What potential change or addition, if any, would make the sub-hero levels of the game more interesting to you? Interesting in this case being defined as: you'd be more interested in PKing/exploring/RPing/etc. in them (vs. powering through them) than today.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I don't know that it'd be quite so feasible in practice, but the idea of having weapons/armor that are "top-end" items for their appropriate range, and that lower level characters can get themselves.

Right now, any character I have, I'm always on the lookout for hero-range gear that I can scavenge/steal/beg/bribe for. Even with the associated penalties (especially with armors), it's still more worth it to do that.

My thoughts were if say 90% of the weapons a level 20 person can get are avg 20, maybe there's some limited weapons that are avg 22 that my random level 20 guy can get by himself, and are the "elite" weapons of his range.

Unfortunately, I tend to think that instead of the lowbies getting them, random hero guy who can't find any "standard" avg 22 weapons would just go pick that up easily instead of the lowbies getting it. Unless you could do something along the lines of the marble gear (which zaps you past a certain level), or leather travelling boots (which are good for the lowbie, but less good as you get higher level).

Anyways, practical problems and functionality aside, that's one of the reasons I always power up to hero, because I'm always thinking "well, if I could just go get THAT piece of gear, I'd do better". If there's lowbie-associated "elite" gear, maybe I'll level up to kill the mob and get that better gear, or maybe I'll try to get that elite lowbie gear instead!

Would be nice if you gained 1/3rd con each time you level up (but not over your trained con.. so you cant ignore training con and use it for hps). Would make it more appealing to play around at lower ranks.

Edit: Might also make people rage delete early less.

Yeah, I've been trying for a while now to come up with some version of "con loss forgiveness" that doesn't defeat the point of con loss, is fair to people with play styles unlike mine, and that I can sell the other IMPs on.

I agree that one reason to power level for some players is to get all their HP gaining out of the way without having to #### around with con gear or training con. There might be other ways to solve that problem (e.g., get rid of train hp) but I think most of them would bring people with torches and pitchforks to my house.

And Gnome shifters by the hundreds would come and burn your house down. You would need to then roll a villager.

I understand the concept of "You gotta have something to lose" in order to make losing mean something.

I personally think exp penalties and con loss are redundant and overly harsh in a game wherein death already means loss of shinies.

And why age death? Gear recycling? Seriously, the only think that does is recycle roles or force lame stretches of the imagination after a 100,000 takes on Baer's religion.

It's a glaring negative on CF's front page too.

Death has consequences! What can that possibly mean but, UNfun?

Re-equiping was a big enough pain, grinding out of a hole that's often deeper than just redoing a level, is worse, especially if you've been struggling to get that one cool skill/song/sup/spell/shape/legacy. Oh and there is the additional penalty that as you age you won't be able to replace stats lost to the process, you'll regen slower, and be more suseptable to a sup that will age you (potentially) AND take another 1/3 con if you go down.

Someone help me understand the possitive gained from all these negatives?

The Pro

Losing shinies is a penalty to failing in combat, but not a hard-coded one. Mobs do not (generally) take your equipment after death. Players can (and usually do, to varying extents), if they choose to. I don't see it as a death penalty, per se, though leaving gear on your corpse is certainly a potential drawback.

As you know, con loss happens with any death. It's part risk/reward, and part mechanism to permanently kill off characters through violent combat. If you con-die, this yields an eventual reward to your foes: your utter elimination. It's important, since otherwise killing someone just results in their continual resurrection. Eventually, killing someone should mean something, otherwise it's just another frag.

Experience loss happens with mob deaths. I attribute this to an increased risk for "easier" targets (ie, not PC controlled). Easier might be the wrong term, so let's call them "more predictable". You know that every time you fight X, it's going to follow a certain set of behaviors, plus or minus some RNG action. You can find X in location Y every time, it's going to use skills/spells A, B, and C throughout combat, and it will/will not chase you down if you have to break off and rest. Experience penalties also provides a risk/reward mechanism that ties into a common mob-related activity: ranking. High risk/high reward areas can result in a satisfying hour or two of serious experience gain at the risk of an experience setback if things go wrong.

Age death is important from a character cycling standpoint. Think particularly of cabal leadership, tattooed religious followers, etc. Age death forces turnover of even the most invincible characters, and allows different players the chance to achieve. If I'm not mistaken, it also trails far behind con deaths and deletions in terms of ways a character makes his grand exit.

So while "death has consequences" may, on the surface, appear to be unfun (especially when you're presently experiencing said consequences), I'd argue that they actually combine to increase the overall "fun" of the game.

I've always maintained that CF has both a well-balanced PVP system and an exceptionally well-tuned risk/reward system that applies to a variety of play styles. Take a hard look at other games you've played, particularly ones that you've gotten bored with and uninstalled. What was missing?

I don't think most people mind the "When your con drops to 3, you die forever" consequence of death. The bummer is that while you're alive, con is important enough to protect from a game mechanics standpoint that most people aren't interested in risking theirs, even when preservation isn't their primary concern.

HP regeneration and vulnerability to rot are two reasons to avoid letting your con get low, as well as HP gains if you're below 51. So now, even though I don't really care about con dying (eventually), I have to save my trains for con because I want to regenerate at a reasonable rate and I find the idea of gathering and carrying with me +20 con worth of ####ty equipment simply too lame to deal with. At this point, the penalty for dying goes way beyond being another tally-mark closer to losing my character forever by the time I'm getting bored anyway.

I like the principle that if I PK you enough, you go away for good. Personally, I don't even mind the fact that dying more than someone else gives me a permanent mechanical penalty (or that being conservative gives me an edge), though some people probably think that sucks. I suppose some people might prefer that the attribute used to count down to perma-death wasn't an attribute that has that much impact on other aspects of the game.

>I suppose some people might prefer
>that the attribute used to count down to perma-death wasn't an
>attribute that has that much impact on other aspects of the
>game.

I've absolutely felt this way for a while. Perma-death via PK is utterly, utterly crucial to CF's goodness for me, but I don't feel that the gameplay effects of low con are very fun, or reward the kind of play that I think represents CF at its best.

>HP regeneration and vulnerability to rot are two reasons to
>avoid letting your con get low

While I agree these are valid concerns, I'm not sure there's as big of a deal as you might think.

Wise Recovery largely takes care of hp regen.

Taking the time to locate and carry a set of "rot gear" largely takes care of the rot vuln.

With a con of ~10 you can usually survive rot using only gear that fits in a sack, as long as you wear it very soon after being rotted.

>gathering and carrying with me +20 con worth of ####ty

Me too, but even with "decent con" you're going to have to carry <i>some</i> stuff in order to survive rot. So having "low con" only means you add a few things to that set.

>Me too, but even with "decent con" you're going to have to
>carry <i>some</i> stuff in order to survive rot. So having
>"low con" only means you add a few things to that set.

Lots of shamans don't use rot, at least not frequently. Historically, I've always made the choice just to not shamans that use rot, because that's more fun than farming up some random goddamned con gear constantly. However, since nobody ever loots a container anymore, it might be almost worthwhile.

Personally, I'd rather carry the con gear than remove my ability to kill said shamans. I can't kill them if I never fight them. In order to not get rotted, I have to never fight them.

Only case where I'd go with the "never fight them" option is if I were playing a class that had pretty much zero chance of *ever* killing a shaman.

>Personally, I'd rather carry the con gear than remove my
>ability to kill said shamans. I can't kill them if I never
>fight them. In order to not get rotted, I have to never fight
>them.

Meh. If I had to waste the time gathering the set once ever, then maybe. Remember, what I said before was based on the experience of losing the sack of con gear every third time I die. This was in the days of more prevalent looting. Now everyone is horrified at the idea of losing anything, so it's less an issue. Also bear in mind that A> I'm not a great PKer to begin with and B>If I'm not dieing as frequently as I kill, then it means I'm not taking on real challenges. Basically anything over a 60% PK ratio means I'm playing too conservatively.

So taken together, high rates of death plus high rates of looting means high rates of replacing con gear. And that is just pure drudgery that outweighs the ability to kill fight few shamans that are going to use rot.

Also I just find fighting shamans to be kind of irritating since they're hard to kill and they leave you incapacitated for long durations, and/or make you spend what to me is lots of gold.

I guess I don't die that often. And, as you point out, when I do, I typically don't lose my sack of con gear. If someone wants something from my container, they usually remove it and drop the container.

Still- my list of con gear is pretty easy to gather.

I don't think it's a big deal, it was just an observation based on the discussion here.

I do find the process of going out and gathering misc. non-limited, light weight +con equipment every once in a while to be "more trouble than it's worth". That said, I tend to delete before my con gets below 10 or so, and usually have a little +con from the gear I actually want to wear.

With regards to many other things I *could* do but don't, I'd rather skip it because it's boring and not fun and have a harder time in some very situational scenarios than bother being prepared for any possible confrontation. I guess that's why I don't play APs.

Kind of like Marcus's idea. I know personally if I hit too many stupid deaths early I delete because of the Con loss I'm going to have to deal with from that point on. Even one Con every 5 levels wouldn't be bad. So people would have a little extra +hp, just means fights last a little longer. Which I see as a good thing anyway.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

> There might be other ways to solve that problem (e.g., get rid of
train hp) but I
>think most of them would bring people with torches and
>pitchforks to my house.

As someone pathologically devoted to saving every last practice for possible hp-training, I would actually be in favor of getting rid of train hp.

Basically I'm against any game design that forces me to do annoying things in order to get a competitive advantage. Personally, I don't think games should be about enduring boredom to achieve a payoff. That's what jobs are for.

Alas, in CF you have to do this all the time, especially with melee and mage classes

Unless I'm missing something, the main people who would benefit from this are the ones who rank slowly (thus dying a fair amount pre-hero) and who are planning to have a long-lived character, meaning they're more likely to train CON pre-hero instead of just piling on the +CON gear and saving their trains for HP.

It means that you could potentially die 50/3 times and still hit level 51 with max con. At least, you could if your deaths were perfectly spaced out at one per level.

The guy who powers straight to 51 and never dies (or dies very rarely) won't derive much benefit at all.

The guy who is never going to train CON anyway, since he knows he's going to delete before age/con dying and wants to dump all his trains into HP, won't benefit that much either. He'll hit 51 with more CON than he might otherwise have had, but he's not going to have any *more* trains to put into HP. He'll just have a slightly higher CON than he would otherwise. (Which won't really matter, since he's going to delete before CON becomes an issue anyway).

This would be a nice change for me personally since I usually take my time heroing and do a fair amount of pre-hero PK, meaning I have a decent number of pre-hero deaths. Since I know I'm going to be playing my characters over the long haul, I usually keep training CON back up to max until I'm down to the minimum # of trains I need to keep in reserve in order to reverse the -STR/-DEX of old age. Hardly ever do I use trains for increasing HP.

>The guy who is never going to train CON anyway, since he knows
>he's going to delete before age/con dying and wants to dump
>all his trains into HP, won't benefit that much either.

Do people do that? Maybe I'm not as much of a train-whore as I could be. But generally I'm the guy power-ranking to hero, so training my con back up to max for hero is one or two trains at most, so I just kind of take the hit.

When you say that the power-to-51 guy doesn't benefit much from this, you're right, but only if he's still the power-to-51 guy. I think the benefit I would feel from this is that I would then have the option of PKing on the way up without feeling like I'm handicapping myself.

I like the idea of getting rid of train hp. The biggest determiner of base hp should be race constitution and class.

This will be a pretty big nerf to the high INT+WIS races though. Maybe gnomes need it?

I don't know if you guys have any more help for mages coming in (like the shield spell stuff) but if you do decide to get rid of train hp, might want to make it live at the same time you do something positive for INT+WIS characters so it's less of an overall downer for people.

Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker

Just my opinion, but I've never liked how gnomes could rival dwarves for health. It just seems artificial, and never worked in my head.

>Just my opinion, but I've never liked how gnomes could rival
>dwarves for health. It just seems artificial, and never
>worked in my head.

But without that they're pretty much simply terrible.

make it scale with age. As you get older you can gain more from your training/ranking.
You still get the trains/10 pracs every 5 levels so quick ranking has no disadvantage but if you hang about at certain ranks, there is still insentive to rank more and restore ones body through hard grafting rank gaining.

young - 0 con per level.
mature - 2/3 con per level.
old - 1/3 con per level.

-----Euan

Have you guys decided on any changes? I'm curious as to how effective these community brainstorms are in bringing about positive change.

There's one for sure I'm planning to do when I get the chance. Although I don't think anyone exactly suggested it here it did come out of my thinking about what people had to say.

.

Have any of you imms ever thought...this person is doing ok, and could get empowered more, or maran'd, , or tatooed, or whatever...but they are only level 35, so I'll keep watching them and if they keep doing what they are doing I'll hit them up when they gain X more levels?

The thought that this is the case is often what spurs my character into cranking out more levels before I am really wanting to.

If it is never the case, then I would be more inclined to go at the pace of my choosing more.

And I'm speaking for me -- obviously we've had some people on staff at some points in time who were themselves in the 'game really begins at hero' camp.

Empowerment/tattoo-wise, never; but then Daevryn empowerment is an odd duck and some of my empowerees have been very sad pandas when they thought, well, if I just power to hero I'll get empowered to hero the next time we talk. Nope.

But even being Nepenthe I tattooed my fair share of under level 20 characters if I thought they were interesting and had a good/unique take on that religion.

I think in the case of something like Maran, and I am not a Fort imm, there is a different standard for promotion at hero vs. midlevels, but I think that speaks more to "it's harder to get promoted early (i.e. as someone new to / with a low amount of time in the cabal)" than a pure function of level.

Two things typically drive my desire to level up.

1) If I'm caballed, there's a certain point where you just don't feel like you're able to do ANYTHING in cabal wars. If you're lvl 20ish, and just plain can't take on the outer guardian, I'm typically going to try levelling up to a point where I can tank it, or I can usually find someone in my pk/group range who can.

2) Mostly the fact that if you look at your character at level X, and what you can go do, then compare that at some level Y higher than X....there's always more stuff you can do. A good 80% or so of the explore areas? Hero-ish level. Want to go explore Teth Azeleth or the mausoleum? Yeah, maybe you can do that at 30-40, but can I still do that at 51 and have an easier time? Heck yeah. Kobold caves? Hell, I can check that out any time I want, but 25's still easier than 10.

On the bright side, explore/observation exp make me want to slow down, and maybe check stuff out when it IS something of a challenge still, but I'm still probably going to explore when it's "moderately easy" versus "one bad repop is going to kill me".

Quests are also another reason I would tend to want to slow down, and maybe finish whatever it is I've found to do before I level out of that range. Unfortunately, a lot of times once I do that quest once, I don't tend to bother doing it again unless I know there's a prize of some sort that I want/need.

High exp penalty characters are another one I'd probably be more interested in powering with, because one of your biggest vulnerabilities (that level difference) becomes less drastic, and ultimately nullified once you reach hero.

Okay, heres a couple (probably bad) ideas:

Now I've never played WoW but I've heard about their epic quests. Perhaps we could implement a huge quest starting at level 30 for each class, but code it in a way that people won't be able to take advantage of... well people will still try to take advantage anyways, thats what players do.

Also another idea I just came up with is that it might be cool to see a 3 person attack depending on the classes in the group (like Chrono Trigger and the 2 or 3 person techs). Only make it a passive ability so that people would have to practice a skill called combo i (lev 30) ii (lev 37) and iii (lev 45). I dont know why, but I always liked flashy passive prog stuff. I cant even come up with names or what the heck the strikes would do though...

Also maybe throwing in some edge points on certain level tiers so even those people that never get edge points (like mine because I don't RP that much) can get an edge or two.

Or throw in an either or bonus at level 30 35 40 45 and 50:

So option A would be gain 10 hp or 5 edge points.

Or just somehow adding a little more diversity to people levels (not saying that there isn't enough though, I've just been playing an xbox indie game called Breath of Death 7 that offers levelling options.)

Anyways I'm sure there's more random crap I could throw out, but maybe those ideas will help you guys think of something that might actually work with the game mechanics.

Also I think you guys should #### with the ass hole players more. You know, in little ways (not by screwing with their stats, but putting the occasional aggro mob in their way or having a giant-ass-demon come hunting them sounds good.)

Thanks for the topic though! I'm sure some people think you

First, I really like the mid levels. In fact, once I hit hero is when I personally start getting bored with characters.

My only real problem comes from the players. It just seems like a "no, I don't want to advance, I'm exploring/learning/hunting" isn't very well received.

Maybe add a way to turn off exp gain so one could still be helpful to groups and get some interaction time without having to power rank. Pretty rare do people interact with me outside a ranking group or someone I just killed/died to.

Maybe some bonuses to explore experience if done in a group, similar to ranking? Really hard to get people to go exploring with you midlevel. (Though I suspect this is because most probably already know the area I'm going to)

I definitely like the idea of mid level explore areas and I'm always down to see more automated quests. I love automated quests. I've found like 55 I think that can be done pre-hero, so there is a lot, but more is better.

Side note. A mob at the Eternal Star that gives hints on where to find appropriate quests your level would be cool. Or suggests level appropriate areas to go explore.

The area list seems outdated/down right wrong on many areas. I use it to figure out where I want to go usually, but many times I run into things that (even the high end of the level range)I can't really handle. Better area help files may be the answer there. Xvart lair for instance. Lot's of poison to be contracted around there and unless you know that, you probably aren't taking a source for curing poison. A note about that in a help file would be nice. Sure there are lots of similar things.

Remove XP loss for death. Or cap it as some less punitive number, e.g., half of what you need TNL or some such. Losing 1/3 CON is already a penalty. I find the XP loss and -1/3 CON together detrimental to exploring. Going from +93.35% tnl to -34.4% tnl does not engender exploring. I know there should be a risk here but losing CON is bad enough I think. Also, after such a death I just power a few levels to get the stale taste gone... And I like to explore.

Apart from this I like the area explore for midbies idea.

Finally, scaleable skills. What I mean here is midbie skills that still have utility at hero. I'm thinking of partial shifts (useless at hero). Elbow is another one. I remember when afflict and mend wounds came in. This type of scaling is what I'm getting at. I think a lot of players hate wasting practices on something that has only limited shelf life. This is a reason to power through such levels.

Otherwise I think it's fine. I do not expect perfect balance between all classes at all levels. The evolution of the balance stick is one thing that makes the game so addictive I think. There are so many subtitles there.

At one time it became basically impossible to level once you reached a certain xp loss. I had a char once that literally had an xp hole of 250k and that was at level 49ish (edited to add: I was also a cabal leader (herald to be exact)). I got my xp set to normal levels as a reward for basically dominating the easter egg hunt.

I have no problems with the current setup. -30% is nothing. That's an extra 10-15 minutes.

>At one time it became basically impossible to level once you
>reached a certain xp loss. I had a char once that literally
>had an xp hole of 250k and that was at level 49ish (edited to
>add: I was also a cabal leader (herald to be exact)). I got my
>xp set to normal levels as a reward for basically dominating
>the easter egg hunt.
>
>I have no problems with the current setup. -30% is nothing.
>That's an extra 10-15 minutes.


It may be nothing for those who know their way around but it can be hell on those of us trying to hero for a first time and not knowing the different areas. If you have to rely on someone else leading in areas you haven't been where there are aggressive creatures and have no idea where to run to get away the newbie always dies for sure.

I've died several times now always when I have like 1 more damn kill to rank and it's not easy climbing back up when you're still learning the lands.

Also when you can't get a group you could be off learning new areas but theres a good chance of dying there too.. then an exp hole for trying to learn new places.

That's a good idea. With my first character, Fungor, I learned much about how to stay alive. I heroed the character and explored a lot, most of Thera. The timeline for heroing is shown here:

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=31&topic_id=4113&mesg_id=4117&page=

Oh, I know. I've been playing for 10+ years. I did not explore at all until hero then. Just ranked. Why risk it? Again, losing CON is bad enough. The fun stick just hates seeing -34% tnl...

is that you can't lose anymore xp so feel free to do all the exploring you want now and worry about getting out of that xp hole afterwards.

Threads like this tell me otherwise, but when I am mid level and wondering what else I might be able to do to get Maran, or maybe some immexp, or empowered, or any of the other types of imm dependant things, I always start looking at my TNL and thinking that maybe I would garner more attention if I were higher level.

I push the thought down most times, as I have seen threads like this and posts that say that there are no negative outlooks on anyone that stays at a level range for a while, and that the game doesn't start at hero, but over time I always end up thinking I guess I'd better go ahead and rank up because I'm not seeing attention with what I am doing now.

For me, just a little nudge that what I am doing is ok, or even a poke on the head on what I could be doing better with my midlevel self would go a long way in feeling more secure that powering up isn't the answer until I just flat out want to move on up.

For the most part I guess my answer to what else I could be doing comes down to being a better player to earn things, but in a couple of cases now I have gotten positive imm feedback after my deletion thinking I was failing, which if I'd had a smidge of before that I would have gleefully applied the spurs and continued on.

Right now it's a powerranking culture, and I can't keep up. I notice if there is a good group, the other two are ready to continue for 8 straight hours until they hero!

mid-ranks used to be full of PK'ing, now, for most, to enjoy pk'ing you are either committed to walking the ends of Thera for an hour until you find someone or ranking up, joining a cabal, and raiding.

Soooo, maybe look at the following

Racial XP penalties:

I want to see more race/class combos - i'm tired of only human necromancers and human thieves.

I like how warriors work, with the different races offering different options in combination with legacies. But again, it's also why the drow warriors don't necessarily take their time.

If not adjusting the xp penalties, maybe adjust the spell/saves/hit level mechanics. Really, if you are a higher rank, shouldn't just knowing more skills and having more HP be enough of an advantage?

Ranking areas:

When the mud was geographically smaller, it was dangerous (and fun) to rank, because you were so much easier to find... and that meant more PK fights. Not just because there were twice the people on. To find someone now, it's no fun. I never played cabals, but I do now, just so I can find a fight easier. Either you should choose to hide and be bored, or take risk and be out there.

You talked awhile back about adjusting Where to potentially locate people in adjacent areas, I think that is a great idea.

I also really really think that easy-to-get-to areas should be ranking friendly - no camo'd rangers one-shotting you, no impaling skeletons, I mean, honestly. So you have incentive to be there, but risk getting attacked. On that note, there need to be more places for thieves to sneak around and find ranking groups :p Too ranger-friendly right now!

Definitely worth looking at. What keeps me playing is the exploring and endless details of classes to learn, but I miss lowbie PK fun.

I don't agree with the call for expanded where at all. I haven't played conjurers or an air shifter, yet I have never found it too hard to locate someone I was hungry to find. It's far more likely that I take the stance of, "I don't think checking out area X, Y, and Z is worth the hassle when my target will most likely flee/quaff at the first sign of trouble."

Now chasing someone is more difficult, but I think knowing areas and trying to give someone the slip or find their hiding spot is what brings out some of the art to pk that is so often decided by bash, evade, gear and prepping.

1. One key thing I believe is Spellpower plays a vital role in a Mage's life, as does Enhanced Damage for Melee Characters.

Toss in Lagging skills, Defenses, and Dual Wield and any way you stack it 20-35ish the mage is different tactics.

I believe Spell Power should actually award MORE in the beginning so that spells are slightly more consistant, I know it is counter to how skills work, but that would equalize damage for mages at least at the level where most spells are Horrible in their spell %'s.

Spell Power an Enhanced Damage just get learned at a MUCH different rate, every weapon swing is a chance for E.D. to Increase, where as Spellpower takes actual spells to be cast (Mana), so there's a chance to increase E.D. as long as your HP is ok, where as S.P requires HP and Mana.

2. Next up is defenses, I would LOVE Mages to have more defenses, but frankly they'd be really powerful with them at the 35-51 range. This is out of left field, but maybe allow mages to train Dodge or Shield Block to a low % ONLY, i.e. 50%, 45%, 30% and require 1 prac = 10% even for Elves.
The reasoning behind this is the mage would still have to consider is the Offhand worth it, and knowing that dodge isn't going to save your butt TO often would help.

3. The Veil, Love it or Hate it, it's here to stay. The Veil plays such a vital role in any mages life that playing a Mage with a Thick Veil can frankly suck. I understand that's the reward to Melee and Ragers, however the mages have no Equal way to affect Melee in such a pivotal role. True, a THIN Veil rewards are MASSIVE, but again it's focus on a Mage for better or worse, rather than Melee. I frankly have no idea how to correct this, BUT I still believe the Veil is a GREAT Addition to the game, allowing more dynamic wars/fights/interactions. The Drawback is it's fluctuations. Make it a steady timer if it's not, and make changes from level to Worse/Better much harder to change. For a Thick Veil I'd hope to see the Commander, Drillmaster, Battle Gods, and Drunk Ragers raping and slaying everything within Galadon to Modan. On the flipside for a Thin I'd expect to see Nexians, Fort, Tribunal, AND Scion Mages all running around.

Sorry for the WALLS of text, it comes from my role writing skills.

Seilclavin, the Horrible Pker and Herald Punk

Tone down the base damage of spells, but create equipment stats that are the magician's equivalent to hitroll and damroll. Spellcraft could be altered then to more closely emulate Enhanced Damage.

The workaround to retooling equipment throughout Thera would be to create a spell or an edge that allows mages to transform the hit/dam on existing equipment in a manner that applies it to their spell casting. Newly create mystical equipment and place in a limited fashion.


-------------------
Spell: Mystic Transmogrification (armor|damage)
This spell allows a mage or Arcane thief to apply a percentage of his gear-related melee bonuses to reduce damage taken or to increase the damage of his spells, whether they are naturally cast or through a wand, staff, or scroll. This effect is enhanced by the current mental capacity of the magician.

When cast, the mage cannot benefit from the Battlemage edge. Barrier and Mystic Transmogrification are mutually exclusive.
--------------------

If it was given as a low-level spell, every mage would see some benefit from it, and many might enjoy it even in the high ranks.
Gear selection becomes more important, and it gives a new reason to attack intelligence and wisdom in combat.

So basically... we'd give more damage to high level mages who have either healer help or a full-out gang? That is to say, the kind of mages who don't really give a damn about how much damage they're taking.

the retooling I suggested to base dam and spell craft.

If it was designed properly, I envisioned a high level mage using this spell would have to sacrifice the use of barrier & hp/mana gear in order to get
- current damage output in spells (gear for high damroll)
- have damage reduction on a stick (gear for high ac)

For the most part, isn't mana gear useless? (Let's exclude the conjurer, who plays dress up right before conjuring.) I can think of very few occasions where I ran out of mana when I wasn't ranking. PK fights are way too short.

So, mana gear is worthless in PK.

If you want to consider some kind of gear based spell enhanced damaged, how about modifying based upon total mana and/or total mana capacity. Normal spell damage might be the mage's naked mana total and the modifier be based upon gear based mana.

Woe is he who faces the the 2000 mana pillar of lightning. Of course, that poor little drow mage might have to drop his HPs down, so the perk would have a cost.

Remove all of the 'detect invis' preps. Make invisibility actually mean something again.

Nowadays, it almost doesn't seem worth the mana it takes to cast it.

I second this.. I usually play mages, and have been playing CF off and on for a few years.. still slowly getting the hang of it. It just seems too easy for a rager, even an applicant, to bash me down. I know if they couldnt see invis, that it would be hella easy for the character to be invis their entire life and avoid any pk.. but maybe there could be a compromise.

maybe have the applicants/rager detectinvis not entirely reliable.. like they might know if an invis person is around but not see them, or see them intermittently. This seems more "realistic" for villagers as a person, hypothetically, could learn to sense invisible beings, and maybe see them occasionally.. but to straight up see the invisible like a mage kind of devalues both the invis and detect invis spells for casters, imo.

along with this sub-topic of mages vs melee, it does seem unbalanced how mages suck comparatively at lower levels, but could win the fight at hero. I dont like the idea of making mages more powerful, or more defensive to compensate.. but something to better their chances of avoiding a fight would be nice.

There are of course places to go to hide, but sometimes you need to do other things.. and hiding in some remote location .. well, you might as well just log out.

so im definitely in favor of something that makes invis a little more useful, but not so much to effectivly replace duo or improved invis. Ooh.. maybe on top of what we have now (even with detect invis preps and powers) let invis do an intermittent effect of hiding you on the where command?

25-40 is where its at.

Once I get to 40+ I often lose interest and delete, but before then there's no better PKage.

The big difference I find between "warriors" and "mages" are that equipment helps warriors on low levels a lot more then it does mages. Sure mages can get more hp at low level but it doesn't help much compared to a warrior getting 40+ in dam roll. Not sure what would be the best way to solve this though. Anyone got any ideas?



As for exploring. I would like to do more exploring on lower levels but the levels suggested on the area command doesn't seem to be correct or varies a lot. Going though that and standardize it would help me at least.

I think it has less to do with gear and more to do with how many lagging commands need to be entered before a successful kill.

A mage with only 150 hp is going to take say, 1-2 trips to die. A mage with 800 hp + damage reduction is going to take at least 4-5 trips. That difference is the difference between stacking up tons of kills and having your enemies constantly get away.

Factor in word of recall, flight, bash protection always being up, greater invoker shields/air forms, etc and it becomes even that much more imbalanced.

But the bottom line is that your % likelihood of permalagging with 1-2 bashes/trips/pincers versus 5-6 is a huge statistical difference heavily weighted in favor of the melee character.

Naturally add in all the stuff below that Valg and others posted.

Well to me it is a lot easier to get 40ish dam roll on a warrior type in the low mid levels. But getting great hp gear at the same level on a mage tends to be much harder. So that is why I think the gear is shifted to aid warriors more then mages at lower levels.

I'm not sure how I can help, since I might be one of the very few people who enjoy the mid-levels more than hero, but I'll outline my experiences as a "rank-sitter".

IMHO, some classes can't compete. In this category I put shifters. Basically, I've never had any success (even with preps) killing with non-final forms. They suck. They aren't usually even good at what they're specifically designed for compared to a well to decently-geared melee type.

Invokers I've also struggled with. It seems like their hp gains are even crappier than other mages, and that their hp regen is even crappier, but that could wrong. I tried a low-mid level pking voker recently (Start of 5th age I think) and was very unsuccessful because (as someone mentioned further down) the damage is too unpredictable. I think I was around even on kills deaths, but the RNG isn't what I like determining my fights (unless I'm a rager). I was also an outlander, which I've once again sworn not to play, so that had some effect on my ability to pk.

I've never tried lowbie transmuter. Conjies are pretty much the #### once they get angels/demons, but they also seem to peter out toward hero. Necros are silly easy to pk with at pretty much any level, but they lack much variety in that sleep is pretty much the deciding factor in a win or loss. You land, you win, you don't, you lose.

On the other hand, you have warriors, assassins, and orcs. Most recently I've played a mid-level orc, and like always, they are very very deadly. It's just so much easier to land a kill when you can bash, trip, or otherwise lag an opponent you know you are going to beat in straight up melee. You also have a pretty good idea of just how much damage you are going to do, which makes determining when to GTFO a lot easier.

Honestly, if I could pick a change, I think I'd go with reinstating xp loss for pk losses. Then I'd have an excuse for never ranking out of the mid ranks and the fact that I'm down to 15 con wouldn't matter since I would be gaining any more ranks anways.

Invis is useless in its current form against anyone who is A) Not lazy (this is what gets me killed) B) Not a newbie and C) Not a pre-25 rager. Let other melee classes share in the pain. Bump up hieghtened awareness and other detect invis skills to 25, Make invis like assassin hide in its usability, Make all potions/pills level 25 or higher (I'd say 35) allow for scrolls/talismans at say 25-30. Basically give every mage the opportunity to pick their fights and I think you'd see a lot more low-midbie mages trying to throw down. By making it so they can't just invis once they've gotten in a fight, you also give melee classes a chance for revenge. I'd probably also move recall and teleport up in the level you can get them as a potion/pill and make scrolls and talismans lower for recall.

Basically, allow low level mages the ability to move about more freely than their melee counterparts, but at the cost of a scroll or talisman vs a potion, meaning they can whittle down more easily, and allow them to invis and have that mean something.

Might be too much, but I'd sure abuse the crap out of it.

I think they would shift things over just enough towards low/mid level pk for mages.

I may be the only one who thinks this way, but I was thinking about scrolls and their place in the magic hierarchy. The way I see it now, scrolls are basically used by thieves (because they have no other option), and the few high level scrolls that are useful enough to be used by anyone with scrolls.

The way I imagine a scroll being made in CF is that essentially you have a piece of paper (maybe magic) and a pen (also maybe magic) and you inscribe a spells and impart the power (mana) necessary for that spell to work when the scroll is recited.

On the other hand, potions should be quite a bit trickier. Lots of ingredients, brewing time, storage, etc. etc.

So why are potions more common preps across the board than scrolls? It seems to me that scrolls should cost about 10x less than potions and cover a wider variety of spells. If you could stock up on flight, enlarge, reduce, and the other basic preps as a mage for 1/10th the cost of your potion quaffing melee counterparts, you might be more likely to engage in some midlevel pk before you have the more powerful wands and talismans of protection available. Not to mention scrolls should weigh very little, allowing you to keep a good number on hand.

The way I imagine it, scrolls could become a vital and important part of any young mage's repertoire, giving them access to a much wider variety of preps at a lower level and at a reduced cost compared to melee costs. After all, why should a conjurer be shelling out 200 copper a piece for flight instead of stocking up on 50 copper scrolls of flight? Or why would they have to gather or buy expensive enlarge/reduce potions when they could buy the cheaper scroll equivalents? Granted this would open up more stuff to thieves/rangers/bards and ap's, but one can always make mage-only scrolls.

It just seems like scrolls is a highly underutilized skill simply because by the time you can get scrolls that are worthwhile, you no longer need them as much.

Just a random thought.

Disclaimer: I'm not discussing social/RP goals, because that's independent of level/class/etc. I'm sticking with quantitative pursuits.

Empirically, we see that most characters with high kill rates and low death rates in the mid-levels are melee-based-- typically warriors, assassins, and rangers, with berserkers, thug-ish thieves, and APs somewhere in there. Less often, someone will be aggressive with a mage (invoker, transmuter are least rare), but they tend to die more often than the top-tier melee characters.

This is easy to understand-- if someone gets the drop on your sword-spec warrior, there's a decent chance you can hold off their melee, and flee if they go for high damage instead of lag. (And if they do lag you out, you might beat them. A surprising number of people insist on tripping themselves to death.) If someone gets the drop on your invoker, there's some chance you aren't getting a command in while you melee like a girl. Throw in the large edge in HP inherent to the classes, and it's much harder to 'blitz' sword spec guy.

I'm not saying you can't be PK-successful with every class, but generally speaking the guy who can manufacture clever ways to murder people with lowbie necromancer... can run up that kill count in half the time and a quarter of the losses with a melee build.

Back in the old days, the counter-argument (which I don't like, and can comment on if asked) was that melee types tended to suck at hero, so it was balanced by early strength. Lately, that empirically hasn't been the case-- for example, if I list the 25 deadliest characters now, there are 14 that can't cast/commune/sing, plus 6 more paladins/anti-paladins that are squarely in the hybrid realm. Most did most of their damage at the upper ranks. And while any player can name tough Fifth Age warriors, you certainly can't say that for every class.

This has a negative effect when the perception becomes "If I'm playing one of ~7-9 classes, my optimal strategy is to keep my head down and power-level.", for several reasons:

1) Power-leveling is monotonous, and can wear out one's desire to log on.
2) They try to remove themselves from PK, which reduces options for others.
3) If they don't see a group, they log off because they don't perceive anything to do. Even if leveling was first among other tasks (exploration, raiding, gathering items, PK stuff, etc.), they'd likely hang around, while groupmates might pop up.

(A compounding problem is that melee types are also desirable groupmates, so random low-level mage wants to power-rank but is wanted the least.)

My inclination is that the mid-level mechanical side of the game would be more interesting if:

1) Melee classes 'matured' slower. My bias is that Dual Wield is a sensible target here.
2) The 7-9 classes I mentioned get upgrades in the lower ranks. I think we've come part of the way-- low-rank shifter is a lot better, the newer Spellcraft is kinder to midbies, more midbie-ish wands and other devices exist, transmuters are more viable early, unempowered people have some punch that lasts into the 20s at least, etc.

Both of the above ripple outwards, of course. If you beef up all the mages/etc., PvE (*) gets easier, and if you're not careful you end up skewing the hero ranks as well. Conversely, as you slow down melee types, PvE gets a little harder, although other classes look more attractive as groupmates.

It's not an easy problem, but I can say that the majority (but not all) of the staff I've run this past lean towards some kind of action being good for the game. In particular, it would be nice to be able to tell new players "Play whatever seems the most fun for you." without having to add "Although you might find it a good bit harder." You see a lot of people on the New Player forum with the mindset "I play necromancers.", and telling them "Don't, for now." rarely goes over well.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Player vs. Environment-- ranking, exploring, gathering items and money, etc. Things you could do if you were the only person on.

I believe this is right on.

If you were going to do anything I would recommend giving mages a boost to their spells.
Or atleast a higher % chance of landing a "big hit" off a spell at lower levels.
A critical hit of sorts. This would give a mage more of a classic glass canon feel.

Other options:
Nerfing dual wield at lower levels slightly.
Nerfing higher level gear on lower level characters.
Giving mages a lower level protective spell that might deflect blows more than on occasion.
Ex: Armor of Bone, Sheen of Stone, etc. Of course these would have to be made inert by higher level protections.
Give healers a damage attack other than kick.
Give all mages shield block and Transmuters dodge.

I hope this helps some.

And really, the only thing I don't like is the idea of nerfing warriors and other meleers for balance.

The very idea of making it harder, slower, and more tedious is exactly the opposite of what our aim should be when it comes to getting more people to play the mid ranks.

But otherwise, agreeeeeed!

When I was playing I totally noticed a lot of new lower rank weapons and wands proliferating several areas where such items did not exist before (a certain flail in Eregion, a certain spear in Arboria, a certain wand on a wandering mob, etc, etc) and I just wanted to say that those types of things made me really enjoy rechecking areas for whatever reason.

And yes, there are some nasty low level wands out there. Some are damn near OP if your wand skill is high enough and you have the gold.

nt

I posted something about druids below. I feel they are the class that should be looked towards when balancing out casting. Im a fan of the consept of giving mages more damage reduction and durability early on.

Druids get: (Before level 25)
Carapace like spell.
Protection vs Metals.
Bash protection.
Heal.
Good offensive spells.
Shield Block.
Parry.
Decent Health.

Mages get: (Before level 25)
Crappy low level damage redux (Sheen of stone etc)
Parry.
Low Health.
Very good offensive spells.

Although they get better offensive spells than druids they not near make out the difference in strength when it comes to the protective aspects vs the offensive aspect. To me a druid felt almost as potent as a warrior when it came to durability in both PvE and PvP.

Give mages a way to counter bash early on beyond the reduce/enlarge which dont really work all that well if you meet a warrior with straight DISMEMBERS(or higher) damage at level 20. Give them more damage reduction aswell.

Pre-25 I've killed more with a transmuter than I have a druid. Druids really don't become "powerful" until the mid to upper 20's since one pincer/cranial or any reliable non-traditional lagging maneuver can instantly wipe you off the board. If you have a high xp penalty, your druid has to be more picky about who it fights than a mage. But on the brighter side, at least they don't have to worry about giant bashers.

At level 23 a mage can have Aura and Shield and combined with their other spells that makes them much more survivable than your standard druid vs warriors. The only power a druid has that a mage doesn't is the hit and run. They can hit, get beat up, run away, and heal and try to whittle them down. But in the end you only end up killing the ones that a mage would have totally washed off the board without running.

If you could post some of your lowbie murder-trans logs to the log board, that would be cool. I'm sure you're at least one of the ones I've seen in action.

But transmuter with quickening/parry/mental jolt is okay on lowbie ranks. I'd like to see more invokers, shifters, aps

I found druid to be the most dangerous caster I have ever played. In my experience what you say is false, when I played Baldrien very few people came of as remotly scary to me. The most dangerous people were the dual wielding flail warriors with flails made of plant. All others just could not do enaugh damage to me.

If you get instantly wiped off the board with a druid around level 20, I will claim you do something wrong. Since that is not even remotly my experience. I was tanking two ugruks way before most my warriors could even handle one of them, which is an indication of their defensive power. This isnt even with defensive herbs, just offensive.

If I trip a mage on my warriors, I expect them to die within 2 or 3 rounds. Some die before trip lag is gone, others die to parting blow.

In my opinion a mage isnt even remotly close to the power level of a druid at those levels.

Risk/Reward. Exploring at hero brings results which benefit your char for the rest of time. Exploring at mid-range gets you the rank 12 orc sword of mediocrity. Why do at 30 what i can at hero, with more tools?

...and not risk a mob death at the same time (which will be made worse by the fact that if everyone is fannying around at rank 30 then there will be no one to group with)

re: pk'ing. At sub hero it's bloody tough to actually find anyone these days and if you do they just recall. Gone are the hey-days of Emerald Forest/Tar Valon.

I think the advantage of exploring early is getting edges earlier. As well as more explore xp as there are level restrictions on getting it in places.

I mean it isn't unreasonable to do several hero level area explores at level 30 (like half of them) and the advantage is that your level 30 with a couple more edges. Since fewer people have edges that is a relatively larger advantage then having them at hero when more people also have them.


and a mob death isn't usually more then an extra 30 minutes to maybe an hour of ranking... just think of it as time to let your skills go up without mindlessly spamming them for hours alone.

Couple things I find frustrating:

1. You run out of movement faster, which is exacerbated by

2. It's harder and/or more time consuming to gather gold.

Also- you can usually get hero gear over time, by taking one piece at a time from PKs, but once you die its all gone, and you're not going to be able to regear with anything close to what you had before. So death becomes a little more frustrating.

It also seems like there are some nastier mismatches at the low and mid ranks than there are at hero. Though, if you're playing a combo that has a huge advantage against someone...that can be a "plus" instead of a "minus".

I don't get this mentality of you can only get one good set of gear on a character in a lifetime.

If you did it once what stops you from doing it again.

At least for me it is the realization that at relatively low levels there is a lot of luck in the piecing together a good set. If I am a level 25 character and mostly wearing gear I can only get myself at hero then if I lose that set it might be that I cannot replace it for a long time. Not, that it is impossible, just less likely.

I feel that in the mid ranks the problem is not mechanical as much as it is players perceptions.

You have listed stats further down this thread where protections at mid ranks are nill, gear is less good, so on and so forth.

The reason a lot of people have trouble in the mid ranks is because they never bothered to learn how to play them. Learning how to be succesful with a build takes experimentation and experience and if as a player you have been powering through the mid ranks the last 10 years chances are while you have a lot of CF experience you have very little playing cf at the mid ranks experience.

Now I think a little part of that has to do with non melee classes having a tougher time in the PvE arena in getting gears and much less incentive to learn these things since when it comes to ranking (what they spend the vast majority of their time doing at these ranks) you are better off just waiting for a melee guy who did do these things to come around and pick up the slack.

Another downside to mid rank play is you can only partially participate in cabal wars which seems to be the driving force of interaction in the game.

You can't participate in taking an item unless you are a support class because the inners will deep fry you in moments. There are actually a lot of instances where you can't participate in retrievals effectively either. Being wanted vs tribunals with heros around, imperial centurions, fortress hero healers, bioempathy, so on and so forth effectively barring mid rank retrievals and when cabals don't have their items for more then 15 minutes you tend to see much fewer around at hero until enemies log off for an easy retrieve.


My suggestion is to start rewarding vissibly some less traditional mid rank power houses, like temp titles would be huge. I know last names are there but they have really lost their value to the majority of the playerbase as a reward.

I know, crazy?

You mentioned something that reminded me of something else. Mages and non-melee classes in general rely heavily on others at the lower levels. They rely on them far less so near hero. This is probably yet another motivation to power through the low/mid ranks.

1) Balance mages vs. melee

there's a balancing problem at low/mid ranks since melee damage is basically a function of your eq, while mage damage is a function of the level. This means there will always be problems balancing the game since the power range of characters becomes very big. Easy fix for this:

Make eq work like weapons, so that if you are level 20 wearing a level 50 piece of eq, then all stats from that eq piece is modified by (MIN(char_level/eq_level), 1)..

So the formula for all eq stats would become ROUNDUP(eq_stat*MIN(char_level/eq_level, 1))

It would probably suck for my lowbie ragers from a powergaming POV, but it would also make things more fun if mages tried to fight back instead of teleport when a melee guy shows up on where.

It will also have a side effect of reducing the incentive to cheating eq to lowbie chars (good) and to full loot decked heros as a lowbie (i don't care about this.. but i know others do.. so good i suppose as it might reduce churn).

Side note: I used roundup because it's boring if eq starts giving no stats at all.

2) Mage power vs. Invisibility

At low level fights are usually over quicker than at hero. Especially if it is between a warrior and a mage since the mage has neither defenses nor damage reduction. And warriors do not do *that* much less damage. This means that mages will usually choose to go invisible rather than to fight.

Solution: Move all parry/dodge/shield block/shield spell to pre-10 levels. Move invisibility to level 25. (This change coupled with the above might actually make mages too strong.. I think one strong reason mages generally get their asses kicked at low/mid ranks is that they just try to avoid PK and power level. Which means ####ty gear, no preps, and low skill percentages. As well as often being caught unawares (since they teleport when they see an enemy otherwise).

3) Class specific adjustments:

Some classes have no or just one decent skill and crappy melee at the low ranks. This means no tactical diversity. Try to ensure that all classes have a decent number of options as soon as pk starts. Pre-form shapeshifters have nothing, and 1st tier form is usually sucky for its level.
Invokers have only a couple of damage spells and no real tactics.
Pre-familiar conjurers have only magic missile. With familiar they might be able to fight, but still not well enough.

4) Incentives:

4a) Take away level requirement for edges. Will give you an incentive to explore / PK / RP early.

4b) Challenges (a new thing): You can choose from a selection of challenges from your guildmaster that you can try to complete before hitting levels 10,20,30,40,51. If you complete the challenge before reaching that level, you get a couple of edge points. Challenges could be:

Challenge of perfection: Master 5 skills
Challenge of blood: PK 5 different people
Challenge of commerce: Trade goods to a value of 100 gold.
Challenge of crime: Become wanted
Challenge of exploration: Find 5 exploration points.
Challenge of questiness: Complete 5 quests.
Challenge of masochism: Die 3 times
Challenge of glory: Defeat 3 different opponents in the arena
etc...

You can choose the same challenge as many times as you want, but the
threshold increases every time if you do.

4c) (Thought about this quite late, but I really like it) The first death you suffer at each level doesn't cost you any CON.

4d) (I really like this one too) You age slower (in years per RL hour) at lower ranks.

To explain 4c) and 4d): The most time efficient strategy for maximizing your hero rank power is to power level and then do explore/obs/commerce XP and PK for edge points. This aims to subsidize doing stuff at lower ranks.

Just wanted to throw out one thing quick:

>To explain 4c) and 4d): The most time efficient strategy for
>maximizing your hero rank power is to power level and then do
>explore/obs/commerce XP and PK for edge points. This aims to
>subsidize doing stuff at lower ranks.

I don't think this is actually true as the edge system is designed, but maybe I need to update the helpfile and explain why better.

In short, it does offer some incentives for early PK/exploration/etc.

I don't think the solution is to nerf high level gear for low level characters. I think if you actually manage to get that kind of gear at low level, you've essentially earned it.

What I see as the problem is that most good limited lower level gear becomes the staple re-gear for heroes before they head off to get their better stuff... Thus preventing that gear from actually circulating amongst lowbies/midbies. Potential solutions here are to either change how such gear is limited, or to make it less useful to higher level characters and more useful to lower level characters. Good examples of gear that already works in that manner are both the Soul Drain item available to necromancers, and the questy pathfinding boots.

Everything else you've said I can agree with, save for invisibility. Getting detect invis is pretty much laughable these days, so your change only actually affects wannabe rager applicants and applicants pre-25 anyhow.

I think the difference is that more melee based characters take the time to equip themselves since they also tend to be doing the tanking and suck fiercely if they try to power to level 40 in fine leather gear like many mages do.

I have seen all sorts of non melee bulds tear swaths through the mid ranks just by actually getting mid level mage gear.

The only thing I would correct is that those mages have a much rougher time getting that gear solo to pk with then melee chars of the same rank.

In a lot of ways, playing a mage in the 30s is like playing a mage at 51: you can only handle certain people without preps. In the 30s, those preps are just a lot harder to come by.

I've played all kinds of mages to at least the low 30s, save necromancer, and never found myself really scared of melee opponents as long as I had some combination of shield, stoneskin, and/or protection, plus of course the usual flight/etc.

Obviously you can't have full ABS at 30, but you can have enough HP through equipment and damage reduction through preps to tear through the same percentage of your range as you would easily tear through with a warrior or something like that.

>> I think the difference is that more melee based characters take the time to equip themselves since they also tend to be doing the tanking and suck fiercely if they try to power to level 40 in fine leather gear like many mages do.

Yeah I agree (and wrote) that this is a huge factor. But do you really think it is so only because mage players don't need eq to rank?

>> I have seen all sorts of non melee bulds tear swaths through the mid ranks just by actually getting mid level mage gear.

Through the mid range sure (for some classes), but when was the last time you saw a mage beating ass between 11 and 20?

I can tell you I have killed people with first tier defense forms at level 14. I have killed people with just mental jolt at 14, I have killed people with just magic missle at 11, I have killed people with just icicle at 12.


In the 10-15 rank range I think mages and shaman have a heavy advantage over melee. Mostly because aside from warriors most melee classes still only have second attach and no dual wield, can't do direct damage, and can't lag reliably. If you have a direct damage spell up at 90% you can just 3 round people with it over and over. You don't even need dam redux you can gear for AC and pick off the people still rocking fine leather with only 100 hp and practice weapon damage output.

Badly formatted, but this is what happened when level 19 shifter tried to kill my level 12 warrior. He died in murder lag, and that was with me wearing 4 pieces of fine leather. (And yes I know, anecdotal evidence doesn't count. But when it comes to racking up kills at any level 11-30, I bet on a melee class 100% of the time. The only mage contender in that range would be a conjurer with demon/angel.)

<100%hp 100%m 86%mv> <10 PM 80.46%> civilized >
<36mYou yell 'Help! I am being attacked by someone!'[br/>A black soldier ant fades into existence.
You parry a black soldier ant's bite.
A black soldier ant has a few scratches.

<100%hp 100%m 86%mv> <10 PM 80.46%> civilized > whe
People near you:
(PK) Djabree East Sumner's Road
(PK) a black soldier ant East Sumner's Road
A black soldier ant has a few scratches.

<100%hp 100%m 86%mv> <10 PM 80.46%> civilized >
Your slash <31mdevastates a black soldier ant![br/>Your slice <31mdevastates a black soldier ant![br/>Your slice <31mEVISCERATES a black soldier ant![br/>Your slash <31mdevastates a black soldier ant![br/>A black soldier ant's bite <31mdevastates you![br/>A black soldier ant is gushing blood.

<84%hp 100%m 86%mv> <10 PM 80.46%> civilized >
Your slash <31mdecimates a black soldier ant![br/>Your slice <31mMUTILATES a black soldier ant![br/>Your slice <31mmaims a black soldier ant![br/>A black soldier ant is DEAD!!
<1mYou have become better at second attack![br/>
And level 12 warrior vs level 15 transmuter


Marlom is here.

<100%hp 100%m 81%mv> <12 PM 80.50%> civilized > murder Marlom
People near you:
(PK) Djabree Park Road
(PK) Marlom Park Road

<100%hp 100%m 81%mv> <12 PM 80.50%> civilized > <36mMarlom yells 'Help! I am being attacked by Djabree!'[br/>Your slash <31mmauls Marlom.[br/>Marlom is covered with bleeding wounds.

<100%hp 100%m 81%mv> <12 PM 80.50%> civilized >
Marlom's pierce <31mmisses you.[br/>Your slash <31mdevastates Marlom![br/>Marlom is gushing blood.

<100%hp 100%m 81%mv> <12 PM 80.50%> civilized >
You parry Marlom's pierce.
Your slash <31mmaims Marlom![br/>Your slash <31mdecimates Marlom![br/>Marlom is mortally wounded, and will die soon, if not aided.
Marlom is nearly dead.

<100%hp 100%m 81%mv> <12 PM 80.50%> civilized > st

Your slash <31mEVISCERATES Marlom![br/>Marlom is DEAD!!
Marlom splatters blood on your armor.

1) Soften XP penalties based on the race/class/popularity/power of a particular combo. The goal here is to give such a combo a more sensible level range to deal with. For example, a human ranger has an XP penalty of 200. An elf ranger's is 700. Considering that there really is no great advantage to being an elf ranger...in fact, I think most might agree that the elf is disadvantaged compared to the human, the current system really sort of screws the elf, right? I don't think every single instance of this needs to be re-tooled, but some of the ones that spring to mind are dark-elf necro, felar AP, cloud healer, and gnome warrior (shoosh I don't wanna hear it!).

2) I posted down below as a reply, but I'll post again here - make movement regen much better for all levels (not just the low ones), but make it so that it goes back to how it is now when adrenalin from a PC encounter sets in. This makes it so that mv-hampering tactics are still viable in PK, but there would be less down-time in the midst of action.

3) How about making the whole Area Explore concept scalable based on your level? For instance, any character at level 51 won't be too freaked out by gathering a group and exploring the castle of barovia. But, take a group of three level 25's and it is a pretty epic proposition. The net result would be increased explore and observation XP for those who tackle relatively difficult places earlier in life. Additionally, they'd gain the benefit of a swift corpse decay and gear return. I'm sure tons of other cool ideas could spawn from this. Also, if you die in an area explore, how about reducing or altogether nullifying the XP penalty? I mean, you're taking a chance by even going to one, because they are inherently more difficult than standard areas. Ideally, the new Explore-For-Tots areas would be chock full of questy goodness and cool gear, so it might mean a long-term retrofitting of some current places to live up to that.

Edited to add: One real pain in the butt for non-high-level characters to deal with are nasty maledictions that last for exceptionally lengthy amounts of time. I.e.; PLAGUE. The fact of the matter is that abilities like this one make exploring a very daunting proposition for lowbies and midbies. I'd suggest revisiting some cases where mobs cast it or "skill" it like freaks. Case in point; that mummy in the castle of barovia.

4) Tiered cabal raiding and retrievals. I know, crazy right? But, check this out: What if cabal members could only raid/retrieve for whatever portions of their cabal powers that they can currently make use of? This would utterly eliminate the effectiveness of lowbie retrievals, and even raids. Each cabal could be made quite a bit larger, with various guardians instead of just an outer and an inner. Each would basically hold sway over a given power. So, let's say the nightwalker at the Chasm guards over divination and nightfist, but if the Scions are holding an item, it guards the lowest tier powers of another cabal. So, if the Scions had the Orb, lowbie squires and acolytes could kill the nightwalker to regain zeal and golden aura (or whatever the hell that power is called). I'm not necessarily saying this is a great idea, or that this would be the best way to implement it, but if the basic gist is followed it could result in non-hero ranks being just as exciting from a risk/reward standpoint.

First, shinies. Best shinies, hands down, are available to heroes. Getting shinies at lower levels generally involved following heroes around and jacking from their corpses. However, this comes with its own stigma, and players like me think its really lame if thats all my character really does. I've noticed that when my characters get access to more powerful gear early on, I'm more prone to go explore or pk with him before hero. If my guy is still using ragesteel, skull rings, and charred bracers at level 40, I figure I might as well hit hero in order to grab the best gear possible, rather than waste my time gathering shinies that I'll end up replacing later anyway, or pking at a disadvantage versus full hero sets.

I think creating powerful limited items that become significantly less effective at hero would be a good way to remedy the situation. You could also use these items to remedy extreme imbalances, rather than tweaking the nature of the classes themselves.

For example, a pair of magical boots which allow elf/dark elf thieves under level 40 to reflect deathblows, but crumble when worn by someone past level 40. No big balance killer, just something which makes playing a gimped class like elf thief more bearable in the middle ranks.

Or a prep which you eat that nullifies the first bash that hits you and returns ice damage. However, the second and third bashes will hit and their effects will not be nullified. This sort of thing would help nullify the giant powerbasher combos, and encourage more mages and bards and people who are really vulnerable to bash to stick around, as they might actually have a chance versus that stuff.

Things like that which make me think I have a fighting chance~

Second, cabal balance. Certain cabals are significantly, significantly stronger at lower levels than others, which don't reach their peak until hero.

Tribunal, Outlander, Battle, and Nexus have significant powers at lower levels. If you make a chart of some of the best lowbie pkers in the game, I'd suggest that of the caballed ones, the majority of them skew towards outlander and battle.

Tribunal and Nexus can still both contribute significantly at lower levels, though their powers are less dangerous in pk. But you can still explore very well with nexus powers, for example.

Scion and Empire have decent powers at lower levels, but really their powers generally don't reach the peak until hero. However, with so many enemies they generally have a more difficult time leveling than other cabals, so they can take awhile to hit hero anyway.

Fortress powers are just trash at low levels, and promotion is based on imm approval. Thus, fort characters have a huge incentive to charge straight to hero, as Imms generally snoop long-lasting hero characters more than lowbie-midbie characters (for good reason!). Thus, you're much more likely to be promoted and given access to powers that aren't such trash at hero. There do exist cases of midbie maran/acolyte, but those are generally given to exceptional players. Its hard to justify maraning a good midbie whose at level 38 with 80 hours, when you have a bunch of hero squires who aren't quite as good, but have heart and have waited much longer and tried just as hard.

>Tribunal, Outlander, Battle, and Nexus have significant powers
>at lower levels. If you make a chart of some of the best
>lowbie pkers in the game, I'd suggest that of the caballed
>ones, the majority of them skew towards outlander and battle.

I can't quickly vouch for historically, but currently this isn't extremely true. Looking at the PK ratio of all characters at the time they hit 40, (or current PK ratio for characters between 30 and 40 -- I originally was going to list them separately but I think it makes it too obvious who's who) who had a positive PK ratio and at least 10 kills at that time:

Battle: 32-1, 26-2, 11-7.

Fortress: 35-3, 41-3, 19-0, and a 15-8.

Nexus: 57-9.

Outlander: 26-1, 25-7.

Empire: 53-6, 38-14, 22-5, 15-9, 14-4, 12-1.

Tribunal: None.

Herald: None.

Scion: 73-1, 38-5, 33-3, 15-2.

>What potential change or addition, if any, would make the
>sub-hero levels of the game more interesting to you?
>Interesting in this case being defined as: you'd be more
>interested in PKing/exploring/RPing/etc. in them (vs. powering
>through them) than today.

Some of this may have been said already.

The biggest thing for me is probably damage scaling. I find that until the mid 40s people, particularly warriors, are doing much more damage compared to hitpoint pools than they would at hero. At the low and mid levels it's much easier to lose 30% in a round Edit: of melee. Recently for example I was in a fight against a warrior and figured that I was at 60% or so, and losing, but I thought that since I normally don't fight warriors in the low ranks I'd give it a shot. Well I was dead in the two rounds of lag on that command, which wouldn't have been even close to a guaranteed win for me even if it had worked (and it failed because of low skill). And that's fine, no big deal, but at hero if I'm at 60% it's almost always safe to try one more command to see if you can turn the tide.

More edit:
And that's much of what it comes down to. Even when I'm on the other side of that matchup, going bam-bam-bam and dropping a few mages with my village app wasn't very satisfied. It just seemed kind of stupidly easy. I didn't even have to do anything "murder" was enough or just "oh you failed your spell now you die before I even bother entering a command" The problem is that at low levels you only get interesting fights if you have two highly defensive characters. At mid levels this is less the case, but still applies somewhat.

Part of that, admittedly, is gear. I tend not to gear as much at low levels, and much of that is because I don't value the low levels. There is a circularity there. At the same time, there's much more risk. I've taken numerous mob deaths while trying to grab a piece of gear that's decent and immediately thought "damnit I'm an idiot why didn't I just powerank to hero and then I wouldn't have this exp hole). Even if it is gear, the fact is that melee benefits far more from gear than non-melee.

Possible way to address: scale +damage on gear the same way weapon averages are scaled by level, and/or apply +damage to spells in some way.

The second thing is skill gains. I hate skill spamming. So basically if I fight before hero I haven't had all that time fighting mobs, receiving level gains and so forth, in order to let my skills mature naturally. By hero I'll have a lot of things perfected without having to waste a lot of time skill spamming. And maybe it's supposed to be balanced in the earlier ranks, but my impression is that defenses, for example, make a pretty hefty difference. Overall the lower level of skills in the mid ranks makes fights less predictable, which would be tolerable, except that it also leads to the kind of sudden deaths mentiond above.

The third big thing for me is con loss. Personally I think that all practices and gains should be based on the greater of your current stat or the max you have ever had that stat trained to.

I see no reason hp gains at your level should be based on your current con rather than your racial max con. It doesn't add anything fun that fighting extensively in the midranks means having to wear crappy con gear while ranking. I'll also admit that I'm just an idiot and frequently screw up wis/int gear and fail to wear the right thing when leveling or practicing. It's ultimately no fun at all to have your character permanently weakened because you were too stupid to remember to wear the right hat when you went to the trainer.

To a lesser extent I just don't want to end up at hero, where I consider the real action to be, with half my con. Maybe if midrank fighting were more important to me this issue would go away.

And if I had my druthers con wouldn't reduce with deaths. Instead you just have a death counter that starts at con * 3, goes down one when you die, and can be trained up like a stat.

What the #### is that attachment? I didn't attach anything

Balance. The classes are way too imbalanced in the midlevels.

Edited to add: This basically boils down to survivability. Mages without dam redux tend to get owned hard and mana/hp/damage of classes doesn't balance well until hero.

My question would have to be, what class if any do you think is unplayably bad in PK at, say, level 30?

Name something and I can easily find you someone who ran, let's say, 30-3 or so with it in the midlevels, although I would agree that my expectations are generally that a level 30 assassin can run a much better ratio than a level 30 shifter played by the same player.

Like you said, you can come back with a counter-argument for any build someone raises.

I can't think of any class that is, across the board, unplayable in PK at 30, though bard is towards the bottom of the list.

Why don't you guys just crunch the numbers if you want to know? You have all this data about characters, their builds, their PK stats at various levels, and tons of logs. Instead if soliciting the information and then batting it down, just tell us. Either the data supports the suggestion that some classes, or just specific builds are (too?) weak or it doesn't.

>Like you said, you can come back with a counter-argument for
>any build someone raises.

Sure, but I'm still interested in what the opinions are.

Maybe someone sees an angle I don't.

I agree that the classes aren't perfectly balanced at 30, but to some degree I dispute the idea that they're necessarily perfectly balanced (or maybe even overall better balanced) at 51 either.

You're right, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to such a huge number of factors that aside from everyone agreeing one class is utterly hamstrung at 30 compared to all others, opinions probably don't mean much.

Race, alignment, class-specific build parameters, equipment, preps, cabal, the RNG, and many more smaller factors all determine the power of a class. There are certain classes that are more than playable by the average player at 30, but insanely difficult to deal with when played by a very skilled player. There are classes whose power at 30 depend entirely on luck, while others on class-specific specialization. So many things go into the "blender" that at the end of the day, it's really hard, I think, to look at the problem from a high level and come up with anything meaningful.

I think it would be a lot easier to look at the data, crunch the numbers, and then try to identify why certain trends exist or don't exist. Why are people playing certain classes or builds? Why are they avoiding others? What makes certain classes so vulnerable to others? It's all a lot more interesting to me than, "Xyz is OP because I died to it yesterday "