Shattered Kingdoms

NPC wars suck, yes. But without them, there's /literally/ nothing a lot of classes can do against 1 PC warrior. And it's not exactly unusual for factions to not have a warrior in them.

We don't have the playerbase to support serious PvP, and PvP on SK has become a joke. The only interesting PK that happens is when somebody thinks they're getting to ambush someone(s) and bite off more than they can chew.

Aside from that, it's just zerg, zerg, zerg, hide until we have more PCs than the enemy.

I agree with syn on the NPCs. They're needed for balance right now and they make things more interesting. I could get behind some of the ideas around making it harder to escape a battle to safety, but I think tribunal NPCs add different dimensions to the tactics you can use.

True story.

My current thinking leans the other way. I'd rather get rid of the buffs and other non-class abilities that tribunals get via guards rather than stop them from having an extra body with them. However, I'd cautiously be in favor of making the guards that can accompany follow the same standards as pets.

I hope it takes a very long time for this to make it to the top of the change list (taking away tribunal buffs). If you do get around to it, there are some spells that will need to be made available to other classes/in other ways, such as shrink/enlarge. There are very often times in the game that you can't find a sorceror for miles. And diamond, adamantite, and energy items cannot be resized by normal means.

It's the same as with the holy symbol spell - the size of the player base does not support having it be so rare (though it's good that you're decreasing the importance of holy symbols).

This would be nothing like Minos, because gate guards in eWar actually put out fairly impressive damage.

Also: encouraging less PvP is not that bad, if the quality of the PvP improves...

I feel compelled to disagree. Changes of the past years have already brutalized one-on-one PK at the behest of group-oriented PK. I always loved the idea of group PK, but I'm not sure I'm okay with sacrificing the one-on-one aspects we have to get there.

I think the eWar comparison is valid. eWar's gate guards' damage/durability is compensated for in this situation by the absolutely twitchy and cheesy aspects of SK's PK. All you need from some NPCs is to hold a group in one room for 4-8 rounds of combat, and you're absolutely hosed by any number of skills/spellscabal etcs.

Okay if you think that's that case, do you have any suggestions on how to stop the flyby ganking that happens now? Were 1v1 ganks are rare unless you are a necro with you own small army?

Short answer? You don't. You encourage it to be one on one flyby ganking, instead.

PK where both parties are equally prepared is absolutely impossible to expect. 1 in 100, at best, come to that standard. There's a thrill with the risk of being jumped. These are the Shattered #*&$ing Kingdoms. These aren't the Fluffy-Bunny-Rainbow-Kiss Kingdoms.

The best you can do is encourage even fights, make it easier to re-equip, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of conversation to be had and inspiration to pull from, but destroying the "flyby" (read: 5on1) ganking is by making it just less appealing to do.

That can come in a number of ways - really balancing out PK class by class, a positive-reinforcement system for even odds, reducing the disparity of usefulness between mediocre gear and epic gear, removing all scripted gear, yadda yadda yadda.

Okay, now that is useful to the thread, thank you.

If eq disparity between the rare and slightly more common was decreased, will that help or hurt pk? (I know I suck at pk hence I am asking)

I totally agree with a positive reinforcement system for trying to do nearly equal battles. Not sure if it would be a buff applied after the battle or something else, even if it would be something that would directly affect the economy somehow.

I also totally agree that unless it is sacred equipment, no scripts!

As stated in another thread, fix centaurs! Fire is already the most common damage, why in the hell does someone need to get wtf owned by it?

I am still very curious on what D has plans to fix swashies, and I want an estimate on when they *might* go live!