Shattered Kingdoms

I think you'll lose far, far, far, far less people than you gain. Right now, the lack of numbers hurts the tactics-light, heavy-rpers from being able to compete with the tactics-heavy folks.


Basically, what SK does with this mentality is akin to having a third grade classroom and introducing algebra into it. The few gifted kids struggle, but get it, and excel. The rest of the class is completely clueless, then they get beat with belts until they go blind because they are clueless, and then you tell them "to work together" to try to get it as blind and beaten children. Meanwhile, the few learning disabled kids get completely ignored and fall off the map entirely.


Raw numbers will only benefit the average RPer. There's no excuse not to implement the system other than petty "visionary" mentality that presumes you know whats best for the average player over what they do.


If you're all so worried someone will say "That has six fortitude and two strength" in game - you're already too late. People say it all the time. No one just uses the term 'moderate' or 'greater', because folks want to know: is it two runes of moderate strength? or three?


So this entire discussion and rebuttal to a simple request to make the game more accessible to the average clueless newbie or mechanics-impaired segment of the gaming community is pedantic and shows a lack of maturity of the individuals to recognize a progressive world of gaming where players actually expect a game to try not to actively frustrate its playerbase in just trying to play the game.


This is no different than seeing how many items you can carry, the weight you can carry, what level of what status you are aka Novice(5), or the worth command.


For all the talk of 'tactics', you sure do enjoy to grief the lives of the more pure roleplayers who want to give tactics a try.

The forum prompts you regarding new replies before you submit a post for a now clearly illuminated reason. Your input, however, is always appreciated. Constructive criticism for the future: I might tone back on how grossly you underestimate a heavy RPer's ability to count the times they input the enchant command.

We're talking about a level of obfuscation that's unnecessary but easily overcome, the fate of the game isn't exactly in the balance (though when I misunderstood exactly what the OP wanted identify to output, I felt that way). However, any time information is more easily accessible for newbies that's already blatantly available for veterans, the better off everyone involved is.

(as always, this is merely my opinion)

It was true to SK's game design when you could actually forget. I compromised core principal by including that number. While I'm not going to remove it, I'm also not going to do it again.

Obfuscation of numbers in the pursuit of RP atmosphere is a tent pole of SK's design. The claim is that this decision makes us harder to get more players and that therefore it should be changed. Even if that claim is right: Too bad, because we aren't changing it. Changing a tent pole effectively makes you a different game. I've already said many times that we recognize that the combination of RP and PK that SK represents gives us a very small potential audience. But I won't compromise what makes SK 'itself' to broaden the audience. That will just water us down, make us less unique, and put is in competition with games that do those things better.

While the RP+PK design paradigm innately gives us a smaller audience, it makes us more unique and beloved by the members of that audience. The path to growth is to find more of the target audience, because in a world with over 1 billion english-literate people, even our minuscule slice of that target audience could fill the game to capacity dozens of times over.

Obviously not everyone who currently plays the game squarely falls into the target audience either and yet still enjoys the game for what it is. Sometimes that's because they don't realize what the tent poles are and that they are directly-related to the things they find compelling about the game. If you are one of those people who want to move the tent pole, I'm not forcing you to leave. But do recognize that trying to move those tent poles is futile. If you literally cannot play within those tent poles, then you are only causing both yourself and everyone around you an incredible amount of frustration by staying and being vocal about them.

For my part, I will try to document the tent poles more clearly as we bump into them. As long-time players can vouch, I am happy to accept feedback on any number of game mechanics issues that I don't consider core. Without any player feedback, the specifics of how the game plays would definitely be very different than it is today.

That is part of the argument. The other part of the argument is that characters routinely break the "fourth wall" with statements like:

It has three runes of willpower and four runes of strength.

How many runes do you want me to add?

If this language is acceptable for in character communication, I don't see how it breaks the atmosphere of the game for identify to follow suit.

Okay. What about pieces of equipment that come with 'moderate enchantments'?


How do you know that an icy headband only has +2 mr or does it have +3?


How do you know that as newbie? Sorry, but you all have played this game way too long with the same few dozen people.


There ARE new people, you know.

That's the point. You don't know and you shouldn't care. The staff could switch +2 to +3 and you wouldn't know. Nor would it make a significant difference to your success as a character. The fact that some people manage to backward engineer this knowledge is acknowledged as a flaw in the design, not a positive aspect. Min-maxing is in opposition to SK core values.

I disagree. One "rune" of speed could be the difference between getting three attacks a round instead of four. I care about that as a player. My character would also care about that, too.

Then what is SK core values? Seriously. You claim 'tactics and roleplay', if that's the case the best player should be the best RPer AND the best PKer (aka min maxer).


You seem to loathe the latter though. Interesting. Yet, when someone brings up an aspect that should be removed from tactics (such as the relic system) you claim its TACTICS and roleplay, not just roleplay.


So, you want us to play a game and mix the two, but you want us to be worse at one than the other? Perhaps just medicore at both? Run around randomly putting att points into stats and using random weapons?


It certainly doesn't jive with what you put out as SK being. And this is someone who came to SK due to your advertisements on tmc.

I've always thought it was quite charming to have a system initially obfuscated, but with experience and effort, we could do as Newton suggests and "make the immeasurable measurable." It simulates the same kind of professional wisdom we might expect of a plumber who can tap pipes to determine where they're blocked, a farmer who can judge ripeness by the wilting of leaves, or any other fitting analogy. It rewards being an "explorer" archetype within the confines of your own character and equipment.

You liking something is unfortunately not the prerequisite for it being reality. Being completely free to use the "kill" command whenever you want, having group formations that allow a variety of strategy, having a limited selection of enchantment slots so that you must pick and choose what you want to maximize all reinforces the idea of "tactics." The game trending toward disallowing you to play it in spreadsheets (see: a lot of numbers-based minmaxing) does not remove tactics. Whether you agree or not, tactics and PK are promoted/protected rights in the game.

Exactly how much you get to see under the hood for your minmaxing purposes is, unfortunately for this discussion, entirely at Dulrik's discretion. Try to see the other side of the argument before you broad-stroke tactics out of existence because you don't like the exact level of detail you get. I don't necessarily agree with the way some things are displayed, myself, but that doesn't change the validity of the point against me. It's a preference thing more than it is a matter of the game's life or death. It also can be spoken about positively when it comes to scratching the itch of a bit of trial/error and adventure in order to figure things out, as much as it can be spoken about negatively as far as arbitrary withholding of detail.

Also, theORplayer, I urge you to reconcile your posts after you write them with the concept that you're communicating with fellow human beings directly. You'd be surprised how much more pleasant the discourse could be all-around.