A vast simpilication of the buff system has been needed for at least 15 years. Gathering consumables complicates balance and is a very boring yet necessary time sink. Lacking or losing your source results in non-viable PK and thus logouts or character abandonment. This is a serious, little recognized issue.
In a class-based system, the weight of importance should be much more on base class skills, with lower tiers of importance on class specializations, race, cabal, gear, buffs, then special gear/buffs (quests) following in that order.
When you try to balance in reverse up the tiers (using gear to balance races for instance) is when things get messy and quickly out of control.
A litany of gathered buffs should not be necessary for most competitive PK (melee or mages) and instead should be distinctly situational. The teleport pill is a good example of this.
I 100% agree with your first and last paragraphs. This is exactly what I was trying to convey. Thank you.
I also mostly agree with your other points. The only sort of clarification I would like to make is that I would like people to be able to ‘balance’ themselves in regards to vulns or weaknesses. But it should come at a pretty huge oppportunity cost. If your giant is worried about being dispelled, you should be able to get your mental saves way up. Even into the 50s. You shouldn’t also have 50/50 hit dam with it.
On muds I have built for in the past we always had a point system. Similar to Anume's custom RP item thread.
This is spot on.
You can't balance without this. Otherwise how do you decide what is OP and what is lacking?
I've been using my own point system to build an EQ simulator and optimize my characters itemization and it works wonders. Only then you realize the true value of buffs and how OP some items are.
Buffs are one of the factors that differentiates the average from the good player. I don't understand the complaining, but I guess people want maximum result with minimum effort. When you think about it, effort is the only thing that separates the skilled from the less so. Effort to learn EQ, effort to memorize areas, effort to think about combos (and not just race-class-cabal combos). If you remove those areas where effort is needed to improve, then you shrink the gap that separates the good from the average, and that makes for a very dull game where luck is the biggest deciding factor.
Buffs are one of the factors that differentiates the average from the good player. I don't understand the complaining, but I guess people want maximum result with minimum effort. When you think about it, effort is the only thing that separates the skilled from the less so. Effort to learn EQ, effort to memorize areas, effort to think about combos (and not just race-class-cabal combos). If you remove those areas where effort is needed to improve, then you shrink the gap that separates the good from the average, and that makes for a very dull game where luck is the biggest deciding factor.
Time investment is what separates people. If I have an hour to play a day, and even half that time is spent fighting, I’m going to run out of consumables. If my enemies have 2 hours a day to play, they won’t. Or won’t as quickly.
People should be rewarded for investing their time. But this isn’t what I take issue with. Giving all classes access to all the buffs dilutes the uniqueness of skills. It creates a game where there is very little reason(outside preference or RP opportunity) to play certain classes. Wands staves and scrolls aren’t even close to as cool as they used to be. Nearly everything can be replicated with spellforge, used items, affects from being equipped, or herbs. This is the issue I’m trying to make people aware of.
From my observations people don't like consumables not because they don't have time to collect them, but simply because they don't like collecting them.
There are players who spend 10 hours a day playing and still refuse to collect consumables. Then I see those same people complain on the forum how much time it takes to collect them and push for their removal. Not collecting consumables and thus hurting your PK performance is a conscious decision people take. It's like a fat guy complaining about gyms being boring and time consuming while at the same time eating all the junk food he can get his hands on.
On the point about uniqueness. I separate consumables in 2 categories: 1) buffs and 2) utilities. You can not remove utilities because they are needed. Spells like sanctuary, flight, detect invis are needed and every single class should have access to them, in one form or another. On the point of buffs I agree. But this is extremely exaggerated. After all, the buffs a warrior gets from his own skills overlap with some of the more useful buffs from consumables, like bless (warcry) and frenzy (berserk). As a warrior, the usable buffs you get from consumables are like armor, stone skin and flesh armor. This doesn't hurt the melee vs mage balance so I am not sure how the classes with the original buffs suffer from the fact that melees have access to the said buffs.
[edit] Actually, if you think about it, mages gain much more from consumables like herbs than melees, since as invoker you can use bless, stone skin and flesh, while a warrior has no use of those against a mage.
Bless. Bless is most often saves. Plus more hit dam depending on the deity. I would say bless is less useful for mages. Wtf do I need more saves against a melee for?
On the point about uniqueness. I separate consumables in 2 categories: 1) buffs and 2) utilities. You can not remove utilities because they are needed. Spells like sanctuary, flight, detect invis are needed and every single class should have access to them, in one form or another. On the point of buffs I agree. But this is extremely exaggerated. After all, the buffs a warrior gets from his own skills overlap with some of the more useful buffs from consumables, like bless (warcry) and frenzy (berserk). As a warrior, the usable buffs you get from consumables are like armor, stone skin and flesh armor. This doesn't hurt the melee vs mage balance so I am not sure how the classes with the original buffs suffer from the fact that melees have access to the said buffs.
Necro, psi, vamp, cleric, and battlemage don’t suffer from enemies having higher ac?
Necro, psi, vamp, cleric, and battlemage don’t suffer from enemies having higher ac?
You are now arguing for the sake of it.
No (smart) melee uses AC buffs against mages.
Vamps and clerics are not exactly mages.
If your "mage" suffers from your opponent having high AC, then you are not really playing a "mage".
On the other hand a mage can easily get -100 AC from buffs (double that if you make a real effort and play a savant) from spells they don't usually have access to. I think that most people don't understand that if we remove buffs, mages will be the ones to suffer more.
If the main argument here is that X, Y, Z are causing balance issues, then we also need to throw RP edges into the mix. The fact that edges stack is crazy IMO. I'd rather they were cheaper and you can only use one at a time. It makes the barrier of entry to lvl 50 PK very tough when you're against 1-2 year old chars with multiple edges already.
Journeyman yourself until you have the edges that make you competitive.
Buy edges before level 50 so you are not behind the curve.
Edges that are literally available to everyone should not be considered out of balance.
Unless the argument is, He Role Plays, how can I compete with that?
As I have pointed out, Adventurer grants a player many hours of free time to harvest RP points.
Unfortunately most only use it to harvest bonus Practices, ranking mobs, and better starting gear for the class they decided on before they picked Adventurer.
We can literally reach level 50 in a day or two. Just as I can literally challenge @f0xx or @Firemanto a duel to the death. That does not mean its the best plan.
Agreed with FH. Edges are an investment. Investing less in a character is going to mean you get less return. You can combat this by not power ranking. If you choose not to, that is on you.
Wade, I think the main problem there still is, is that people are not actually willing to test things. They have it in their head that xxx is unbalanced, therefore they do not even try.
There have been a LOT of changes lately, where mages benefitted way more than anything else.
Even though fireman says such a thing as mage parry does not exist, yeah let's nitpick and say parry for mages then. Happy? That has been improved. Ac diminishing returns has been improved. A bug with serks has been fixed that made them a bit too tough. Eq with heavy saves has been revamped. From the logs I see and the fights I snoop there indeed is no indication that mages are not balanced right now. As I said before, it's some synergies that still need to be looked at.
By the way, feel free to disagree. But then don't just state your opinion as fact but post logs. Also ask yourself, would I do better vs this player if they were the mage and I the melee? If the answer is no, it's probably not a matter of imbalance right there.
It makes the barrier of entry to lvl 50 PK very tough when you're against 1-2 year old chars with multiple edges already.
So you think a newly created character should be as tough as 1-2 year old one? Where's the incentive to longevity then? What makes people want stick to their characters instead of deleting and roling the next FOTM combo, and who are going to be those characters that are going to drive those long term global RP changes that make FL the game we all love?
I disagree.
A character that has just hit 50, no matter how decked, should never be able to be as strong as a long term character. Edges, cabal ranks and skills, RP points do just these.
You are right, facing an established characters with a newly rolled one is tough. You should be glad you even have the chance to do so. In real life sports, you first have to prove yourself for years just to have ONE shot at the top dog.
People want everything on a silver platter, NOW. But this is not a realistic option.
I can't even believe that someone as skilled as yourself would make such an absurd claim.
[edit] On another note, blaming your PK shortcomings on edges alone is silly. You're bigger than that.
I’ve never lost a PK and immediately thought it was because of an edge. In fact, I’ve NEVER used that as a reason. There are so many other factors that contributed to my death and none more important than my own mistakes.
When I first hit 50, I don’t have top gear, cabal powers or edges. And that’s when you tell yourself maybe you’re not ready for the big badass yet. You might need to grind out to Veteran at the minimum to see your combo really jump up in power. Time investment is part of the game and it’s not a bad thing. You’re not logging into a game of Call of Duty.