Thinking about my most recent character here are some relatively small changes that would make playing more fun. They are all based on eliminating tedium-based or lame min/maxing mechanics, and most have been mentioned before. If you think a game should reward easy but boring work then don't bother reading further.

Eliminate skill practice: Instead give bigger level-based increases and add time-based increases. E.g. every level and every 5 play hours you get a (wis/int based) increase to all skills. Reason: Right now an optimized character trains all skills once and then just practices from there. It's a direct trade-off of tedium for power.

Base all level gains on max race stats. No more permanent gimping due to forgetting to swap on gear, or dieing a bunch. Reason: Will encourage pre-hero pk and exploration. Also having to remember to swap gear before leveling is just tiresome. Right now current-stat-based level gains don't really balance anything, they're just a mindless hassle, and only at low levels.

Age-based stat changes don't waste trains. E.g. if you max your strength while young, and it goes up at mature, and then down at middle-aged, you won't have wasted a train. Reason: It's silly to make people plan out trains like this. More importantly if you don't know about it you get screwed for no reason. At least it's in the helpfile now.

Give a choice between exp penalties and triple-con-loss against non-cabal mobs. Exp penalties aren't like they used to be (My personal best was a 300k deficit) but I'll pay pretty much any price to have to rank less. This change only makes sense with the max-stat level gains change.

I don't like the idea of replacing a system where you become good at what you are actually doing with a system where you become a superior fighter by sitting in the Inn, sipping tea and reciting poetry. In short, your first suggestions is horrible and should not be implemented.

Also, I can't help but to think that those 20 hp or so are so critical at the hero that you'd have to fret about them.

nt

>Eliminate skill practice: Instead give bigger level-based
>increases and add time-based increases. E.g. every level and
>every 5 play hours you get a (wis/int based) increase to all
>skills. Reason: Right now an optimized character trains all
>skills once and then just practices from there. It's a direct
>trade-off of tedium for power.

Here's the problem I see: with your system, I can have my character sit online doing nothing and get skill improvements for free. So if I want to game the system, I just spend 100 hours doing nothing before starting to play my throwaway bash spec. Or, if the gains are tied to what level I am, then I just power straight to hero in ~40 hours and have straight 100s across the board, with no effort.

Also, at what rate are you going to fix the level-based improvements? Will a character have to hero before anything gets perfected? Or just hit hero range? Will it vary by skill? Where will the skill percentage start from; wherever the character practiced it to in the guild (e.g. 68%, 71%, 75%, etc.)? Or will every character get every skill at 75% as soon as they reach the rank at which that skill can be practiced?


>Base all level gains on max race stats. No more permanent
>gimping due to forgetting to swap on gear, or dieing a bunch.

The issue here is that for some stats, people won't bother to train them at all after character creation. For instance, constitution and wisdom. If I'm a warrior then, during character creation, I'm going to make sure that all my non-wis/con stats are as high as they can get, then probably never train them again.

I mean, if you're going to make this change, you might as well get rid of trains altogether, along with stat rolling during character creation and stat modification due to aging. Give everybody max stats at character creation and have them never change. Adjust the number of practices-per-level given to certain race/class combos that currently have to gain revert a lot.

If you don't like swapping gear...then don't swap gear. Wear the +stats gear all the time, and live with the small reduction in hit/dam.


>Age-based stat changes don't waste trains. E.g. if you max
>your strength while young, and it goes up at mature, and then
>down at middle-aged, you won't have wasted a train. Reason:
>It's silly to make people plan out trains like this. More
>importantly if you don't know about it you get screwed for no
>reason. At least it's in the helpfile now.

I'd be fine with removing age-based stat modification. It just penalizes long-lived characters. On the other hand, long-lived characters already have somewhat of an advantage, since they get to spend a larger percentage of their lives with perfected skills and full cabal powers (if applicable).


>Give a choice between exp penalties and triple-con-loss
>against non-cabal mobs. Exp penalties aren't like they used to
>be (My personal best was a 300k deficit) but I'll pay pretty
>much any price to have to rank less. This change only makes
>sense with the max-stat level gains change.

This just makes it easier to hero a throwaway character you really don't care about. If you're willing to give up a full point of constitution just to avoid a ~10k xp penalty then you're clearly not interested in character longevity.

Here's something that might be handy though:

When a character dies, he receives some small portion of "ghost coins". "Ghost coins" work like normal currency, except that they disappear when you unghost. You only get "ghost coins" so often, so if you die twice in quick succession then you won't get a new batch.

Basically, this would allow people who haven't banked any money to buy some "basics" without first having to go raise some cash. Yes, they should have planned ahead and banked money. But that's a pain, and it's not like "ghost coins" are going to give anyone a huge advantage. You'd get enough to buy a return potion, teleport potion, couple flight potions, couple detect invis preps, a sack, some food, and a drink container. So maybe the equivalent of 5 gold.

Alternately, you could just add the potions to the standard set of things a ghost gets. One return, one teleport, and some number of detect invis. Ragers could just drop/sac them. Or maybe have it coded so that ragers get some other little perk.

>Here's the problem I see: with your system, I can have my
>character sit online doing nothing and get skill improvements
>for free.

So? How is that any worse than spending 100 hours spamming skills on a mob? What is the cost you are interested in having people pay for skills besides annoyance?

>I am, then I just power straight to hero in ~40 hours and have
>straight 100s across the board, with no effort.

This argument sounds kind of like you think that tedium should be rewarded. Or conversely that a lack of tedium should be penalized.

>Also, at what rate are you going to fix the level-based
>improvements?

I hadn't thought it out in precise detail. Off the top of my head I'd say some level restriction makes sense, certain skills are exempt (e.g. assassinate).

>I mean, if you're going to make this change, you might as well
>get rid of trains altogether

That's mostly fine, though there is some small amount of decision making. For example extra con for longevity vs hp to be tougher.
I personally don't max int/wis, but I wouldn't really care if trains were taken out and just rolled into race selection and level gains.

>I'd be fine with removing age-based stat modification. It
>just penalizes long-lived characters.

Yeah, I agree that the old-age modifications are pretty harsh. One reason for keeping the min/max system in though is so that the wis/int bonuses can actually do something. As it is now, you only get something out of old age if you are a high int/wis race and rolled low-int/wis at creation.

>If you're willing to give up a full
>point of constitution just to avoid a ~10k xp penalty then
>you're clearly not interested in character longevity.

Meh, that's not really true, but maybe we have different standards of longevity. Honestly I'm one of the least conservative players I know and still last into the hundreds of hours on a character I'm serious about. Con-dieing, if you use a couple trains, means dieing 60-75 times. You can die 3 times a day for almost three weeks and still keep going. Do most people die more than that? I feel like I'm pretty reckless, and suicidal (with my characters) and still average way less than that.

As for ghost coins, regearing never bothered me very much.

>So? How is that any worse than spending 100 hours spamming
>skills on a mob? What is the cost you are interested in having
>people pay for skills besides annoyance?

Spending 100 hours spamming on a mob(s) is much, much, much harder to bot. Meaning someone had to be at the keyboard the whole time. The fact that spamming skills on mobs is fairly monotonous, and can't be automated, dissuades many people from bothering to do it.

If it were trivially easy to bot straight 100s...I suspect you'd see a lot more people doing it. I mean, I'd just have my character sit online somewhere obscure while I'm at work, with triggers to make sure I don't void, and to generate an audio cue whenever something happens that I need to respond to.

Do you honestly not see a problem with that?

That gives players more control over how their skills develop, more opportunities to fix prac mistakes if they are newbies, a more consistent reward pattern for being active, and ultimately more choice as to the kinds of activities one engages in.

Furthermore, I think Seantryn Modan must be destroyed.

The only reasonable modification I could think of to his scheme is the following. I'm not sure I really prefer it to what exists now, but it at least retains some of the "flavor" of the current system:


1. Practicing with a guild master stays the same.

2. Remove the current system of random improvements on level gain.

3. Set level-based skill percentage caps as follows:

a. At the level where the skill can first be learned the cap is 85%.

b. At level 42 the cap is 100%. In other words it disappears.

c. The cap increases linearly from (a) to (b).

4. When a character gains a rank, for all skills whose cap is going to increase, automatically bump up his current percentage by the same amount.

5. Exempt certain skills. Namely, those that are eminently spammable (e.g. hide, sneak, peek, etc.) and those that can't be spammed at all (e.g. assassinate, cleave, pwk, etc.) For those that are "eminently spammable", consider just starting them at 100%.


This system has the following properties:

1. It retains the fact that a character can gain an advantage by spending time using his skills. It just places a cap on how much advantage he can gain. In my example this is 10%. If you spam pincer up to the 85% cap right at level 29 then you won't receive any more "use-based" improvements at pincer. Your pincer percentage will linearly increase from 85% to 100% as you rank from level 29 to level 42.

2. Per the above, this system it retains the learning advantage to smart races and learning penalty to dumb races. The smart race will earn his 10% quota of "use-based" improvements faster than the dumb race. The relative advantage of being smart, or penalty of being dumb, is reduced from where things are currently, though.

3. It mostly reduces the need to spam, since characters are going to see a much higher percentage of their skill improvements coming in an "automated" fashion. In this system, a character is only "accountable" for 10% worth of "use-based" improvement, instead of the current 25%. With most characters and most skills, this 10% should be achievable just through normal ranking.