Shattered Kingdoms

I'd be really excited to see classic rare/difficult to obtain armor made better under the new enchanting system (and be happy to donate time to help any builder who took on identifying and re-allocating enchantments on gear from the Outer Plains/Infernal Outlands).

Also would love to see a shake-up of Religious roleplay --- even though the Pantheon is static, maybe there could be some Church re-org RP that saw 2 gray faiths go dark and 1 each light/dark (Ain?!) go gray. Dogmatic priests only, with hellions and paladins competing to impose their vision of Order on the realms. As I write this it seems like Kanye-level genius stuff. Am I a visionary or a lunatic?

I think the pantheon would look better if the immortals lacked morality. Allow the player base to take over and turn the religion whichever way they like, rp supported of course. Writing new books and new histories for the gods every year or two would be interesting.

I, personally, won't be back with any seriousness until the alignment of the NPCs is enforced to the same stringency as it is against the PCs. I.E., griffons being employed by and acting in defense of dark-grey/diabolic characters is NOT okay, particularly against light aura'd PCs.

In general, though, to enhance accessibility and enjoyment of the game for most people, I'd say the following should happen:

1. Content balancing. This is a builder-level issue. Areas with overly-obscure/impossible-without-ooc-info quests and access points need to be redone to be accessible to a broader population of the game. New players are more often hooked by the metaworld, exploration, and pve. Improving the accessibility of that side of the game is critical to improving the retention and enjoyment of new players. Older players may be drawn back to areas by the prospect of not having to hit their heads against a wall (or resort to what is effectively cheating) to access and best that content.

More in this regard: sensible building choices. Stupid levels of immunities to damage types, spell immunities, glow scripts that spam one-shot abilities, instakill scripts that are unavoidable, and lvl 51 random encounter NPCs that spawn with these things (or natural reach, or kipping/bashing/charming/glowing nonsense) in numbers exceeding 1 is not okay. Those NPCs and areas currently swarmed by this nonsense need to be toned down. It is NOT fun to spend 6 hours trying to recover because one failed attempt caused an entire group wipe, and everyone's naked and trying to get back to their crap. Less no-recall zones as well.

2. Non-class, non-race, non-alignment specific personalization options for characters purchased with LPs and trained with enlight-earned XPs at GM. A few examples of this would be access to certain skills or spells (perhaps new ones created just for this purpose), or specific enhancements (only one of which could apply at a time). Just off the top of my head, the kind of enhancement I'd personally like to see would be a colored aura that would provide a bonus to a specific save or stat that appears in the short desc of the PC and strengthens as the skill masters.



Possible aura bonuses would include willpower, fortitude, reflex, art, mana, moves, and HP.

Other possible bonuses include a purchase-able one point increase to a specific racial max on a stat (again, with only one being possible to have active at any one time).

3. Multiclassing. Armor restricted to lightest of selected classes (i.e., a merc/sorc would still take spell casting penalties for gearing up in addy). Each status gets dedicated to a specific class (to a maximum of 2). I.E., Mr. Mercsorc started as an amateur mercenary. He reaches level 5, gains enough exp to train level again. Instead of typing just train level, he types train level sorcerer. He then gets a level in Sorcerer (with the appropriate HP/mana/move gain of the Sorcerer class at each of the novice levels). Mr. Mercsorc cannot train mercenary skills during his Novice status. Instead, he gets access to Sorc skills and spells at the Novice rank. If, at Apprentice, he types train level mercenary, his Apprentice status will be dedicated to merc skills (with all the appropriate stat increases for merc leveling throughout Apprentice).

This would probably require a refactoring of what statuses certain class-specific skills and spells become accessible to balance the multiclassed characters, as well as to force real choices between which class to train at which status. All alignment-based class restrictions would still apply, of course, and no LP class options would be available for the secondary class (no griffon rogue/mercs, for example). This wouldn't be a means to get a barb/necro griffon, or a paladin/hellion combo.

4. Bring back lvl 51 heroes and amulets. Monthly tournaments for two classes (schedule them for the same weekend to help dissuade players from stacking multiple hero characters).

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. Might come up with something more later.

I gave my character's phat loot away last month in my expectation of being inactive. I will be inactive again starting next week for six months. My suggestions come from observations from playing the game and seeing what makes it less fun to play.

1. Someone stated this alright, non-static alignment system and use it to punish/reward players. If a lightie does too many evil deeds (a very non-interpretive version), they become a greybie (or a darkie does too many 'good deeds'). Which can mean several things. If Paladin/Priest/hellion/necro changes alignment that is not compatible with their new alignment they lose access to spells (in case of necro spells that are not shared with the sorc class). If a elf/delf/griffon becomes a greybie, they become a 'new' race. One which they lose most of their abilities and NPCs of that race treat them as an outcast (PCs should also).

2. To stop hoarding an actual automated system of dehoarding. Set a limit for the number of things a person can actually hold on themselves at a time before thieves take them upon logout. ie 1 set of armor, 2-3 sets of weapons,...,...,....

3. A comprehensive list of actions that are clearly defined as good/evil. Could even go further restrictions based on religion. As people find new ways to abuse the list, add/subtract as necessary.

4. Make the fmud client and export it to facebook as a facebook app. Advertising on FB is great and everything but an app is needed to actually make it more visible and reachable to many.

Facebook app or connection would be nifty.

In short, reward people for playing the game. At the moment, there are some possible tactics in the game, PK specifically, that cannot be mitigated through effort or that are actually -only- effective against you if you spend more time playing and gathering decent equipment. That's extremely frustrating for people who play for both RP and mechanics.


On one end, nerf or remove abilities that can be used to damage opponents without taking risk. The biggest offender here is dispel magic working across etherealform, yet MR being able to be raised to 100% resistance thus preventing you from being dispelled yourself if you build an MR sorc. Dispel magic should either ignore MR, or you should not be able to dispel non-ethereal players while ethereal. The fact that a caster, specifically one who enchants 100% MR, is completely magic immune while being able to cast dispel on other players with impunity takes the fun out of the game.

On the other end, remove or nerf abilities that are more effective against players who actually put more work into their gear. I'm looking specifically at the MR barb buff package, which made MR barbs take half damage from weapons with half special damage, and zero damage from weapons of an exotic material and with an exotic attack. What this mechanic means is that if have spent the 20-30 man-hours required to travel to the most difficult to kill NPC in the entire game, and spend time enchanting up his unholy badass weapon of destruction, it does zero damage to someone who trained MR ten times. You're legitimately better off with an unenchanted storebought claymore in some respects. I respect that it's nice for MR barbs to be a bit tankier, especially in PvE, but the mechanic of MR barbs innately resisting half damage or all damage from weapons that require time to gather actually discourages people from playing the game to gather those weapons. They may as well just stick with the bronze storebought claymore.

On the same note, lessen the strength of aura of negation. Right now aura of negation is, again, a skill that is overpoweringly useful against players who have actually put effort into their character and bothered to buff up before a PK. On the other hand, aura of negation is completely useless against someone who hasn't bothered to actually put any effort into gathering consumables. What you end up with is yet another mechanic that gives the ability to instantly negate someone else's preparation, and in fact punish them for it, while at the same time requiring absolutely no prep on the person doing the negating (You don't have to burn through 5-6 consumables and enter into STR and DEX fatigue to negate all of a person's defensive buffs, you just have to type "negate" while hitting them.)

Yes, all mine are mechanical, but they are more than just basic balancing mechanics like "mercs do too much damage". They are mechanics that hurt the game experience. They are the sorts of mechanics that made it a lot easier for me as a player to stop playing. I don't like playing a game where someone has the ability ruin your day with a build that is able to kill and/or severely hamper you without ever opening themselves up to counterplay (MR sorc running around ethereal dispelling people/luring aggro NPCs to kill you being a prime example). I don't like playing a game that, in the case of MR barbs resisting damage, actively punishes players who dedicate time gathering and enchanting what's supposed to be the strongest weapons in the game. I also don't like playing a game with non-resistable tactics that only punish people who have actually put effort into learning how to play the game well, which is exactly the case with AoN.


I suppose I'm beating a dead horse with these three ideas, but if you are asking me for what would entice me to start playing again, I'd start there. I know that many other players who enjoy mechanics and RP simultaneously probably feel the same way. It's no fun RPing the guy who can't do anything against the random nutjob MR sorcerer whose sole purpose is to run around griefing people by gaming the dispel while ethereal system.

A better dehoarding system would also be a big one for me. Make dehoarding more aggressive and happen twice as often.

Edoras makes some good points, I would like to add that balancing the classes so you don't have to have xxx class to kill yyy class.