gorboth wrote:
(...)
I wanted it to:
- Make grinding more fun.
- Make normal items potentially exciting.
- Give Genesis a greater depth of itemization.
- Provide a meaningful money sink.
These things worked!
I did not want it to:
- Make it so players had double or triple their normal
stats at all times.
- Make imbuements a lasting effect that you should feel
you can expect to have at all times if you work hard
enough.
- Create pvp imbalance on a regular basis.
Sadly, these things also happened.
(...)
I was reading this topic for a quite long time and I wanted to add my 2 cc to the discussion. First of all I have quoted what Gorboth wrote in the begginig of this discussion and I wanted to make it as a base of my comment. We can agree with him or not but he as the creator of the imbue system had the vision how it should look like and the reality should be compared to this vision and not what we as mortals want. Of course we can use different arguments but the goal of the imbue system was His vision and not our wish (because we always would like to have the best/the strongest/the most powerful, etc)
Lets see what was the changes made lately to the imbue system:
1. Reduce drop rate of imbue 2 times
2. New imbues will appear on npc's that are not killed very often. Less times the npc was killed the higher chance is that will have imbue - right?
3. Eq from slots used for imbues by players will take damage and in consequence if player receive damage (is a tank in team or killing solo) sooner or later the item will be broken. There is no chance for tanker to have imbue more than few days of active tanking (30-40 h of real killing, depending of item and number of hits received).
Side effect of this change is that "normal" items like magic rings, medalions, boots without imbue will break as well.
4. Reduce the stats boost from imbue that increase stats
5. Last change connected with the one from point 2. Now items in prime or fine condition will never break.
Now lets see how this chnages fulfill the main goal of imbue sytem stated above:
1. If you want to have find imbue you need to travel to area that nobody travels, you need to find and kill two times as more npc's as a month ago and in result you will have an item with imbue that is worth nothing so you can only go to enchanter and change to the stone. So there are following consequences:
a) you have to choose looking for imbues or make exp - I think nobody will deny it. Imbues are now at places without exp. If they would have exp pleople will kill there, so there is almost not chance to find imbues.
b) there is no chance to find a good aremour like scale of weapon with imbue. All imbues are on crapy eq. In the past there was quite often imbue you can wield or wear. Just look at the topic with nice imbuents. I even remember once a crystal with dmg that was takec from corpse of wise troll. Do you think it is possible someting like that now?
Gorboth you wrote you wanted "Make grinding more fun". Where do you see fun here? Now during normal/typical exp grinding there is no addition to the fun because of imbuents, because there are no chance to find imbue during griding.
No goal reached.
2. Lets imagine that after many moths of killing you will finally have 1 ordinary stone with dmg or stat improve or heal you can add. You imbue something and after not more than 30h of killing solo or tanking in team will be back a cracked stone.
Gorboth you wrote " I did not want to make imbuements a lasting effect that you should feel you can expect to have at all times if you work hard enough." Here you have reached your goal. Nobody can feel now he can have the imbue ALL TIME. But in my oppinion there is a huge difference between 30h and ALL TIME.
Another issue is that implementing this change with breaking all items you are unfair to players who are tanks or play solo. In my oppinion such general changes should not give more to one players then others. And Calia is here only an example becuause it is easy to say. But it benefits all players who are on back to tanks and players who play solo.
3. How much imbue boost?
Here I think everyone who wrote in this topic agree that stat imbue gives much to much and your stat boost cap was a a good move and your gola of not having players with double or triple stats is reached.
Now I would like propose something.
1. Change the chance of hiting imbue equal to all npc's. Give us back fun of grinding.
2. To not to back to the issue with over powered by imbues players maybe you can consider lower the "power" of imbues. For instance faint imbue can give less than current one in terms of dmg/skill/spell/heal/speed/etc.
This connected with proposal from point 1. for sure bring more fun to the game. And not only to mega myths but to all. For sure imbue will be much frequent but overall influence on the game balance will be less. If you think pronounced and Intense imbues will have to big influence on balance you can consider increasing number of stones needed to create it.
3. In my oppinion you should reconsider the decision of making breakable all worn items. Tanks or grinding solo should have chance to have at least one imbue that will not break. If you use shield why your gloves or rings can break?
4. I also agree it would be enough to have max number of imbues. I like very much the idea of imbue points: 1 intense or 2 pronounced or 3 faint.
5. As I understand you are revising what imbues grant to users. Maybe you can divide imbues in two groups:
a) that are connected with equipment a player has:
- weapons - dmg, racial banes, increase acc or dmg
- armours - dmg, racial banes, increase AC
b) rest of imbues that gives general boost in
- skills
- stats
- heal, speed, slow opponent, darkvision
- light, dark
Imbues from first group one can be put on armours or weapons as currently, while imbues from second group can be put on one item that by the end of arma will be like torque. You cannot drop it, sell it, breake it, thief cannot steal it, etc. And you can have only one such item that will stay with you by the end of arma.
Thanks to this influence on game balance will not be huge, and tanks can have their con or heal imbue a bit longer.