I'd like to throw my hat into the ring. Enchanting has never been a problem until the dynamic of PK shifted more heavily toward tribunals, guards, and equipment equalization.
It's always been random and no one ever had a problem with it. (Correction, they probably did, but it wasn't really a huge deal) I remember back when I had to walk up hill both ways to my sorceror to get gear enchanted, when we had 7 (breath, petri, charm, spell, magic protection, magic resistance, death) different enchantments instead of your 5 simplified ones (and you are only ever using 1 or 4, you never use all 5 now).
The problem now isn't enchant. It could be less mind-numbing, but we're not attacking the source of the problem proposing this change.
The PK philosophy of the game has shifted very heavily toward group-oriented combat and player-run fortresses. Equipment equalization and weapon classes has shifted combat in a heavy skew towards the defender. It's not so much that enchantments are a sign of a dedicated player and you need to play 40 hours a week to get everything done. It's the fact that with meager, simplified enchantments and an emphasis on player turtling, it's easy and productive to camp in your fortress and only leave on your own terms. When someone's coming, you know it before they show up.
I said it years ago when tribunals were first put in, and it's even more truthful now: the system is a great shell for a larger future playerbase. We don't have the numbers to make it fun for the numbers we have now to split all the players between multiple player organizations. It's not feasible for more than 2 factions to ever be warring at once, so that if a third faction wants to attack a fourth, they just find it overwhelming to collect the parts to mount it. This is even more evident and troublesome when all you want to do is kill one person - you need a war party to do it nearly every time, apparently.
The proposed over-simplification of enchanting will only act as a band-aid so that attackers can more easily and readily attack a fortification. It's not addressing the heart of the issue in that in order to kill people you have to attack a fortification 9 times out of 10.
That being said, with the current size of the playerbase and the pervasiveness of good equipment due to the low playerbase, I don't see an enchantment change hurting anything. It'd make life easier and less stressful in the game. I'm not sure it's the answer to the posed problem, though. I don't play enough to really propose a better answer, but I thought it'd be helpful to try to clarify the problem or give a different perspective on it.
The problem is the entry point to PK, and I don't think changing enchanting to make it easier is going to be the door you think it is. It will only make it less painful to die, which is promoting the wrong kind of PK.
I'd say, just to throw it out there for a test run: remove the leadership skill, cabal/tribunal bank-tied guards, outer guardians, cabal hq doors, and tie the cabal relic to only one or two skill/spells. See what happens.
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