Shattered Kingdoms

Problem: Enchanting armor is a painful, boring grindfest. Enchanting a good set of equipment involves gathering, enchanting, destroying, and regathering equipment in order to achieve the desired results.

Solution #1 (jerinx): Give more players access to enchant armor.
PROs: More people can enchant.
CONs: More people are self-sufficient, discouraging group mechanics and RP.
More people have enchanted gear, reducing the advantages of enchanting classes.
Enchanting is still as frustrating as it currently is -- but that frustration is spread out to more players.

Solution #2 (Salandarin): Enchant armor is removed from the game.
PROs: No class is overburdened with enchanting.
CONs: Dedicated enchanters lose a serious advantage in setting up gear for their "team."

Solution #3 (Turon): Allow targetable enchantments.
PROs: Enchanting becomes far less frustrating, without compromising character interaction.
CONs: Requires serious recoding of the DikuMUD engine.

Personally, I'm against distributing enchant armor, but only because priests are the only class that are not entirely self-sufficient without cabal/tribunal membership. Brewing, enchanting, and resurrecting are the ways in which the priest continues to curry (required) favor with other players. The recent stupid bonuses have removed the need for the most important one, this proposed change would eliminate the second.

Really? Not enough people play on a consistent basis to keep QQing about this.

I can't speak for other classes but it seems like sorcerers are so good at solo play that the enchant ability is really good for getting them to interact with others... I mean I did a lot of leveling before I had to talk with anybody and if not for my ability to enchant, might never have been pulled into knowing other characters, and therefore been a deleted noob nobody, again.

I generally agree with Turon on things, but I was against his idea the first time (targeting enchant armor more specifically) and I'm against this one as well.

True, both Jerin and Turon's ideas would make better enchanted armor more available, and thus more people able to save against "I win" PK spells. I agree that enchanting is currently necessary to be good in the PK arena. I also agree that both ideas would cut down on priest/sorc grind time (though I usually refuse enchant requests on my priest).

The root of the issue, though, is that there are a few key spells that you just can't afford to fail a save on, and some of the saves are pretty damned hard to make. They are: charm person, sleep, petrification (to a somewhat lesser extent), FoD (if you're an elf), BoG (if you're susceptible) ... there might be one or two others. Why not just bring these spells into parity where either they're easier to resist or they're not so horrible on success (e.g., making a charmee have ways of breaking the charm)? This way you achieve (I think) what you guys are going for (far fewer enchanting hours essential to compete in the PK arena) without nerfing all other spells.

The proposed solutions would make other attack spells (debufs, direct damage, etc.) nigh useless across the board if everyone has the kit of their dreams. I don't want blindness or curse failing all the time on everyone, for example.

[Edit: I am largely agreeing with Salandarin, though I don' think you need to remove enchant armor. Once you wimp the "I win" spells, you can leave it in as something that is a minor differentiator insetad of what it is now, essential.]

tl:dr Don't like the ideas. Just wimp "I win" spells like charm

Enchant armor is what spurred me to make the warlock thread I made. Basically after i read the warlock help description, I came up with a concept that I though would be nifty. A warlock that had trouble controlling his abilities and could potentially lose control of them. Then of course after meeting a person who always created a super suit, I realized just how easily warlocks could be mitigated. The damage was laughable at best. Granted I was mentor at the time and they were GM, but still I didn't expect the damage to be mitigated -that- much. As an example, i'll give some figures.

Lightning bolt, THE strongest DD spell of the warlock arsenal done a whopping 3-5 % dmg. Chain lightning -missed- on about 5 casts. Fireball done laughable damage at I believe it was 2% and magma spray (learned it early) done a whoppin 5% and simply refused to cling (not sure if it was a level thing and it was at "good" at the time) Cone of cold again done about 3-5% dmg and my warlock at the time had around..2 or 3 art. This was on full hits when they did manage to hit. The problem with enchant armor is this:

A. It's too "grindy." Seriously, I play MMO's a lot and while SK is nothing compared to the grind of say..FFXi or RF online, it's starting to feel like it's getting there. MMO's have flashy graphics and pretty colors to entice the gamer to keep playing, the skills are nifty and whatnot. A mud does not. It's text based and reading the same descriptions over and over is not fun. It's far more boring than watching say, skills from PWI (my current MMO) over and over. Grinding is not good for this game, be it enchanting or levelling.

B. It's too powerful. The fact that a super suit can make you nigh immune to magic shouldn't be happening. Classes like warlocks get left out in the dust because they have all attack spells. The entire system truly needs to be changed. Art needs to be limited as stated a 14 art sorc is insanely overpowered. The "I win" spells do need to be reanalyzed a bit and encahnts need to have a cap on them. Say 15-20 willpower, anymore is negligible. 15-20 mp, anymore is negligible you get the idea. I think that'd help balance enchants via art if the two were tweaked a bit.

I agree with jhorleb, but petrification is already mega-easy to resist.

allow me to inseminate your dissemination with an idea

enchant needs to have a much, much faster casting time before anything else.

consider that ardith actually really makes a lot of sense

enchanting is boring for everyone and there is no way to put a spin on pitching a tent in front of some dude in cain techt to kill him when he respawns with the adamantite you took seven minutes to vaporize.

but, this really open the can of worms on the whole "time investment is a balancing mechanic" thing that's present in a lot of aspects of the game.





including leveling.


but yeah, ardith's real points are amazingly accurate and bear highlighting. enchanting makes people stop playing sk.

letting more people enchant would only mean that more people have a reason to stop playing...


you don't cure garden plants of disease with miracle grow, just like you won't make enchanting better by letting more people do it, just like you won't cure aids by giving it to everyone.

Damn, now this thread is preggers

teeheehee

also that spiritual protection thing is silly the last thing we need are more potentially obscure mechanics we would be better off learning how MR really worked or what the caps on save bonuses were than having to trial-and-error-and-assume with yet another enchantment that we get on our red silken thongs instead of willpower

In response to grep's post, I do not think reducing casting time is the right answer either. You're still just using enchanting to adjust for some overpowered spells. And in doing so, you end up nerfing a lot of spells that are already balanced or too weak as is.

If the "I win" spells were fixed people wouldn't feel enchanting to be so necessary to compete and you wouldn't need to adjust the casting time of enchant armor.