Shattered Kingdoms

/thread

[REDACTED] that the change to ranged combat balanced it out. Ranged is just as powerful as it has always been. When someone has the balls to specialise in crossbow again they'll be raping the mud again.

A few thoughts.



Small difference. Assuming we allow the drop-over-the-city "feature"/bug, what you have is the following:

charm -> fly -> go over a city -> dismiss fly -> die and lose all items and corpse.
petrify -> smash statue -> die and lose all items and corpse. (unless this has changed in the 1-2 years since I last played.)

End result is the same. The difference is that with charm, the charmER must spend some time making you fly and go over a city and let you drop. Considering that charm isn't exactly a light spell to maintain concentration, and if we also assume that it's a body-control spell, not a mind-control spell, you have time to notify someone to summon you.

You don't have friends? Tough luck.

In petrification, you're screwed. Period.

Both cases can be avoided with proper gear and enchants. Said gear and enchants are available in specific locations that with the proper preparation and friends you can get easily.

Once again, you don't have friends? Tough luck.

Moving on to other points:

I find it silly to complain about the power of an ability in the game that can be countered if you play the game as it's meant to be played. This means, team up with people and take down stronger nasties for better loot which offer better protection. It's a multiplayer game (Hence the 'M' in MUD). Wanting to nerf -any- ability because a solo player can't resist it without relying to others, is akin to asking blizzard to nerf WoW because anti-social non-raiders won't get to see the end content ever. The only difference, is that here you have an imm-base that's usually numbered in the digits of one hand, so they might take pity and listen you out, or they might even see your point of view and agree.

Moving on, taking all the elite scrolls, staves, wands etc and putting them in hard and very hard to get locations will mean two simple things. First, the average joe schmoe won't have access to these items making them more rare and less used. Second, they will be used almost exclusively by the people that know this game like the back of their hands, leading to an even larger gap of power between "twinks" and "non-twinks". Or rather, between "pros" and "non-pros" as it doesn't take a twink to know the game's locations. Then, we'll all be whining about how the same people seem to have the best loot over and over again, with no chance for the others to get a piece of the pie.

Personally, I don't even understand what's wrong with releasing a charm over a city. I've died to it with Krauss countless times as well as with other characters and I never seemed to mind. It's a body compelling spell, you have no power over yourself, it's the easiest thing to do for someone to make you jump off a cliff. BUT! It's a rule, set by the Immstaff and I abide by it. Topic closed.

I find energy drain far more aggravating to be honest, because it sets you back on experience. It doesn't strip you of something that with proper friends you can have again in less than 2 hours, it denies you a portion of your well invested time and effort to get a level. Then again, that's the use of the spell, so I abide by it too and I'll even accept one voluntarily if the RP dictates it.

Suggestions regarding charm? None. Why? Because I don't think it's overpowered.
Make it unscribable? Hell no. It's one of the reasons Sorcerers are needed by other classes.
Make it uncastable on players? Sure. Do the same with half of the game's "imba" abilities though, like cleave, and finger of death. No exceptions.
Make it so that it's harder to get the stuff to make it potent? Yeah, whatever... I wouldn't mind that. I never have the uber-loot in mind anyway.

Nerf it, or leave it, just make sure it's done with the proper reasons and not just because some people want to solo-play a multiplayer game.

Statues can't be smashed - unless they have means to actually kill someone the old fashion way, there's no eq nor junk.

Charm offers the loot, for a smaller price/casting time than pet - that is the skewed balance.

And the point of Sineran's post was hardly the ranged combat, but rather the precedence we should follow - that something should be done about scrolls. Less powerful ones, in 'harder to get to'-places and an increased lag would be a good start.

For me balancing and wimping are not the same.

People should be able to sacrifice or be very clever, and still do the super poweful thing. But not everyone should be able to do it with a minimum of effort.

Out of curiosity, exactly when did we forget that sorcerers are 'supposed' to be powerful, with the main weakness that they don't like swords to the face? You don't need enchanted armor to beat a sorcerer, you need to remove a few organs before he can do anything about it.

I can't believe so many people are outraged over Charm Person being a useful spell when Cleave has less casting time and a chance to kill no matter what the level or equipment difference or any of the other "way overpowered" skills everyone loves until they're used against them.

From what I understand, the topic is not about Sorcerers charming the masses. It's about every scroll-using class charming the masses, due to their Sorcerer friends.

The main difference between cleave and charm here though is that cleave is a 1 time use only ability. It can only be used AS a first strike and ONLY once per tick, hence it has downfalls. If you get pre-empted, you're screwed. Your cleave misses? You're screwed. Your cleave doesn't kill the opponent? Then depending, there's a chance you may be screwed.

With charm however, it can be cast til it takes affect on the victim. Furthermore it has a rather quick cast time and the opponent has only a few options. Either A, get a reaching weapon and HOPE they're in second row. Any good sorc however knows how to counter this thanks to some wonderful NPCs that, in my opinion really need to be removed..[coughcoughbondservantscough] As much as I like them and use them, I find them to be a bit over the top.

Secondly, the option of either dirt kicking them or chewing through their mount / guards is available. Of course, you have roughly...2 rounds to chew through them before they charm you? Yeah, a bit tough to do even with full enchants and a massively enchanted weapon. Needless to say, it's thanks to the availability of NPC's that anyone can stay third row or such and be completely safe from melee, with the exception of a back stab. Even then, any good player who mildly knows how mechanics work can avoid a backstab, even while staying third row. There really isn't much of an option and Charm, other than the concentration rate, really doesn't have much of a drawback.

Look at Necros. Despite how "uber" they are, a few holy words can destroy all the prep time, and possibly you if you're not enchanted or spelled out the wazoo. What destroys sorcs that enchant the hell out of their gear? A melee certainly has a minimal chance to do anything.

Finally,I've always been against so many things being brewable and "scribable." Charm is one that definitely shouldn't be. In return for losing that, lower the concentration on it a bit so that the H-elves and other low int classes don't take a hit from the nerf bat. Up the rank, or possibly the cast time and viola. With a spell that powerful, hell make it a 3 round cast. FoD itself is 2 round cast spell and can be saved against easily.

Scrolls are the main problem with it anyways as any scroll using class and just recite a few and viola, insta charm, no drawbacks whatsoever. If things like that are going to exist, they should have a draw back to them. Just because a scroll can crumble or it'll be used even when the target isn't in the room isn't a big enough drawback. They should have a magnitude of lag for the "reading" time it takes to recite them. Roughly, they should lag you JUST as much as the spell would or take half the time to cast. Instant cast is just bogus.

Anywho, those are just my thoughts on the subject. Agree or disagree how you like. Carry on.

Before Dulrik makes any changes to scrolls or charm I hope he goes ahead and does some tests to see how effective scrolls really are. Considering 20 or so will seems to be enough to resist the majority of charm spells by a 16 art sorcerer, I'm going to go ahead and say 12 will is enough to resist the vast majority of charm attempts via scrolls. Thats 3 greater will items. If 3 greater will items is all it takes then Dulrik should lock this thread.

Indeed - I highly doubt that's the case though. I have seen several well-equipped characters fall victims to the spell - and scrolls make the "hit-recall-repeat until lucky" tendencies of some even more abhorrently pathetic.