Shattered Kingdoms

What about the tribes trying to unite to fight off a new type of enemy? The transporting of the krychire tower to the nightmare realm caused a tear between realms allowing nightmarish creatures to slowly infest the northern wastes and the dreams of its inhabitants.



@syn As for ki straps, not sure I know enough about them. From my testing, you do forgo an armor slot to wear them. They did not seem game breaking to me. Perhaps that is the fault of damage types that get applied from them like divine wrath? I'm not a fan of nerfs in any case.

I think I agree with what you said though. How cool would it be if every cabal had seasonal gear, something new swapped in every 3 months for people to try? That way you don't have to worry about freeing up vnums to make these items. Idk, just some random ideas.

Can I touch on one thing, from some pages ago, @Algorab.

I understand staff is working with half a deck here, believe me, I really do.

But I think these weird builder "rules" are a relic from another time that really need to be looked at. I understand they were completely necessary once upon a time.

I think that time has passed though.

And hearing stuff like "that's a mentor level zone, it can't have X, Y, or Z" just seems like such a silly thing to get hung up on. Especially when I know for a fact we could all go point out ten million things that probably aren't supposed to exist as they currently do "per those rules".

Is this something that can be worked around, or is it actually some hard coded thing where like "you get 10 points to build with here, and an energy good-subtype weapon with a script on it costs 9000 points, so bye felicia, put in some more flame armor with greater AP on it".

I definitely understand stuff like "hey maybe don't put the best suit of adamantite in the game on the judge in Everclear where it can be requested", but hearing about how things can't be put in a zone like N'kashya because it's a mentor level area or something just feels weird to me.

Yes, it is coded. If I designed an area to be used as a leveling zone for journeyman, the amount of phat loot I can add is limited, as is the strength of the NPCs that can live there, etc. It's higher for mentor areas, and even end-game areas have a limit, though we are much more free to do stuff there.

To change the area's levels to add more loot is ... you guessed it! Creator level. Only Dulrik. And generally, area level is set once when an area is made and then forgotten. We did bump a few low level areas up a smidge when the Adventure Academy went in, but literally everything inside those areas had to be manually adjusted to match the new parameters.

On a separate note, is this also a barrier to creating wholly new areas?

Yes, though we do have several areas that can be/are being recycled. The level limitations will stick in those cases, though.

I like the idea of a seasonal approach, though I know it's a building burden. Every cabal has a block of gear that just gets changed out here and there. The only downside besides building burden (which is likely significant) is I know that any salty gear-mongers among us might get a little upset if they don't get it and ruin it for everyone, but I think it'd be fun until it isn't.

Here's the thing about 'not fan of nerfs' stuff - I agree, in principal and 95% of the time. However, any player that isn't brand new is gonna think about the opportunity cost - why am I gonna pick a harder time? It's why there's always players for griffons and fist. In order to bring up every other cabal to not be the 'harder time', you would basically have to unlock loot like it's a test server. That kind of creep trivializes content, and I think this is the only instance the answer is 'bring the items back in line with the original intent.' It doesn't get rid of them. It just makes a more realistic bar for everyone else to raise to.

The game wasn't always lightie slanted. I've been chewing on how the tuning of areas, selection of available gear, nerfs to [cabals], necros, charms/tames, ranged. It's seemed to funnel the game down into a particular valley of melee play. I've been trying to noodle through ways out of that valley, but I'm either not creative enough, am wrong about it being a valley, or it's too steep of a climb. There's very few selections that I can see get you there.

I explored the north today and so many areas that used to be there are missing! Dashre Monastery, Ice Fortress, Abandoned Mines. I especially loved the Abandoned Mines. Is there a reason those areas were all closed, and could they be opened again?

Every time I do PvE on a darkie, I am thinking in the back of my head "we need 3x the manpower as we do if I was playing an Aludra priestess and I had Fisties for front row".

I can't say that I appreciate the methodical efforts in "recent" building areas to make classes like sorc/necro completely useless when 1 Fist Paladin can literally solo all of the Infernal Outlands/Grey Wastes/Frozen Wastes/Forsaken Valley without dropping below 90% hp.

Edit: Worth noting that said Fist paladin is also an absolute monster in PVP vs anything and everything (including grey auras), except possibly an MR barb. Which is the most unfun thing in the world to play (and to play alongside).

So if you want to counter the super fun PVE and top PVP class, you have to commit yourself to having no fun and being useless in PVE.

This makes sense in regard to coding interactions and if you don't want some areas to get too popular, while others become neglected. I guess my question is, how can we help? Is it ok if we're still spitballing ideas out there?

I feel like if spell immunities were removed and saves were adjusted more in PvE, you could see some classes make a comeback. For now, it does seem like passive defensive buffs, healing and melee > Debuffs and damage spells. There might be an off chance that you get your debuffs off, but it is unreliable. I prefer having more than one reliable way to accomplish a task and if a monster now takes damage from magma, it probably won't be game breaking.