Shattered Kingdoms

My assertion is that it wasn't widely used by melee classes, of course since undead were auto-hasted on the whole necros didn't need it and sorcs did use it on their charmies, however it wasn't haste that made sorceror charmies broken. It was the nerf of charm to humanoid only and the removal of quite a few decent charms. The only thing that even approached brokeness was haste affecting starting attacks such as backstab and cleave.

Sorry charlie, this absolutely positively wont work under the current system.

Some weapon types are basically flagged as rare and get to have a higher statline first off. For an example, see trident pre-nerf.

Also, not every part of the weapon statline is created equal. For instance, speed is worthless unless it gets you to an extra attack. Let's say haste adds 2 to speed for the sake of making this easy. Let's also say that every 4 points of speed is an attack. So for instance anything over just baseline speed gets 2 attacks. That means that if something is already at the limit of 2 or 3 attacks, at 8 or 12 speed than 2 more is useless. That also means that a point into speed at those junctures for those weapons is also equally useless. 8 speed and 9 speed are absolutely the same thing in practice. You can already see this in many weapons that compare as faster, but never reach another attack over their counterpart even with GM haste.

So what does that mean? Speed is inferior to the rest? Not exactly. Just some points in speed are inferior to points elsewhere. Basically, point 9 and point 11 are both wasted points because neither of them will ever give you another attack in this example, whereas with acc/dam every point effects you. Makes it easier to parry/hit or does more damage.

Not all of the stats are created equal, and this is an inherent flaw in the system. Like I said, with the current system the only way to achieve balance is to make all weapons the same mediocre equal. As long as short swords are worse than long swords people are going to use long swords over short swords pretty much no matter what. This means builders are either going to build long swords or add in useless weapons. The same goes for every other weapon type, people are going to use the top 3 weapon types and nothing else except for special exeptions where this is no alternate such as reach weapons for priests/shamans in leveling.

In the past there were 3 groups of weapons, rp trash, good weapons, elite weapons. The RP trash was pretty much just the random steel weapons you'd see on leveling NPCs. Good weapons ran the gamut from gigantic naginata/yari/magari yari, tanso weapons once they came out almost all fell into this catagory, some of the mithril weapons, and a lot of also rans like jade daggers/serrated swords/spiral swords for leveling until you hit things with supernatural hide. The elite weapons were named weapons and other unique or demi-unique creations. Velshar/HHL/Mottled/Ritual/Black Death/Headchopper/ETC. There was no problem with this system, at all. Any time a new weapon was too crazy it got stealth wimped a bit, however there was plenty to compare it against to build something great, but not game breaking.

Since everything of a certain weapon type is now exactly the same, it doesn't matter if that unique weapon you built is in an RP sense the bees knees, unless you make it one of a few subtypes its going to be inferior to another weapon based on weapon type alone.

Once again, there is basically no benefit to the weapons system that I can see that couldn't be added to the old weapon system, such as flags for backstabbable independant of damage type and reach flags the same way.

Hasting for an extra backstab attack or cleave was just plain silly. But you brought up another reason why haste shouldn't be returned to the original spell.

The brokeness behind charm person was that NPCs used to have several thousand hps before changes to the weapon system to bring things on par, as well as the ability to haste these creatures. No PC could come close to that kind of ability.

Not to mention that NPCs can still wear heavy armor with no penalty because they're speshul.

Huh? Armor penalty applies to everyone based on their class, regardless of whether PC or NPC.

In game testing shows otherwise.

There are such things as bugs, unless you changed it since the last time I bothered to play around with this thing.

I'm not a fan of sub types either but getting them removed...well...yeah

/signed for Sklz711

Ignoring Ardith's completely blatant misinformation (4th attack triggering 50% of the time? in-game testing gg), I like this idea. From all my time playing, minus the enchantment system that was in place (sr/mp/mr/breath/petrification/death meh), the period AFTER humanoid NPCs were regulated to PC HP levels under the charm flag, but before haste was hosed, was the best combat system I've played under thus far. Let someone give up a week of their char to go ripsh*t. People are allowed to have indecently powerful spurts. If someone keeps just completely wrecking you, haste gave you the ability to kill them if you caught them at the right time. It enabled a whole world of bragging rights/fun outside of this new system of horde or be horded. That's the spice and fun of this damn game. It was fun when someone tried to haste up on you when you were melee, and you still whooped up on 'em. The easiest way I think this could be accomplished, without destroying specialize, would be simply to uncap/deregulate every weapon subtype, and let builders do what they want with them (like the old system). A little addition to area check can keep things within any desire parameters (the top average dmg of a weapon in any given area, approved on high). That way, you could really ruin someone's day if they specced for a specific weapon and you tooled it away from them.

Haste, gs, and size modifier changes have pretty much regulated the choice of your melee class to "What race doesn't have horrible weaknesses?" The weapon system has basically taken your elite weapons and spread them across the game, and then made them dumber/weaker.

Other changes to talk about before I let sklz go on fighting the good fight.

*Change recall locations back to central social rooms, like in the times of yore. The game in no way, shape, or form has the pbase to support the segregation of players any more than absolutely necessary. A character's first interaction with people should never be relegated to getting into a chosen religion/player group/etc, or just complete random happenstance on finding another person levelling at the same time as you that actually wants to talk.
*Remove bounty NPCs, and the leadership skill. Promotes turtling in a [REDACTED] way. There's no way a complete tool in a tribunal should be able to go from killing NPCs to complete safety with no risk, and should never be completely safe. Right now, this system promotes as the only way to kill someone 5-6 to 1 ganks. This isn't good for the game. Where's solo PK?
*Change Tribunals from organizations into simply an extra flag that lets you kill people in a country without being a lawbreaker. Let people in tribunals join cabals.
*Put familiarity on a weekly timer. Every Sunday, it resets.
*Think of other ways the segregation of our pbase can be removed. Half of the initial charm of this game was the people I got to interact with as a newbie. I didn't even know about religions, cabals, etc, and now it's like the only way to find socialization. You might be able to keep new players that aren't masochists approaching changes in this way.

In general: make PK more fun/twinkable, remove turtling from the game, and find ways to bring our shrivelled pbase together more.

Why is everyone wanting to have the stones back in the city? Does anyone remember what happened? No one was in the city and instead just hiding in some random place in the wilderness.

IMO, the cap on enchants should be much lower. Maybe even half. It should only give you a slight edge, it shouldn't dominate combat. If that was changed, then art would have to be lowered also.

I don't think someone that dies 900 times to another character and gets 1 kill on them should be running around bragging. That's an inherent flaw with that system.




Where have I heard something like that before?

That's false, first off.

When people recalled into the city there were a lot more people at the "fountain" or in the inn, hence the term fountain RPers.

I'm for a lot of the changes that were suggested by Rogues, but with some tweaks.

I think it'd be much easier to just remove subtypes, and it'd be a lot more fitting for mercenaries to specialize in a single type of weapon instead of a subtype of weapon. Master of swords instead of master of rapiers.

As far as recall goes, have normal recall send you to the previous recall points, and have word of recall send you to your native countries portal stones. Leave the portal stones in places. This salvages the greatness of the portal stones and wimps word of recall slightly since it'd still send you to vulnerable area unlike normal recall.

I could really get behind tribunals being just an additonal flag, since I really can't stand 3/4 of the tribunals anyway.

I still prefer the idea of familiarty increases in areas dropping your familiarity in other areas back to the no bonus mark.

That's enough for now.