Make It Harder To Deter Gameplay

In an effort to provide less deterring gameplay how about adding a "study" type skill to thieves for their blackjack percentage.

Inventory should be free game, find a sleeping victim and they are free game but landing that blackjack then grabbing 3-4-5 rares is worse than a death. What happens when someone gets jacked? They usually log out, suddenly they cant fight their usual battles, it takes a month or more to get those saves or hr/dr back depending on rare purges or if your class can kill in a half common suit. 

I also think a successful 'plant/pry' session (full approach time) should have a cool down period where you are too jittery to pull it off again, the amount of time could be the stolen items levels added up.

And no I didnt just get jacked, I saw it happen to someone else whom I wanted to fight. I found out he lost 5 slots to a jack so I didnt bother initiating and logged out myself, so its not just harm to a victim, its harm to a victims other opponents and their gameplay as well. 

UC

On 8/13/2018 at 7:02 AM, Unknown Criminal said:

As for weapon cleave zerks need it. Does it deter fights? Yup, good. Sleep deters fights, steal deters fights, blindness deters fights, no saves deters fights, no food deters fights... And the list goes on and on. There are far worse things that can happen to someone than getting their weapon cleaved.

I thought your stance was to deter gameplay?

'deter fights' is alot different than 'deter gameplay'... 

Thanks for the attempted derail though, your efforts dont go unnoticed :)

Not opposed to the Idea per say.

However, there is a way to avoid the blackjack that already exists.

The poor fool you watched get jacked failed to be prepared, so he prepared to fail. Odd it was not me, because that's my MO.

Not always the case. Maybe no thief is on and he logs in hidden and blackjacks you without ever making a stir.

9 hours ago, Unknown Criminal said:

...it takes a month or more to get those saves or hr/dr back depending on rare purges or if your class can kill in a half common suit.

But I thought high saves and hit/dam were so easy to get nowadays?

Is this real? This has to be satire.

So you are saying, you were going to fight someone.  But a thief got them, and robbed them.  So we should nerf all thieves so you can fight who you want when you want...

This isn't a single player game.  The thief I am sure feels FAR from deterred from their game play.  Honestly its pretty thrilling to pry a few things.

14 hours ago, Kyzarius said:

Is this real? This has to be satire.

So you are saying, you were going to fight someone.  But a thief got them, and robbed them.  So we should nerf all thieves so you can fight who you want when you want...

This isn't a single player game.  The thief I am sure feels FAR from deterred from their game play.  Honestly its pretty thrilling to pry a few things.

Im saying that I was gonna go fight someone but then a thief suddenly jacked them to the point where I would have felt bad initiating an attack, so instead I logged out. 

Getting killed via assassinate back in the old days sucked, not because you got killed, but because your items got taken without any real skill. (Im drawing a comparison) where blackjack can be landed without any real skill and you can lose as much equipment or more from the act. YES it feels fantastic to pry a few things,  I do however think that for the sake of gameplay that blackjack should take a little more settup. I also said that if you catch someone sleeping it should be free game because you caught them, however just KO'ing someone and popping 2-3-4 pieces is a gameplay deterrent.  

I also think that blackjack should work on MORE mobs, that (too big) flag hurts a class that has a very hard time getting groups and cannot get EQ on its own aside from theft. 

And on a side note I think thieves need a MOB damaging skill or advantage to help with basic equipping, naked thieves for the most part just wait to steal instead of going and getting things on their own because of the restrictions and gimps against them vs EQ mobs.

On 8/21/2018 at 2:12 AM, f0xx said:

 

But I thought high saves and hit/dam were so easy to get nowadays?

It is easy to get, if the equipment was ever in. But when you log on every day and there are 0-1 other people on and no equipment to be found you cant even go fight for it. 

But a great thought that was, thanks for the godly input.

3 hours ago, Unknown Criminal said:

It is easy to get, if the equipment was ever in. But when you log on every day and there are 0-1 other people on and no equipment to be found you cant even go fight for it.

So is it easy to get, or is it not?

And if it's easy, then why complain about a thief stealing it?

So, if they had been bashlocked by a warrior, slept by a necromancer, strangled by a ninja, ambushed by a ranger...do they all need nerfs too?

Where does it end?

Next inflammatory post earns a ban

27 minutes ago, Lloth said:

Next inflammatory post earns a ban

I was quoting a well known urban legend that people only use 10% of their brains... It wasn't inflammatory. 

Anyhow.

I honestly think people don't give UC enough credit to some of his ideas. Yeah, some of them are outlandish and ridiculous seeming to people who've played the game for over a decade. It sucks ass when you lose things, and his own personal bias of feeling bad for the situation that happened at least goes to show you he has a heart through and through to help others. Yeah, the EQ is easy to get that has a ton of saves/hit/dam, but it's only easy to gain when it's in. There's some things that are significantly weaker though and when everyone is after the same exact things and suddenly 90% of those characters disappear and have the required hours for the month, it doesn't purge them at the end. It purges them upwards of nearly 2 months later. If you play (secret hours needed to keep wares) hours on January 1st, then log off, your wares wont come back until after March 1st when the purge is put in. And it's not a specific date either. I'm pretty sure it's Anume who purges player files, and doing it on random days means it gives people more of a chance to get things equally. The problem is though if you have 1 player with 5 characters and they don't have the ability to juggle their time well for all of them so they become part of that problem.

If you have time to play a main character, do so. If you don't plan on playing them anymore, delete or purge them personally. That would solve of that easy factor for getting EQ. If it's in, yeah, it's easy. But @f0xx, you can't kill a character for the EQ if the character is never online either. That's where the easy factor goes from easy to impossible. When UC states that it's easy to get hit/dam and such, I take into account that he probably also means that it's easy for when many items are in. I had around 50/50 hit/dam on a race with low strength and a good -30 or better saves in each category just by switching out a couple pieces. I wasn't decked, I got lucky though on a few pieces because they're not always in. Usually when upgrading hit/dam a lot of the items it's only minor like an extra hit/dam or save or two. Then you have items that are all hitroll or all damroll so you're sacrificing here and there. I've got a character that I've managed to get over 60 in both and that's without being decked as well. Better than average maybe, but not decked. I tried wearing some of the elite gear, but there's a certain balance to it you have to have as well. Look at Danpher. He has toyed with some of his EQ here and there and given away items he would definitely make him more difficult, but instead found it was not as good for him as he'd thought.

So yes, UC does tend to grate against other people on the forum, but he also has ideas that are outside the box sometimes that would actually make the game better for newer players. I'm not saying I love this particular idea, but I understand it. I would rather see people make more initiative out there and come up with ideas  like this than see others just outright say no because that's not how the game works. This idea, I understand why he'd want it implemented. Will it? No. Why? Because no one would give it a chance based solely on most responses here. Could it be done? Yeah. Would it be good for the game? Who knows since it wont ever go into the game. People complain about how so few people actually play anymore, but if you were a newbie coming to a game like this who gets steamrolled by vets, then you hit up the forum and see how every newbie friendly idea has been shot down, they're not going to stay. You can play COD online and have the same skill as everyone else and it's far more random in terms of winning because of it. Here though the Elite and hoarders of knowledge tend to be on top. They're not one and the same by any means, but by refusing to even attempt to help out people because you personally don't find it useful to yourself is essentially the same as being a hoarder. Give him a chance guys, don't shut him out completely because of his name. I hate some of his characters for what they do, but overall he can be classy in the right light.

In the future it would be more appreciative to see people give more thought out rejections though. Not just outright dismissal. If you bring up things someone stated in another post you're the problem. Not the idea itself. Write out the pros and cons. Stop trying to smother out people willing to put ideas forward.

What if as players we had a command intended to alleviate the rare problem?

help abscond

syntax: abscond

The abscond command is intended as a tool for players to help alleviate the rare circulation difficulties created by unforeseen absences what ever the nature of the absence. This command has two major affects on both the character and the world itself. When a player uses the abscond command any and all rare equipment they wear or hold loses its rare flag and takes on the Rot_Death flag and Auto_Purge flag. These absconded items no longer count toward the current rare counts allowable by the game, and are automatically purged when the time of the purge is at hand. WARNING: The abscond command is a tool to increase rare circulation, and the rotting of any current equipment will not guarantee that its rare counterpart reappears.

I realize that elite players who rarely ever die, could possibly use something like this to arguably have multiple decked characters. I would argue however, that elite players are almost always heavily observed by the staff and would certainly be caught abusing a tool intended to improve a players chances to find and utilize those rare items.

Just something I have been thinking about.

22 hours ago, Tantangel said:

But @f0xx, you can't kill a character for the EQ if the character is never online either.

If a character is "never online" then he will be purged. Then you can pick the EQ from the mob or from the other character that picks it up.

A character that is never on can not keep rares.

So I don't get what your point is.

I think it is directed toward ppl who make the time hack so they don’t get purged, which imo is way too low. Especially with the extremely low phase. I personally think this would be a very good idea. Because the ppl who carry the god suits are one of two ppl. Those who have the skill to kill most everyone or those who are imo hoarding them without putting themselves in much of harms way. Implementing this idea would allow those very skilled individuals to continue just as they do. If they do die we all know it wouldn’t be long before they killed for what they want because that is what they did in the first place. And two, those who are either hoarding rares or are scared to fight because of the potential loss could still keep their rares until they do finally die.

@f0xxWell I walked you through it already. You can make the hours easily enough if you're someone like UC who will play (sometimes at least it feels like it) around 23 hours and sleeps only one of them. Raising the hour limits had people freaking out in my thread I made forever ago where a few of the veteran players stated they'd quit playing if it were raised or if they were limited in how many characters they could play. So if you make the hours even in the first three days of the month and don't log on, when do you think they get purged? It's definitely not the following month. Lets say again:

Step 1: You log on January 1st. You play the required hours.

Step 2: You stop playing the character despite you're decked as hell because you got bored and wanted to play another.

Step 3: You play another character, get them decked to hell, or at least as much as possible since you very well could have other items on the first character.

Step 4: You meet the hours on that character, but get tired of them and try a dozen more after without ever dying so it doesn't really matter. You don't log on to self purge so you completely expect the system to do it for you (not you specifically, just in general).

Step 5: February 1st comes along. Guess what? Yeah, no purge. February 15th comes along. Guess what? Still no purge despite the fact that you haven't logged into them since the beginning of February.

Step 6: You're realizing there's a shit ton of items not in circulation and don't comprehend why. (I already know why and I hate you for it for those who do it.)

Step 7: You've circulated out of 15 characters in the span of a month and a half by now because they didn't suit you and you didn't like the selections you made on your warrior so you have five of them all with different ones, but realize you will just stick with exotic lore. Then later on in the year you repeat this to see if you can be accomplished with another lore, but you don't because you never gave it enough time to figure out in the first place.

Step 8: It's February 27th and you've realized that holy shit you haven't played that character since January 1st-3rd. You know now you may not make the hours because of it. If you think you can and can pull insane UC hours across 3+ characters in a short period of time though, you manage to save your ass from that purge that was nearly guaranteed.

Step 9: It's now March 1st, but you didn't log on so you're technically purged based on the concept of rares, but you haven't logged on. So you still have them in a file, but because that file wasn't purged by you logging in without the hours it has to be done with the overall purge (at least this is how it definitely seems to work because I've tinkered a little with it and worthless rares at varying points of playing the game). So Anume comes along and finally does the purge. Not on March 1st because it would be too obvious. It's now March 4th-8th possibly and FINALLY! Holy shit there they are. Everything is back. You can finally grab shit again. Three days later though...you do it again and start the process over pissing me off because you're stiffing me possibly.

That is why playing multiple characters with tons of hours on each and hoarding rares knowing you probably wont be back to that character. I log on and purge it if i don't think I'll play them anymore or if I just want to shelve them for the time begin. Very few people do that. Very few. THAT though is me trying to elaborate on something that was already concise in the first posting. You're welcome.

The fact that items do not get purged until that character logs on is just silly imo. That shouldn’t even exist

On the topic of rare purges:

I have alot of free time, so 3 chars to me is like 1 for other people. I do my best to log on each character for a minimum half hour a day with my flavor of the week putting in 2-3-4 hours. I probably have 9-10-11 characters at 50 with the majority of them having been self purged, if im not playing a character I will strip him. Please take note that all those unused characters HELP with EQ spawning where rare limits are based off pfile counts.

With the recent influx of mages good saves gear has become harder to obtain, so characters whom dont have X saves for X mage will not be played as much by the playerbase which is why I think the lands have been soooo dead these last... 4-5-6 weeks. With 3-4-5 necromancers running around most everyone needs to get (-45 mental and -45 maled) just so they dont get blitzed, add in on top of that you need maxed out defenses in order to avoid the army onslaught while a decent HR/DR must be maintained so that you can compete. 

All in all I think that everyone should have 5-10 unused characters just to get the pfile counts up so that your/our main characters have a better chance at scoring the EQ needed to play against any other class that logs on. Not god suits, but if you need -aff saves you should be able to go grab -aff saves while your opponent tries to prevent it.