If all wands spawned for all people, I would say that ANYONE could find one or two different kinds. Since the new system makes it so you only have access to certain wands, I would put forth that this makes extensive wand knowledge even more appealing. The easiest way to get extensive wand knowledge is to start comparing lists. The vast majority of characters that find a unique source are highly unlikely to share it. Even if they are good align.

So the question is this. Does the new system really offer everyone access to wands, or does it just lock out those with little to no wand knowledge encouraging them to find outside help? If "their wands" are really obscure, the few they do know may be useless to them.

I know this gets rehashed a lot. I just felt it was worth asking.

The short answer is that it's akin to the anti-ganking code. Essentially people started bringing bigger gangs. The tighter the grip the fewer people (numerically) will cheat but the greater the advantage the cheaters will have because fewer people (numerically) will have the coveted knowledge (read: less competition).

nt

I still say the solution to this problem is to give mages these spells in their spell lists and tie them with a hefty per tick mana drain. You could keep the wands as is. These would not have this mana drain and could maybe offer longer durations. Problem solved. You have an incentive to explore and playing field is leveled.

This sounds alot like a spell we implemented on Riftshadow.

A quest to get the spell, the spell had a duration of 8 hours. The way it worked, the spell had 3 charges every 24 hours, you had the option to keep the spell up all the time but the reduction was minimal (ie shield). The other option was to cast it more than once, up to 3 times, each time increasing the damage reduction. Once your 3 charges were gone, you couldn't cast it again until the 24 hour timer was up. The disadvantage to stacking the spell means you can't cast it again for awhile.

It has been awhile, but I think this was the jist.

Gabe

They had to change it so it started like barrier and then added shield aura with the additional castings because I kept steam rolling the mages. It helps when you have a haste form that also bites the neck to negate spell casting, but hey, thats not my fault. It was a good idea, but I generally found it to be ineffective in it's lowest form meaning that most of the time I got 1 fight every 24 hours because people couldn't hack it against a strong character without the fullest protection possible.

nt

>If all wands spawned for all people, I would say that ANYONE
>could find one or two different kinds. Since the new system
>makes it so you only have access to certain wands, I would put
>forth that this makes extensive wand knowledge even more
>appealing. The easiest way to get extensive wand knowledge is
>to start comparing lists. The vast majority of characters
>that find a unique source are highly unlikely to share it.
>Even if they are good align.
>
>So the question is this. Does the new system really offer
>everyone access to wands, or does it just lock out those with
>little to no wand knowledge encouraging them to find outside
>help? If "their wands" are really obscure, the few they do
>know may be useless to them.
>
>I know this gets rehashed a lot. I just felt it was worth
>asking.

The current system guarantees that you can find all three types of wands, whether they are your own set of sleek wands, or the highly limited wands that anyone can find.

I think it encourages mages to do some exploration and rewards them for that exploration. Will people compile lists? I'm sure they will.

I don't think there are any "really obscure" sleek wand locations. Typically when someone finds one, they are able to look around and identify more fairly easily.

The sleek system is in place, and other than adjustments here and there I don't think it'll be going anywhere.

That being said, it just occured to me after reading a post by someone who knew nothing about the sleeks, that there should be some kind of helpfile (linked to in every mage-class helpfile) that talks about the sleek wands. It does not need to give any locations, but could say something general like "they are known to be found in places where mages would dwell, or upon powerful wizards, themselves." Then it would explain that each mage character gets a generated set of sleeks.

That's all it really has to say, but I think there needs to be *something* out there like this, since quite honestly these wands are a neccessity at the high ranks.

Would that be do-able, Zulg?

for me and my friends. WE QUIT.

Yhorian and the rest of the idiots who simply don't get it: I hope you enjoy playing with fewer and fewer players. You've all brought this down on yourselves.

I distinctly remember another newbie mage, shifter in his 30s, who was asking about sleeks a few months back and I told him he'd have to find them throughout the world and were unique to each person. The guy replied pretty much saying "are you ####ing serious? I die left and right and now you're telling me I have to find a unique wand to have a chance against everyone else? #### this!" and he deleted right there.

Something that I also don't think being discussed, is if you even find your spot, if it's possible without aid. I really don't think some of these spots are entirely fair (I can think of a few sadistic ones) when other people have barrier wands they can just go pick up with little to no threat.

It's bad enough in my opinion people play the gamble with shifters, but now people play the gamble with wands as well. I've seen a few mages delete after finding their first sleek at 30 because "my locations suck". How would you feel explaining to someone completely new to the game that their sleek is on something they can't get themselves, but there opponent has four of them.

I'm also with Gromkonk about balance with wands versus without wands.

Whilst I think wands make too much of a difference, and don't agree that you intuitively have a chance of finding them alone, you can normally get guidance from other characters. Not by asking everyone, but by asking characters that you have bonded with.

I suspect this person's deletion had as much to do with the way in which you passed the information to him as the information itself. You could do plenty with a shifter with no sleeks. You just might have to do it without going air-offense.

Knowing your location isn't really enough, as I pointed out....I can think of two locations that'd I'd honestly tell a new player shifter (and I've met more than one) where I'd say "hah, good luck getting that" - even more if they're immune to blunt.

It would be interesting to hear from some of the recent decently-successful mage characters about their experience with wands. Granted some of these were played by staff, but if you don't think they cheated then that can be ignored.

Would the following folks please post (in reverse order of character termination): Haratzi, Kharghurln, Palmer, Isabeaux, Nuloh, Kanaev, Enarn.

Which is it:

1. These guys kicked ass despite having trouble finding wands.

2. These guys had wands in quantity but only through OOC knowledge.

3. These guys had wands in quantity through completely in-game means, but only because they lucked out and had easy locations.

4. These guys had wands in quantity through completely in-game means and weren't especially lucky location-wise.

I'd like to see answers here, be interesting.

Personally I think the wand system works out ok as it is. With Palmer, I had an easy shield source and a moderately easy aura source and a royal pain in the ass barrier source. I didn't find my barrier source until well after hero, but I had the other two earlier. While my shield and aura sources were relatively easy, both had some major drawbacks that may not appear obvious unless you play the same character with the same sources for an extended period of time in that you are continually going back to the same places over and over again. This means that if your enemies are good at following you, they can set up ambushes in that spot and generally catch you. Granted this is true for any pattern, but with wands there isn't really a workaround.

Example: I used the old dwarf as a regular source of zombies, so anyone could wait and ambush me when I was going to kill him and more than one ranger did exactly that. However, I could summon the mob sometimes, so that might not be the best solution to finding me. But, if I always have to go to X spot to get the wands, you can find me there almost every login at some point. This didn't really ever happen with Palmer that I recall, but since I was extremely cognizant of it, I made sure I used different routes and did whatever I could to disguise what I was really doing.

Back to your general question though, I don't think having abs readily available to me made that big a difference, but that could also be my playstyle at work. I got my first kill with Palmer at level 11 and for the most part got at least one kill every level thereafter, so for the bulk of my kills I had no preps. Once I hit hero I sort of felt I needed the preps, but with a few exceptions I really didn't need them. They helped me with killing mobs more than anything and perhaps they made me more confident that I could walk into a situation and not die so quickly that I couldn't get out, so I was more likely to mix it up, but it was a very rare fight that came out that close. Most of my fights were fairly one-sided in that I either was going to get a kill or the person was going to get away (or I was going to die, but I don't dwell on that) and those various preps really didn't make much of a difference except perhaps from a psychological point of view.

Ymmv, but I really don't think that abs makes that big a difference and I think the system we have works fairly well.

No offense, but a necromancer is a pretty close example of someone not needing preparation because most of your kills/deathfulness doesn't come from actual combat. You can sleep someone the exact same without a/b/s or have an army rescue you against a blind combatant and avoid combat all together while someone dies.

Quite different for someone requiring to fight like a transmuter/AP/invoker/shifter.

I don't know how someone like you, who obviously plays long long hours, can have no idea what they're talking about. Pretty much ALL the time.

Probably has something to do with his only playing one class.

It didn't seem that he went to go get wands often at all. Occasionally he would have them from his locations it seemed, but he'd often just have sanc from me or another cabalmate, limited wands from grabbing gear in explore areas, or just from wasting evil mages.

I talked a bit about a/b/s on my farewell, but I'll repost it here.

I had a very, very easy sleek aura source. I pretty much had aura up 24/7.

I found my sleek barrier source pretty early, but I couldn't really get it without a lot of pain until I was about 45th level, and then only with Empire powers. Even after I heroed, it was a pain in the ass, and wasn't what I would call easy to get.

I didn't find my sleek shield source until like 2/3 of the way through Khar's life, and it was so far out of the way that I didn't go there very often.

So I think I fall under #1 above, or maybe #4, depending on what "in quantity" means.

As for fights, if I was raiding or defending, I'd usually (always in raids) have aura and barrier up - I'd make it a point to go get a sleek black as soon as I logged in if I didn't have one when I logged out. If I was fighting a RBW, I'd usually have aura and barrier up. If I was planning on fighting what I considered a "tough" opponent, one that I'd fought before and maybe had trouble with, I'd usually have aura and barrier up. If I was taking on multiple opponents by my choice, I'd always have aura and barrier up.

Shield was a rarity, and I almost never used stone skin.

But I fought and killed plenty of tough opponents without barrier; I wasn't afraid to give it a go, see how it played out.

Not saying our current system is perfect, but I think it plays out pretty well. I would agree that it isn't newbie-friendly, and I think that might be one area we should address.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

As Enarn I think it was #3 by virue of duo. My barrier was a matter of walking to it. Shields a grab and flee. Aura... think my source on that one was a two spell fight. This was one of the very few mages I have ever played where I pretty much always had wands, even though I've known dozens of spots with other characters too. One good thing about wand knowledge, doesn't die with your character.

Do you mean your friends who had a list of shared wands, or just players that found them all on their own?

Because I know that under the old system, I NEVER got sleeks because they were maxed out by people with lists.

And because of the old system, these same people also maxed out all the non-sleek wands.

The only source of frustration regarding wands in general to me is that, being that you having them doesn't hurt anyone, I don't get why they should disappear so easily from inactivity.

I sorta gave up on my mage when I figured out I had to play at least once a week for over an hour to retain my wands.

I've been playing since a while before the changes went in and this is the first I've heard that each mage gets a generated set of sleeks.

>I don't think there are any "really obscure" sleek wand locations. Typically when someone finds one, they are able to look around and identify more fairly easily.


That is where the majority of those who dislike the a/b/s system disagree with you, in my opinion.

I've played quite a few mages, a number of which have spent hours looking for sleek locations. Never found one with a mage.

Might have found one or two with a non-mage, but I have no idea of knowing.

Except once. With a warrior way back, I found a hidden location on accident (mis-spelled a look command) that I thought might be a sleek.

I was going to check that with my next mage char, but between that warrior and the next mage char. tlb and such went out. And yes, That spot WAS a spot for a sleek. But wasn't anymore. Heh.


I'm not an idiot. And I know alot about this game in many areas. And I disagree with the above statement made by you. And you know what, That's my opinion and it is valid for me.

The above is your opinion, and is valid for you. A very high level immortal. That's fine.


I know you, or SOMEONE will take this the wrong way, like I am attacking you or something, so ####it I'll just come right out and say it....

Maybe you could try a *LITTLE* harder to look at it from the perspective of the not-insignificant-number of players who like me have struggled with the A/b/s system BECAUSE we haven't wanted to cheat and feel mildly insulted when it seems an Imp or other high up imm is telling us we are complete idiots for not rocking the A/b/s world with minimal effort.

not directed at you specifically Z, many of the high-up imms have made posts that, to me at least, gave the impression that they thought deep down that "Hey, I as an Imp can reverse engineer the system and find a/b/s at lvl 36 *fairly easily*, if you can't by hero you are an utter noob, so I am not even going to listen to your opinion on the whole A/b/s thing"

nt

FWIW, I have an idea submitted that we're still discussing that would address some of your concerns in (I think) a fairly cool way.

It's still in the discussion phase but it's not unlikely that something will be implemented.

Sorry it's so vague but since we're still discussing, details would be, well, just plain stupid to give out right now. :P

nt

A good part of the reason I don't play frequently more than I do is because I'm not interested in spending a huge amount of time (like 50 hours) searching for wands with every character. There are a lot of fun video games that don't require that kind of tedium.

I think this is the reality of online multiplayer gaming these days, and CF needs to adapt or just accept that gamers have matured (and new gamers are coming in with a different mindset) and almost nobody finds it fun to hunt and hunt for things anymore. Every game that has items in locations, has a host of sites dedicated to people sharing that information, because 99% of people just don't enjoy searching for very much.

Also, because CF has permanent character death, there needs to be a minimum of tedious tasks repeated every character. MMORGS get away with an awful lot of boring grinding, because people can do it once and then put it behind them. CF has way less grinding, but what there is has to be repeated for every character.

Skill practice is quite an old horse, but it is an area where a (relatively small) amount of tedium is pretty necesary for many classes. but I think it would be to swap the use-based improvement system to a purely level-based system. e.g. you gain an int/wis-based increase in skill % every level. Imm rewards would still have an effect, as would quests. Frankly, the only thing the use-based system does is reward people who are willing to do a bunch of tedium. I suppose it also benefits the few rare people who know where the holes in the system are so they can max their skills easily even on low-int races.

Level-grinding is mostly okay, though I don't think experience-loss (via mob or WANTED) adds anything to the game. There are other ways to penalize these things without resorting to increasing tedium.

>A good part of the reason I don't play frequently more than I
>do is because I'm not interested in spending a huge amount of
>time (like 50 hours) searching for wands with every character.

Do all your characters have to be mages? If anything, the harder the wand system is, the more of a boon it is for non-mage players. Think of all the mages without a/b/s you could feast upon!

>Do all your characters have to be mages?

Nope, they don't, but they're what I like best.

Orcs and warriors are too gear dependant for my taste. The low-int varieties (which are otherwise the ones I'd usually pick) also require way, way more skill practice (just to get to the mid-80s) than I can begin to tolerate. Bear in mind, my 300 hour bard didn't even perfect trip, or get staff skill to 85%. I *really* can't stand skill practice just for the sake of skill practice and warriors have a crapload of skills that you really should get up to at least mid-80s or so.

Thieves are okay, but they're not really my style.

Assassins are generally fine. Somewhat gear and practice dependant, but not too bad. They're too vulnerable to bash for my taste. I've played a few and they went okay. Would play another.

Rangers are okay, but I find their wilderness-dependence very frustrating. They share much of the same gear dependence situation that makes warriors unappealing. Overall, not my cup of tea.

Healers can't PK except with leet gear I don't play conservatively enough to hold on to. One of my favorite character ever was a healer, and I'd play another, but not really to kill with.

Paladins are fine, but can't seal kills worth a damn, something I have terrible problems with anyway. Also their skillset is a bit lackluster and the high exp penalty turns me off. I will play a paladin at some point.

Druids and Shaman are solid and fit me well. I recently played one though. Generally with empowerment classes I have a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew and deleting when I can't live up to my role.

Bards are currently the class I'm most suited to, but I just played one and while I do have another idea in the wings it'll be too obvious it's me if I play it right now.

Mages generally appeal to me most.

I'm sure this was all very boring to you, but eh, you asked.

>>I don't think there are any "really obscure" sleek wand
>locations. Typically when someone finds one, they are able to
>look around and identify more fairly easily.
>
>That is where the majority of those who dislike the a/b/s
>system disagree with you, in my opinion.
>
>I've played quite a few mages, a number of which have spent
>hours looking for sleek locations. Never found one with a
>mage.
>
>Might have found one or two with a non-mage, but I have no
>idea of knowing.
>
>Except once. With a warrior way back, I found a hidden
>location on accident (mis-spelled a look command) that I
>thought might be a sleek.
>
>I was going to check that with my next mage char, but between
>that warrior and the next mage char. tlb and such went out.
>And yes, That spot WAS a spot for a sleek. But wasn't anymore.
>Heh.
>
>I'm not an idiot. And I know alot about this game in many
>areas. And I disagree with the above statement made by you.
>And you know what, That's my opinion and it is valid for me.
>
>The above is your opinion, and is valid for you. A very high
>level immortal. That's fine.
>
>I know you, or SOMEONE will take this the wrong way, like I am
>attacking you or something, so ####it I'll just come right out
>and say it....

Nah, I don't take it as an attack. I've done this long enough to know discussion can help flesh out ideas like the ABS system.

>Maybe you could try a *LITTLE* harder to look at it from the
>perspective of the not-insignificant-number of players who
>like me have struggled with the A/b/s system BECAUSE we
>haven't wanted to cheat and feel mildly insulted when it seems
>an Imp or other high up imm is telling us we are complete
>idiots for not rocking the A/b/s world with minimal effort.

I don't think anyone is saying you are an idiot for not rocking the ABS world with minimal effort. If you could do it with minimal effort, we would just give everyone all three spells. The system as it stands is supposed to be a bit hard, because the rewards are really good.

>not directed at you specifically Z, many of the high-up imms
>have made posts that, to me at least, gave the impression that
>they thought deep down that "Hey, I as an Imp can reverse
>engineer the system and find a/b/s at lvl 36 *fairly easily*,
>if you can't by hero you are an utter noob, so I am not even
>going to listen to your opinion on the whole A/b/s thing"

I can reverse engineer it because I made it :P That being said, I don't think any mage can do this easily at level 36 (though they may stumble across an aura wand in their exploration). I don't think any mage can do this easily at 45 (though they may stumble across a shield wand in their exploration). I think hero level mages stand the best chance because they have the best survivability, can explore some areas easier or with less chance of death.

I'm not sure who you're talking about that thinks the ABS system is easy. It was not designed to be so.

It was not designed expecting everyone to have ABS all the time.
It was not designed to be easy.

It was designed to give everyone an opportunity to get ABS.
It was designed to reward mages for exploration by giving them decent to significant damage reduction.
It was designed to provide other options for ABS that are not your specific sleek wands.

This is what I look at and find it to be successful. Are there room for improvements. Sure, as Twist eluded to we are talking about some currently.

Generally, when people start bringing up the word improvement, it ends up being a complete freaking revamp.

Are we going to have to re-learn an entire new system, spends hundreds and hundreds more hours figuring out how things work? And even then, we still might not get it or understand it?

Change is good up to a point. But if the change or improvement will involve dramatic changes to the current system, to the point of having to learn something entirely different, don't you think that will help contribute to a declining (summer) *playerbase?

* I don't really care what the playerbase is. I generally put in my hour a day, sometimes not. Until I'm the only person online, I'll continue putting in those hour time slots.

>Generally, when people start bringing up the word
>improvement, it ends up being a complete freaking revamp.

What we've been talking about is purely an addition to what currently exists today. Nothing new to relearn.

> The system as it stands is supposed to be a bit hard, because the rewards are really good.

May be the root problem is that "the rewards are really good"? Perhaps it's not the greatest idea to give out rewards that good for exploration and automated quests, because of the OOC information sharing? Also, consider a person who does not enjoy exploration. For such a person exploration after a while becomes as fun as skill spamming. Why make him do it? Not saying don't give out any rewards at all, just may be don't give out rewards that affect the game balance as much as ABS does?

If you look at the PBF for Spenner, I got ripped fairly well for not using ABS all the time. I spent a pretty large chunk of time looking for my sleeks, and never found even one. The thing is, I know where sleeks should be popping from previous (recent post-TLB) characters, and from places I have been told ICly wands can be. I spent probably a good 50 or more hours of that characters life JUST looking for wands, and not finding even one sleek.

Sure, I could have gone to a certain area explore and gotten them, but for something thats supposed to be such a large part of a mages life, not even being able to find one sleek tells me there's a problem. I'd say my area knowledge is better than most. I know the mud backwards and forwards, I know of at least a few places I go regularly that most people will never even see. But I couldn't find my goddamn sleeks.

I think if the classes are going to be balanced assuming mages have access to wands, they should be at least a little easier to come by. Why should you reasonably expect someone to spend a quarter or more of their life examining keywords in an easter egg hunt? Does that sound like something that would actually be fun? I'm really not trying to be disrespectful here, you know I've never had any issues with you so this isn't like me trying to be a cock just because you're an imm and I want to be disagreeable. I want your honest opinion. Is the easter egg hunt that the ABS system now stands as, something that you see as fun for the player? And if not, how can you reasonably expect someone to want to spend a large portion of their character time on it?

Point 1: If a class is balanced on the fact that its access to wands takes some effort then making those wands more readily available unbalances the class. Therefore, it makes little sense from a balance perspective to make wands more readily available. However, I dislike the idea of any class being balanced upon the idea that exploration is mandatory. This is why I mainly play priests, because all of my goodies are in my bag and I don't HAVE to go out looking for stuff so that I can compete. This is also why I'll never play a poisoner/trapper or a mage. The ONLY way I'd play those characters is after finding a bunch of wands with other non-mage characters first OR somebody emailed me a list. Therefore, in my opinion the A/B/S system encourages cheating. At least, it encourages me to cheat if I want to play a mage.

Point 2: Some people, me included, enjoy "easter egg hunts." However, people say that the easiest way to make a hobby less enjoyable is to make it your job. I like few things more than spending a few hours in an area looking at keywords in the hopes that I'll find something new. However, when I feel I HAVE to do it to survive it becomes less like a hobby and more like work. The best thing the imm staff could do to remedy this situation is make barrier an intrinsic part of each mage class, but make it something you have to work towards in another way. I don't have the time to create a unique system that wouldn't be much like what other classes already have to do (i.e., master spells, lich quest, etc.), but I'd even start playing mages if I had aura/barrier/shield in my spell list but putting them up cost me 1000 mana and they only lasted two hours. That to me is better than being mandated to get out and search.

Point 3: When I wrote HTS part of the idea was to have wands there for sale at exorbitant prices (currently I think only one is sold there for 50 gold?). Generally, I'd find it easier to go out and kill an assload of coin-heavy mobs so that I can buy wands (if only at hero) than to go out and endlessly search for wands that may/may not repop when they use them.

If I get off my ass and finish magic item standardization, you'll probably see these for sale at some point.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

>Point 1: If a class is balanced on the fact that its access
>to wands takes some effort then making those wands more
>readily available unbalances the class.

The thing is that the effort of wands is almost mitigated if you know where to find them.

What would keep the classes balanced and eliminate the exploration tedium is if mages had a trio of "create _type_ wand" spells that each create one wand of aura, shield or barrier. The wands have a few charges (4ish), can only be used by the caster, decay after a period of time, and can only be created every so often. For example you might have 15/30/45 tick timers for aura/shield/barrier. That way you still have to manage your use of a/b/s, which keeps the important balance aspect (i.e. mages aren't guaranteed to have abs at all times) but alleviates the explore tedium.

That's an interesting idea.

Could make it sufficiently inconvenient to create them as well. Maybe it sucks a ton of mana and lags you like creating a ranger staff. Maybe it has a chance to fail every so often (and you still get the timer). Etc.

I like this idea too. You could additionally require the mage to gather the "parts" a la mix. There are "treasure" items all over that could be used in the creation of the wands to make them more/less powerful based on the worth of the item of treasure.

Alternatively, you could create shoppies that sell the parts (this is really just a cheap way of me petitioning the imm staff to come up with a reason for the shoppies outside of HTS. You know, the ones that sell pieces of wood that look like they could be made into wands).

I like when the players can get together and take an idea and have their say and refine an idea. I'd really dig seeing something like this implemented.

At this point admitting the wand system should be changed would be paramount to the CIA admitting a UFO landed at Roswell. It'd be great, but I have my doubts.

It's not like the system that's in right now has always been the system that's in.

Just because I think nearly all of the ideas suggested to replace the system over several years are either completely retarded or actually make the system worse or more annoying, does not mean I think it's perfect. Like democracy! :)

If it's just completely retarded, well, okay, not much to talk about here. I don't see what is completely retarded about it, but okay.

Worse? As in, has more flaws? I suppose that if you don't agree about what the flaws in the current system are then you might easily think the mage-crafted wands suggestion is worse. Here are the flaws as I see them

1. Current system requires pointless hassle of writing down every empty container and every strong mage mob you find .

2. With every mage rolled, you get the obnoxious tedium of checking every item on that list until you find your sleeks.

4. It can take a very long time spent on sheer drudgery to find the wands.

5. It contains a very significant luck-of-the-draw component. Some characters will get wands they can gather easily, some will get wands they cannot gather without help. Needing others to help gather your wands makes using them far, far less viable, especially if your character does not have a lot of allies that like to waste time helping gathering other people's wands.

6. Cheaters gain an advantage by sharing wand locations.

7. People who need the wands most (newer players) are least likely to get them and vice versa.

Since the mage-crafted wands suggestion removes all of these problems, it would need a greater amount of flaws to be considered worse. I would honestly like to know what you consider the mage-crafted wands system's flaws?

As for "more annoying" I can only imagine that the mage-crafted wands suggestion is more annoying if you never have any problem getting your wands anyway. You're basically trading not having to look for your wands with having more hard-and-fast limits on how much you can get them. This is only more annoying if you A> don't value your time B> love the tedium of searching for wand or C> have the ability to get your wands very easily with virtually no effort. This might work out great for you, Nep, but us mere peons really are not in that position.

Wands are there for expansion, no one is supposed to be guaranteed sleeks. They are a reward for exploration. Get it through your head.

The main reason I hate this system? Every mage has ABS all the time, and will NEVER fight without it, ever. Run out of ABS? Retreat and wait off the timers, reprep, and head back out to slaughtering wand-less classes. At least with the current system mages are forced, with every new character, to explore and find these wands, thus EARNING them.

If you don't like the fact that you have to earn rewards in CF, go play something else and stop crying about how unfair everything is.

That's retarded.

Point blank - you only play non-mages.

As a mage such as an invoker, AP, transmuter, necromancer or evil conjurer, my viability without ANY ABS WHATSOEVER is far below my PK viability as any cleric, stealth class or melee class.

Therefore the wands are what *balances* the class. In other words, these classes would be crippled *without* wands. Its not a 'reward', its a necessity unless you're a masochist that likes to pick classes that are crippled.

I don't get whats so hard to grasp about that, if they were unnecessary why would Imm played mortals be using them all the time? Cabdru had barrier at 36, if he thought it was totally optional and superfluous why would he bother?

not sleek, either. Just one that someone told me about in exchange for...something - haste at a critical cabal raid or something, maybe?

Kharia avoided PK for role reasons, and yet was 2/1 in the pk situations that I was unable to avoid.

I firmly believe that if I had wanted to rape my pk range as Kharia I could have done so pretty damn easily, without barrier/aura/shield, by being opportunistic.

Sure, if I had needed to raid an enemy cabal or something, I'd have been somewhat weak. But then, at that point, I'd have been in a cabal, and have had more characters with which to trade things like potential sleek locations.

Is this intended to be the "see, the sleek system is fine, so shut up!" post of the year? Nah. I'm just pointing out that Kharia was my first mage comeback char, had NO wand knowledge, and still did just fine.

>Kharia avoided PK for role reasons, and yet was 2/1 in the pk
>situations that I was unable to avoid.
>Nah. I'm just pointing out that
>Kharia was my first mage comeback char, had NO wand knowledge,
>and still did just fine.

You can do great things with RP, exploration and so forth without a/b/s, or without even practicing a skill for that matter. But I really think you'd find that as a more pk-intensive mage, you would need to either have abs available at least a decent portion of the time, or play very conservatively. So while I guess you can call 2/1 in pk just fine (though it's such a small sample size) I'm not sure that it really says much. I just wouldn't call opportunistic killing the same thing as raping your range.

Vargal:
I see what you're saying, but my suggestion is really no different than now with regards how often mages are able to keep abs up. In fact, it reduces their ability to keep it up all the time. Right now, a mage can choose not to fight you and just run off and hide until he has a chance to get his wand. That's no different from running off and hiding until he has a chance to create his wand. Unless you really are going to just camp his wand location for hours.

I think mages really do need abs at least some of the time to be on even keel with other classes at hero. They don't need full-time, easy a/b/s, that would be overpowered, but they have to play ultra-conservatively if they and only pick opportunistic fights otherwise. Compare to a warrior or ranger or empowerment class than can pretty much throwdown anytime and have a good chance.

The only answer to this I can say is that I probably average 5/1 kills vs deaths. My current mage has a pk ratio of about 5/1 and he uses ABS. I can only presume that if I did not use ABS I would have a PK ratio of less than 5 to 1 and I definately feel a lot more fragile when I have no ABS. That to me seems to indicate that a mage with ABS = balanced with a shaman/druid/warrior/etc. Whereas a mage without ABS isn't.

You went 2/1 but if you were a ranger how would you do? I'm not saying you can't play a mage without ABS and manage to not con die. I'm saying that if I played a ranger/warrior/thief/etc I would have far better PK stats than a mage without any dam redux. Every "successful" pk'ing mage has had ABS for major fights. I'd never fight a char like Hunsobo without ABS, and there's no way in hell I'd win (I'd be surprised if I even survived) unless I was a mongoose or something.

I was saying it was literally 2 wins, 1 loss. As I said, I *really* didn't seek out PK and *really* attempted to avoid it.

That said, with one aura source I'd probably have been 50/50 at hero levels if I wanted to really mix it up - but that'd be by being very opportunistic, attacking groups while they were leveling, etc. Just raiding Fortress to kill someone at the Watcher wouldn't happen, no.

My point wasn't that you don't need advantages like ABS to be deathful (I consider 5/1 pretty deathful), it was that you don't have to have ABS to have a successful character.

Many consider a char successful purely (or largely) based on number of pkwins. Some throw in "oh and I didn't die much" as a tack-on. I consider all the stuff I learned with Kharia, the bits of RP with other mortals I got, and so-on to be parts of why I found her "successful."

I'm going to also use this post to reiterate that we ARE working on something that will probably help matters and addresses several of the issues mentioned above. It won't be "let mages make their own barrier wands" - I hate that idea on several levels - but what it will be is pretty cool, at least in my opinion.

Except, of course, that Zulg is kind of a left-coaster it seems and likes the color pink. ;)

My point wasn't that 2/1 or 5/1 matters. My point is a comparison of mages to other classes, given all else equal. If you think a mage without ABS is on par with other classes, then I guess we'll have to disagree, because that would mean a mage with ABS is overpowered which I don't feel is accurate.

Your post is in the vein of "I could make a felar sword/axe spec and do 'Ok'." Whereas mine is contrasting other options with "mage without ABS" and deciding those other options are much stronger in a fight.

I am not entirely disagreeing with you, but I have a couple of comments to contribute:

Hunsobo is a terrible example because he is an "elite" warrior. If you read your post in context with this entire thread, you are saying that any mage should have the potential to go toe-to-toe with the strongest warrior playing right now. And that's just wrong. What about all the other not-Hunsobo warriors that get creamed by ABS mages? You cannot balance mages by stacking it so that their default is to be able to face their toughest imaginable opposition. I guess I don't see a problem with only the "Hunsobo-class" mages being able to go toe-to-toe with a "Hunsobo-class" warrior.


>Every "successful" pk'ing mage
>has had ABS for major fights.


These "major" fights are generally fighting against multiple enemies in raid situations. ABS characters are one of the few that can stand toe-to-toe and do this. This means that "not having ABS" means "being on par with clever classes like thieves/rangers/warriors that can't wade in and kill everyone in sight".

I think we need to examine the average mage vs. the average warrior/thief/ranger/whatever. Does the average mage without ABS have all the tools it needs to defeat the average warrior, of equal skill, 50% of the time? I think it does. ABS is what turns the average mage into something more akin to a "Hunsobo-class" warrior. And as a result, its use should definitely not be easily available for every fight.

And as a side note, I think the reason why mage PK totals are generally so much lower than other classes is because ABS encourages extremely conservative play. No one is willing to play without that extreme advantage - the kind of advantage that lets them take on 3 enemies, but they use it to make sure they can defeat one. You might see more high PK totals if competent mages played that way. For example, Jinroh's shifter.

n/t

>warrior/thief/ranger/whatever. Does the average mage without
>ABS have all the tools it needs to defeat the average warrior,
>of equal skill, 50% of the time? I think it does.

And I would say no. A mage like that is absolutely dependant on opportunism. A warrior isn't. Sure, a mage *could* go 50/50 or even win 100% by being extra cautious, but that's not the question. In my experience, with mages and non-mages, is that mages without at least some extra protections are too fragile to be scary (unless you have no saves and get surprised and slept). I mean, as a *bard* with a nightwalker in the daytime, a couple of times I out-melleed a hero transmuter with a/b/s who froze me, but failed to soften/decalc me before he got wittled down. And I had crappy saves. Now imagine if I was a warrior with decent saves and he had no a/b/s... he wouldn't stand a chance.

Do you think Lightmage is just an idiot, because he has said that you need a/b/s as a shifter. Overall I think that while there certainly are a number of different cases where mages can win without a/b/s, they can't get in there and mix it up, and absolutely must rely on opportunism. By contrast, most melee classes can accept a wider variety of fights and have a pretty even chance. A full a/b/s mage is probably more on the overpowered side, and that's why they shouldn't be given a/b/s all the time. But without at least something they are definitely lacking.

Lastly, you're forgetting that anyone can pretty easily prepare to fight a mage by gearing for svs, which can really ruin the mage's chances.

>Do you think Lightmage is just an idiot, because he has said
>that you need a/b/s as a shifter.

Idiot? No. Biased given his strong preference for the shifter class and sometimes given to unrealistic expectations, sure.

I mean, when a guy is going 60-0 with a shifter and telling you they are underpowered, you have to question that a bit.

Nep, if you think ABS is so trivial to the success of a mage, why not prove us wrong? You used ABS, didn't you?

I don't think I've ever said it's trivial. It's also just not essential for every fight. Or for every mage. Or vs. every high-damage opponent, etc.

I mean, we're not politicans seizing on sound bites here. Shades of gray do exist.

That being said, no-ABS-ever mage would probably be an interesting challenge character for a veteran. Although, I suspect if I did one there'd always be some reason why it wasn't a true test of the theory (witness Torak responding to Palmer talking about ABS with... well, of COURSE a NECROMANCER can make it work, but...)

>(witness Torak responding to
>Palmer talking about ABS with... well, of COURSE a NECROMANCER
>can make it work, but...)

I still stand by my comment - necros can completely kill someone without every even being in combat, 1on1. Every other class 1on1 requires being infront and taking damage. There is a huge difference between fighting a berserker villager laying out deathblows compared to a villager slept and who is pretty much dead before they even wake up, not to mention a spell that can instantly kill someone.

In theory, that's true.

In theory, an A-P can just cleave whoever in half and doesn't even need to fight.

If you can put a Battle character to sleep and kill them, odds are they weren't very good (or didn't have their cabal powers) and you probably didn't need barrier.

Aside: If I'm playing the berserker, your odds of cleaving me in half are much, much, much better than your odds of a fatal PWK.

Which is, no matter what kind of mage someone played without ABS wands, there'd be someone who thought that doing it with that was no big deal.

Edited to add: Or, who would think that playing that kind of character that way, at least, didn't constitute much of an accomplishment. I bet someone'd say that about assassin-style opportunistic wandless transmuter, for example.

>Edited to add: Or, who would think that playing that kind of
>character that way, at least, didn't constitute much of an
>accomplishment. I bet someone'd say that about assassin-style
>opportunistic wandless transmuter, for example.

I will admit that if any disadvanted but opportunistic character is trotted out as having a high win/loss ratio, I will call it unimpressive. It will never surprise me if a skilled player manages to get a favorable ratio by playing extremely conservatively. On the other hand, if they get a lot of kills per hour, that would be impressive.


Any class can get a very high kill ratio by being super conservative and opportunistic and maybe a little lucky. If you play naked, never practice anything but bash, second/third/fouth attack and hand to hand you could get a high ratio with enough effort. You could play an assassin without hide or sneak that never wearrs any gear and still got kills just by waiting and waiting until the perfect chance comes up. A duegar AP can practice on cleave and axe and get a perfect record by just waiting for cleave to work and running at the merest hint of danger. That doesn't mean that assassins don't need gear to be on par with other classes, or that warriors don't need specs or legacies.

So a necromancer that scores a high ratio by being cautious and running away anytime sleep fails isn't really very amazing. Likewise a transmuter that waits for people to be injured and pops out to one-shot them with disrupt organ or whatever isn't really indicative of anything either. The real test is, can you play a mage without wands and still have results on par with those you'd normally get as a warrior, assassin, or any other non-mage. If not, then that pretty much says mages need some access to a/b/s to be balanced.

>I don't think I've ever said it's trivial. It's also just
>not essential for every fight. Or for every mage. Or vs.
>every high-damage opponent, etc.
>
>I mean, we're not politicans seizing on sound bites here.
>Shades of gray do exist.

I tend to look at things in terms of absolutes because that's just how my mind works.

>Worse? As in, has more flaws?

Let's say, is overall not better than. It's not really about a longer list of flaws or strengths so much as whether the whole is better or not.

>Since the mage-crafted wands suggestion removes all of these
>problems, it would need a greater amount of flaws to be
>considered worse.

Not necessarily number. I'll keep going.

>I would honestly like to know what you
>consider the mage-crafted wands system's flaws?

I'm not going to enumerate flaws in an absolute sense so much as discuss problems I see with this system vs. the existing system, or strong points of the existing system that it lacks. This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list so much as just some of the ideas that occur to me.

1 and 2) It removes all interaction from the equation.

Have you ever traded potential wand locations with another character in game? Whether a straight up trade with another mage or a trade of that piece of information for something else of value to a character or simply assistance given to your IC allies, the current system allows for all of these things. I'm not kidding myself that this is the only way any of this information gets around, but if I actually have a day with a decent amount of free time to watch mortal conversations/interactions, I will almost always see one of the above at least once.

Even experienced players who know a bunch of wand locations often do these things. Maybe I've figured out where my sleek black rod is, but my invoker can't really get it. Now I'm out trying to find some alternate barrier locations that I can handle, and existing ones that I know from other characters might not be good for specifically this character.

Your system axes all of that.

The current system has a second spot for interaction: actually getting the wands. Often I'll need or want to use a wand location that involves killing something or somethings that my mage can't really handle on his own. I had a mage last year that *could* kill the mob that held his preferred barrier wand at hero, but it took a lot of time and generally a pile of gold to heal faster or fix maledictions. Recruiting other characters whenever possible made that substantially easier.

Your system axes that kind of interaction, also.

3) Your system doesn't value exploration at all.

From the sounds of things, you really don't so much as a player either. That's okay, but we're not working with the exact same set of priorities and it is a factor on my list.

4) Your system encourages/empowers more conservative play. I feel like there's generally enough rewards for that as things stand, and while I don't want to wholesale remove all of them, I don't think we'd make a better game by adding more without good reasons.

The way this would play out seems pretty self-evident to me so I'm not going to dig into it, but if you don't see it or disagree I could.

5) Your system eliminates/minimalizes risk (and, for the most part, decisions and opportunities) around actually getting the wands.

For example, trailing someone who's getting their wand and stalking/assassinating them.

Or finding an opponent and initiating a fight with them because you've noticed they keep going back to the Forest of Nowhere for some reason (which they happen to be doing because a wand they gather is there.)

Or fighting in a way to run an opponent who has your cabal's item out of wands. Now they have an interesting choice to make: go and re-get the wands, in which case they leave the cabal HQ exposed for a brief but valuable window, or continue to fight you without wands...

A character who has to go somewhere, anywhere to get their wands is always opening themselves up to risks by doing so, no matter how slim. A character who can park inside their guild or cabal and create them can largely eliminate most of these risks.


6) Your system eliminates Veil-based decision making.

Probably, a powerful mage NPC has a wand that I want. Killing him will thicken the Veil, making my magic weaker. Forgoing the wand won't, but now I don't have a wand.

Generally, getting the wand is the right choice here... but it is a tactical choice that you're eliminating.

That's about all I have time for at the moment. Hopefully it's some food for thought.

>As for "more annoying" I can only imagine that the
>mage-crafted wands suggestion is more annoying if you never
>have any problem getting your wands anyway. You're basically
>trading not having to look for your wands with having more
>hard-and-fast limits on how much you can get them. This is
>only more annoying if you A> don't value your time B> love the
>tedium of searching for wand or C> have the ability to get
>your wands very easily with virtually no effort. This might
>work out great for you, Nep, but us mere peons really are not
>in that position.

It's not really that simple, and CF not being a single-player game annoyance has to be considered in a more general sense. For example, is it annoying as hell as a Battle thief to deal with an air major shifter enemy who will only fight me with full A/B/S and otherwise is parked far ass away from me for the other 90% of the time he's logged on? Sure is. Under the current system I still potentially have a lot of that problem, but I have the opportunity to gradually learn his preferred wand locations and turn that to my advantage. He can't just go fly up to Arial City and wait out his reuse timers on me.

Ironically, I don't view any of those as good things. Not a single one. Every one of them seems, to me, like an unnecessary point of failure. Lets say I require interaction to make my wand situation work, now I'm hinging on something (that my allies will be useful, intelligent, or at least around) which is completely beyond my control. What does it add to the fun factor for me? Nothing, in all seriousness.

Ditto for exploration. I'm cool with exploration rewarding people, but it shouldn't be intertwined into class balance. Meaning, I shouldn't be crippled from playing a class if I haven't done my exploration quota. Once again, a point of failure in a generally accessible scenario (classes that anyone can pick) which in most other systems would be considered a bad idea rather than a good one.

Out of curiousity, do you think if you polled all players (not just vocal ones like me), they would rank these 'benefits' higher than the class being playable by everyone? Even the 'haves' like Lightmage didn't like the system as it exists. I'm never without barrier and I don't like how the system is either. It seems like its a pain in the ass just for the sake of being a pain in the ass and to some degree, you're stating exactly that.

>Ironically, I don't view any of those as good things. Not a
>single one. Every one of them seems, to me, like an
>unnecessary point of failure.

Obviously, I don't agree.

The game is full of points of failure that, individually and strictly speaking, don't really have to be there but open up tactical opportunities and possibilities. Needing to deal with food/drink. Spell durations that run down and leave a character (possibly only briefly) without that spell on them. Levelling a character. Characters having variable skill levels. Characters needing to get gear and make gear choices. Characters needing to decide how they're going to get from point A to point B. And so on.

If it's not an interesting and (from a gameplay perspective) acceptable risk that a stealth class might jump me as I'm trying to get a wand... I don't know, at that point I honestly don't understand what you actually find interesting/fun about the game or think it should be.

Personally I like roleplaying mages and priests more than warriors/rangers/thieves/etc. To me, the wand system, since it only affects mages, is a dissincentive to play mages. I'm ok with things being applied evenly across the board but I view the wand system as a way to, primarily, screw over mage classes and newbies.

The main thing you forgot to mention is that the system as it is has one profound flaw that the others don't - they make my class abilities intertwined with the amount of time I spend online. Amount of time spent gathering wands, amount of time spent online to avoid getting hit with anti-hording code, etc, and its part of the class balance. In terms of the affect that has, I'd rate it as an 8 out of 10 in terms of impact in how it affects my playing. Contrast this with the amount of times I've been assassinated/tripped to death getting wands (0).

There's plenty of tactical situations in the game in terms of ranking, cabal raids, deception, gear gathering, quest completion, etc. This one appears to be one that just focuses on making mages a pain in the ass to play. That to me is the difference. I'm actually probably going to delete the mage I'm playing now because I just realized that the overtime I pulled at work last weekend means all my wands will be gone by my next login. Its just not fun to me to spend half of every login gathering wands and the other half thumb firmly planted in ass trying to get a group or find someone to PK. Once you get to the point where you're able to start accomplishing fun things you've dropped 3 hours already and have to leave to go to dinner or spend time with the family or whatever.

.

>Let's say, is overall not better than. It's not really about
>a longer list of flaws or strengths so much as whether the
>whole is better or not.

Okay, I should've phrased that better. I know it's not just about number of flaws but the overall flawedness.

>I'm not going to enumerate flaws in an absolute sense so much
>as discuss problems I see with this system vs. the existing
>system, or strong points of the existing system that it lacks.

I appreciate that you did this.

>1 and 2) It removes all interaction from the equation.

Well, in its most basic form, yes. And I agree that's a downside. It is hard to think of ways that don't rely on tedium but still introduce an interactive element. Personally, I find that the tedium element outweighs the interactivity element. Some of that is personal choice with roles, but I've always gotten kind of a blah feeling from wand-centered RP, despite being someone who until relatively recently played mostly for RP. Admittedly, there's a world of options out there, but overall my experience has been unrewarding. Anyway, that's just anecdotal and not systemic, neccesseraly.

I'll try to think of some ways to re-introduce interactivity to it.

>The current system has a second spot for interaction:
>3) Your system doesn't value exploration at all.

>
>From the sounds of things, you really don't so much as a
>player either. That's okay, but we're not working with the
>exact same set of priorities and it is a factor on my list.

I do value exploration. I've always enjoyed exploration, and I've gotten minor nods for reporting tons of typos with a couple different characters. Exploring is a lot of fun to me. However, the major caveat is exploring is a lot of fun once or twice. What I hate is running a while, sleeping for moves for a few minutes, running the rest of the way to an area, checking off some locations on my list, resting for another few minutes, then dashing off to check some more locations ad infinitum. Oh god I it's putting me to sleep just thinking about it.

I even think real exploration is a legitimate CF skill, though there is a significant portion that can be automated just as effectively, which means to me that it's not much of a skill. Maybe it's just me, but being a fastidious explorer is tedious. It's great fun to go to an area, look at everything run around discovering stuff. Making absolutely sure that I've typed "exa word" for every word in every bit of text in the area is just tiresome work that I'd rather have a program do for me (though I have not and will not be writing such a thing). And then you have to make sure that you really wrote everything down and keep it in a place you can get to and don't lose. Bleh.

To summarize, exploring is fun and can be a valid skill, but just farting around rechecking a list of locations is neither.

>4) Your system encourages/empowers more conservative play.
...
>The way this would play out seems pretty self-evident to me so
>I'm not going to dig into it, but if you don't see it or
>disagree I could.

Well, I don't see it. My assumption is that you won't be able to have a/b/s for every fight because of the timers on the wands. The theory is that you would adjust the timers on the wands such that the incidence of people having a/b/s is the same as it is now. That is, it takes a certain amount of time to get your wands now, and it should take that same amount of time between castings of your wand creation spell.

If anything, it should make people a little less conservative, because they know that if they die, at least they aren't losing the hour it took them to get the barrier, though just like in the current system, it might be another hour before they can get it (depending on the timers, obviously) again.

Overall, people should be getting *more* conservative with more protections, not less. Maybe it's just me, but half the reason I use protections on my mages is because it means I can be more aggressive. When you're a mage without protections you have to be excrutiatingly cautious and pick and choose your battles very carefully. To pick a current example, without wands I would never fight hunsobo with any mage. With wands I would at least give it a try (and still lose). Unless pimp gear, having a/b/s doesn't put you in a position where you are more powerful, but if you lose you're taking a big hit. An increase in a/b/s availability for the big fights should make people more willing to enter them.

Now granted, people *could* choose to only fight with a/b/s, but they can do that now, and most of the elite mages pretty much seem to choose that. I don't remember ever fighting say, enarn, or any of lightmage's characters when then didn't have wands. The only difference the mage-crafted system makes in this sense is that you know that if you wait long enough you will get your wands, so you can go sit in a corner if you really hate not having a/b/s that much. Again, I'm envisioning the mage-crafted system as an overall reduction in the ability to get 24/7 coverage, because it's an increase in the ease of getting it and the guaruntee of having it at least sometimes.

>5) Your system eliminates/minimalizes risk (and, for the most
>part, decisions and opportunities) around actually getting the
>wands.

That can be alleviated a number of ways. For example, you could just make it so you have to go find a high-level mage and pay them to help you craft a wand. If there are only a few of these NPCs then everybody knows where mages go to get wands and that creates the risk. That would increase the risk and allow for the stalking/assassinating. A system like that would have pretty much all the positive effects you listed, wouldn't it?

Also, that system encourages some exploration (finding the mages that you can pay, or maybe finding ones that don't charge as much gold for their services, etc) but doesn't require straight-up drudgery.

>6) Your system eliminates Veil-based decision making.
>Generally, getting the wand is the right choice here... but it
>is a tactical choice that you're eliminating.

I guess.... I can barely imagine anyone every making the choice to let the npc mob live instead of getting barrier. If you want this element, then perhaps the wand-creation ritual weakens the veil. I.e. you're pulling a piece of the essence of the veil into the wand (yes, that makes the veil the Theran plane's a/b/s)

>That's about all I have time for at the moment. Hopefully
>it's some food for thought.

It is, thank you.

>It's not really that simple, and CF not being a single-player
>game annoyance has to be considered in a more general sense.

That is a good point, though I think the npc-helper addition addresses that.

I said "Overall, people should be getting *more* conservative with more protections, not less. " I actually meant the opposite of that. The word conservative should be replaced with aggressive.

How about this. Just like affinities were added to let players who don't like spamming spells play invokers, the system I describe below can be added to let players who don't like re-exploring with each mage character.


- A/B/S wands can be crafted, but require materials/ingredients that are in the same place for all mages, are limited, but have a very high limit, so that they are always available. (So essentially the only consequence of them being limited is that you have to carry them in your inventory).
- After being crafted, the wands crumble after a certain time (maybe 20 ticks).

- This system address your concerns (1) and (2). In fact, there maybe a lot more PK risk involved in getting the ingredients, if there's not a lot of these locations.
- It partially addresses (3), because wands that are not crafted are still more valuable, since they don't crumble. So there is still some value to finding wands the old way. You can make the difference more significant if you make the crafted wands give slightly weaker versions of a/b/s. (Also see below)
- Depending on how much mana and time crafting takes, the system may address (4): if it doesn't take much mana and time, then you can craft the wands and zap yourself, quickly prepping for an unexpected fight. If it takes significant ammount of mana/time, then (4) will be more of the concern, however the wands acquired the old way would become even more valuable, making (3) less of a concern.
- As I already said, it addresses (5), in fact it will be better than the current system in that respect.
- It can address (6) if crafting thickens the veil or if getting the ingredients requires killing a powerful mage mob.
- And it empowers dexy races! (it's a goo dthing, right? =))

There can be a lot of tweaking done: # of ingredients required to make each of A/B/S, # of ingredient locations, crumble timer, mana/#of ticks required for crafting, etc., etc.