I have mixed feelings about the limiting of items etc. I'm all for not having 500 chars running around with charred bracers, and I do think it promotes area exploration. However, cuppled with the changes to skill improvement, it makes the game heavily weighted upon gear rather than skill. I see this leading to more ganging and full looting (not that I have any problem with full looting). Just wundering what the Immortal staff thought.

I concede that you guys who can snoop may know better than I do, but I see it like this:

I explore an area. I find little of note. Why? Because a group came through and cleared out the limited stuff before me. Therefore unless I am looking in a secret niche that contains nothing else, I have no way of knowing there even is anything there.

Until you put something there that helps us know if a limited item would be there if it wasn't maxed out (eg something that looks similar but as you take it you "feel the power flow out of it" and you are left with either a dud or a weaker version of the item), I don't think you promote exploration that much.

>I concede that you guys who can snoop may know better than I
>do, but I see it like this:
>
>I explore an area. I find little of note. Why? Because a
>group came through and cleared out the limited stuff before
>me. Therefore unless I am looking in a secret niche that
>contains nothing else, I have no way of knowing there even is
>anything there.

So you only explore an area once, and you're done. I don't feel sorry for you for not knowing where anything is.

>Until you put something there that helps us know if a limited
>item would be there if it wasn't maxed out (eg something that
>looks similar but as you take it you "feel the power flow out
>of it" and you are left with either a dud or a weaker version
>of the item), I don't think you promote exploration that
>much.

Until you play a character who actually tries to locate some gear, either through spells or exploration, or talking to people, you really don't have a leg to stand on. You're go through once, don't find anything, must not be anything attitude is what is stopping you.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I've explored more than most players. I'm not expecting you to feel sorry for me, since I'm one of the people who explores anyway.

I'm pointing out that much of the encouragement to explore is removed when not only will you not find anything, you won't even spot a clue that something could sometimes be there to find. Why reward the guy who happens to kill Fred the mob when Fred has the sword of doom but not the guy who kills him when Fred is without his sword?

If people in a position to explore a new area clear everything out early on, or people who go and download maps of areas clear out gear, then other people are unlikely to find limited stuff under the present set-up. That discourages exploration. You may feel that people should have to go through an area many many times and kill each mob many many times, to deserve rewards from exploration. I believe that you may be right in terms of who deserves reward, but right or not, it discourages exploration to know that your effort may not be met with material reward. Sure, exploration can be fun without material reward, but you have cited the change in limited gear status as something to promote exploration. That brings the material reward into focus.

If I take a specific example of a slow wand. It looks to me as if this is now limited. This is something I found and was very pleased to find when I explored the area with it. Now, if I explored the area, I would not find stuff like this. I'd find a potion of little comparable use to a mage. I admit that when I found this slow wand, I was very surprised that it was not limited. I even think that it should be limited.

However, I don't think making it limited in any way encourages me to explore. If anything the effect is the opposite. I could have explored the area, and unless I repeatedly checked the appropriate place I would never know this wand existed. Assuming many such places exist without such a wand, I would spend a great deal of time checking these places, and at the end of the day there would be a very good chance that I'd never know about this item. Is it fun to repeatedly check the same places? Not as far as I can see, so people aren't going to do it as much if the chances of it proving fruitless increase. Or if they are, they aren't going to enjoy doing it much.

Since you have said I don't have a leg to stand on, I'll summarise my own exploration history. When I explore with others I am normally far more effective at exploration than them. I'm the guy who notices the bit of the room description that can be interacted with, or the one who finds a niche of some description that isn't shown in the room. The one who examines objects as well as loring/id'ing them, and then examines any details shown up by the first examination. I've played one chracter solely dedicated to exploration and research (a shifter). When I played a thief, I did a lot of exploration with him too, to take advantage of peek and steal. I spent a big chunk of time trying to find a way into silent tower with my drow warrior, including asking everyone I knew (and most of my other characters have spent time on this too). I did in fact find a quest to do so but it dead-ended and when I reported the dead-end it seemingly was removed.

I've solved a lot of the quests in the game for minimal reward, because I like doing them (exception being a mini-quest that costs about 9 gold to do and has a reward of a couple of hundred copper).

I've found five proper quests in the last two weeks (or at least, five separate rewards). One of these took me 14 hours to do, without spending time doing anything else. I was mudding until 6 in the morning with work the next day because I didn't know if I could log off without wasting what I'd already achieved. If you don't think I explore, I think you've got me muddled with someone else. If your post was phrased at "me" simply because mine was written in the first person, then ok, perhaps I am reacting negatively for nothing.

But ultimately, setting aside whether you deserve to find stuff if it is maxed out and you never come back, I don't agree that limiting gear will promote exploration. This is because it will increase the chances of nothing being found from exploration.

I see it as a way for characters to explore various areas to get new items instead of running to the same old place to grab the usual. There ARE actually a lot of items in CF.

>I have mixed feelings about the limiting of items etc. I'm all for not having 500 chars running around with charred bracers, and I do think it promotes area exploration. However, cuppled with the changes to skill improvement, it makes the game heavily weighted upon gear rather than skill. I see this leading to more ganging and full looting (not that I have any problem with full looting). Just wundering what the Immortal staff thought.

Full looting, ganging has always been part of CF. I don't think item limitation encourages these acts.

Sometimes as a player I tend to see things limitedly, however, being an Imm once made me think otherwise. The Imm DOES NOT come up with major changes overnight, trust me. There is much discussion and debates, plus monitoring players feedback.

Let's wait and see how these limiting items stuff go.

I keep reading posts in this thread and getting the impression people think we just made a whole bunch of items limited.

Again, what happened was that an Immortal went over the Great Big Item List, and looked for outlying data points. As in, "Wow. That's one of the best pieces of gear for that wear slot, and there's 35 of them." as well as "Wow. That's pretty third-rate. Why is it limited at all?"

It's not all opinion. There has been a surprisingly (to me) sophisticated set of guidelines in place for some time. We recently updated those guidelines to account for more possibilities. They're followed to get an initial guess, and then adjusted further for intangibles and unique circumstances.

So, some items are less prevalent. Other items which were inexplicably rare are now more common. It's not a big deal. I've been doing similar stuff with NPCs and carried coinage (and other variables, like how hard they hit). Some mobs have less than they used to. A lot of mobs used to have 0 and now carry a 'normal' amount. (Some authors essentially didn't give any of their NPCs any copper, even merchants and similar people.)

This stuff goes on all the time. You're noticing it now because we're being more vigilant about it and it's moving at a faster pace. But it's not moving in a new direction.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I know that things like the screaming demon mace are extremely powerful, but I don't think making them unique or greatly reducing their number is always the answer. Cf is a game where a lot of the players have extremely limited playing time. There are a lot of good items I haven't seen since the late 90's. I've run through a couple 180 hours characters looking for some things (not even the ultra powerful ones like etched dragonscale or dragonkind), and none of the characters ever even saw one of them. Reguardless of how much of an outlier an item is, I think you should take into consideration that certain timeslots are a lot less dangerous and can be a sort of whirlpool for the best items. When the numbers go down this far you get that one guy logging in when his enemy cabal is ALWAYS strong and a lot of the goodonly evilonly stuff isn't EVER available to him cause it's all tied up in the 3 hours he's always sleeping when his cabal is seriously in power (how's that for a runon sentence?!?!?!). In summation, charred bracers and other overused common items becoming limited good, lowering item numbers that are already under 10 bad. Just a thought.

>In summation, charred bracers and other overused common items
>becoming limited good, lowering item numbers that are already
>under 10 bad. Just a thought.

As the guy who has written the forumla, used a careful eye and judgement, and made most of the limit changes, what you are saying is pretty much spot on.

Most of the lowering of limits was on things with limits way over 10, and bringing them down into some semblance of conformity with the rest of the game. As for other items, their limits shot up with these same changes. The things that have been highly limited have stayed that way, I think only a handful came down, and again, I even made a few go up.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I'll begin by saying that we recently re-evaluated a lot of items for limited vs. non-limited status. Some limits went up. Some went down. We do this periodically as part of making sure the limits reflect real value.

I have mixed feelings about the limiting of items etc. I'm all for not having 500 chars running around with charred bracers, and I do think it promotes area exploration.

It does promote area exploration. Not that charred leather bracers have ever been limited.

However, cuppled with the changes to skill improvement, it makes the game heavily weighted upon gear rather than skill.

You're going to have to explain that one. I don't follow. Seems like apples and oranges.

I see this leading to more ganging and full looting (not that I have any problem with full looting).

One of the purposes of having a limited item system is precisely that it creates competition for the items. It's a lot more exciting to have the good stuff if it doesn't grow on trees.

Easy games are boring.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>Easy games are boring.

Thats true.

Games that are too tedious or difficult are not appealing either.

Have fun keeping it balanced

>However, cuppled with the changes to skill improvement, it
>makes the game heavily weighted upon gear rather than
>skill.
>
>You're going to have to explain that one. I don't follow.
>Seems like apples and oranges.

I disagree, but I think what he's saying is something like this:

There's a relation: PK_Power=GearAbility + SkillPracticeAbility + CombatAbility

By making gear rarer, you in increase the impact of knowing where to get gear. By making skills harder to practice, you increase the impact of knowing how to perfect them. With these other factors increased in importance, CombatAbility gets relatively less significant.

Basically, if gear and skill practice were easy, then everyone will be about equally good at them, and battles come down to combat skill a lot more.

But maybe this isn't what he meant, and since I think the equation is more like PK_Power=GearAbility/50 + SkillPracticeAbility/1000 + PrepAbility/40 + CombatAbility (And this is an irrefutable equation I've derived from hours of statistical analysis.) maybe this post was a waste of time except to the extent it amused me. Oh well.

I feel that non-battle warriors are at somewhat of a disadvantage now. Most warriors carry a wide variety of weapons, but now they are very limited on the preps they can carry. I agree that some of the stoneskin/shield/aura items should be limited. Shouldn't a few stay unlimited though, so warriors can have a little protection?

nt

Preps that are usable by any class are limited much tighter than preps that are only usable by classes with device skills. This is part of what makes those skills valuable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

As a possible compromise meeting both your key concern and Krivohan's, is it possible to limit the warrior-class-preps and yet allow them to stuff them into their packs?

It's a real hard decision to make when you only have inventory space for 3 or so limited one-shot preps with sub-10-hour durations, getting new ones takes ~20 minutes or more, and yet you have to suck up at least one of them to take on the annihilating paladin. Not being able to stuff them into a container is the real kicker.

I was thinking more about thieves. So many preps being limited must make gathering preps as a thief pretty dang easy since "put them in a worn container" is no longer an option.

Originally the rule of thumb seemed that if the prep didn't have any negatives it was limited. Non-limited preps either didn't always work, had potentially lethal side effects, or a combination of both.

For example, I could easily use up all my extra inventory slots having 3-5 limited stoneskin preps, but have them all fail to deliver.

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