Shattered Kingdoms

As you can see from my post count, I do not post a whole lot, but I felt obligated to give my two cents on this topic being as how I am likely the most in the middle on this subject.

As far as how long it takes to lvl to GM NOW, I am not certain. However, with the last character I had that was GM, it took me near 200 hours to do so. With every other character since then, I have not even got to champion on them and had near 1000 hours on some chars. Now I may not log in all the time like a lot of the player base, but I do log in at last 20 hours a week on an average. Even with that much playing time, I still barely make it to master.

This part is meant for Dulrik especially. You say people don't need to be GM to play the game and do the end game thing, the problem I have with that statement is that no matter how much you try to stay uninvolved in politics or religious matters, it never fails, somehow you still end up getting wtf butt raped by the PKers. So in summary, I guess what I am trying to say is that people have to get to GM if not just to be able to protect themselves. The mud over the past 5 years or so has just gotten [REDACTED] with the amount of PK to RP ratio. I do not think that it is your fault or the IMM staff so much, but I do think that you guys play a large role in it. I see no problem with needing to fix bugs and loopholes and all that jazzy stuff. I do however see a problem with the fact that when you guys do these "fixes", it never really affects the PKers. It affects us casual players. (who I would like to say comprises your RPers)

In ending of my rant\post, I would like to say this... When you make changed to the game, don't make them with the intent of fixing those bedamned cheaters, but with the intent of making the game better.

Arelgama

Most damaging spells do not get better once you get to Master. The few that do get better, do so at a greatly reduced rate. If you feel this is not true for a specific spell, let me know and I will investigate it.


I double-checked and there is only a minor improvement to either of these post-Master.

But keep making those suggestions. If there is some area where GMs still have a large advantage over Master, I want to know about it.

Is it possible to adjust CONSIDER for GM chars to not think Master(1) is quite so low? This could affect the RP value of a Master talking to a GM, and the overall acceptability level.

Hmm... that's a suggestion I never thought of before.

Consider is entirely level based. It used to try to account for other factors like hit points and magic power, but that just ended up making the consider command inaccurate and unusable for any purpose. Just doing the simple level check means that it is at least valuable for gauging how much XP you might get while fighting NPCs.

Still, I happen to think a lot of the problem these days IS purely perceptual and not factual, so this might be an effective change. I could just make all PCs over Master consider as the same, or maybe someone else has a suggestion for how it should work versus other PCs.

I'm lost, what new lvling change was added that made it hard from mentor+?:/

From the 12/26/08 update notice:

I am starting to think that for the occasional player that there should be some sort of rest xp system. I am not talking about something that would stack up multiple lvls of 'extra xp' but something to give the person that doesn't know the system in and out some boost through those later levels. The hardcore grinders won't benefit from this bc it requires them to be offline for a while, I would suggest to get any real benefit, a long while. Then the occasional char can get a small boost to help them catch up with everyone else.

I would prefer this change in CONSIDER to be one-way only and with a caveat. I'd prefer a Master(1) to CONSIDER a GM the same as now (upward CONSIDER) but a GM to CONSIDER a Master(1) the same level as the GM, maybe (downward CONSIDER). The caveat would be that a GM would need to consider a Mentor the same after the change as is currently, to prevent overkill in PK. Pretty much, the downward CONSIDER jumps from 11 levels below to even. In that manner, the char 11 levels below doesn't CONSIDER barely below, and the char 16 levels below doesn't CONSIDER 6 levels below.

Haste and GS give more at gm, sanct is stronger at gm, just any protective spell pretty much...

And harming spells hurt worst and I believe its harder to save from at higher levels?


There is alot of champ/gm gear.

All these things help in pk, exploring, and sometimes rp purposes.

Those are just some reasons why GM is better to get to.

This debate is becoming a double edged sword and really should be given time to play out. The best thing I've liked so far is how ridiculously fast it is to level at the lower levels. I literally went from novice to initiate in 3 hours just by completing a few level appropriate quests and exploring places on a horse. I think I fought absolutely less than 20 NPCs, meaning there was almost no grinding at the lower levels. The dexterity change to movement with fighter class characters really helps and something that would help characters along would be quests that offer gold with their experience rewards, some quests currently do this, but a greater prevalence would be significantly more beneficial.

The way it is now, though, I'm fairly certain that getting to GM should take roughly the same amount of time as before, if not even faster. In areas that are recently discovered, I haven't noticed a significant slowdown from Mentor to Master and I'm sure Master to GM isn't that much of a change. How many of you who feel it's slow have taken characters through the whole spectrum since the changes?