Shattered Kingdoms

That's a fair enough question, does the value outweigh the inconvenience.

The increase in RP is fundementally the choice you must make to trust or not trust the label. In giving the item that power, it invests the character into it more.

> That will spin off other RP, finding someone to identify (for example).
> Chancing the outcome of an unknown
> The player trade of deceptive potions / scrolls. (I mean the market for such items - the negative potions people want to have made to use tactically) . A rogue may want to swap in a negative potion before attacking someone, for example.
> The surprise PvP outcomes, those are RP too, if done correclty.


Let me ask all the players a question? Why should everyone's (non class skill) preperations be sacrosanct? Why should the reliance on items be safe, so long as you still hold them?

Yes, that may inconvenience PvP preperations or mid-battle uses of potions. But why is that a bad thing? Because everyone is thinking right now about winning, no one is thinking about other fun outcomes. Someone who is too reliant on something should be burned now and then. I'm sorry but that is my belief. Why should consumeables be brainless?

I don't think you give enough credit to Dulrik. He is one of the few admins that actively listens to the feedback and input of his players. Our input does have an impact on what changes get made and when they get made, evidenced by his own statements on the forums.

I am sure there are other factors involved, but community input is certainly one of them.

Wasn't really going to chime in on the OA and Finney show, but this idea sounds cool until you think about the net effect of implementation, which is thus: after PK, winners put "labeled" vials into a separate container and pull them out at a later point to have them identified by a friendly caster. It would do nothing for scrolls, since all classes that can use scrolls can also identify (rogues and bards through scrolls if necessary).

So all you'd really be adding, as has been pointed out, is an additional time sink where those classes without easy access to identify are going to have to nag their local priest / sorc / shaman / paladin / hellion to camp out and waste mana / time on another relatively mindless task: sorting through chaff. I'm all for making new suggestions, but if the only result is that it creates more undesirable busy work, then it's a no-go.

You are under the impression that players would quaff a potion that hasn't been identified. If this change were implemented, no veteran player is going to blindly quaff a potion - it will get identified first. The end result is an additional time sink of needing to identify every potion. Not a big deal for caster classes, but a PITA for everyone else.

SK already has two significant time sinks: enchanting and gathering consumables. This would add another: identifying consumables.

OA and Finney hereby reserve all creative licensing rights and relevant merchandising rights related to the copyrighted intellectual property called "The OA and Finney Show." Bookings available upon request; fees negotiable.

I'm actually giving all credit to Dulrik, saying that ultimately it's his choice, and that he has the perspective to make the calls the he needs to make where we do not know all the other issues that he's comparing any given issue with. I'm not saying that players cannot make suggestions around priority, I'm saying that I do not make those suggestions, AND I'm saying that a suggestion has it's own merit regardless of priority.

Priority just puts it in a queue if you want to think about it. Depending on the priority it gets put into the queue in a different spot, but that means you have to know the other things that are in the running. I don't, do you?

But why are we addressing priority when we aren't addressing the merit of the suggestion? The merit in some degree informs the priority. So forget about priority and talk about the issue, at least that's my perspective (you can talk about priority if you want I guess... sheesh). But priority will solve itself.

The other BIG thing to note is that popularity doesn't always make something right or wrong. Unless the imms have a set themselves a method of judging issues in which one of the the criteria is to always satisfy the majority of players (I can see that this is not the case based on examples, but assuming they haven't) then there is nothing to do but talk about the suggestion for it's own merits.

I'm not making any assumptions about what Dulrik wants to value or not, but he is the arbiter of what gets done and is privy to all the items they are considering. I am not, so I am not going to talk about those things in relation to the suggestion.

Or they could leave the potions, and not take them, or junk them and only use ones that they got from the person who they trust.

You're also assuming someone would be able to differentiate a labeled potion/scroll. Yes if the brewer used a silly label, but if they called a word of recall potion cure poison you'd not know the difference.

You're basing a counter argument on ONE player chosen outcome. No one has to take those items, or use them, or identify them.

So why not just skip straight to suggesting that potions become death-rot and save us all the trouble?

The suggestion has no merit. I'd really rather you invest your energies in generating a new one rather than continuing to defend this one.

Ah but it does have merits, you're just considering them from one perspective. The perspective of the looter.

What about the brewer? They are protecting their own investment. What about the plethera of other merits I've listed that NO ONE has talked about.

I'm also noting that no one has answered my questions about why consumeables need to be sacrosanct?

Chancing the outcome of an unknown will never happen, because people will always identify potions.
The player trade of deceptive consumables will probably be interesting, I admit that.


The "surprise" PvP outcomes comes more or less only from handing someone a potion before attacking, and a lot of vets have aliases to pull out vials before using them. Not having them all in their inventory, so I'm not even entirely convinced the PK aspect of potion deception is even going to be all you think it might be.


I don't understand how this idea "protects the brewer/scriber's investment". What's protected by it? Either the items get junked to save the looter time, or they identify and toss out the worthless ones.

No one is saying consumables can't be messed with, simply that this idea of messing with them doesn't seem to add anything other than a mild annoyance that doesn't seem all that necessary.