I know you love waxing emotive on your soapbox Nils, but the point of this thread was to spitball ideas. We haven't locked down any plans as yet... we have been throwing around a lot of ideas of which a few we have brought here for discussion.
Interestingly, some of the ones you've raised we are seriously considering. Nice to know we are sometimes on the same wavelength!
I am not a fan of the alignment system either. Good and evil is contextual, and the idea of killing stuff making you more holy just seems... weird. Re-tooling is worth considering... although there is a lot of legacy code reliant on alignment that would need to be re-worked.nils wrote: ↑10 Mar 2020 17:54I think there are other forces at play, and that they all play some role in what we’re seeing.
Alignment
I’ve said many times that the way alignment works in Genesis is inherently flawed. It basically allows evil to kill whatever and goodies to kill only evil mobs. In the beginning this is fine. In whatever we call the “end game” the game itself is too small to not be able to kill both.
A better solution would be that alignment is chosen at character creation, but can be changed upon death (like race, desc etc today). It would remove the limits set on Knights, Calians etc, making them more feasible in the end game, at least until admin green-lights a lot more grinders for myths and above. Some would say it’s bad roleplaying for a knight to kill kids in Drakmere, but it’s equally bad roleplay for any soldier in the Dragonarmy to kill dragonarmy guards, or angmarrims killing orcs. I think bad roleplay is preferred over game mechanical STOP-signs.
It’s also possible to concoct some way of blocking evils of killing good mobs and vice versa on a character-level, echoing something like: “You don’t want to kill your friends, do you?” but I’d argue that one would ruin a lot when it comes to other aspects of the game part from grinding alone.
Agreed, this is not a dumb idea. I think we have discussed it before on the forums and we have done some work behind the scenes to come up with some possible rebalancing options... the wall we hit though is putting a combat aid 'value' on a stat type. Constitution is universally valuable. But what is the value of strength? Or dex? Largely dependent on your guild specials? Int/wis/dis are largely useless to a fighter but the bread and butter for a caster.nils wrote: ↑10 Mar 2020 17:54Races
We all know the goblin is the superior fighter-race in Genesis. If you want to min-max, you go goblin. Period. In the same way the ogre is technically neutral, it’s viewed as inherently evil, the goblin is inherently evil and subsequently not a natural choice for a good character.
Now people would scream “SO NERF THE GOBLIN!”, but that wouldn’t sit well with the goblins now would it? Nerfing is always bad, but upgrading usually welcomed. I think the good side is missing a goblin-type fighter option, and I think the dwarf qualifies. Like the goblin, the dwarf is ugly and has social limitations. The problem is, and always has been, the horrible penalty to dexterity and it’s “wasted” bonus on the dump-stat discipline.
I have a hard time believing anyone would protest the dwarf getting, like the goblin, human-like dexterity (no penalty, no bonus). That change alone turns the dwarf into a natural good aligned fighter and the game is more balanced for it.
I’ve also suggested making human more customizable, dividing it into three types: “Normal”, “Warrior” and “Mage” with logical stat distribution accordingly.
This change would make dwarves excellent Calian and Knights, and for the roleplayers, the “Fighter-human” is a bit toned down but still eligible choice, for all guilds I might add.
We can 'finger in the wind' a new racial stat distribution. Mind, if we did that I think it would be cool if there was a baseline racial modifier as well as 'bonus' modifiers based on your occupational and layman guild choices... much like what you've outlined for humans.
Cherek put forward such a proposal a while ago. He is super keen to progress it, but I won't steal his thunder on this.nils wrote: ↑10 Mar 2020 17:54Player size, differences thereof
I’ve also advocated an adjustment to how the growth curve can change. The quick version is making it easier to grow to myth, but equal time to reach “super-myth”. Quicker progression early on, slower in the end. No “super-myth” would protest this, as long as it takes just as long in total to end up on “the Best” on the rankings. The game needs new players the same way Calians and Knights need new members. The gap between the new and the really big could benefit from some shrinkage. It’s not the only solution, but definitely part of it.
This is a big nerf. We are reluctant to pull the trigger on this without also introducing some sort of player carrot. But it is something we have talked about rolling out with re-scaling of advancement (so one big bandaid rip).nils wrote: ↑10 Mar 2020 17:54
The problem with CAID on special attacks that still hasn’t been solved.
Now I can’t be bothered to find the thread regarding this issue, but in short it’s true that special attacks do a lot more damage than they’re supposed to and because of it we live in a “special attack is king”-world. Correcting this would make “soloing the world” harder, promote teaming even more, giving team-oriented guilds a boost and actually become a boost for guilds specializing in using two weapons.
An understandable pet peeve. Most are easily gamed. It's a lot of code time to introduce even moderately sophisticated guild leadership management systems. WoHS has an automated system where elections are regularly held every x months for the council positions, and inactivity boots councillors from the role, but that won't stop determined players from gaming the system. And in a lot of cases elections aren't thematically appropriate. Our newer guilds have more sophisticated systems, such the Fire Knives, but it is still gameable and not necessarily appropriate for all guild types. It really comes down to how much priority the coders want to focus on this issue... and compared to some of the others that we'd rather work on it really is a case by case basis.nils wrote: ↑10 Mar 2020 17:54
Opening up guilds vs making changes to leadership.
This one is obviously more work than simply opening up a guild, but it’s been a pet-peeve of mine for as long as I can remember. Some people are able to sit the throne on a guild for decades, or a crew of friends keeping a guild hostage (see Rangers, Calians, and previously the Neidars) and it’s detrimental to not only the guild itself, but the game as a whole. There should always be more than one way for guild power to transfer to other players. Some guilds have it, some don’t. Some are half-assed and easily gamed. Attempting to make it game-proof might end up a futile mission, but a combination of ways for power to be lost (and subsequently claimed by others) should always exist, in all guilds.