Dulling vs undulling weapons and more.

[Thalric]

Nothing happens... surprise!!!

[Targun]

Nothing revolutionary and well known from other games, as well as also present on Genesis to a certain extent (somewhat underutilized), but...

My proposal would be giving mini-bosses chests or rooms where 'k' number of items from the pool of 'n' can spawn. They don't have to be weapons and armours only, but can also be things akin to potions you can get from Krynn dragons or items with a limited number of charges or internal cd. You don't know up in front what it's gonna be, so you have to kill it, but they will always have something that has some worth, which you can later trade with other guilds, friends or sell on AH.

Example could be more NPCs like Mergula - even if this particular fight could be somewhat harder - where you need 3-4 relatively big (legend/myth) players to kill them. Other examples would be Balrog or Nazgul (the latter one is a bit buggy now and easily abused, but just to give the idea).

I think it would do if we had more NPCs like that. The bottom line should be - they should not be soloable in any circumstances. With time, we could slowly gravitate towards a model where you have:

• Farmable NPCs that have the effect of: "hah, nice one, I got it from <xyz>!"

• A number of mini bosses or bosses that have a pool of nice gear and guaranteed reward.

In order to avoid a situation where 3-4 super-myths clear all the mini bosses in 1.5h hour, an over-farm mechanism could be implemented. For example: to participate in a fight you need to use some item that has 2-3 charges and regains a charge after several hours.

EDIT: some editorial changes

[Cherek]

NIls/Targun: I too think it would be good if bosses always had _something_, or almost always at least. If a wizard volunteers to do the work needed, I am definitely not going to stand in anyone's way. I am not sure what else to tell you. You all know how it works, there are tons of good ideas that would make the game more fun, but someone has to do it too.

[nils]

NIls/Targun: I too think it would be good if bosses always had _something_, or almost always at least. If a wizard volunteers to do the work needed, I am definitely not going to stand in anyone's way. I am not sure what else to tell you. You all know how it works, there are tons of good ideas that would make the game more fun, but someone has to do it too.

This is known.

But at the same time you neglect/omit the bottleneck of either AoB (who has his hands full for the forseeable future) and/or inactive/biased/otherwise disinterested lieges who torpedo the idea before it even hits the planning stages.

Or are you saying you'll give carte blache to anyone who codes a reasonable reward-system for any boss, in any domain, and rather nerf it to shits if turned out to be "too OP?

[Targun]

NIls/Targun: I too think it would be good if bosses always had _something_, or almost always at least. If a wizard volunteers to do the work needed, I am definitely not going to stand in anyone's way. I am not sure what else to tell you. You all know how it works, there are tons of good ideas that would make the game more fun, but someone has to do it too.

Oh, I only threw in an idea since you were asking. I don't think eq system on Genesis is particularly bad. In fact, it works reasonably well in my opinion especially if we consider available "work force". It has its pros and cons, but so do other systems. The only really annoying thing is perhaps when you farm for specific item which is far away, and you will see it 1 in 50 attempts, but that's just life...

All I was saying is: if new equipment is added or someone were to rework currently existing mobs, it could perhaps follow the proposed approach. Baby steps.

[Cherek]

NIls/Targun: I too think it would be good if bosses always had _something_, or almost always at least. If a wizard volunteers to do the work needed, I am definitely not going to stand in anyone's way. I am not sure what else to tell you. You all know how it works, there are tons of good ideas that would make the game more fun, but someone has to do it too.

This is known.

But at the same time you neglect/omit the bottleneck of either AoB (who has his hands full for the forseeable future) and/or inactive/biased/otherwise disinterested lieges who torpedo the idea before it even hits the planning stages.

Or are you saying you'll give carte blache to anyone who codes a reasonable reward-system for any boss, in any domain, and rather nerf it to shits if turned out to be "too OP?

Seems like you have information I don't have then? We have several members of the AoB team, and for example Ckrik and Arman can also approve things if Carnak is busy. Especially if it's relatively "minor" things like adding some extra loot to some bosses. Personally I haven't heard any wizard volunteering to work on this. If it has been presented to someone else but me, for example a liege, who has turned down the idea, then I don't know about it.

I am not giving a carte blanche to anyone, but it's not very hard to send a mail and say "Hey, I want to give boss X a chest of Y", get it approved, and implement it. You make it sound like there is this massive bottleneck, and tons of wizards lining up to code all sorts of things but are shot down before they get anywhere. That is hardly the case. If it's bad idea, then we'll say no of course, but if it's a reasonable idea and someone wants to do the work (and has the skills to do it) nobody in the admin is trying to stand in anyone's way. I don't think lieges will either, but obviously they want to know and approve what goes on in their domain.

[Arman]

WIth the spawning of magical items, it is interesting how often i get contacted saying "improve the spawn rate of x... it never spawns!"

The way magic item cloning used to work is that there was only ever allowed x number in the game per Armageddon. Once that number was reached that was it. That got changed to a 'chance of cloning' based on broadly how many we wanted in the game... mindful that Armageddon kicked in weekly rather than daily, and items saved on players now.

The way magic item cloning works is based on the existing proliferation of said item and how frequently the npc/s that hold them are killed. If there is high proliferation they won't spawn as frequently. If the npc is farmed practically on cloning, you'll need to kill a lot to get the item as well.

It seems there are a number of niche powerful items that all players really really want to get their hands on. But they are out there... we know, because we know where they all are. Some people have multiple, some hoarded in guild chests.

But overall there is a massive proliferation of magical items... and we can see exactly the proliferation based on magic item spawn stats. It is why we are reluctant to change the spawn rates, even though there may be a perception of rarity.

Are we open to other ways of getting good items or abilities? Sure. The imbue system, warfare gems etc are examples of that. Are we open to expanding the AH to allow people to request specific items they want to buy? Sure... if there is someone who can create such complicated code. Are we open to systems that circumnavigate the existing magical item spawning formulas and allow easy proliferation of the best equipment in the game? No, not really. Are we open to reviewing existing items and re-balancing to provide more choice and align better to the challenge? Sure. At the top of Carnak's to-do list post magic system is a review of all the magical items in the game.