>This is something that has definitely been changed for the
>better, but knowledge of where cabals are isn't exactly
>spelled out in a helpfile. I'ts available from the diku wiki
>map, and there is a quest, but the quest isn't exactly
>something everyone (or anyone) would stumble upon. Perhaps
>making that quest more tied into Simon's quest would be a good
>idea. Knowing who is in a cabal has really only changed for a
>few cabals as well, and for a leaders mostly.

I think being able to pledge and even just knowing who the leader is is a huger help than you think.

I remember spending weeks trying to just find out who the leader of Masters was, much less get inducted.

>This has changed, but at the same time gear today is a whole
>lot better than it once was, and the true newbie doesn't know
>how to gear any better today than they did 10 years ago and
>the amount and quality and variety of gear today is much more,
>but there is a still a lot of worthless crap out there.

Now, understand that I'm mixing contexts a bit in my bullet points -- some are things that newbish players didn't know, and some are things that almost no one knew. This is in the "almost no one" category.

I mean, seriously. Circa '94-'95? Pick the top 10 PKer mages on the mud and probably 9 of them are wearing some red dragon gear and wide coppers. The small handful of mages who thought to gear saves or HP were like unstoppable gods.

>There
>is also the truly high-end gear that not so many people know
>where to get and even fewer can truly gather with confidence.
>How many folks have had Mel-Kartha? (yes I'm picking on you
>specifically, but it illustrates my point nicely)

Mel-Kartha's kind of a weird case -- just because I can get it if you give me a character with super gear, wands, 3000 HP, and 200 damroll does not mean I can just get it with anything short of that.

But to your point, yeah, the gear knowledge gap has shifted a bit. But I think this is still on more of an even keel than it used to be, even with some cool unique stuff out there.

>NPC pets (outside of class abilities) are less important than
>they once were, but other things have more than covered that
>difference I'd say. Preps (number, variety) would be a good
>example.

This still seems like a smaller gulf to me.

Imagine you're playing Battle, and I'm playing a mage that can charm something that you literally can't damage, and once I rescue you can't redirect. My other two pets are unspeaking you. Can you win that fight?

Is fighting someone who takes, say, 30% normal damage as daunting as that? I don't really think it is.

>Hard to argue this one except to say that mud-wide summon was
>something everyone had a shot at. A gang of noobs with summon
>could be just as deadly as a vet with summon in most cases...

Well, not really: the high-end vets would have a way out of that deathtrap; they'd also have some saves gear, whereas most people wore literally zero even at very high levels. (And they might just be able to kill the gang.)

>Perhaps I'm misremembering, but assassinate used to be just a
>base chance or something... so that's improved-ish. You
>recently nerfed cleave, but I'm guessing it hadn't changed
>before that for essentially forever...

I don't think cleave has been touched since, like, the 1900s. (Excepting adding the edges that effect it.)

>PWK is just as
>deadly...

It's really not.

>Hold person has dissapeared, but neuro is somewhat
>the same... Dual backstab is the only one that comes to mind
>as being more or less totally not as likely to kill you as it
>once was... mostly because it's been completely nerfed... Am
>I missing something?

Ambush, dual backstab, and assassinate were the biggest ones.

Bonus points if you knew to haste yourself to get a triple backstab or double ambush or assassinate. These did more damage that you could realistically survive for most characters and all you could really do was not let them have the first shot.

>I would actually argue that being unable to rank up actually
>compressed the skill gap instead of making it larger (so the
>opposite of what you are implying). After all, lots of people
>rank into hero range now and promptly get steam rolled until
>they delete.

Yes, but they usually get to be caballed and have allies that teach them something along the way.

Remember that pre-heart-exploding and pre-distention, people who were level 15 for 500 hours was a thing. The biggest PKers on the mud were NEVER at the high levels. So you actually got steamrolled a lot more as a guy who was stuck at, say, 23 because you can guarantee that there's about 3-4 level 30 thieves with 60 damroll and dual backstab ready to one-shot you repeatedly.

Roving gangs of 3-4 people in the midlevels looking to clear their range were a thing, too. Why that doesn't happen anymore is a whole other discussion really.