PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Duraza on July 23, 2008, 11:17:40 pm
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The actual idea I'm going to talk about came up on IRC when discussing some ideas about how a quest system should work. One side was saying that history and such should be intertwined into the quests, an important part of them. The other side was saying that some people don't care about settings info and history and we shouldn't make them sit and learn about something they don't want to know about every quest they do.
After thinking about it I came up with an idea that I'd like to see in planeshift oneday, something that would apply to quests, leveling, and roleplay and would help them seem less like 3 seperate things.
When it comes to leveling I think that knowing the settings and things like that should help you level, possibly help you even level faster than not knowing it. For example, if there was some research that you could find in the DR libarary about the carkrass written by Londris. This research would tell anyone hunting it everything from how powrful and fast to any weaknesses it has. Londris mentions a weakness against crystal way spells. A player who happens to be hunting carkrass would know to use crystal way.
Notice I say player. It doesn't matter if you think of yourself as a roleplayer or you prefer leveling. The information is there to anyone who wants to seek it. It doesn't force a 'roleplayers' to level or 'levelers' to roleplay. It simply helps players, no matter who they are. You could do the same kinds of things with all kinds of the monsters, maybe not all of them but a good amount.
You don't have to make the info open either, maybe hidden/secret depending on the monster. Maybe tefusangs have some kind of weakness to bludgeoning weapons like hammers so anyone who uses a hammer will have an advantage but other weapons do little. It makes leveling a bit more challenging (and interesting in my opinion) and makes information something more sought after. It doesn't make it immpossible to level without knowing the info nor immpossible to roleplay without leveling.
As for questing its more or less the same only with an option. Lets say Leverus asks you to go and collect rat eyes for him. Before you go he'd ask something like 'would you like to know more about rats'. Say no and you go off on your way and fight the rats. Say yes and he tells you a bit about them, possibly whether all their parts are useless, maybe ones that are useful, weaknesses they have, etc. If you say no killing rats could be difficult, if you say yes it may give you some edge. Yes or no, you now know Leverus knows about rats. Maybe later Sharven needs you to make a special potion but doesn't know what part of the rat is needed. Leverus knows all about rats as you well know and can tell you what parts are helpful and what aren't.
Maybe someone wants a tefusang skin. You try and kill one but you fail. Then you ask around and a player tells you the tefs weakness is hammers. Maybe another NPC who you find out knows about tefs tell you. I'll admit, I've no idea how these things would be implemented, all the hard complications about it etc :P Either way I think its a good idea and at least something to keep in mind. To me it makes the 3 things in the topic seem more like one thing than three.
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I like the way you are thinking about this. It isn't about alienating any one subsection of players, but also expanding what there is to learn and know about PS. You have my vote for this. Have you come up with a Feature Request to add to the bug tracker for this yet? If you want/need help drafting that... just PM me.
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While this would contribute to a much better game, since it would give more depth to the monsters, areas and quests, I'm not sure how it would make role playing more fun (well besides giving the obvious bonus of an even more immersive setting.)
My opinion is that to make role play more consistent we need urgently to make the quests role-playable. For me this means allowing players to include their quests in their character's interaction with other played characters, having quests for all types of players and never allowing unique items to be rewarded through NPC quests (generally speaking. There might be situations where a NPC who can produce over and over again something unique will use it as a means of getting his chores done by adventurers.)
To make levelling more consistent we just need to erase the PPs and make it so that levelling one skill makes all the others a tiny bit harder to level.
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What is the point of making all of your skills harder to level if you train one? Are you saying that if i train sword, it should make all of my crafting skills harder? Biased much against people that want to play the game? Honestly, IRL if you learn a spoken language or a martial art... learning more spoken languages or a different martial art becomes easier because you have the necessary skills already and it is just a matter of learning the differences between what you know and what you are trying to learn.
I don't know that i like the pps AND trias exchange for skills/stats training, but I like it far better than the traditional level based systems. I like how i have to have training in sword to gain sword skill, not just gain a level and think to myself... hrm... i want sword, mining, metallurgy, and um... armor crafting skills this level.
[EDIT: fixed grammar]
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This fits in with what I've been trying to think of lately ... a way to have NPCs serve players instead of the other way around. It is not easy to make a change like that with the Settings Team's current options. However this suggestion is something I hadn't thought about yet and might be possible. Further ideas that lie in the same line are:
- Skill or Stat point rewards from quests.
- Players giving NPCs 'a quest' instead of the other way around.
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I'm not sure how it would make role playing more fun
It was more about combining Roleplay, leveling, and questing in a way so that they intermix better than they do now than making roleplay more enjoyable. The need to know settings stuff will at least make roleplaying more attractive but I think ultimately roleplays fun is decided by the players of the game.
My opinion is that to make role play more consistent we need urgently to make the quests role-playable. For me this means allowing players to include their quests in their character's interaction with other played characters, having quests for all types of players and never allowing unique items to be rewarded through NPC quests (generally speaking. There might be situations where a NPC who can produce over and over again something unique will use it as a means of getting his chores done by adventurers.)
I'd agree. Quests are not usually easily roleplayed because each single person goes through the same process. Its how most game quests are done but doesn't mean its the right way to do it. I'd say it would be great if quests became a mixture of everyday tasks that could be completed over and over again as well as tasks in which the players always fail at. For example, a certain NPC has a rare sickness. Instead of every individual character curing it we all fail, still getting a reward for trying. You could even spawn GM events and things like that, taking the NPC's problem and making that final epic quest to cure the NPC. it would make the world seem more as if it were always changing.
- Skill or Stat point rewards from quests.
I think items are okay for quests to give so long as the truely rare items would be kept for special occasions. Commonplace items are what we should find the most. A few 'powerful' or 'special' NPC's will give you quests in which you obtain a rare item on your own. Not that you did their task and they gave you the reward but that you do a task for them and in return they tell you how to get such a rare item. The really special items kept for GM events and distrubuted to players as they see fit.
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Or how about you ask them about a certain item and they help you get or make it?
By the way I meant to add stats to the questing rewards, not replace current experience, tria or item rewards with them.
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Or how about you ask them about a certain item and they help you get or make it?
That would sound good to me. Possibly instructions to make a weapon. Or possibly they have a glyph symbol and their willing to allow you to copy the symbol to your own piece of stone/wood to make a glyph ;D (I wonder if thats how it works :P )
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For example, a certain NPC has a rare sickness. Instead of every individual character curing it we all fail, still getting a reward for trying. You could even spawn GM events and things like that, taking the NPC's problem and making that final epic quest to cure the NPC. it would make the world seem more as if it were always changing.
This is exactly the sort of stuff I'd love to see.
What is the point of making all of your skills harder to level if you train one?
It's a way of making each character more specialized, rather than having most characters with all skills.
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I have talked about that on other topics... but I agree that all characters should not be vanilla... all characters should not be able to do the same things or max out to the same levels. I don't think that it should be incorporated in this request though. The resistance to this that i have encountered is that a lot of vocal people on the forums want equality instead of balance. They would like their dwarf to be able to wield the same 8 ft claymore that a kran can. Balance is much harder to achieve than equality though.
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What is the point of making all of your skills harder to level if you train one?
It's a way of making each character more specialized, rather than having most characters with all skills.
Instead of making it harder to level a stat or skill, why not do what uo did and set a maximum total points a character could have that is significantly less than what would max out all the stats. Though UO also made it so that the total could be raised a little bit later on.
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Hmm, I prefer Sangwas idea over yours Arlaton, as it makes more sense. With your points limit, it means that a character is physically unable to max out everything. with Sangwas, it just means that it is harder to be a master of multiple things, which does kind of make sense, as in real life it is possible to master a number of skills, though it is easier to master just one.
On the flipside, as a mechanic for preventing lots of awesome completely maxed characters, your idea, Arlaton is probably better. Because Sangwas idea may create a much larger gap between powerevelers and casual players.
So in the space of one sentence I've managed to change my mind, somehow. I suppose each idea has their pros and cons. So to sum my thoughts up:
Sangwas idea - Makes more sense
Possibly tilts things the Plers way
Arlatons idea - An effective mechanic for making sure people only specialise in a few skills (which can also be taken to be more realistic as well).
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I'd say if you go with Sangwa's idea there is still an easy way to stop PLing from becoming dominant and that would skill decay. I mentioned this before I believe but basically if you stop using a skill you'll skill will decrease. Obviously it won't go all the way back down to 0 but you can make skills decay a max of like 25-35%. Makes it hard to not only master a lot of skills but keep them mastered. Just like what people say about riding a bike. You never forget how to do it. This way you won't forget but that doesn't mean you'll have it mastered after not doing it for so long.
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How would that stop power levelling? It would just mean max-o characters will always have a reason to keep playing. They will not need as many alternate characters because their first ones will always have stuff to do.
Are you suggesting skill degradation only with time spent in game or continual even when not played?
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How would that stop power levelling? It would just mean max-o characters will always have a reason to keep playing. They will not need as many alternate characters because their first ones will always have stuff to do.
Well some people will do that. But I think most will give up on purely powerleveling for the fact that maxing will be immpossible. Maxing one or two stats would be possible but not them all so it would be utterly pointless to try. That hand in hand with Sangwa's idea that by raising one skill level others become harder to raise and I bet you'd see less players who only level. We'd still have a few and theres nothing wrong with that so long as they don't disrupt roleplay. But I think we'd have less.
Are you suggesting skill degradation only with time spent in game or continual even when not played?
Thats a tough question. Both sides have their ups and downs. I'd probably go with continual degradation, even when your not playing. If it were only for time spent ingame it would solve nothing at all (it may solve nothing at all either way though). Sure, people who can't play a lot would get the worst bet because their characters would always be the ones losing their skills but you could fix that.
Firstly, create a sort of restriction to when your skills start to degrade. Say the first 20 levels of a skill you can pass without skills going down. After that your'll start losing levels slowly, a max of 25% but you can never go lower than that first 20 levels. Makes it easier when you start training off because even with the skill decay if you just achieve level 21 the most that can happen is you getting set back to 20. Once you start getting higher You'll still only ever be able to lose 25% so you can still achieve and maintain say level 75 sword if you ever got it to level 100. Start training it again and when you don't train you'll start losing levels.
It does in a way make people level more but at the same time makes maxing hard. I'd say it keeps the game challenging for anyone who wants to just spend their time leveling and it gives those who rather roleplay reason to level because they can catch up (though they might not because we prefere taverns :P ). Since the game doesn't enforce roleplay on everyone, just wants to support it I'd say this would be fair.
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I really don't like the idea of losing hard earned levels. And I bet a lot of other players wouldn't be two keen for this idea either. I still see the merit in the idea though, it with smiths having to craft regularly to keep their skills up, and warriors having to train for tournaments and the like.
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Sounds to me all you really need to keep the role players happy is a Drinking skill and a lie swapping skill. "I'm telling you *slurp slurp* that fish was *slurp* bigger than an ulbernaut!" :lol:
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Wow... you summed it up quite nicely Prolix. They'd never need to leave the tavern. ;D
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PlaneShift is a MMORPG. Just like a card game player is considered a player in a card game, so is a role player considered a player in a role play game. So, when you say that we need a drinking skill to make players (or role players, same thing) happy, you're not being fair to the rest of us players (or role players, same thing) who don't want that silly skill. I know you were joking, I just can't let these confusions slip.
I wasn't speaking about losing levels. Just making other skills harder to level. For instance, for each point you raise in Job skills, your Combat and Magic skills need one extra advance to level. This would make characters tend towards focusing on certain areas, because if you raised too much of every area, everything would become harder. It doesn't waste any hard work, it just makes the work actually hard.
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For example, a certain NPC has a rare sickness. Instead of every individual character curing it we all fail, still getting a reward for trying. You could even spawn GM events and things like that, taking the NPC's problem and making that final epic quest to cure the NPC. it would make the world seem more as if it were always changing.
This is exactly the sort of stuff I'd love to see.
And in the same note I'd like to see Toda and Merrinez married in an event and that quest dropped. Some things just need closure, you know? :)
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What are you talking about? In PS quests have no closure. If it were as such, the stupid kran would already be happy with the poem.
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Aha, Perhaps I should have Capitalized Role Player! But, yes, it was just a quick one liner.
Just How many Buds does Gurgus have now? That kran ought to be a billionaire just from collecting the droppings from his Gemmating snack!
However it might be nice if doing the quests had more noticeable effect on future dialogue but that is not really more practical as you would have people at different states, some seeing Kras bud others not, etc.
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The biggest problem that i see in the whole system is experience points. And this is a problem that plagues a lot of games. Currently in order for a character to level up a skill or a stat they need to have gained exp points and trias. So lets take your basic adventurer. He goes out and starts to kill rats, and then gobbles etc. He does this by hand to hand or if he is lucky with a club or a sword. Now he gains exp points, and collecting body parts he sells for tria. Next thing he does is buy a weapon and seek out a weapons trainer. Now he didn't use a weapon to gain this experience but he spends it on weapons training. Now lets switch to the crafter. Most if not all the crafting operations do not provide enough exp points, and even if they did its all one lump sum so he can train in axe making after he got points from smelting iron, and making steel. But in the end he still ends up having to go out and kill monsters to gain points so he can continue to train at a decent rate his crafting.
This is just wrong. I don't have a problem with the trias being spent on training. But it should just be training, followed by practice, and self training. How your character obtains the trias is up to him. But lets quit using exp points cause they let you use one activity to raise another that has little or no relation to each other. Example magic and cooking. You can gain points by killing monsters with magic and use the points to train for cooking. Sword Fighting and empathy. You can skewer a bunch of monsters and the spend the points on being more empathetic. This is just absurd.
I have played a lot of games and the best ones have been the ones that avoid the exp trap. Traveller -- You had skills and you raised them with training. Didn't matter how many things you built or destroyed. It didn't speed up your skill advancement unless it was to gain needed cash for training. RuneQuest -- Every game session you played in you had the chance to raise one of the skills that was used succesfully in that game session. Thus only what was used could go up. Other games were innovative but they still had the problems of the exp trap. Champions, White Wolfs World of Darkness. R.Talsorian's Fuzion. All innovate games but they still had exp points gained from all activites be used to raise any given trait.
I even find the idea of skills being allowed to deteriorate over time from lack of use to be acceptable. But I think it has to be based on time in the game not total real world time elapsed.
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The biggest problem is indeed the Progression Points (what you get from having plenty of experience points. Same thing.) It kills me to see that in order to raise intelligence one is forced to fight or mine. We all get this, but for some silly reason the developers don't. It's been an year or more now.
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suggesting the devs don't "get it" or don't care is NOT appreciated. The devs have their plan for how things should work, and they have a big picture. I can guarantee that you will not always agree, but that doesn't make them stupid or wrong. If you don't like things that bad, don't play. This way of doing things is MUCH better than a "level based" system, where you just gain skill by clicking a "plus" icon after each level. You can gain skill in anything without ever even using it. At least PS requires you to seek a trainer, and then put those skills to use before gaining proficiency in a skill.
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also it is _not_ easy to redo the training system, that requires recoding a LOT of the game and then a ton of work for settings to help with setting up all the npcs to work with the new system. Last i heard xordan had an idea but he has been busy with other aspects of ps that are more important at this time to get done.
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Mythyndel what we have now is a cross between a skill based system and a level based system. Again its using experience points to provide advancement. And there is no relation between where you gained the exp and where its spent. My favorite example of avoiding the exp trap is the game RuneQuest by Chaosium, and then later released by Avalon Hill and Chaosium. It use % values on all skills, and you only got to roll for advancement on those skills that were successfully used. So no matter how many times a character used his sword to kill the local baddies, he would never get a roll to advance in sorcery. Here I go out and kill 100 trepors, maybe mine a little bit for cash and boom I can now buy training in crystal way. Do you see why that is just wrong. I have no problems with practicing the skill after I buy the training. That is what they did right. Just get rid of exp points. Train, self train, practice. That is all that's needed.
Caarrie Yes I realize the recoding the advancement system would be involved but it wouldn't need to be a case of starting from scratch. A lot of what is there is good. Its just the exp that needs to be removed.
1) Training -- use cash to pay for the training points (x number of trias = 1 training point), and allow use of the skill to provide for self training. Say 10 practice points {using the code for creating practice points that already exits} = 1 training point. Thus a character can advance slowly on their own or more quickly if they pay trainers to train them. (the number of practice points to create the training point [what you currently use exp (pp's) for in training] can be adjusted to create the proper balance.)
2) Practice -- No need to change this code at all.
3) Stats -- Define activities that would provide practice points just the way you have activies for the skills, so that stats can be trained up without the need for exp points just like the skills.
This would resuse most of the existing code and decouple the use of one skill to raise a totally unrelated one.
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The other side was saying that some people don't care about settings info and history and we shouldn't make them sit and learn about something they don't want to know about every quest they do.
Keep in mind that I, as a member of the settings team, don't care about this people at all. By that, I mean, I'm not making any content for them. I don't speak for anybody but myself in this case.
Besides that, I agree with your idea. You want the information to have real-world (well... fake-world) application. This is hard to implement right now, unfortunately, in quests people are more likely to go with the answer they think the NPC wants than the answer their character would give. This means that many, many forks are completely ignored. Having it so people who have knowledge of settings get ahead on quests would be hard just because of the sheer amount of places we'd have to edit to add that in. There are a few quests that do have this, though... Not sure if they are ingame yet.
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If you don't like things that bad, don't play.
I never told you I despised the game bad enough to quit. I merely disapprove of the system and, in my ignorance of the Developer's progress in this topic, the developer's progress. I don't know to what extent this matters to them, nor do I care about that. They have this section and I have this opinion.
also it is _not_ easy to redo the training system, that requires recoding a LOT of the game and then a ton of work for settings to help with setting up all the npcs to work with the new system. Last i heard xordan had an idea but he has been busy with other aspects of ps that are more important at this time to get done.
It's not easy? Great, that means it's possible. And Xordan's ideas rock too.
I can wait years, that's fine by me. However, I greatly doubt our perspective of importance matches. I play the game and the current two worst set backs I notice are exactly the Progression Points system and NPC-Player interaction; because they directly fumble all attempts to role play and this game is considered, by the developers running it, a Massive Multi-Player Open Role Play Game. It looks to me as a central question, opposed to improving other game mechanics.
And the sooner it's done, the less converting you'll end up doing.
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I play the game and the current two worst set backs I notice are exactly the Progression Points system and NPC-Player interaction; because they directly fumble all attempts to role play and this game is considered, by the developers running it, a Massive Multi-Player Open Role Play Game. It looks to me as a central question, opposed to improving other game mechanics.
And the sooner it's done, the less converting you'll end up doing.
I agree there, especially with the part about the less converting that will need to be done...I don't know much about game mechs but it sounds like changing the current leveling system would be a lot of hard work...But if you do continue to add more game mechanics before deciding to change the system then by the time you get around to deciding to change the system you'll be in way over your heads with the amount of things that need editing. It will be almost like doing everything over again. Of course, I may be wrong as like I said, I'm not so smart when it comes to the tech stuff :P
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The issue of diversity is a lot more complicated than how XP/PP are gained. Honestly, the gaining of XP this way is a long-standing RPG (tabletop as well as computer) staple, and I don't see the harm in it. What I would like to see are tweaks that would make playing diverse characters possible, rather than herding people into cookie-cutter 'max out XYZ' mentalities. Myself, I'm interested in role-playing, but I also want an experienced enough character that I'm not RPing as a clueless neonate forever--I start that way, but I want to feel that I've gotten somewhere. However, I don't feel the need to max everything out. I'm not a grinder; I'm here to play a character. I came here wanting to make a mage, and I had no intention of ever having a terribly high STR or END. However, the stamina system quickly forced me to see that I needed to put a lot of points into those stats. Every player I meet tells me that I 'need' to max out STR, END, etc. They laugh at the idea of focusing on magic, despite the realistic notion that a character who devotes all his/her time to magic is going to be less physically formidable.
What I suggest is that, to allow for more balanced playing, it should be possible to create a character who makes weapons and doesn't fight, but is merely a tradesman. It should be possible to create a character who is a scholar/mage, but does not have massive physical stats (and does not have to sit down every minute for two minutes to travel anywhere). The heavy emphasis on needing one, single skill set is really what, I believe, leads to the "vanilla" or cookie-cutter characters.
Don't get me wrong; I heartily appreciate the devs and I think PS is a great game. However, it's a great game that's still in development, so I offer these thoughts as constructive criticism, not an expression of dislike. The game is good, but why not make it even better, right? Right!
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Just something else I thought of and wanted to add since I'm so full of ideas. :P
I was curious about the descriptions for races in regards to leveling and settings. Kran being the stronger of the races, xacha and lemurs being physically weaker, ylian being able to learn a bit of everything, diaboli weak against holy weapons, etc.
Now when you look at things in regards to leveling, strength maxes off at *insert number*. I can get a kran character and have him start off with very high strength or get a Xacha with low strength. Either one of them can end up at max strength. My Xacha can be as strong as a kran. Anyone find this silly? No of course not because players should be able to be what they want.
Then why is it that if I say my diaboli isn't weak against holy weapons or my ynnwn isn't weak against precious metals I'm sure I'll get flamed? Surely isn't my diaboli overcoming his weakness to holy weapons the same as some PLers Xacha suddenly overcoming its races physical weakness? Why should the two be viewed any differently?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Leveling needs limitations added. Else what sense does it make? Either theres going to be a way for all races to overcome their weaknesses or no race should be able to. If Xacha get to get kran strength then I hope there is a good reason why else I might as well start saying my Ynnwn is impervious to precious metals and my klyros can fly.
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Duraza... you might want to edit your post... someone is likely to come along and warn you about it as it contains spoilers...
[EDIT] I wholeheartedly agree with you. However, at this stage of development, the decision seems to be equality instead of balance. This does make things simpler for now, but I have asked the question before about why a stout, but small, dwarf should be able to wield a huge claymore as well as a large kran. I believe there is a race that is "allergic" to metal... but i assume they can train and wear medium and heavy armor... that is made of metal...
I do assume that this is going to change later... and a significant number of very vocal players are going to roast the devs over an open pit for doing it.
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Thanks...Think I fixed the spoiler thing...
I suppose I understand the reason that everyone is able to max (makes it easier for testing etc right now) but I'm still against it. :P
I do assume that this is going to change later... and a significant number of very vocal players are going to roast the devs over an open pit for doing it.
As for that I'm sure it will happen. But when you think about it, anytime a change is made theres someone who wants to flame the person who made it. :P Likewise for when changes aren't made. Theres going to be a roast no matter what. The difference is one roast will end quickly while the other won't end till the change is made :P
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I believe there is a race that is "allergic" to metal... but i assume they can train and wear medium and heavy armor... that is made of metal...
Um... that race is not allergic to every metal, but only to the metals that are considered as being precious metals. So that means they can wield metallic armours, as long as these armours don't have any component made from precious metals.