Shattered Kingdoms

Assembly lines take a lot more work than cheerleaders. Assembly lines have more problems than cheerleaders. Do you think people enjoy being on an assembly line more than being a cheerleader? I know I'd prefer pom-poms to hydraulic presses any day.

If everyone can enchant, you'll just have more people you wished you had some adamantine to give to. I thought skinning would be the answer, there, but wow, those were terrible to enchant for some reason.

Also...

"Spreading the wealth" is not the right term. You're talking about "spreading the plague" or "spreading the obligation." You know, like universal health care. Or social security.

Time sinks are not necessary in games. Time investments are. There is already plenty of time asked of people to level up to learn enchant, to go find the stuff, and to sit down and cast the spell.

The difference between a sink and investment is a matter of semantics if you're going to put it like that.

The effort it takes to enchant a full kit is only a few hours to have an efficient kit. If you want an uber kit you are damn right you're going to waste up to 3-5x more time to get it, when you don't really need it. It's all a mixture of misinformation on enchants and people thinking the entry level to PK is being the best of the best before you step foot on the field.

Volume lowers the cost on all involved. The size of the pie doesn't change, and I'm not sure it should change much. It's a matter of two people supplying fifty cherries each, or a hundred people supplying one cherry each.

Random analogies: exhausted.

I don't see your point, grep. Allowing more people to enchant doesn't increase the amount of enchants required to not get reliably slept, charmed or petrified. It would just make enchanting easier to come by, and also keep me from having to cart around three sets of unenchanted adamantite just because I haven't found someone with the time to spend enchanting them for me.

Right now there are two schisms in the player-base: Those who don't know what the crap enchantments are even for, and those who do and want to have them so they don't get owned. The former might actually be encouraged to learn if it was more accessible. The latter would like to have to hassle other people less to achieve what they need to survive.

A time sink wastes time. A time investment is when all that time is working towards a result. If I have to wait three days to get parts from you, take one day to build a computer, and drive over to Turon's to set it up the next day, have I invested a week in building a computer? I've certainly had a duration of five days, but I didn't work for over half that. You don't have to apologize, Jerry, you haven't said anything mean yet. Two people, one hundred people, sour cherries ain't gonna make sweet pies no matter how you slice it. That's my angle.

Turon, my beloved, you've changed my mind. It would be better than doing nothing to give more people the enchant spells, but there's definitely better things to try than that to make your two results more likely to come to fruition.

Unless a game is charging you a monthly fee, a time sink should only exist as part of the process of having fun, not separate from the process.

My last post mentioned Roleplay, PK, and Exploration. A good time sink example is Exploration (fighting NPCs, discovering new places, learning new skills) because it is directly related to a method of having fun. A bad time sink example is armor enchanting, because the act of enchanting is separate from a method of having fun.

I spelled this out elsewhere too, I think. I forget what thread it was in. There's like a million of these things going on right now.

Just because a game is free doesn't mean you have free reign for instant gratification. It's a game, and as much as people need to remember it's for fun, it's also for challenge, and sport.

I don't feel enchanting is a time 'sink.' There's a measurable reward that scales very well with how intense you think your enchants need to be. It's super easy to get the basic, run of the mill ~50-65% resist rate, which is all one really needs. If you are looking for upwards of 80, you deserve to spend weeks on your silly standards.

Enchanting is a direct correlation to PK and exploration, and has measurable rewards in both. It's not like some arbitrary thing you're forced to do for absolutely no reason or return.

I'm not entirely sure you understand how enchanting works, Jerinx, when you say things like that.

But then I'm not entirely sure I understand how enchanting works, either.

That's kind of the point.

"To be the best you must have no life" is a manifesto I kind of enjoy not seeing in games.

This is actually a pretty badass idea. You could give paladins the ability to create a holy flag, hellions unholy, necromancers life drain, warlocks frost bite and all the other elements etc. I also think it would be cool to remove enchant weapon and replace it with hone (for mercs) which increases accuracy and sharpen (for barbs) which would increase damage.

I'm also in favor of less grinding, no matter how that was achieved. Too much time consumption is just boring and impractical.

To be fair, if you're the best, you really only need to make one suit. It's not that big of a chore (if you only have to do it once). Of course, I've never been the best, just decently good. Sure, the suit is important, but people seem to overestimate how much of a difference there is between a good solid suit and a sick one. If you are learning to pk, a good suit is all you'll need, and most of the time, if you're a pro...the same is true.

Honestly, I don't see a big problem with other people having enchant, but that might be because I've never had a problem getting enchants from others, and so it won't really make a difference to me.