Shattered Kingdoms

I have seen some really good ideas on this thread so far and I do not want to repeat them, I just hope we will get to speak more on them later in another thread.

Most of my ideas have been stated already, but I will restate and add what has been on my mind- more RP options that are safe from PK, more IMM sponsored RP events and bonanza's, more options for loyalty tokens (I like most of the ones suggested, but I do not think they should be limited to the character who earns them because you earn them so slowly), balancing the cost for tribunals at war (having to spend so much time replenishing coin to your tribunal is takes away from training and RP and does not encourage game play), happy hour every 12 hours, quests that reward you with something other than exp so once you reach grand master there is something to do (so you are rewarded with an attribute point, loyalty token, an imm will rename an item for you, have a statue of yourself erected in your home city for a month, etc), fewer "starting" cities- with a shrinking player base, we need to bring people closer together- so there should only be three (a good, a neutral, an evil), more positive imm interaction- if the only times the imm's come out to play is to punish people, then people will only see them as harsh angerballs, let them control NPCs and interact with the players and start RP's and storylines more often (I think someone compared it to a DungeonMaster).

Honestly, the biggest problem is not having the players to play with. I tried to come back to the game recently and just couldn't do it. Every time I logged in that was not a happy hour there were only 5 people online and I rarely ran into them. To me, the biggest challenge to bring people back is to bring the people together so they can actually play together. If I want to play alone, I play my Xbox.

Posting from my perspective as a player:

What if we consider just plain 1 LT = 1 level +1 month starting age, up to Jman?

Reduce the exp cost up to mentor
Same exp cost for mentor
Increase exp costs for master
Total game changer from lvl champion/grandmaster
- Champion level area exp (i.e.- champions focus on train in champion-worthy places)
- Quest exp
- PK exp
- Cabal war exp
- Tribunal war exp
Focus the game where EVERYBODY wants it. At the fun levels. Earn exp from PK-fun too.


Dancing lights was my idea.


Automate religion selection for any/all priests, hellions, Paladins, and exceptions like warlock to Yed. Make holy symbol work for unblemished priests. Give warlocks equivalent spell for Yed.

Give the holy armors access to the religion spell. Give all high favored access to 'Holy Symbol' spell in their main temple.

Consecrate for warlocks & shaman, enchant for necro is kinda interesting.
Eliminate raise/breath exp cost for people of the same religion. (Or aura?)

Expand duel system to open it for groups and movement so you can do war games with your companions, to practice PK and tactics with allies in a semi controlled setting, where a single mistake isn't going to leave your corpse stripped and taken out of competition.

Alchemist class, complete with crafting and enchanting skills, ability to create wands and staves and scribe spell books.

Expanded alternate races for loyalty token cost. Play an Orc, ogre, goblin, kobold, merman, lizard man, troll, Pegasus, nightmare, etc. Short life spans. Maybe level cap?

Necromancers who can become an undead at the end of their life? Liches, Death Knight, Vampires?

Ability to link between forums and note boards in game. Let me be able to compose a note or read IC note boards even if I can't be logged in the game or I'm on my phone. Better yet, let my tribunal leader sign certain orders from offline, like pardons, deportations, immigrations?

Play instrument skill for bards.

Expand ability for one country to take another country's territory. Let cabals have some ability to partake in that or to claim land too.

Some kind of event scheduler for players to set meetings in-game and have a way of posting it for people that goes a step beyond current note boards.

Some way to expand playability from my phone.

Oh yeah and an astral projection skill for shamans (maybe necro too).

Relaxing formal pk rules, revisiting whatever criteria are currently being used to decide cabal, tribunal, and religion leadership, and taking a look at core adventuring skills* would be nice.

*rescue (to hellion/swashbuckler), enchant/consecrate (to all mages/clergy), gate (maybe to bards and shamans?)

And a flyer --- a mentor-point based way to add skills/spells cross-class. Some would be class defining (cleave, specialize, charm person) and wouldn't be purchasable. Others that are unique or ultra high level (aka hellfire or holy word) and could cost 10 mentor points to add. Some would be rare or low level unique (e-dam, gate, fourth attack, retreat, acid blast) and cost 5. 3 for a medium like frenzy, parry, pick lock, staves. And 2 for something fairly run of the mill like a weapon class, armor, sneak. The point of this would not be to maintain perfect balance, really, but to promote long term investment in building a character.

Pondering what would excite people to play. Im thinking "small" changes more often are more likely to inspire the desired result. That is to say rather than prioritize a huge change many small simple to implement changes would likely get a bigger curiosity value from them. Case in point the building change logs have inspired PvEer to explore old areas on a semi regular bases to check changes. I really feel speed of change is a really important factor regarding inspiring players to come back. For example trade skills are "exciting" but if they take a year of work Id rather see 3 other minor changes or tweaks.

A few easy to implement changes I can think of. Judgement stance on PK and punishments for mistakes should be reduced. Punishments need to be looked at with a more practical design of achieving the goal required. With the "real world" price being consider closely.

ForumID should not be accessible to staff (There are reasons for D to have the access for fixing problems). Players are players and characters are characters. Everyone players and staff should try to keep this distinction as much as possible. Many fun times have been had playing with people who I thought where complete jerks on a previous character, this has led to me to avoiding as much OOC knowledge of players as possible and SK is better for it.

Id like to see the way the forums are handled changed. This may be beyond the scope of things but if we could get spoiler tags or similar. Forum moderation could be a lot more useful via using a infarction system that hides the post behind an expandable link. If people wish to enter the conversation they can use tags to keep the conversation going between people who want to with out involving the general population. This would let dissenting opinion or thoughts to be expressed while hopefully limiting flame wars etc. It would also hopefully open the boards to a broader range of people while still maintaining a clean forum for those who dont wish to dig deeper. This might also open the option of giving moderation powers to non imms freeing Imms to doing Imm things, because being a good Imm and being a good moderator do not always go hand in hand.

Now my pie in the sky idea that would take huge amounts of work. Holy symbols getting a script that burns the item to cast the religions religion spell. This would make "stealing" a holy symbol a thing. It would make being in a religion as a random class a lot more interesting. If coupled with better access to creating holy symbols (any priest not blemished) it would mix things up a lot. There was a time when holy symbols had scripted spells this change could return to those times however if you lose your holy symbol doing it you cant just "spam it". Also holy symbols would then be added to dehoarding code so people couldnt run around with a sack full of holy symbols. Some religions would gain more than others but it would likely promote conflict over them as well. The idea could be coded as a one use scripted item that "activates a holy symbol worn" as a limited resource as an alternative way of introducing it.

I do like the idea of mentor points being usable on the character they where earn. However many of the improve your character ideas for them to be spent on will likely break game balance for newer or less "gamey" people. However boosting XP on a character I RPed with as an apprentice would be a good use, or being able to self rez from it.

Scrap enchanting altogether, renormalize saving throws so that everyone has an effective +5 bonus to fortitude, reflex, and willpower compared to right now (so the enchanting won't be missed for saves), and hand out 1 attribute point per level instead of 1 point every other level (so that the enchanting won't be missed for ability scores). Give priests and sorcerers each a new spell to compensate for scrapping the enchantment system.

what would excite me to play?

i'm sure i could come up with a laundry list, but i'd prefer that existing bugs getting fixed take priority over new stuff.

as for new stuff: option to pick a religion during character creation.

With the lack of players, we should allow tribunal NPCs to cast spells again. I forget why that was taken out, but it would be nice to have them conseceate, cast haste, GS, and gate.

A lot of great ideas have already been thrown out there, but I have to agree with Finney, fixing what is already broken would be a bigger draw than anything else. Along with adjusting the PK rules, PK was never something I was interested in on past characters, but this time around it’s an aspect of the game I’d like to get better at and it’s hard when you have to be so careful as to not break a rule.

Being able to learn new skills would be neat too with LP or something, within reason of course. Similar classes could have skills that could cross over.

An updated Imm contact list would be helpful too so that we know who to contact about different things or if someone is away for any amount of time.

Imm interaction with the players is always a plus. Even if it’s something as simple as dropping a sandwich or giving someone a noogie. This shows players that the Imms are paying attention to them.

As far as something that hasn’t been mentioned and it’s not even really a game feature, but social media could be utilized to draw new players or players that haven’t played in a while. Yes there is a Facebook page for SK but it is not being used to its full potential.

I would like the abyssal tower restored and maybe bring back items of old, like the staff of demise.