Edoras wrote:
The issue with lighten load is very similar here: That's an imbalance that basically says "By the way, if you are planning on playing a heavy armor centaur, giant or minotaur, you're much better off in Talons than in any other trib." That's also a change that came through as a complete side-affect to lighten load being changed to heavy armor priests and raised in level. I gave my shot at arguing that one, and at least that KD is active, but Sargas isn't buying it so meh. I can only assume that he hasn't played a character who is consistently overweight and seen the overwhelming benefit that lighten load provides.
As for the jail thing, Exile's jail has always been harder to break out of. At least now there isn't a null-magic room outside the jail like there used to be, but it's still insurmountably more difficult than every other jail in SK.
Kingdoms are different, that I'll definitely give you. Every kingdom has different melee NPCs of varying classes and levels and starting EQ, each kingdom has different buff NPCs of varying levels, but in general these aren't too out of sync with each other except for probably the North's ridiculous amount of supernatural HP NPCs with deathrot diamond shields and weapons. Each nation has their strong points here: Taslamar has a GM and champion level paladin, a high-level barbarian, and a high-level merc. The Guardians have high-level casters for buffs, an entire slew of sprite swashies at their disposal, and they also have access to a barbarian elemental NPC that can't be petrified. The Talon has a high-level swash NPC that spawns in the middle of their capital with starting weapons and detects, and they also have two high-level griffon barbarians with scripted SA. I also feel it worth pointing out that the bounty NPCs of Zhenshi are much more powerful than any other nations bounty NPCs. The MC has one high-level giant barb, some high-level hellions, and that's about it, but they're also a cabunal. The North has the trio and the high HP guards from Krychire, and absolutely no casting trib NPCs that are higher than level 30. As for buff NPCs, each tribunal has access to the exact same set of buffs (Except the Talon gets lighten load), and as for functionality, every trib also has access to enchant and -either- gate or rift.
Personally, I think this is a pretty decent balance just for NPCs, with the exception that the deathrot diamond EQ on the cowled guards of the North needs to go.
However, none of that has anything to do with the fact that Exile's jail is still extremely difficult to break out of assuming that any trib members are online, whereas every other kingdom except for Exile is much easier -and- already standardized: Get guy out, give guy recall, everyone gtfo before the trib members wreck your day. As such, Exile's jail is pretty OP. Honestly I don't think that anything else about the trib should come into consideration when determining the "balance" as it regards to jailbreaks. Is there seriously a person in the mud that would say "I would be willing to give up my highest-level trib NPC if my jail were harder to break people out of?"
I just disagree. Exile is probably the worst city to be in a tribunal for RP-wise because people are always wtfpwning you and attacking your city, and there's hardly ever a full tribunal in order to fend off enemies, like say, a necromancer army. If you commit 532432 crimes, then you probably should have a big sentence. Necromancers don't have many other downsides. It shouldn't be super-easy to break into ANY jail, IMO. It should take as much effort as it does to break into a cabal and kill the inner guardian. Yeah, jail time sucks, but it should take effort to break out of it.
Anyway, I wonder what Dulrik would say, or what Sargas would say short of being irritated with the people in this thread who don't understand what "no flaming outside of General Discussion" means.