One animal corpse that people have done something to != "hey, every animal might be a wand pinata!"

Y'all know who you are.

...or everyone complaining about it wasn't enough of a hint, don't ya think it might be worth spending some time on? Not perpetuating the problem by adding MORE spots?

Sorry if people get pissed to spend 35 levels to find out they're screwed by a random dice roll of their locations. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if ya want random, play a shifter...but leave every other mage alone.

I would have posted saying, I want to hear you bitch again.

You'll notice I didn't post that.

And maybe pointing this out is a little mean, but it's also true.

Once upon a time, wands were more accessable, until someone intentionally ruined it by posting a list.

I wonder who we should blame for that.

People who voted for the status quo with their actions, regardless what their words were, don't get to complain about it. At least, they shouldn't be able to complain about it without feeling like a giant piece of ####.

However, there is a point to his madness.

It's just not nearly as bad as he and some others think it is.

Yeah, that doesn't invalidate the entire discussion, just provides some extra perspective on that small piece of it.

Probably if dude had never been born we still wouldn't have the old old wand system, but you know? I think it's the height of ludicrous for someone to say they want a wand system that looks like X, when we used to have X and the specific reason X went away is because they pissed on it.

>Probably if dude had never been born we still wouldn't have
>the old old wand system, but you know? I think it's the
>height of ludicrous for someone to say they want a wand system
>that looks like X, when we used to have X and the specific
>reason X went away is because they pissed on it.

X was a few years ago and still broken but not nearly as bad as the system that exists today. Y, Z, and everything else beyond is on your end. And yet again, you make personal shots instead of valid actual argument returns.

Keep up the status quo and all.

I was happy with the wand system few years ago, I was happy with the wand system with after they changed it, and I can live with the wand system that's in place right now. Would I prefer the old system? Sure. But I'm just sticking with what the Imms give us and I'm thankful that they spend more time than we do running this game and fixing ####.

The only real instigator of all this #### is you. I've only seen you complain. Legitimate complaints or not, learn to either deal with it, don't play mages, or quit the game.

And who would you play with if he quits as well as few other players?

Masturbate in your guild for hours?

I'm not Aether's biggest fan and I also think it is fair to say that I don't complain a lot; however, I just don't like the new wand system. It isn't that I can't find wands if I want to but moreso the fact that as a veteran player I'm wasting countless hours rechecking areas I've looked at 50 times before, that isn't fun to me. Now I know you all say play something else but my options are getting more and more limited. Why? Why not make a change to make the mage classes enjoyable to everyone?

When the system was initially put in you all said to give it time. Well we did and I've heard people say they tolerate it but I haven't heard anyone say they enjoy it.

I still think the easiest change to make it enjoyable is to make detect artifact operate on an area and not a specific room. This would make the system better for both veteran and new players. Then instead of having to walk into 100 invidual rooms and looking/killing 100 mobs you'd be able to say okay I know it is here, somewhere. I would guess the reason you don't do it this way is because it would make them to easy to find. Well who cares? Put the wand on a more difficult mob.

For the record I understand the hard work that goes into things and appreciate it. You all are human though and sometimes a change just isn't a good one. I'm pretty sure you all realize it is a problem, otherwise you all wouldn't have made the changes recently to try and improve it. I'd just like for you all to come up with something we would all enjoy.

What if mages could cast a spell to create an sleek for their use, but they could only cast the sleeks spells every so often based upon how much explore/observation they had received? That is, the more obs/explore, the more often they could cast the sleek spells.

This would remove some of the randomness of "I had hard to get wands or easy wands" or the much lamented "I've looked in 100 old sites and didn't find so much as a shield, but with my invoker I found my barrier at location 10".

It the timer were long enough, it would still be worthwhile to collect standard wands.

One reason the current system doesn't work because the areas were not designed with wands in mind. A number of wand locations I've heard of have elicited a WAT? Perhaps institute a scaling assistance system, where the more time a character puts in, the better they get at finding artifacts. I think Detect Artifact working in general areas should be tried.

In any case, we can't afford to be pissing off players (myself included) with an asinine wand system.

n/t

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

It would be better to make it significantly less powerful, as the option to explore and gain in power is still there, but is less game breaking. Also, mage types are underpowered without ABS. Maybe consider expanding mage spell repertoires to include class specific defensive spells with an eye towards diversity. As a side note, I am primarily a mage player and I find transmuters straight up outmeleeing ragers to be somewhat unseemly. Their ability to outmelee should be harder to achieve, but perhaps give them some options to compensate for the effort to reach that level. Perhaps random mutations.

Masters gets re-implemented as a cabal choice.

Transform is kind of like a barrier/aura....(sorta)
Maybe throw in a shield-like spell Warlock style (ward).

Makes the game more dependant on cabal warring for powers instead of grueling searching.

Might make things more interesting to have 4 cabals, all dependent on their cabal powers.

Screw the uncabaled....they can use the limited wands out there to compete. Maybe make it so once you join a cabal you can't use wands period to compensate.

And thats with 3 beers in my system....

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.

I disagree with everything you wrote here. Everything. I don't think that happens very often.

I think it's the beer.

Balance should not be dependent on cabals. Cabal balance should be.

Just remove barrier. Leave aura shield locations as is...maybe shake out some of the ones that just don't make sense or are too hard.


All mage classes have forms of damage reduction available to them, just turn them up a notch it count for barrier. If you want to add cast timers on it sure go ahead.

Aura and shield are still available for everyone that wants to do the leg work to be a prep junkie.


For anti-paladins maybe combination of aura of despair and bloodlust can give a barrier type effect... or you can just give them a brand new spell.

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I see the problem as people having fixed locations were they have a certain sleek wand. Thus, when the character finds the wand, he has the benefit of getting a sure wand from that location for the rest of the game. With a reward as huge as this, the character can keep himself effectively prepped with sleeks to the point that this has to be taken into account when balancing classes. This in turn, forces other mage players to undergo a tedious and often unfun search for their sleek spots in order to compete with the wand users.

My suggestion for a fix is simple: Re-randomize the found sleek location after the sleek wand has been picked up from the location. This will effectively remove the problem caused by sleek farming, as such farming would no longer be possible in the new system as the location provides only one wand. This way, explorers could still retain their fun random reward without it breaking the game for the rest of the people as the game could be balanced for wandless people, due to the use of wands being much rarer.

There is no parity in the current system and the current locations, random chance is making or breaking characters. The thought of putting in a 100 hours with every mage character played to check the same locations over and over, only to get screwed with a ####ty "set".. is going to chase away players.

I mean it's just plain and simple truth.

On a character I've lost interest in playing, for a variety of reasons but one of the biggest ones are the locations I did find.

However this is only the second character I've ever had a sleek black with, or even more than one sleek where I knew the location. Moreover the amber and black were in the same spot, which meant that if the character got off the ground I'd be discovered and thoroughly ####ed over by certain classes due to the circumstances of exiting the area. This is on top of the timesink involved in actually getting to the said black, I can't imagine the unholy ####edupness of getting that location if I couldn't at least tank half-assed, and it often takes me multiple in-game days to get in and out to collect one of each rod.

The sienna was in a spot well-travelled and going to get me chased.

Now this is still better than finding nothing, but not by much. Compared to a spot I know one of my rivals has where his back can be watched easily and he can get in and out with no fuss. This rival, unlike me, rushes every single fight with full a/b/s whether he's ganging or not.

Previous three or four mage classes I played didn't find a full set, though with conjurers I stop looking and resign myself to using devils more often than not.

Oh and one of my allies had a spot that could potentially permanently leave him with a status affliction that can only be cured by healing sleep. He never told me why he wouldn't approach the spot from the opposite direction and avoid it completely, but given the area you had to go through to get there, it's probably understandable why he never elaborated and assumed it was obvious.

You're such a turd. You advocate whining, just to be a ####.

But let's get this straight.

You now have shield on a stick.

That leave aura and barrier.

You in fact found your sleeks.

Now you're whining that they aren't totally safe and easy for you to pick up. You're whining that there's possibly some actualy risk involved in getting your full set of enormous damage reduction.

So all this boils down to is you just want abs given to you as a spell, all the time, so you can have your dam redux whenever you want, without any risk, or interaction.

Not only is that not going to happen (and it shouldn't) but you're a moron for wanting it, let alone asking for it.

>So all this boils down to is you just want abs given to you as
>a spell, all the time, so you can have your dam redux whenever
>you want, without any risk, or interaction.

I think this sums up a lot of folks' argument on the current a/b/s situation and is pretty spot on.

More to the point, I agree that the system should lean more towards a small factor of risk for gathering wands than the current time-sink/roulette paradigm of landing sleeks.

Every mage has shield on a stick. You know for a fact that 18 hours out of 24 is not that long to wait between shield castings.

Did you miss the part where I pointed out that I have to spend multiple game days (i.e. up to 1-2 RL hours) trying to get both of them?

I'm just relating experiences. I also happen to absolutely abhor exploration and detest players who whine about other people who have legitimate complaints about exploration, specifically being forced to re-do the tedious exploration with every single character. To which the reply is 'if you don't like doing that then either go without or do this 10x harder task for half the reward'.

I don't play mages that often and this isn't a class I'm great with. In truth, this was, as is the case for other people, a throwaway character. I wanted to see if I could accomplish something and it turns out that the mechanical hurdles of doing so aren't something I want to put up with for another 300 hours. These hurdles are not including the enemies I have to deal with, who are hypocritical at best and wantonly thumbing their nose at everyone they kill because they are the cabal in power with free indirect backup at worst. All of which I'm very much used to and at home with, just pointing it out.

I'm more pointing out that if you get it on a stick (as you presume I have them all) and don't play overly recklessly, then you pretty much are top dog and fated to go down in Thera's history as a leader char or fearsome top dog that can accomplish anything he wants. Regardless of what your gank-o-meter says.

I never said I wanted the character to have it easier, there's other factors in play that are making me not want to play the character. Just like you claim there's other factors besides spam-rolling Ragers that make you fine with the a/b/s.

It really must be a bad day for you when I'm the one sounding more rational, Graatch. Perhaps you should stick to dealing with the people who are actually posting an opinion, because I wasn't. (other than the fact that every single other mage I have played without exception has not found a sleek black in my entire career of playing CF except the second felar shapeshifter ever rolled, who ONLY had her sleek black and was a retarded defense/utility focus.)

cause your only looking at part of the overall picture.

Changes to the wand system have made playing mages a little different for veteran players (newer players aren't affected at all cause they didn't already have the repository of knowledge). It has made mages a bit more difficult to play. Therefore the number of people playing mages would theoretically go down.

Conversly non mages are now more appealing and have less trouble fighting prepped mage types.

So yes the game may be rougher now for mages. But at the same time its easier for everyone else to deal with mages so its a good time to play melee classes.

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Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=

Every non-mage became more powerful, as a result. I really can't say that's a good thing, because ragers are in that group. And they did not need any kind of power boost.

I realize it's an effect of the change, and not the cause. But, really, I don't know if there was just cause for the change in the first place. It's all opinion though. There is no right or wrong. All I can say is that, for me, it was a pain in the butt. It put a lot more "busy work" into my limited game time. Amusingly, enemies would ask now and then "Where the hell are you? Why are you hiding from me?" And when I'd respond with something that would tell them, cryptically, that I was looking for my wands, they would grunt in annoyance (more or less). So it takes away from my fun, and takes away from other like-minded people's fun, who want to get in there and box rather than play a solo rpg where I get to look under every obscure place/mob's skirts, hoping to find a sleek rod.

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