Shattered Kingdoms

I've been known to join in on the occasional 5 v 2 gank, yes. That's pretty much all the tactics SK bothers to have. I love quaffing heal pots like mad, too. Loot and luck makes up for any lack of skill. This is an RPG and not an FPS, after all.

In a nutshell, "sk takes no skill and you're a jerk if you think ganks > necrogangbang/charm person"

Maybe people should try being less of a dick about the game and stop junk looting that skill you spent hours enchanting, but that's the only way to win SK. Annoy your target until they delete.

I'm more than happy with all of the jloot-happy [REDACTED] moving on to another game and leaving SK for the roleplayers, as it should be. Roleplaying and tactics mesh about as well as General Tso's and a coke. That's why it collides instead of comes together.
Summon Gank was here, Charm Person is for squares.

So, you've put yourself into the "Achiever" category of gamer.

Let's take a look at things from the context of Bartle's four archetypes, since you seem so intent on it: Judging by his findings, achievers would be the only people who actually enjoy enchanting, but in the same line of thinking would probably be inclined to quit the game as soon as they lost their uber-enchanted suit. Even achievers wouldn't appreciate putting so much time into something that can just be taken away by a killer at the drop of a hat. Or at the drop of a gank squad/summon kill/charm scroll, if you want to put it in context of SK.

Even then, most enchanters of SK (Many of which are surely achievers) are bored to tears by the grueling uncontrollable task of enchanting their own entire suit to be able to resist charm and petrification even 80% of the time, let alone everyone else who wants them to get their own suit enchanted in the same way. I've played WoW before, and I've seen my fair share of achievers, but I can say with certainty that I would rather grind then thousand elementals in nagrand again than have to enchant a suit of armor in SK. There's no skill allowed at all in enchanting, and the weight with which it affects everything else your character is capable of is enormous.

So in the end, there's only one player-group out of four that might enjoy enchanting, and those are the achievers. Ignoring the fact that this player-group has already been well catered to via the leveling and skills/spells system, you've got two other groups of players (The explorers and killers) who are not just affected by but are in fact dependant upon the enchant armor spell even after they managed to finish the grind of leveling so they can get to their "fun stuff." And worse still is the fact that even if you do manage to piece together a powerful enough suit to enjoy what you like to do with the game, any mistake (Or even unlucky roll) could end up sending you right back to square one in the enchanting game. In light of this, balancing the game towards Charm Person is in fact favoring all four archetypes of players, albeit socializers the least.

Achievers will always be able to achieve, especially in SK. Every other type of player except the most hardcore achiever, however, is completely disgusted by the enchant armor spell, which at its best is a glorified dice roll that affects everything else they're able to do in the game (Except pure socializers of course.) I can see why Blizzard puts timesinks on WoW: That's how they make money. I don't, however, understand why the enchant armor grind has to be so grueling in a free online game. Nothing is gained from the way enchant is now.


That said, Charm Person is still overpowered.

Where did Charm Person touch you, Turos? Charm Person is not overpowered, even if you like to think that getting junked by a sorceror is stupid. As it stands, a sorcerer has exactly seven options to kill you. Toss magic missiles at you, toss acid, toss color, petrify, charm (be it through Lathron or directly) delete their character or scrolls from a different class entirely.

If you die to the first four, your gear isn't nearly as good as you think it is or you have no hands and you broke your nose trying to play a Hunter earlier.

Mercs have exactly three skills, all with no cast time, and it's all they need to kill any spell casting class in the game. With a cleave and a pet, you, too, can emulate the mighty Merc with giant strength and a reaching weapon.

This game is so heavily unbalanced in favor of melee it's pathetic. Charm Person, Colorspray and Finger of Death are virtually the only hostile spells anyone gets scrolls for because they're the only ones worth using. You can stand and spam magic missile at a meleer for weeks and he's one heal quaff away from laughing at you. You're two rounds from death tops with the best enchanted armor in the game if he touches you with his weapon as a caster. If he catches you without a pet you eat a ggbash.
Charm Person lets you have your very own meleer so that you don't instagibb when a real one looks at you. And you have to enchant your charm's gear as well. Twice as much work as you put in on your armor if they're into gearing for perfection like you are.

No, spending hours on your gear does not make you invulnerable. That is where the supposed tactics come from. Not from outgearing the opposition, but outmaneuvering them (Or just outnumbering them and spamming screens of combat). You should be happy that gear doesn't make or break the game entirely, not trying to make SK even more gear-dependent.

Want to avoid Charm Person? Walk out of the room when they start casting. Spells, unlike melee, can be avoided just that easily. Bet you never tried not fighting head-on instead of hoping you got someone else to enchant your stuff well enough to just steamroll someone before.

In closing, you can nerf Charm Person as soon as sorcerers get [A CERTAIN RELIGION SPELL THAT OVER HALF THE CURRENT PRIESTS HAVE].

Wow, 12 pages! Next time I need a river to swim to, I know what thread to visit.

I think we learned a valuable lesson here.

This game will have grinding no matter what.

Whether you grind in an inn room or Enchant Armor, though, is up to you.

And the next time I feel like reading completely unrelated trolling, I'll know too.

Pre spelled charm person scrolls have been altered to contain another spell or no spell at all. Charm person wands have been wimped, but still exist. I will likely pressure Dulrik to remove the ability to scribe charm person.

Thanks Achernar. I take back all those bad things I said about you. Well, most of them.

And to Parnys... I think I'll just leave my argument at and then once again remind you that this thread was never about charm person in general, just charm person against PCs. It's a bit wasteful to argue with you, though, considering that your mind is clearly already made up to be at odds with me: If I wanted I could rebutt every single one of your arguments with a direct quote from other posts in this thread.

INB4 Sorcs n' Necros 2010.


... Unless Achernar's put Charm Monster on those scrolls.

I already answered your elitist question, Tury. Can't help that you didn't even bother reading my posts, just assumed that I was attacking you instead of saying sorcerers suck and need Charm Person. On a NPC and on you are both viable tactics.

You have bested me by telling me that you could rebut all of my points you didn't read just by quoting other people in the thread, however. Good show.
Really, I just kind of skim everyone else's posts until I get to mine, too. It's nothing to be ashamed of.