Shattered Kingdoms

I agree with most everything else, but please remember this is an RP mud as well, so if you're character is enchanting because you're semi-afk enchanting ignoring something important happening, your character is still putting enchanting his loot over whatever the issue is, or is apparently so absent-minded that something wild happening has no effect. Being a name on the who list does have some kind of intrinsic value, as it encourages more people to login and stay logged in, but it's a much much lower value than someone actively engaged.



A lot of those are tasks, gold/items those seem to be the rewards, are there other rewards not currently found in the game that would be worth completing tasks for?

Creating staves/wands

I completely agree with you on those points by the way. I'm just making the point that pretty much any system that allows people to grind something out is going to result in people at times choosing to grind that thing out instead of RP. Hopefully that's rare, but it's going to happen.

I bring it up because when you say things like thisyou seem to be advocating that when some players choose to abandon RP for the same of a timesink that maybe the timesink should be changed. However, if you carry that mindset through to its conclusion, you quickly get a game with nothing for players to do when they're online solo... and then no one logs on. You have to recognize the balance there.

The problem with enchanting wasn't that some players chose to focus on it at the expense of RP. The problem with enchanting was that only a handful of classes could cast the spell and it was intrinsically random. Removing the top-end potential of enchanting without at the same time implementing something else people could do to push the boundaries of their existing gear/capabilities was a mistake.

I was one of the few who, when playing an enchanting character, really enjoyed spending that time gambling with EQ in the hopes of landing a killer set of enchants. Really played to my nascent internal gambler's instinct. The woe and agony of pushing it to exploding versus the wild-eyed joy of landing it with a double-hit was fun. Removing the randomizing of the enchants was a let-down to me. But I understand the argument behind that change and can appreciate why so many people prefer the change, though it (and other aspects of the enchant changes) kinda felt like a streamlining of 'how to play'. To me it seems like some of the variety of how to potentially build a character was limited and the change of mechanics has made it more prescriptive. In these I strongly relate to your point about removing the top-end potential of enchanting.

As commented above, I would love to have greater opportunity for crafting, not just wands & staves, but everything. The time sink that would be required on the coding end makes a comprehensive crafting system unlikely in the foreseeable future, but I love the idea of it. Have to settle for priestly brews and one particularly gifted cabal for now of course, but a retired elemental deity can dream.

As someone who advocated heavily for changing the enchant system to be predictable, I never wanted to get rid of the top-end potential, so I feel you on that note.

As someone who used to play a great deal, and does sometimes still, my biggest issue often becomes wondering about the actual capacity for change or the addition of these kinds of new potential mechanics. I understand Dulrik is likely very busy with tons of other things, but every time a great idea or otherwise comes up I'm left thinking, how many coders or people with the capacity to actually implement community agreed upon changes are there? I miss the days when big D had a few people he trusted to actually code and therefore SK wasn't left to stagnate. Correct me if I'm wrong and that's no longer the case. This compounds with the fact that SK is in essence a "side project" and admittedly there aren't that many of us around so it's the possibility for a lot of work for very few people, making it less likely to happen.

I know there are lots of us who would be happy to help code, and aren't gonna screw stuff up, either. There are a lot of ideas, but I don't know how to get Dulrik to care enough to implement or listen or let other people make changes on his behalf. The game isn't AS active, but it's still active. So... please help, Dulrik.

I'm less advocating, and more stating my opinion that if people are regularly abandoning RP for the sake of a time sink, the back end drop of the reward curve on the time sink is probably too shallow, regardless what the time sink provides, because it means the in-game RP negatives are outweighed by whatever that reward is.

In terms of "online solo" it sounds like a time sink that helps everyone collectively somehow while also providing a lower level personal benefit to the person would be something to contemplate.

I worry sometimes that our focus on specifics makes us miss the larger picture, it's just infinitely more useful to say "We need more time sinks that feel rewarding." instead of focusing on the minutia of a enchanting change. Enchanting doesn't actually seem to be a problem really, people just miss having a clear place to spend their time.

I haven’t read through the thread but I have a couple of thoughts.
If we did have a counter, I would say that once you go over x hours, you begin to be able to keep extra limited items.
For example, you can keep the 6 items at logout for the first so hours. This will also protect you from the monthly de-hoard. For ever extra 10 hours you get, or when total monthly hours is greater than 30, you can have 7 limited items + protected from dehoard + 1 week after reboot. When you hit 40 hours, you can hold 8 items.

This would encourage people who want to hoard to log more hours.
But it would be code-intensive. I doubt it would ever happen. But in a perfect world, this is how I’d want to see it work.

I don't know if I understand exactly what you're saying, but often there is little RP to be found even with other players online, and often there is little to no reward in pursuing that RP. Plus, RP is necessarily time- and attention-intensive. It's not a stretch to assume that fully half of a player's online time may be spent distracted, doing other things while they play. When you're playing half-AFK, it's anywhere from rude to irresponsible to dangerous to spend your time roleplaying, or PK'ing, or engaging in dangerous PvE environments. I don't think people are regularly 'abandoning RP for the sake of a time sink', but engaging in the time sink when the RP/PK/multiplayerPvE is not available OR when their own time/attention commitment doesn't allow for that higher end activity. And typically the time sink activity is used to supplement that higher end activity (re-equipping, re-enchanting, restocking consumables, practicing skills/spells, etc).


That's probably a fair assessment. Consider that understanding the reaction to the minutia of a enchanting change can be helpful in deciphering which time sinks 'feel rewarding'.