Shattered Kingdoms

Hopefully this is in the correct topic. I am relatively new to the game so forgive me if it's not. As far as my thoughts on the my topic... there should certainly be another means of having an item identified other than asking another player. I tried to use the idea command in game... but my string was too long. It would make sense to have an appraisal shop in each of the capital cities. Perhaps with a flat rate per item? If this isn't desired... could consideration be made on adding a new shopping command that would allow you to identify items before you purchase them? I don't know about you, but I typically know what I'm buying before I buy it! Anyway... it was just thought, please let me know what your thoughts are on it.

I've always wondered why some items are labeled with hints as to what the items does, and others don't,

I think I've brought this up once before and received only replies along the lines of 'go ask someone to get it ID bro' :/

I wish there was an npc you could ask, then hand the item over and have the cost scaled with the item in question.

Appraisal shop is an AMAZING idea. This needs to be implemented ASAP.

Hi maxman, and welcome to Shattered Kingdoms. I appreciate your willingness to come to the community and share ideas as a new player, but I do see some problems with this suggestion. First and perhaps most importantly, the desire to be more autonomous is not in line with Dulrik's vision for the game. He WANTS you to have other players cast ID for you, and he wants the spell to be an asset to those caster characters, rather than just a money-saving perk. People should expect to become more dependent on cooperation, not less. Consider this a broad foreshadowing if you like.

Secondly, the way a script reports item values and how the identify command does the same thing are entirely different. So, this suggestion requires first some patch that allows the script function to convert to the recognizable and language-based spell form and then some way to force a playback via tell or say to the player setting the trigger. It is a mind-bogglingly large undertaking, and even if it was something deemed essential (which I doubt due to point one), it probably wouldn't come into the game on any player's idea of "ASAP."

I appreciate the feed back Miessa. I suppose the script is something to consider but the only issue with that, from my point of view anyway, is that Dulrik is pretty much the only real coder for the game, or so I'm told. So in that regard, I do understand it to be a task that would require time and is not considered a high priority compared to other things that need to be worked on. As far as giving the spell a use.. well, I come from a game where you are allowed to multi-class into 1 of each of the 4 main groups, i.e. fighter, thief, cleric, mage. You retain all of the skills of the previous class etc etc. I can speak from experience when I say that having the ability to identify what is on an item at will is a very very useful tool. I understand why the game wants to steer clear of numbers and statistics but giving the entire player base the ability to know what they are using should not take away from the game and in fact, should do quite the opposite. (I am not saying we need numbers, but the ability to know what an item does/ is enchanted with etc.) I only mention a change such as this because.. well, I can't imagine anyone being overjoyed when another player asks them to ID every piece of gear on their person so they know what it does. I'm sure it would take much less time to set up appraisal shops instead of coding all the shops to give the identifying information through a command, however, I am not a coder and honestly can't give any kind of information on how hard or long that would be. I mainly wanted to see if I was the only one that thought this might be a good change to the game at some point. My intentions weren't have immediately have my idea implemented. Just to let you all know, so far, I'm enjoying the game a good bit. I still know a thing about it really, but I'm having fun so far. The RP aspect is the newest thing about it and I find it rather refreshing, for the most part. I may post a few other things I've noted could improve the game but I will leave it at this for the time back. Thank you all for the responses and voting.

Making the identify spell work on a NPC from an IMM perspective (scripting) would be terrible I'd bet. I would think it wouldn't be too bad at all from a coding perspective though.

But yeah, I can see your point maxman. It is generally a chore to ID everything you come across, so I would actually advise you that if you're the sort who really loves to know exactly what everything does, you should consider playing a sorcerer. You could also make friends with a caster as well, though. I would wager that someone might not even mind sitting with you and IDing the entirety of a shop if you were willing to talk to them in the meantime. Even then, sometimes you can wear something and then check your stats again to see if there are any noticeable changes. Can you carry more when you wear this ring? Then it's got some strength on it. Do you notice your ME dropping when you wear that necklace? It could have wisdom or magical energy enchantments.

Columbia eh? I'm about an hour and a half away.

There are some pretty friendly priests out there who actually don't mind so long as 18 people aren't all asking at the same time and they're not in a group keeping people alive. Just ask around icly

Oh, do not worry, I have the situation under control. I have not had too many problems getting people to help, but a lot of time goes in the waiting, especially if you're a darkie. Sometimes it's hard to find someone around that willing to help a darkie. I found this most true in regards to a sorceror... unless they are all invis, I haven't really seen too many sorcerors willing to help a darkie. This was just an idea to help improve game play, the player base has been fairly good about helping.

This would be an excellent point if you had a game with roughly five to ten times the playerbase that you have. Given the rate at which you're losing players, the staff might have some reason to loosen that policy. You might want to reconsider the rest of your rather barbed post for more personal reasons, one of which being that it makes you come across as quite snide. I most certainly didn't appreciate it.