Shattered Kingdoms

I think you may be misunderstanding more than a few things. More importantly, though, more people seem to think some action approaching the OP's suggestion is better than no action. Even you.

But then, like, why bother having this discussion?


On a side note, no one with an account at a certain jean the 5th's site is allowed to ever talk about "taking away from the atmosphere of the game." You're incorrigible, Edoras. The only "atmosphere" I see you bringing to the game this time around is hot air.

I don't see what my 11 posts over more than a year's timespan about character builds, game mechanics, syntax issues with quests, and comments on PvPs have to do with this.

This is why we can't have nice things.

The reason the shopkeeper ultimately has success in this scenario is that the player knows he's playing a game for which things don't always makes sense. It's suspension of disbelief. It's also annoying. Would my scenario happen in a CVS?
Buyer: "Excuse me, I was looking for something to help with the common cold."
Pharmacist: "We have a big blue bill, and an orange liquid, and a little red pill."
Buyer: "Great! And they will all help my cold?"
Pharmacist: "lol idk, y dont u buy them all and try them?"

No, this wouldn't happen, because if people who sold things behaved like a pack of [REDACTED], buyers would go to the competition. I'd go to a different freaking pharmacy. But in the game world, I know it doesn't work that way. I know people don't go out of business, and I know one store can sell things that no other store does. Also, there's no competition I can go to because all the stores are equally stupid.

I wouldn't mind having shopeekers tell you what an item does. It makes sense after all, and given the economic (lol) aspects of the game, gold is even more precious.

Also, grep and edoras should get a room.

Right, so can't we all just get along?

We just differ in that you think it's annoying, and I think it's cool. I find it pretty neat that some shops tell you exactly what you're getting, but there's always going to be that nutso illithid in the deeps that sells completely unlabeled potions that may help you, or may end up confusing you and sending into a rage attacking everything in sight. He isn't labeling that potion, he thinks its hilarious. That elf selling her exclusive herbs feels like it would be disrespectful to classify her herbs by their particular uses instead of just by their name, because that's something that a lesser race would do. That guy sitting at the top of <Tower> isn't going to tell you what his scrolls do. He's going to smile at you, and let you figure that out for yourself. That sprite in Nerina isn't going to illuminate all of his acoutrements for you, he's going to make you work for it and also constantly pester you about joining his order.

I got my arm cut off when playing Valtari by a raven because I was a noob, so I ran into the Hero's inn to recover and hopefully sleep off my severed limb. Some random giant showed up, gave me a plant, and communicated in what I thought to be broken english (He just didn't have taslamaran mastered) that I should eat it. I looked at him funny, then ate it mostly because I felt it would keep him from murdering me out of confusion, and Voila! My arm was back. I thought that was freaking awesome. Later, when I was fighting <Extinguished cabal X>, I realized that carrying around sources of regeneration would be extremely helpful, so I remembered that plant the giant gave me, asked around, and went to buy some: Only I had to buy all the plants from one particular store because I couldn't remember exactly what kind of plant it was.

If he had handed me a potion of limb regrowth, that wouldn't have been quite as cool an occurrence, in my mind. I think that part of the draw of SK is that things aren't spelled out for you: You're meant to learn things for yourself.

This is why Edoras would be well-positioned as a member of the pantheon.

Edoras, I don't think it makes sense. Yes, there are and should be some vendors who don't tell you what their products do. That makes sense, but they should be the exception. You think it would make sense for there to be some vendors who tell you what their products do, but that they should be the exception. I don't understand this position.

It's also tough on newbies. Expecting people new to the game to be able to farm enough coin to buy everything is just unreasonable.

No one expects you to farm enough coin to buy everything, no more than SK expects you to roll a GM character of every class with every possible race and aura combination just so that you can get the full experience. You aren't meant to experience everything, SK is too large for that, so if you find something sold that you don't feel like buying, then you ask around, and if no one knows what this thing does, you get over it unless your curiosity gets the better of you. I don't see a problem with not knowing everything about everything when the alternative is to put a WoW-tooltip on every item you could potentially buy.

I think that if you went through every consumable or jewelry store in every city and bought one of every item they sold, it would cost you somewhere around fifty obsidian, and that's EVERYTHING. That's a lot of coin, but it's also a completely absurd task to undertake. Once you find one of every kind of spell that you want, there's little reason to continue searching, as if one day you may stumble upon the "slay" scroll. Some things are okay to leave undiscovered.

You're meant to learn things for yourself

yet

Some things are okay to leave undiscovered



You do realize this creates a situation where information is the most valuable resource, right? This makes cheating attractive. This is a problem-making set of philosophies. It is not a good system. It is in fact a system that relies heavily... too heavily... on the behavior of players and the policing of supervisors.

More importantly, it spits in the face of the fact that the time required to do these things is of different values to different people. You may have had time to trial-and-error your way into a memory of what is where, but that might be too risky an investment for someone to dedicate their leisure towards. Some people may need more lucrative fun opportunities. Some people don't get off on the ideas you get off to.

I think it is wrong for SK to prevent these people from having the ability to choose options that work for them, and I think it is even more wrong for you to judge those options as undesirable simply because you chose other ones.

You don't want the tooltips in WoW? Don't hover your mouse over the item.

For all your prattling though, you still hold membership in all the worst sites for the archival and brokerage of OOC information. That makes you sound very hypocritical. I think the sites you post on should be made obsolete so that OOC cheating doesn't happen because it has no advantage over the established options.


It's like, if you don't want kids cheating by smuggling in notes for a test, you structure the test so that it is open note. There's room for improvement in that regard in this situation.