Shattered Kingdoms

Most of these changes are not too complex and I may make them unless I hear convincing commentary to the contrary in this thread:

- A "Prone?" column in the info command output
- Add a third specialization to an age ticked mercenary.
- Birthdays in attribute or score sheet.
- A notification of the number of trains in a set stat.
- Limited minotaur helmets
- Reassess bard songs such as songs of dancing.
- Increase auto-deletion to two months/send email before deletion.
- Wimp the armor and frenzy spells
- Reduce the duration of the curse affect
- Decrease the cast time on plague.
- Make poison affect constitution instead of strength.

I am not guaranteeing that I will make all of these changes. I'll prioritize based on what I see in this thread and may not do some at all.

There are a few more complex ideas from the first thread that I am saving to be discussed in separate threads later.

-A prone column would be wonderful for leading groups. It would take a big load off my mind.
-Making older warriors more viable? Yes please! I wholeheartedly support this change.
-Birthdays don't matter to me whatsoever. Frankly, I don't see the point but if it won't take you more than five minutes to implement then why not.
-I like the system we have with levels right now. I'm constantly aware that I am in an IC environment, and at the same time I know everything I need to know about my character mechanically. I would really like it if this was extended to character stats as well.
-Minotaur helmets would be cool for shamans, mercenaries, and the odd scout. I'm in favor, although I think that if you just gave minotaurs a racial toughness that only applied to the head slot everything would be just as fine. Thick skull and all that.
-Bard songs need a whole topic in and of themselves. In fact, bards as a class need a topic like that. It's a great class, but they swing too rapidly from extremely powerful to laughably weak. If they had more middle ground, things would go much more smoothly.
-Sending an email before auto-deletion could actually keep a few more players in the game. Hearing that your 100-year-old helf is about to go down the drain may bring back memories and some nostalgia, prompting a return to the game.
-I'm fine with armor except when it gives a lion such obscene AC that 99/100 attacks flat-out miss (with the 100th attack being dodged). Frenzy only really bothers me when it lets rogues kill any class save barbarians via backstab, and do 30% to an hp-maxed merc via circle stab.
-Curse can be annoying. If you lowered it to maybe 12 IC hours, everything should be fine.
-Plague could be a fun spell to play with if it was faster. I'm in favor of speeding it up.
-In favor of poison affecting constitution instead of strength. You already have chill touch and weaken for that.

Threads like this make me feel dizzy, by the way. Swooning the ladies already, are you?

I'll split these into three columns.



I'd love to see these changes implemented as soon as possible. One of them promotes longevity, especially for a warrior class which only lose with age ticking. One of them is newbie friendly and helps determine one's stats more accurately. Vets can do it without numbers, which is why I'd like to see newer players receive the same treatment. One of them is a good step in the direction of balancing some things out.



These changes are good and I'd like to see them implemented, but they're not as necessary or urgent as the ones in the first column. Help the poor minotaurs out. There are some bard songs that are next to useless, I can't comment much on them as I've never played a bard. From my own perspective, auto-deletion would help a great deal, there's times when I'm away and don't have access to the internet; I'd like to keep my characters still - if it doesn't take long to implement, why not? The curse/plague/poison changes are logical and would make one of the spells more useful and applicable - implement them.



I don't really care either way. If people want this and it won't take long, why not?

As a final note I'd like to add an expression of hope that big D is considering a great deal of other good proposed ideas which are sorely needed to balance things out.

I meant to add reduce the mana cost of plague as well, but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. The cast time of the spell is probably the main reason though that I never bothered using it with my hellion or necromancers outside of trying to get it to land on a cleave attack.

Two comments on these:
1) I don't think armor needs a wimp now that the bug around it is fixed. Frenzy is really only OP in the hands of rogues, so I'd rather see any adjustment just affect its ability to stack with multipliers.
2) I'm curious about the rationale for poison affecting constitution instead of strength, unless you're just making a realism argument. Why does this make the spell more usable (or is that the goal?)

Oh, and I love the prone idea. I would add to it that probably because of the way actions are set for npcs, you often can't even tell when one is prone even when using the "look" command.

I'm not as experienced and knowledgeable as most of the folks commenting here, but these are the ones most important to me.

- A notification of the number of trains in a set stat. (Art and mana? I'm still getting a feel for hp and move. Unrelated: I know what hp and move mean on a superficial level but maybe somebody could write help files for these? You know, for the newbie's and the eternal newbs like myself. These stats were really confusing to me when I first got here because they aren't really on the stat list.)

- A "Prone?" column in the info command output (This would be very nice.)

- Increase auto-deletion to two months/send email before deletion. (In the name of recruitment, could we send a kind of reminder e-mail out at one month? In the far distant past this would have brought me back to the game when I left it due to real life distractions.)

The birthday thing seems silly to me but if it's really important to somebody then I don't see anything wrong with it. Everybody else has more informed opinions about the other changes.

Here's something that has affected the game in a HUGE way recently, but hasn't really been stated as a needed change.

Mood defensive needs to lower damage along with weapon speed.

since the stances were changed, mood defensive characters got a HUGE bonus to survivability, which in my opinion is good because at least places like the dreamscape are actually possible then.

However, it's really annoying to me that in the front lines, a defensive mercenary or barbarian is better off with a fast, accurate, low-damage weapon, mainly because going from 6 strikes to 5 is better than going from 4 strikes to 3. Is no one else annoyed by the fact that a defensive barbarian with a khopesh or no-dachi does less damage than one with a shuriken, yo-yo, epee or rapier? I'm miffed that adamantite and straight daggers is better than khopesh/falchion and straight dagger. To this end I think it would be better to have mood defensive lower damage as well as weapon speed.

Agreed!

I figured I'd elaborate on the topic of bard songs since my main is a bard and I was the one that suggested it. I want to elaborate exactly what I meant on "reassess bard songs."

The three useful songs that bards have are songs of healing, sleep and silence. Healing and silence are fine, but songs of sleep are completely overpowered as the fact that have no chance of being resisted. Not a one. Songs of silence do, and I've found it pretty resistable, but not to the point of uselessness.

Songs of dancing, antimagic, death are easily the three most useless songs there are. Songs of dancing are so easily resisted it's not even funny. I realize just how powerful this song can be as anyone who dances cannot flee, backstab, or do anything besides disarm. It truly is a powerful song, it's just so laughably weak. Anyone with a sliver of willpower (I think that's what resists it) will resist it. By the time the song takes hold it's already at least 10 lines into the song, which means the bard has already been killed or has forced to flee. This is also from a max art bard with max charisma. Half-elf.

Antimagic I've not really found much a use for if any. It supposed to make spells weaker and reduce concentration while dancing, but the affects from a GM max art bard is miniscule at best. Unless someone has their concentration nigh maxed, you don't see much of a difference.

Songs of death are only good for levelling, period. It's damage is roughly equal to a cause light spell, which can be spammed faster than each line comes. While dancing it saps ME and PE, but at the rate it goes and how fast battles are, there's simply no point in using it.

Songs of war and protection and magic are fine. That's basically what I have to say. Mostly I'd just like to see some variation in songs. As it stands now the only ones I -ever- use in a group are sleep and healing. Maybe occasionally silence but that's rare.

Sounds good to me, they have their use. They probably have a few situational applications as well. Bards already have a room affecting damage dealer and it's pretty powerful.