I think it is time for the immortal staff to consider redesigning the anti-paladin class and/or replacing it with a new version like a black-knight or something similar.

The class has become a bastion of obssession, paranoid gameplay and utter power gaming by more than one individual. It inspires a cultural of paranoia and conservatism that is not beneficial to CF in any sense.

Even myself personally have been interested in the class, but in the end I always say i don't want to play where I am paranoid every moment, where all my eggs are in one basket.

CF should encourage character building in other ways. Roleplaying well, pking well, getting a lich quest. Getting a third virtue through your prowess and attitude, attaining leadership.

Triggers and robotic conservatism are not apart of CF as it should be. AP is by far the class that causes this to happen the most.

I realize this will come as an attack against a certain player but it goes well beyond it and given the change in playerbase and behavior seen over MANY antipaladins in recent memory, i think we need to consider a core change to this class.

I'm with you. Part of it is the class and part of it is certain high-end gear that tends to always end up on top-shelf players.

Some ideas:

1. Fix or remove vault. Too easy to kill people at certain ranks.

2. Remove the detect hidden item. Force A-P to give up giant-sized bash if they want detect hidden.

3. Remove *worn* items that auto-teleport in combat or that can be invoked for the same.

Or possibly just put a fairly modest cap on how many charges can fit in a weapon.

Let's nerf liches too because they are way OP.

Let's also remove hummingbird pendants and that heartseeker dagger. Both of them far too OP and far too easy to get.

In fact let's nerf and/or remove everything.

Please don't become a high level IMM.

figured you might be in the know

Disagree that powerhouse APs are less common than liches. Especially during the past couple years, and especially if we're only counting powerhouse liches. While the two are approximately equally difficult to kill, I'm actually less worried about the powerhouse lich since it's harder for him to permalag.

Pendants make someone harder to kill but it's not close to as big of a powerup as detect hidden is on a class that doesn't normally get it. If you're a buff fire A-P would you rather have detect hidden or two hummingbird pendants?

You have a point about how easy heartseeker is to get. It's one of the best if not the best goodie dagger in the game. Then again, kind of hard to get it (as a goodie) if it's on another goodie PC, which it normally is. But it doesn't make you that much harder to kill and it doesn't make you all *that* much more deadly. Some, sure, but not a game changer.

Nasty axe from Inferno so it doesn't break things, but it will then prog for unblockable increased damage more often.

Nasty shield from Inferno so it doesn't touch unholy weapons, unbreakable weapons. But add stats or another prog on it.

Nasty talisman from Inferno so it doesn't make acid storm, but it will then prog other progs more often.

But i also told it already few years ago.



Removing items what teleport and a single item in mud what lets see hidden is just weird.


You are not exploration type. But half of the players enjoy this aspect of the game. And there should be amazing rewards for this.

It's too sad ST was removed.

I attribute the current powerhouse AP to be the direct concequence of your heroimm, as it was YOU who were the direct reason for ragedelete of previous like three powerhouse AP wannabes, taking and sacrificing their weapon.

Therefore it's not about the game design, it's about quality of opposition. When opposition is whiny bitches, yeah, that results in whinefests. When the opposition is people who can actually play this game, that results in weapon being taken away, as was the case for many years.

The first guy died because he couldn't detect hidden. I don't have the log, but if I recall it was a classic knockout-bind-gang situation on Eastern Road.

Second guy only died because (I assume) he got bored and decided to start taking risks, then got screwed by the RNG. Also because I stuck around in a situation where 9 times out of 10 I should have died, i.e. where I should have quaffed out long before I actually did.

It's an entertaining log. If I ever get the chance I'll post it.

Why aren't you also arguing to remove or change classes with stealth?

You're not good at being deceitful.

ALL 36-40th sitting a-p doing same: flee/sleep/flee/sleep valut, yes, its possible to survive it.
Actually you need perma lag him or blind, perhaps make a trap if he cant see you, overwise you will be slept/valulted.
Suggestions:
First of all I would change vault somehow, or remove.
Or maybe remove unrestricted number of charges, and let A-P have:
1. Fire/ice/lightning controls system after humber of kills with unholy.
2. Spell like imbue unholy weapon, first degree: 15dr/150hp/150mana, second degree: 25DR/250hp/250Mana, third like 35DR/350HP/350Mana
3. Even you lost unholy you can create weapon depends on your degree.

So you dont need be more conservative then over classes. You still have a reason to be agressive for controls and degree of this spell.

It's the second time in my CF career I see an almost unstoppable AP killing machine. First one deleted after he lost his weapon and from what I've heard, he's not the only one who did so after loosing his unholy. I never had an AP with charges but from what I understand, each charge add +1 dam to the AP weapon... am I correct?

What if you limit the number of charges an AP can have on his weapon?
I don't know make it only possible to build an unholy weapon 4-5 times stronger than the best weapon in game.

I see two main advantages:

A) The AP class will still be able to be very powerful without being unstoppable.

B) If the AP, for whatever reason, loose his weapon, he might be more willing to build another unholy (instead of deleting) since the challenge is not as high as it can be at the moment.

If this post wasn't made every time there was an AP with more than 250 charges running around. Even Cabdru was super paranoid and had to break rules to git gud.

It's also sort of a non-issue until that once a year AP comes around.

I tend to agree with the basic premise that I believe APs would generally provide a more entertaining role for people, and provide less frustration if they didn't constantly turn into a medium for people just to prove their leet-ness.

Honestly, what *I* think would be kinda cool is if the AP's collected souls in their weapons to then sacrifice to demons & devils for new powers. As if you had to sacrifice the souls to get unholy blessings instead of just continuing to collect kills. Then at least there's some debate of "Do I want to continue risking all my eggs in one basket, or build up my overall character as a hedge against the weapon loss?"

In general principle, I agree. Exactly how to go about making that chance? I'm up for suggestions, and I'm also not the one who'd have to be convinced to make the chances. But who knows, maybe something inspirational will come up!

It's kind of like what you've done with Necromancers.

You can go all out and risk the very powerful Lich transformation, or you can settle for the safer but less powerful Mummy/Wight.

It is a very interesting idea. Collecting charges and spending them for new powers would let an AP to play in a less paranoid way. Maybe a system of becoming a Death Knight could be considered for implementing, in which definite number of charges is a must and more charges you get above that number, better chance of becoming would be. Huge code rework and testing is a must in such approach though.

First, how the current system works, as far as I can tell:

Once you unholy bless a weapon, on killing blow charges are calculated as (more or less) pkwins / (pklosses + 1). There is also probably a random +0-+1 to account for sometimes getting a charge off even the lowliest sad sack, and a static bonus for leader characters. Probably +2 or +3.

Assuming you are wielding an unholy on killing blow, these charges are then applied as a permanent bonus to the wielded unholy, split randomly between hp/mana and hit/dam at 10/1 respectively for each charge.

Last person AP killed is tracked, and they can't get souls from them again until they kill someone else first.

When the weapon is sac'd damage is calced and AP takes it. All souls/charges released forever.

My suggested change:

Most of the above is still true, but charges are kept track of by character they came from. When you kill someone for the first time, nothing much changes. If you kill someone where you are already holding a "soul piece" for, then if they are now worth *more* charges, then that difference is applied and the weapon grows. If they are worth less, you gain nothing (but also lose nothing).

So build up only really works if you kill tough people (high charge worth) and or unique kills. But really there is incentive to go after the really tough people.

Now, when AP dies, and the weapon is sac'd, damage is calc'd like now and AP takes said damage as the souls rush back to them, except for those belonging to the person who sacs the weapon. So AP goes after tough person they think is worth more charges, dies, and loses the charges they had stored for that person (only).

AP can still bless a new unholy (which is now limited to exactly 1 per AP at a time) and put the rest of their charges back into said weapon minus whatever they lost to the person who sac'd their weapon.

I'd also apply a medium length rot_death flag to the AP's unholy on death, and when it decays, same thing, only without anyone sac'ing it, they don't lose anything. This would prevent people just holding the unholy to keep charges away indefinitely. It would also mean the AP needs to leech his own weapon to avoid the con-loss if he dies (and can't handle the backlash damage).

Leeching another AP's unholy just applies the diff between charge sources from AP1's weapon to AP2's weapon, delivering the damage to AP1 (the leechee) and the bonus charges to AP2 (the leecher). AP1 doesn't lose everything if they are holding soul pieces from people AP2 has also killed, but AP2 potentially gains charges from sources (characters) they wouldn't otherwise be able to (characters that are gone).

Under this system, the ceiling is still theoretically infinite, but realistically is much lower. Over a long time scale, AP's could basically carry charges forward to new AP's and so on and so forth.... but realistically age death (Which nukes all gear) and deletions will likely prevent this from happening with any real regularity.

Control unlock values would need to be adjusted to match the new reality. The charge calculation could probably also use some tweaking, but that's a balancing point. The floor for AP's is a lot higher. Even if you have a 20 charge weapon, unless that is all from the 1 person you've killed and they kill you and recover their soul piece, and it is sac'd, you probably still retain some charges. There is also some tactical consideration to who sac's a weapon when an AP is killed.

On the other hand, a 100 charge weapon probably requires a really long lived character that has killed a lot of tough opponents and a lot of different people. Getting something beyond that would be exceedingly difficult, or require some really long term cheating.

On the AP side, a lot of bad behavior is mitigated. Going after the same sad sacks doesn't build charges. You are already holding a piece. Going after new people has advantages (and risks). Going after *tough* people has much greater advantages... and risks if you are already holding charges from them, but if you aren't... No reason not to try, you only stand to lose con, unless they have someone else sac the weapon that you are holding souls from.

I dislike this because I feel that while it removes some of the reasons to be uber-paranoid, it really doesn't afford an anti-paladin any significant loss while still allowing the uber-large AP.

What I've always thought of as an idea for an anti-paladin's weapon would be something like making the weapons indestructible except for some form of involved process (possible with paladins having an easier/faster way) to destroy them, and doing so destroys a portion of the AP's charges, but not all of them. In counterbalance, I would say some means of the upper limits likely would need to come down, too.

However, I've always been disappointed that the first thing anyone ever does to an AP's weapon is just sac it and hope to double-kill the AP. I'd love to see AP weapons be held as leverage against the AP's, possibly even so far as to semi-permanently *weaken* an AP if they have an unholy weapon that's theirs and not with them. Then there's the balance of "Do I sacrifice the weapon to be rid of this massive threat, or hold onto it to continually weaken an AP?"

>I dislike this because I feel that while it removes some of
>the reasons to be uber-paranoid, it really doesn't afford an
>anti-paladin any significant loss while still allowing the
>uber-large AP.

I'm not sure this is true. Specifically with the uber large part since you can only gain charges per unique source... How many unique PK's are you likely to have in a character's life?

>What I've always thought of as an idea for an anti-paladin's
>weapon would be something like making the weapons
>indestructible except for some form of involved process
>(possible with paladins having an easier/faster way) to
>destroy them, and doing so destroys a portion of the AP's
>charges, but not all of them. In counterbalance, I would say
>some means of the upper limits likely would need to come down,
>too.

That's sort of what I proposed....

>However, I've always been disappointed that the first thing
>anyone ever does to an AP's weapon is just sac it and hope to
>double-kill the AP. I'd love to see AP weapons be held as
>leverage against the AP's, possibly even so far as to
>semi-permanently *weaken* an AP if they have an unholy weapon
>that's theirs and not with them. Then there's the balance of
>"Do I sacrifice the weapon to be rid of this massive threat,
>or hold onto it to continually weaken an AP?"

You do this because while those other things are potentially more interesting, they just aren't worth the risk of hanging on to the weapon.

I feel like a change on the level of taking an AP and literally turning it into an empowerment class would be awesome. When I first
started CF, AP always came across as a paladin of dark powers. But I know it can be looked at as Paladins use diving and healing and are empowered classes, the anti of that is dark defiling powers and magic but I think a paladin and anti-paladin should both be empowerment classes. This would also even up the playing field for evils to have more opportunity at empowerment classes. Goods have Paladins, healers, and shamans, while evils only have shamans and healers. Anti-Paladin could have defiling prayers, have dark aura instead of sanctuary, have some neat, not identical, similar specs to paladins.

I imagine instead of a shield ded type AP, do a dual wield AP. Two handed AP would be awesome, human running around with two handed sword swinging it around like crazy. Basically instead of dedications they could be demon or devil followings and would give different abilities and prayers.

nt

n/t

nt

>I feel like a change on the level of taking an AP and
>literally turning it into an empowerment class would be
>awesome. When I first
>started CF, AP always came across as a paladin of dark powers.
>But I know it can be looked at as Paladins use diving and
>healing and are empowered classes, the anti of that is dark
>defiling powers and magic but I think a paladin and
>anti-paladin should both be empowerment classes. This would
>also even up the playing field for evils to have more
>opportunity at empowerment classes. Goods have Paladins,
>healers, and shamans, while evils only have shamans and
>healers. Anti-Paladin could have defiling prayers, have dark
>aura instead of sanctuary, have some neat, not identical,
>similar specs to paladins.

I'd thought the same back when also, but partially *TO* be opposed to a paladin's righteousness and godliness, an AP gains their strength without the Gods. I expect it to be a safe bet we'll not see empowered APs at any point.


>I imagine instead of a shield ded type AP, do a dual wield AP.
>Two handed AP would be awesome, human running around with two
>handed sword swinging it around like crazy. Basically instead
>of dedications they could be demon or devil followings and
>would give different abilities and prayers.

I do feel like this is an area in which APs have a reasonable logic, and it somewhat fits with my thoughts on bargain with demons/devils trading collected souls for new powers. But, who knows.

Short version: About a 99% "no" on priestly APs. Demon/devils, who knows. I like it, at least!

Throwback http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=61202&mesg_id=61204&page=

This is just off the top of my head.

1. I would lower the level of unholy blessing to like 15. The weapon is the AP. They are bound to it so why not make it a part of the char from a young age.
2. I would change the benefits the weapon gives. Sure you can give it some hit/dam and hp/mana, but don't make it go up infinitely like it does now. Maybe the first 5 charges gives +5+5 hit/damn. The next 5 give hp/mana. At 10 you get fire control at maybe 20% power. The next "X" number of charges ramp up the power of the fire control by some percentage each. So like 20%. At 15 charges you get frost..etc.. The damage/maledicts of the power they give can scale as well. By level perhaps. Don't expect a full power fire control at lvl 15 to give you ***DEMO, but maybe a mutilate.
3. Beyond the controls you could perhaps make it empower their other spells. Lowers spell resistance of certain spells. Increases your spell resistance. Do anything other than create the potential for a stupid powerful one shot weapon to occur. Everyone knows that as soon as that weapon is destroyed the AP is deleted.

I could probably think of more, but this is something I have been pondering every so often over the years. I've never had a stupid powerful weapon, but I've deleted many 30-50 charge APs over the years. I think it would give flair to the AP at low levels. You could discourage level sitting using the distend mechanics or some other mechanism.

What do you guys think?

And it may be this way already, I have no idea...

Henceforth, A-Ps shall not be protected by anti-gank code since they hit everyone.

Not sure it's a good idea, but it occurred to me.

should not be a subject to anti-gank code.

Not sure exactly where the cutoff should be, but definitely diminishing returns on anti-gank code as you become worth more charges.

You could easily be describing all of CF instead of a single class.