pick up the enchanted gear or go find a replacement if it got evaporated.

See scenario #2 I posted. The only thing more tedious and boring than enchanting/brewing would be watching someone else do it. I would simply go find another game to play, so there is no double time sink - unless you are the type that enjoys watching paint dry or grass grow.

There has always been too much prep work involved for PK. The game should move towards a design that encourages more active participation during combat than spending countless hours enchanting gear, brewing potions, gathering herbs, wands, scrolls, and staves BEFORE combat.

I am soooo very thankful for all of the enchanting people have done for me, since I don't have the patience to play a class to do it myself and then get 20k requests to do the same.

I agree that less grind would be nice, but didn't you just say that the APM and reaction time required for SK is already higher than most MMOs? Why do you think the bar should be raised even higher?

If you removed or negated all out of combat grinding, then the game would be immensely boring unless you had enemies to fight (not always true) and winning would mean very little. One of the biggest features of SK is that PK actually matters, since when good loot changes hands it shifts the tides of every battle afterwards. I can't see many ways for that to hold true and for grinding to be almost completely eliminated without implementing some very nonsensical and/or frustrating features.

You would also alienate much of the playerbase, because there are plenty of people who like SK for reasons other than PK and on top of that find it really hard to keep their head in PK (Personally I consider myself to be about halfway in between them and the true "pros."). At least through enchanting, brewing, and PvE trips, these people have the opportunity to be involved in the combat world of SK without getting extremely frustrated.




But hey, on the really big bright side, enchant armor is changing this year!

The bar is not that high for MUDs either - just higher than MMOs. The best example I can think of is that my seven-year old nephew plays a mage on WoW and has finished the current raid content (Dragon Soul via raid finder - lol) and his arena team with my brother is 1700ish.

I'm not suggesting that Dulrik make SK as hard as Starcraft, but making some changes that will allow players to showcase skill would be nice.