Shattered Kingdoms

There's only one oracle riddle that could be considered genuinely difficult, and it's purely because of the obscurity of how it's answered. All the others are pretty self-evident.

I voted for trade skills, and making the game more interesting before master. I think the former would help accomplish the latter.

New quests are always good, the over reliance of games in murdering mountains of npcs to level up has always been such a pain in the [REDACTED].

There also need to be more imms.

Global RPs. The immstaff needs to stop being lazy with these and design open ended ones, not just ones that have a preset story that the outcome can't be changed no matter what.

I voted for


I think this would be an excellent addition to the game, even though I also feel like it's probably one of the most difficult in terms of gruntwork required (and would require re-working the existing quest info system as well, which seems like it only supports one message per quest as opposed to a "state" of quest as well). One of the annoying things I often found with SK was the extreme difficulty in figuring out some quests, and in many cases there are just some NPCs whose scripts are outright broken when you get down to it. One of the most frustrating things ever is to forget what a certain NPC told you to do, but to be completely unable to figure out what he wanted because you don't remember the keyword for him to repeat his information (or, even worse, the keyword doesn't exist). I've lost count of how many times I've watched a certain matron swirl her drink around while I sat flustering about trying to figure out how to get the daggum deep-elf to talk to me!



I'm not too sure what this means, but it does seem like it would be nice to be able to incorporate SK happenings into a messaging system. I sorta like the idea of being able to schedule cabal raids, for example.

I know that one of the big things about SK is the protection of numbers/information, and the elimination of global OOC channels, but sometimes that stance can seem very prohibitive to new players. While I certainly am not a fan for advocating an official place to just spoil IC secrets for people or to encourage people to cheat via using a wiki to solve quests for them, there are a lot of mechanical issues that new players who are mechanically minded would really be able to benefit from. A set of official guide forums for character building, min/maxing ideas, leveling tips, enchanting goals, and even PvP guidelines could, in my opinion, really be helpful to some players. A lot of players don't really enjoy the mechanical side of SK because they simply aren't aware of the implications of their character stats, and as a result just feel powerless, and I think that having an official open forum to bring up strengths and weaknesses of certain classes and builds would make the otherwise unapproachable task of character planning for new players much more palatable.



Everyone wants this. The problem is that it feels like it's by far the most demanding task of development time, and unless the underlying concepts would have no mechanical benefit (which would make them lame) then it would certainly introduce another balancing mechanism into the game as well. I think there are a lot of other options to improve SK that would take a lot less time and introduce fewer problems, and it may be better to tackle tradeskills after those.

I voted for the majority of things, minus two or three.

As far as making the game more interesting before master, I would like to make a small suggestion.

Perhaps a bounty system that is a mixture between a quest and a 'boss fight'. You go in and accept the bounty and you are given a map along with information regarding the last whereabouts of that particular 'boss'. The reward will be coins and exp. However, finding and killing this 'boss' will be relatively rich as far as exp goes, and you could probably load some slightly better than shop armor/weapon onto these guys as a treat, or a special trinket that's not amazing, but certainly helpful for the player. If this were implemented, you would want to have a range of levels for certain bosses, so that my novice isn't fighting some dude that requires a veteran or higher to kill. I would say that expert and below would want to target more of a solo experience, though bringing others can have an added bonus to coins and exp for those involved, which will promote more grouping. (My old MUD has some areas that scale in difficulty depending on the number of players in that particular area so that it can be done both solo as well as in groups.) This approach could be taken all the way up to GM if the scaling idea can be figured out, otherwise I would say once you reach mentor, the bounties will be difficult to the point that you'll have to have group involvement. Maybe certain GM bounties could give LP as well, in small amounts if it is an exceptionally hard target. Just a thought... what do you all think?

Im not sure you got what I was saying, please forgive me for communicating it poorly. What I mean is that the system itself is not self evident from a new persons perspective. I was able to get out the the swamp area BECAUSE I am a returning veteran and knew what the next best option for me was. We are talking about new players here. It isnt even clear in the system how to properly answer the wi....I dont want to give away IC info here, how can I explain this without doing it?

My point is, I had the answer right, but I put the answer in the wrong format and that alone doomed me. Would a new player know what to do after failing the Oracle? Is it clear how to answer in the various stages before and during the IC event? That is the point I am trying to make here.

Haha, when I was a new player, I pored over the helpfiles relating to the death quest when I died. Then I floated over to a wisp and he goes "What do you seek, Valtari?"

And I was like "I KNOW THIS ONE."

So I go "My answer is life."

And then he banished me to the swamp

I think I did that 2 or 3 times until I realized what I was doing wrong.

On a more serious note though, the helpfiles on death seem to be really self-evident. I don't think that a new player who paid any attention at all during the intro would be confused.

In hind sight, yes it does seem self-evident, but even you admit your own personal struggles understanding it easily. This is just a suggestion.

That feeling when every option you voted for has over twice the votes as every option you didn't.

No one has any thoughts on the bounty idea?