Shattered Kingdoms

Wow, Salandarin has just hit the nail on the head and I hadn't even really realised there was a nail.

Abso-f'in'lutely.

Only question is how to actually make that happen.

It's all about area design. Temple of Murder (reaching it and leveling inside of it) would be the perfect example.

Well, ToM is only hard in three ways:
* Knowing how to get to it.
* Dealing with the NPCs along the way.
* Dealing with a certain hazard once there.

Only the second is exciting. The rest are just routine once someone shows you how, which is the only way you'd get there anyway. Doing ToM by independent exploration would be ridiculously difficult.

I'd like to see more areas where the NPCs are interesting to fight. I'm with Edoras. If the levelling sub-game were actually fun, we wouldn't care that it takes time.

The immortal that built ToM urged me to go there with the only high level character I ever had (1400+ hours playtime he had at the time).

As it was, I never managed to get organised enough to get there and in the end I never had a GM character (though I've been an immortal much longer than I was ever among the playerbase, now).

GM isn't for everyone.

PS: Reading over this entire thread again, I saw so many suggestions to fix master level skills/saves/etc... but strange how no-one reported any loopholes.

Speaking of leveling dampers, I never understood this one. If the NPC dispels your elemental, why do you have to wait another half an hour (or until the original time expires) before summoning another one? This is 3x longer than blind, and I thought that was annoying...

Quoted For Truth

It should be.

I say...and here's where it gets crazy...you just drop the level cap to master..or master +5. Then nobody needs to worry about lvling to GM.

With the added bonus that folks who want to level and are not twinks, get their jollies at being level capped. And twinks, whose sole advantage is that they level past the average p-base and it then it's easier to get tho neato lewt that they've memorized from their past gm char's...are not blowing past the average p-base...and it's really hard for them to get the good loot...hard like *gasp* ...they need help from more than 1 or 2 people.

And here's a side story...

I had 1 GM character, a rogue, back in the day, like way back when 50-70+ chars were on daily. Highpoints over 100+...anyhow...

I never GM'd my rogue cause I decided to solo grind an area for 5-10 hours a sitting. I GM'd cause with my RP folks liked me (or in Dark Aura sense found me useful) and pretty soon I had a crew I ran with often. A sorceress, a priestess, another rogue, a swashie, and a merc who hated me IC but we were competitive...what do ya know a classic adventuring party, from around journeyman on I never solo'd. and we never had any named loot, or scripted items...heck the best dagger I ever had a jade stone knife...and a ritual dagger for bit...we also never went to ToM, cause none of us knew where it was... but we all gm'd easily, painlessly, from just running around exploring, PK'n (which used to give great XP in group vs. group PK) and generally having fun.

SO I don't think the xp curve is to rough, I just think with a smaller p-base the xp curse is hard to solo...and what I see is Journeymen and expert level folks , with scripted items, and sacred items, and rare material weapons/armor , soloing...cause there aren't enough folks to run around with, or maybe "variety" of folks is more proper. And their twink friends, who gave them the equipment and and buffs to solo..only log on long enough to -c loc NUKE- or do a quick PK....

Rant Ends... Drop the lvl cap...that evens the playing ground and makes it harder for those who want the REAL challenge.

i would love it dearly if PK awarded XP

I would put down a particular method but then Dulrik would think that would need fixed. But there *is* a way to get xps from PK.