Temporary survival in a game that you can quit out of is enough.
Ok what exactly are the easy ways to beat it?
Fight, run and make them run out? Good idea except you hear of people quitting when they run low. Not to mention while you're doing this they're healing faster than you which puts you at a disadvantage.
Keep them blind so they can't use them, great unless you're a class that can't blind or who's blind is chance based.
Collect them yourself. Even better, so now unless you're very good you have to collect consumables to be able to pk? It's not that bad now but if it ever gets to this point I'll probably leave. If you're not out damaging someone and they have 3k of healing in consumables it's pretty hard to wear them down especially if they're good without them.
The thing is melee characters should NOT be healing themselves at this rate. Might as well just give them cure crit as a spell since so many people won't fight without the consumables.
shaman - dysenteria
thief - steal pry pilfer
dark knights - silence
ninjas - assassinate or quickly outdamage them while they are blind
lich - qspell
psi - qspell
monk - laglock that cannot be stopped
berserker - haymaker
and of course it would be harder for a new player to take down such an opponent, but just focus on catching them unprepared, of course it is hard to kill someone with protective shield fly and curatives but you can always roll a shaman or thief, there are the two classes in the game that can take anyone down.
Im not complaining lol. I like all the extra stuff you can through in. I was just mentioning those things because yes, nymph hearts are awesome, and can turn the tide in battle. Casters STILL have the advantage because there are flat out more healing items geared towards magic users than there are melee. I mean hell if you have to take off 3500 hp from me before I die, then why wouldn't I?
And temp survival IS everything. I dunno about you, but I feel that staying alive is really the key to winning at pk.
Temporary survival in a game that you can quit out of is enough.
Ok what exactly are the easy ways to beat it?
Fight, run and make them run out? Good idea except you hear of people quitting when they run low. Not to mention while you're doing this they're healing faster than you which puts you at a disadvantage.
Keep them blind so they can't use them, great unless you're a class that can't blind or who's blind is chance based.
Collect them yourself. Even better, so now unless you're very good you have to collect consumables to be able to pk? It's not that bad now but if it ever gets to this point I'll probably leave. If you're not out damaging someone and they have 3k of healing in consumables it's pretty hard to wear them down especially if they're good without them.
The thing is melee characters should NOT be healing themselves at this rate. Might as well just give them cure crit as a spell since so many people won't fight without the consumables.
I will still collect hearts in that instance. Not enough mana on a melee for a spell that costs 20? mana to be worthwhile. You still get lagged from casting. I mean hell. If you know a warrior has 30 nymph hearts (not hard to pay a mage to locate it) then why not start fighting him to drain those? You can say that strong pkers don't need nymph hearts etc, but you are wrong. The game has these in effect to keep it interesting. Otherwise Giant lagging classes would be the best classes in game. I mean those things help you too! It is not like nymph hearts ONLY work for melee. Just usually mage players are a bit lazy in my opinion, rarely do you guys go out on a limb to get those spells you can't get (namely flesh armor, and stone skin) and you assume because you have cure crit that means you have no use for a nymph heart. It just is not true at all. I cannot think of a single class that cannot benefit from that item. The only people who do not benefit from having them are people too lazy to spend a bit of time running consumable laps around FL
shaman - dysenteria
thief - steal pry pilfer
dark knights - silence
ninjas - assassinate or quickly outdamage them while they are blind
lich - qspell
psi - qspell
monk - laglock that cannot be stopped
berserker - haymaker
and of course it would be harder for a new player to take down such an opponent, but just focus on catching them unprepared, of course it is hard to kill someone with protective shield fly and curatives but you can always roll a shaman or thief, there are the two classes in the game that can take anyone down.
Dys is the only one on there that I can see stopping consumable healing, and even then it stops less than 30%. There are nodrop bags, there is not a single monk that can lag you start to finish unless your not prepping right (more consumables required honestly). Haymaker is not a win button, it is actually pretty unreliable in combat unless used properly, it is in no way shape or form dispel magic. Silence is the same as Dys, it can stop healing spells from Dks, ninjas bards, and scrolls, but it still lets through staves, hearts, usable items etc.
Shamans, and thieves both will have a stupidly hard time finishing off: Healers, Blms, Rangers who play with some semblance of intelligence, invokers who spent time on their staff. Maybe some slipping my mind.
Shamans have a tough time with Clerics as well.
Thieves have a tough time dealing with high output melee with lag. Most notably necros, and espescially berserkers. I cannot tell you the number of times I would get vuln backstabbed, and immediately get sanc leaf from nodrop bag, smoke it, rage and dirt. then it becomes you trading hp with me as a thief, which is not hard to do unless your filthy decked like Azantar was.
I'm going to collect 80 million nymph hearts, roll a drow invoker, and stand in the middle of CC and just spam firestorm for 4-5 rl hrs until atticus assassinates me
Some of us have this down to a science lol. I know of a bag that weighs 1, everything in it weighs 0, and it holds 50 items max 
I can keep 2k hp in a bag
nymph hearts, really? heh.
blind them.
stay on them.
be equally prepared.
if I stock 50-75 nymph hearts, and no reds/gyvels I deserve to be shot.
Back in the day me and you had a voker/shammy fight with Lorfaine and Krondrin. Had I known about all the consumables then I doubt our fight would have been the same.
I think the main concern that people have missed is time.
We have implemented a new tier to help those with little time be 'competitive' by keeping this and that when they die. Those poor bastards now have to spend what little time they have farming consumables to be prepared to even hold their own.
Its not the fact that its 'unfair' or that its 'not available' to everyone. I think what bugs me about it is taht the culture/psyche of the mud is shifting to where people are so consumable concious that we should give out exp points for collecting them because thats pretty much what 50% of the time at 50 is. Basically if you dont invest hours and hours of time you will only be mediocre.
IMO this is a very dangerous route as people will just get fed up and disapear. Most people can get much more and more easier gratification from playing just about 100 000 000 other things.
In this day and age retention is everything. I might not know how to fix it, but I can see the beginings of a problem.
I think the main concern that people have missed is time.
We have implemented a new tier to help those with little time be 'competitive' by keeping this and that when they die. Those poor bastards now have to spend what little time they have farming consumables to be prepared to even hold their own.
Its not the fact that its 'unfair' or that its 'not available' to everyone. I think what bugs me about it is taht the culture/psyche of the mud is shifting to where people are so consumable concious that we should give out exp points for collecting them because thats pretty much what 50% of the time at 50 is. Basically if you dont invest hours and hours of time you will only be mediocre.
IMO this is a very dangerous route as people will just get fed up and disapear. Most people can get much more and more easier gratification from playing just about 100 000 000 other things.
In this day and age retention is everything. I might not know how to fix it, but I can see the beginings of a problem.
I couldn't agree more. There is such a large focus nowaways around having a sack full of nymph hearts, herbs and pills that to not do that can place you at a disadvantage.
I have no problem with preparation providing a bigger advantage. Of course someone that has gone out of their way to prepare with the best herbs around should deserve that advantage - but IMO not to the point where you have to spend hours and hours collecting consumables just because your opponent can go from awful to excellent in 0.21 seconds on account of their sack full of healing items.
Dey
I think that in some aspects the consumable discussion is part of a larger problem - that through general expansion of the game and eq/other items, more and more affects that hadn't been previously accessible to a wide range of characters are becoming so as designers create new and unique equipment that grants bonuses that did not previously exist in the game. In both consumables and in the larger area of general equipment, veteran players and people who play more often have a huge advantage as they have the knowledge/time to figure out nearly ideal combinations of powers that are not class-based but eq/consumables-based. This has also lessened the relative utility of more easily accessible items, which again puts both newer players and those with less time available to them (and especially those with less time available to them but who still prefer the higher-danger-but-higher-potential Ruthless tier) at even more of a disadvantage.
Personally, there are a lot of consumables and higher-end bits of eq that I'd love to see gone from the game. I patiently await the eq rebalancing that the staff has been working on, as I hope it will go a long way to fixing many of these annoyances.
I'm with the last three. I haven't played a cleric in years but it just seems that they loose some of their flair if I can have a giant warrior with all of the same spells for defense, healing and warrior abilities. I have a wife and kid and get to play around an hour a day on weekdays and more on weekends, I've pk'd a little since my return and have found it crazy how some people are healing and what spells they have on them.
But what I hate is that yes consumables can unbalance some things, but only because your not stocking them too. Not gonna lie 90% of the time as my melee chars I have sanc, stone skin, shield, armor, flesh armor, enlarge, frenzy, and of course some curatives.
The only trouble I see in rebalancing herbs, is the fact the game has gotten to a point where average skill level is MUCH higher than it used to be. Now because of that stripping away some/all of my consumables would give the upper hand to mages by default since they require less buffs that they do not already have access too.
Good point Nameless. While we have had some warriors who kicked *** in the past before consumables were so big they were usually elite players. That shouldn't be a requirement for a class to be used and consumables shouldn't be a requirement to balance a class. The main problem with them is the fact that it's like leveling in WOW, it's not a show of skill but a show of time. You find out where nymph hearts are and you keep collecting them, yes this is preperation but it's taking it to stupid levels.
So let's look at melee characters, if people feel they aren't balanced with c/c then what needs to be changed? Personally I don't think it's skills as much as equipment. Melee characters are much more dependent on equipment that everyone can use. A combat cleric has access to spells and can deck himself in melee gear, does he need it? Yes. Does a shortage of equipment for an equipment based class hurt them? Hell yes. If we made class specific equipment I think it would greatly improve this problem and balance things out. Make some equipment that is for your pure melee characters that c/c get burned or something when they try to touch it. This way as a melee you have more choices with equipment and can achieve it easier and be more viable without collecting consumables for hours for one pk fight with someone.
I really think armor should have it's own skills for each weight class. Light heavy and medium. Take away access to heavy armor for mages because of somatic spell components. Also make your proficiency in different armor classes make it more/less effective. For example someone who has maxed skill in light armor, but almost nothing done to heavy armor, is going to see something like the samite gown as much better than centurian's hauberk strictly because their own skill with it is better. You can do this for most armor in game, it would make wearing adeptus armor still good for melee, but not as desirable for clerics because of chance of spell failure based on the fact they do not know how to use heavy armor. There are still plenty of viable solutions, and players who want a melee heavy cleric can still do it, they are just not going to get the same benefits from Adeptus torso as say a warrior, or berserker. Same goes for Rangers, I could never understand how a ranger could be wearing fullplate, carrying flails, and not make a sound in the woods.
D&D Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Clerics are proficient with all simple weapons, with all types of armor (light, medium, and heavy), and with shields (except tower shields).
Nifty idea but to much work and ruins looting.
What warriors need to realize is that they need to pack some saves if they plan to fight C/C.
Just like a Cleric. You cannot fight all the classes with the same armor (Unless it's gOD-ARMOUR)
A cleric that skips AFF saves for Hit/Dam gets creamed by a Invoker.
A Warrior that skips Mental saves for Hit/Dam get creamed by a Cleric.
A Warrior that gets Mental saves creams a Cleric, but is creamed by a Warrior in Hit/Dam that is creamed by the Cleric in Hit/Dam. It's Paper/Rock/Sissor.
That's great, but paper automatically beats rock. Doesn't work that way here.
It won't ruin looting, you see someone with a piece you want and you go for it. Just means you won't see a combat cleric and a fire zerk in the same suit.
And stop quoting D&D!
D&D is not a basis for FL.
She quoted D&D because Nameless spoke of restricting mages armor wearing due to somatic components. He went into the D&D realm.
And if you want to combine that with FL, then you have synthesized FL with D&D and made D&D a component of FL.
So, yeah, eat that. 