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 Post subject: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and fut
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:12 am 
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What do you all think are:

1) The best three features added/ updates to SK over the past few years?
2) The worst three?
3) The three features/updates that would most benefit SK going forward?

I’ll do mine later today when I have more time.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:51 am 
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SK Character: Amorette
I don't know enough to really come up with a list of three, but:

Favorite change: addition of unique religious spells for priests

Least favorite change: Needing shovels to dig

Benefit SK: I'd like to see a major GRP event, like the addition of a new god or the death of a current one. This pantheon is boring!


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:03 am 
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1) The best three features added/ updates to SK over the past few years?
- The enchantment simplification overhaul
- Mentor system.
- NPC instacasting (3 edrain scripts in one round, guy? anyone remember OP NPC scripts?)
- (Honorable mention to oathbreaker, and the "toughness" skill/griffon usefulnes, ranged working in wilderness, charm HP equalization, spirit aura being fixed from its original state, and art)



2) The worst three?
-Leadership skill and all it's recent terribleness/bastardization (NPC wars anyone?)
-The removal of Heroes.
-Area familiarity.

(see also: weapon code update)

3) The three features/updates that would most benefit SK going forward?
-Removing tribunals/merging with cabals. Subtext of remove NPCs leaving their initial country/leadership.
-Re-emphasizing the hit bonuses/reductions supplied by size to buff race choice difference
-Removing/fixing weapon code.
-Special mention to the original concept of removing mages, locks, and necros and making them priests of specific religions, and merging spells into clerics.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:13 am 
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jhorleb wrote:
What do you all think are:

1) The best three features added/ updates to SK over the past few years?
2) The worst three?
3) The three features/updates that would most benefit SK going forward?


Off the top of my head..
1) - mentor system + less exp required up to level 26
- familiarity
- various changes which made Master characters more complete.
2) - shovels are annoying
- forcing you to pick your alignment before your race and class at creation (annoying too)
- Can't think of anything else at the moment
3) - this one's a little tricky.. I'd definitely like to see the pvp system revamped, but that's too long and complicated a post to write it here and now. Short version: less emphasis on bash and NPCs, removal or wimping of one-shot abilities, adding various scry-like spells to make finding your enemies easier and longer battles.
- a tribunal war system in which killing members of opposing factions would push your war efforts forward, allowing you to "conquer" various node-like parts of other countries which in turn brings more economic prosperity to your kingdom (simple, no?)
- removing voodoo and final strike


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:43 am 
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I hate the throw code. That's about my biggest complaint, I hate trying to level a squishy class and die to two throws from a NPC.

Can't say I love or hate anything else at the moment, I don't agree with a lot of things but that happens.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 12:48 pm 
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Favorite

1. The Priest Religious Spells

2. The weapon overhaul (Yeah, that's right!) + merc specialize

3. The NPC hp balancing

Honorable mentions: minotaurs, parry for paladins, dodge for hellions and barbarians, sacred armor, quest system, fixed pantheon, toughness to griffons, adept to crucible (+ recent tweaks, sheesh)

Least Favorite

1. CRS (No, I really don't care about the system, I actually like it, but I don't like cabal headquarter overhaul, a lot of good rooms were lost, -MY- room was lost, it had a balcony that looked over the Monastery garden, it followed the rules of Feng Shui perfectly, I had a tea set and I will never get it back)

2. Shovels, for lack of a better gripe?

3. Dunno really... Fist skills not working with brawling and self defense, not even a little bit? Uh, slings?

Tweaks/Updates

1. Less I win buttons. This includes ethereal wands and triple cast wands and scrolls, If you want triple finger of death, have a necromancer eat 100 fireballs before he manages to make one scroll. Double spells, maybe, but three? Three? Really? Really? Three? Yeah? Three? No. Add a lag to wands and scrolls, I mean, does everyone take up speed reading classes? What's your wpm dude, 400? Awesome, I've been taking classes to reduce skimming so my fireball doesn't end up looking like a flying [REDACTED], but I still rely too much on meta guiding, which sucks when you have a scout on your [REDACTED] firing arrows.

2. I'm thinking that caster classes benefit from age ticks whereas melee classes don't, at all. It makes sense, your character is older and wiser, your glory days are behind you. Yet I always get that image of that battle-scarred grey haired man sitting at the Inn, some young punks try to start a fight, he calmly drinks his ale and rises, the young whelps charge him, his too many seasons of experience and war awaken. Deftly he moves around the skirmish, letting the young whelps exhaust themselves, his moves are fluid, calculating, whereas theirs are brash and tiring. Blah blah, in the end he kicks their asses. I would love to see some sort of system where aging fighters (Yeah Yeah, mercs get 1 extra spec slot, that's a start, and a GREAT start!) but hell, I am thinking more like when you get to your age tick you start getting melee bonuses from your wisdom stat, raising again at the second tick, maybe even your skills going 1 level higher than mastered. Something like that.

3. Bards could be less stat heavy, how about their concentration being based on their DEX instead of their INT? It would make sense.

4. More weapon tweaks, some of them really are poo on sticks.

5. Few more class/race combinations. (Halfling Shaman, Bring back Griffon Merc, Griffon paladin, minotaur hellion? Sure they can't be aberrant in code, but ohhhh my, maybe they should!)

6. Fisties should be able to use knuckles in conjunction with their abilities to make them a bit more appealing, they were given a big nerf a few years back a means to get some damage enchants as well as a means to change the elemental or damage attribute to their punches would be fun.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:47 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2004 8:43 am
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SK Character: Pilnor, Surrit, Berr, Rall
Aust wrote:
Bards could be less stat heavy, how about their concentration being based on their DEX instead of their INT? It would make sense.


Right now it's actually based on both, when dancing comes into play.



Best Three code changes:
The fast affects system.
The prone system.
Charm's increased casting time.

Honorable mention goes to MP only preventing half damage on passed saves.

Worst three code changes:
CRS, for making cabal HQs seem way too cookie-cutter, and for being a system based on griefing the other guy and not on making yourself more powerful, especially given how much exponentially easier it is to take a relic when the opposing cabal doesn't have any members online.
Bounty NPCs, for taking the "tribunal" out of "tribunal defense" and for how overpowered they make ranged classes in city defense.
Disallowing rogues from being principled or aberrant.

What could benefit the game the most?
Above all else, making enchant armor targetable and decrease the overall success rate, with success rate being determined by a combination of pre-existing enchants for the specific type you're enchanting for, level of the item, and total number of enchantments on the item. Make higher level items much more likely to fade than to explode. The amount of time that players spend enchanting in this game when its so easily lost is so high that it heavily detracts from the experience of SK. There's also little reason to travel to the "exotic" places within SK, because it takes less time and less people to get better enchanted equipment from easily obtained lower-level sources. No one in their right mind who manages to travel to the end of the Dreamscape (which could easily become a three hour endeavour just to get to the end and kill said final boss once) is going to be able to ask his friends to wait with him while he sits and enchants the one set of armor at the end of it. At least the Iron Citadel has multiple suits of equipment. The Dreamscape has only one suit of armor, and takes longer to traverse.

Remove bounty NPCs completely, and have tribunal accounts only for managing diplomacy drain and special IMM-sponsored events. Revamp guardian prices so that the outer guardian costs near nothing to replace, whereas the inner guardian is the expensive one. No one likes farming coin or running into 3 bounty NPCs every city step while being kited around a city by ranged defenders.
Disable ordering 'stance' and set all NPCs to neutral stance. This will slightly cripple the "NPC wars" mentality of SK that yes, I realize that I personally ascribe to. If you can't beat them, join them.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:16 pm 
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First of all, my lists are going to be longer than three each. Give priority to the ones listed at the top of the list, though.

1) I've only been playing for a couple years, but there have been a bunch of good changes in that time. To name a few:
- Stone skin prevents physical damage from split damage weapons
- Necromancers are now limited to a maximum of 8 animated dead
-Wimping bounty NPCs
-Increasing charm person's casting time
-Severely reduced chance of potions/pills/scrolls evaporating
-Increased chance of successfully brewing and scribing
- Cool new areas like Dreamscape, and new places to level like Valley of Ashes.
-Jail time can be served while offline at 10:1 ratio
-Added "Prone" column in the info command output
-Recalibrated leveling curve so low is easier, but high is harder
- Add a third specialization to an age ticked mercenary
-New unparole command available for tribunal leaders
-Training mana increases ME regen rate in addition to ME pool - however, I think maybe this should be scaled back a bit, as maxing mana on a caster can make him absurdly powerful
-Training hp increases HP regen rate in addition to HP pool
-NPCs will not dirt kick while training at low levels
-New tool for cleansing dirt from eyes available for purchase
-Added auto reminder option to display adjective and race

2) There haven't been too many changes that I've thought were terrible. However, a couple I've disagreed with are:
- values of items increases and decreases based on demand (this is okay in principle, but in practice ends up hurting the game. There needs to be a cap on how much an item's price can be inflated as a result of demand)
- 25 int deep-elves. Deep-elves did need a buff. The increased wisdom, decreased vulnerability to light, and 25int combined to be a bit over the top, imo. I'd bring their int back down to 24, probably.
- Suddenly available etherealform wands that hold several charges.
- I'm sure there are some others that I can't think of. All in all, though, there haven't been many changes that I've disapproved of.

3) Same old stuff:
- See answers to (2) - make it so only warlocks can use the vortices wands (make necros/sorcs rely on mottled wand or scrolls like they used to), drop delf int, put a cap on how much an item's price can be inflated as a result of demand
- Remove final strike
- Nerf charm person (lower rate of success - it should be difficult to charm someone with 10+ willpower and decent wisdom)
-Remove voodoo, give shamans some small buff to compensate
- Nerf some of the magical items in the game. This includes offensive scrolls/wands/staves that people have mentioned, but also some of the defensive staves in the game that make caster classes nearly untouchable.
- Lower rate of success of the sleep spell - it should be difficult to put someone to sleep who has 15+ willpower and good wisdom.
- I'm not sure why petrification ignores MR, but sorcs are powerful enough without a way of bypassing MR, and I'd change that.
- I agree that halfling shamans would be neat.
- A change that would require a lot of coding, and I seriously doubt will ever happen, but something along the lines of what Sakhul mentioned. I would love for there to be some coded way for a tribunal to be "winning" a war (besides draining accounts). I'm not entirely certain what this would consist of, and it would need a lot of thinking-out, but if possible, I'd be absolutely thrilled to see the IMMs work on something like that.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:48 pm 
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Haha, I should have remembered to disqualify Edoras and his enchant armor campaign from number 3! :)

My favorite changes:
a) Religion specific spells. I think this has kept me interested in the game more than any other single feature.
b) Tweaking leveling and skill/spell acquisition to make master a viable level to "participate" and make it easier to get there.
c) Prone system
d) Honorable mention to the ranged combat system, serving jail offline, minotaurs, and bards

Worst changes:
a) The "realistic" economy
b) Making non-named creatures un-gateable and summoned creatures walk away
c) CRS (specifically taking away powers from already weakened opponents)

Proposed:
a) Tweak religion-specific spells. Some of them are really neat and fun and others are garbage. Wherever possible, tweaks should push the spells toward stuff that can be seen by others, is useful, and thematic. E.g., the Sargas spell is alright I guess but no one gets to really SEE it take effect.
b) Fix or remove the economy code (though for some reason this has been less of a problem lately - maybe because the lower player counts mean less people Fing up prices.
c) Effectively decrease the # of factions, either by just eliminating some, combinging them, or creating some sort of dual-membership.
d) Honorable mention to a few more balance tweaks that would be helpful like allowing for situation-specific additional charm saves, removing final strike, removing some special items like the ones Aust mentioned, etc.

As an aside, I don't actually mind the "NPC wars" thing that people complain about. I think it makes for an interesting variety and diversity of tactics that otherwise wouldn't be possible.


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 Post subject: Re: The good, the bad, and the proposed: SK updates past and
PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:40 pm 
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My favorite changes:
a) Weapon code change. Now it's far easier to level. Before this I couldn't even dream of hitting master before 100 hours, and grand master before 250 hours.
b)
c) Prone system. I know I fought hard for this, at least I'd like to think I did, because being bashed set players into a resting position where they took more damage. It really took a lot of strategy out of fights when hellions (which I was playing at the time) could order their dominated NPC to bash a pc and then follow it up with a cleave. It was nearly always fatal, and even if they didn't die from the initial cleave, they were probably dead within the 3 round time limit due to the increased damage they took. It made bash far less powerful than it was.
d) Mercenary. This class was at one point broken as all hell. At one point they had both specialize *and* berserk.
e) Spirit aura. Was too absurd at the weapon code change. I can still remember shamans whining about the class becoming worthless when it was initially wimped. I think protection and sanctuary can be thrown in here as well, because if I recall they were equally as overpowered.
f) Stance. Even though I don't think it's been fully hammered out, it definitely changes tactics.
g) Paladin/hellion packages. Paladins didn't get dodge, hellions didn't get parry. Combat casting is great. Call armor is ridiculous. The changes to bolt of glory were welcome
h) More damage types. I played before this change, and the increase in damage types made for more and varied tactics in gameplay, but I feel that something is missing, which I'll touch down in my proposed changes.

Worst changes:
a) Religion specific spells. First, I actually support this idea, but it just came out as bumbled. Priests in SK are not the same class as clerics in D&D. Some priests in SK can wear heavy armor due to religion, but this "bonus" doesn't even end up being a bonus since they have to fight against mercenaries, barbarians, paladins and hellions to get that heavy armor in the first place. At least if they want to be pimped out in adamantite plate. They also suffer the loss of remove compulsion, and get weaker religious spells, except in the case of the Dulrik religion. SK priests are not like D&D clerics where they can run around in heavy armor, melee like an idiot, and cast all sorts of spells that summon raptor jesus (as jerin puts it) and crazy other enhancements. They don't even come close. Heavy armor isn't a bonus for a priest, because they are first and foremost spellcasters, and never should be in the front due to the fact that they get no more than 2 attacks, don't get enhanced damage, lack the dodge skill, and don't have combat casting. As it stands, magical vestments, remove compulsion, and whatever religious spell a cloth priest get far, far, far outweigh any suggested bonus that heavy armor might be to a priest.
b) "Sacred" loot. In my opinion, this just encourages players to spam die because of easily available armor that is scripted with bonuses. It also crumbles which can wipe away hours of enchanting. That is BS.
c) CRS. I know I tried it out in the early days, but it just wasn't worth it then, and it still isn't worth it now. This sort of gameplay is best left to games like Halo and Call of Duty multiplayer. Some cabals have better advantages at defense than others, and it has only encouraged offline jacking of relics. It does the exact opposite of what it is intended to do. Nobody wants to be bothered with it, or really bother with it. It's just been a drag on the whole game ever since it was introduced.
d) Art. Some people are going to swear by this, but I think it just really put a strain on classes such as hellion, lowered the amount of hps a sorcerer could get to make them more viable in PvP. Even worse the high end players just enchanted higher to negate the bonus of art, completely robbing it of any benefit. Before the change I ran around with +15 in saves, and ignored the effects of 95% of spells cast at me. Now I run closer to 30. A good idea, but spellcasters were given such copious amounts of points they could place in this stat that it ultimately hurt the game and classes. Personally I feel that all classes should have their maximum art values cut in half and those points placed in other areas. Giving classes such as mercenaries and swashbucklers art trains is laughable at best. I really haven't seen any other game I've played where enhanced spellcasting was given such a ridiculously high bonus.

Proposed:
a) Warlock package. Imbue element. Like enchant weapon, but instead of adding to hit and damage bonuses to a weapon it adds an elemental property like flaming bite, frost strike, shocking bite, etc. I think this would definitely add incentive for some people to play warlocks as they would automatically become one of the greatest allies you could have, and it would take stress off of builders to come up with weapons to exploit weaknesses. As it stands now, players are completely at the mercy of builders to come up with weapons with interesting attributes, and their idea may not always be in line with what a player might prefer. Resist elements changed to be like enchant armor except adds reduction to damage from elemental spells. All spells in the warlock arsenal are changed to ignore magical protection in favor of the new elemental resistances. Resist elements no longer is brewable or comes in the form of magical devices. You want resistance to elements? Buddy up with a warlock. The cling from magma spray can no longer be negated by resist elements, only the damage can be lessened.
b) Ranged combat. Personally I find it to be completely useless. There are some nice perks about it, but it's bland, and can be completely neutered with the defensive stance. As I understand it, it is also currently bugged, and a battle arrow from a longbow and a shortbow do the same damage. There's no incentive to try out a longbow when the shortbow actually gives more attacks at the same damage. Damage should also vary depending on the distance the shooter is from the target. If it's the same room, it should do maximum damage (should technically do the same or more damage than the greataxe). If it's one room away it should do slightly less damage, and so on. Ranged combat used to stop spellcasters from summoning raptor jesus and rampaging on a room. Now there's generally nothing that threatens a spellcaster. They can actually summon raptor jesus and rampage easily through most places. If a spellcaster is wearing a shield, and then sets defensive stance, ranged combat becomes a joke. This is dumb, and needs fixed.
c) Swashbucklers. I consider this class to be the worst of the melee classes. Defensive stance is cool and all, but it is obvious that it wasn't made with swashbucklers in mind. While mercenaries, barbarians, paladins and hellions can get shield block, and use out of shield the swashbuckler doesn't get that same bonus. Defensive stance with a shield is a hell of a lot better than without. They're kind of back where they were before being given finesse. Taunt is now based off of intelligence, as it needs to be concentrated on now, and their defensive abilities aren't up to snuff with other melee classes. In most scenarios the swashbuckler is [REDACTED] poor, even if there is incentive now to roll that deep-elf swashbuckler for the higher int. Still, that swashbuckler isn't going to be any better than any other swashbuckler due to their underperformance in melee combat, the thing they're supposed to excel at. I think an attempt was made to buff trip by lowering the to-hit of flying opponents, which is cool, but melee opponents are going to rip a swashbuckler apart with their superior melee abilities. Fly doesn't even affect the abilities of spellcasters, so trip is still useless against them. The helpfile seems to suggest I could use any sort of takedown method to trip other than a flying tackle which I've always imagined bash being. If I can grapple a flying opponent, then I should be able to bring him down and toss his scrawny [REDACTED] to the ground. At least that's what the helpfile suggests. The helpfile is *wrong.* Taunt loses its effectiveness against opponents who keep int mods around, and can figure out how to disrupt the swashbuckler's concentration. The weaknesses of the class are glaringly obvious, and to borrow a line from pokemon, are SUPER EFFECTIVE. I honestly don't see why anybody bothers with this class other than masochists. I'd suggest adding an ability that allows the swashbuckler to parry incoming missiles. Remember that scene from the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where Li Mu Bai deflects all the needles with his sword? Yeah, that's what swashbucklers should be able to do.
d) Craft skills for mages. Mages should be able to craft their own staves and wands. This is sort of to address the issue of scrolls of 3 finger of death and harm spells floating around. Everybody else has to work for heal potions, word of recall vials and stuff, but these sorts of things can be hoarded by a single player and help that spellcaster summon raptor jesus to win all battles they enter. A warlock for instance can craft a wand of magma spray or cone of cold, whereas a sorcerer could apply their spell set to the task.
e) Reduce the effectiveness of art. Really the art for all classes should be cut in half, and that love sent elsewhere. Spellcasters are the cream of the crop, especially necromancer and sorcerer, and shouldn't have such a god damn easy time steam rolling the mud.


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