Imbuement and Armour Changes ...

[Jar]

The simplest solution is just removal of buyout option.
Setting max auction time to 1 hour should really fit it if a seller wants fast money.

I guess those selling people prefer good, market-based money to quicker but significantly lower cash.
New, less knowledgable players would benefit most from that, at cost of those heavy money-makers.

[Sykil]

Forcing travel to the tent adds value to the auction itself. Not money mind you but time. And since it isnt money the richest cant just win easy, so it sort of levels the field abit more with time (time to run to tent) used as another form of value.

So if i grind and script-kill during day at trolls and sleep-camp and script-buy at the ten at night - it will be allright?

What stops me from camping at the tent when i am not really around? You can idle as much as you want, do not you?
I just happen to arise when there is something to buy out and then go back to iddling. Just a coincidence, really.

If you are just idling, that's legal. However the moment you win, you get item. Now you are sitting on item and cheating and can be punish.

Don't remove buyout. Is legitimate strategy for selling you item and make item more worthwhile because you get to use it right away.

Deal with 1 problem a time. Problem: Scripters auto-buy item.
Solution: Bid in person. Easy. Good. Done.

Of course Jar and other bot-grinder say this is not good and let them pay more and win items without buyout without having to visit Sparkle. That proves how good this is.

[Jooli]

The changes to drop rate on imbues, combined with all items taking damage made me loose the interest to even log in for now. I've said it several times in respectful and constructive ways, but there is a firewall between common sense and the wizard community. The worst part is that the changes are the exact opposite from the stated goals of the imbuement system.

Obviously the goal was not to make any particular guild stop playing. Why BDA are not playing as much only they can answer, but from what I heard they got tired of having nobody around to kill quite some time before the imbuement change was made.

[Ydred]

The changes to drop rate on imbues, combined with all items taking damage made me loose the interest to even log in for now. I've said it several times in respectful and constructive ways, but there is a firewall between common sense and the wizard community. The worst part is that the changes are the exact opposite from the stated goals of the imbuement system.

For me the recent silence of the admin is actually a positive. I think they are thinking how to get out of this hole. If not, I will probably join you in who gives a flying forgetmenot.

If it gets that far though, well let's just not forget to not let the door hit us in the ass.

So if i grind and script-kill during day at trolls and sleep-camp and script-buy at the ten at night - it will be allright?

What stops me from camping at the tent when i am not really around? You can idle as much as you want, do not you?
I just happen to arise when there is something to buy out and then go back to iddling. Just a coincidence, really.

This is hard. It is so against the spirit of the game. Not the idle part. That just gets you on the time played list and affects nothing unless you really want to be on a list that means nothing.

But to idle and gain something useful? That is just wrong. Same way script killing in an illegal fashion is. Both give you gains and are very against the spirit of the game which should be more a legit competition in my mind. So a harsh penalty if caught? Or remove ability to use safe rooms for 1hr after bidding on an item and are unable to drop connection for same time? (sort of like when you LD to fast after combat and your 'image' stays in game for about 2mins) Not sure really.

[kirsach]

(...)
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.

[gorboth]

Kirsach - best post yet. Thanks for such a thorough, relevant, and constructive analysis.

Let me be clear on one thing. The concept of things being imba (too powerful to be considered good for normal balance) is something I really like, so long as it is rare, and cannot be sustained. For this reason, I do not like the idea of limiting imbues to three at a time, creating a system of points to limit use, etc. I much rather like the idea that all slots are fair game, and if you prepare for a long time, you could have twelve or more (maybe twenty at once are technically possible?) imbuements in an absolutely insane setup that you spent months to prepare.

To me, that sounds extremely fun, and I love the idea that such a thing is possible.

The trick is making sure we haven't got a system where the hardcore among us are able to set that up for themselves on a regular and sustained basis. That is what we've been working at with some of these tweaks.

Your post, Kirsach, spells out almost point for point the issues that I have been struggling to reconcile in my own thinking on the issue. Specifically, I agree that we have made grinding far far far LESS fun with the recent changes. This was absolutely not the goal. The tricky dance there is that sometimes we do try to have a goal to "reward bots less" but ... being that there is functionally no difference between an inactive grinding bot and a fully alert hardcore grinding player ... we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater with this change. I'm not really liking it.

So, stay tuned, everyone ...
G.

[Ydred]

Kirsach - best post yet. Thanks for such a thorough, relevant, and constructive analysis.

Haha my ass. He posted much of what we already covered. So best regurgitated post. And it still has many flaws too.

Here was my take. But I am glad you are thinking.

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?

.
.
. Leads to this (I think)
.
.

1. Change the chance of hiting imbue equal to all npc's. Give us back fun of grinding.

This (make all npcs drop imbues equally as before) AND work to make all npcs on a more even xp system. Much like Redoing quests so they have criteria to give xps .... npcs should. No fudging npcs either by giving them no int wis and 120 skill level in weapons. Make it even across the board. This will make us want to hunt other shit than we do.
1)Trollshaws ....
2)SilverForest .... remove freezing or give us double xps for dealing with the unfun of it
3)Kalad
4)Any other npcs that suck ass to kill. Make them all nearer to each other.

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.

Not all in one step for sure. Stat imbues are OP. Lets check these out first. Reduction for sure on them.
But does intense skill help others too much? Many have sup master skill in needed stuff. So pronounced and intense dont do anything for them. It might for some but probably not OP. Now if we had other skills like a BackStab stone .... that could be interesting and maybe OP? No idea.
(sorry adding ..... 81 takes along time to get to ..... 3600hrs played time I estiamte to get 81 of any one. And granted you are also gathering 'all' but the limit on number worn would keep the balance)

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.

I think these go hand in hand. If we reduce the number of slots you can have, I dont think we need to have the everything breaks we do now. The limitation from number worn would be very sufficient.

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

[/quote]

Because I dont think we need breaking anything I think this is overkill. But if we do have one unbreakable (2?, 3?), let the player decided what they want to wear on their unbreakable item. No need to do this imho as I think your 3 and 4 cover it solidly.

Also, if we move to a you can wear only X imbues .... then any imbues we create (not find mind you) will be 'saveable' to us an protected items for all. Not just those with private drop rooms.

But most important to nerfs is not to overnerf. Pick one solid parameter and test it. Imbues have been around for years and wont break the game for a few weeks or months of slow testing.

Overnerfing causes major burn out to the players. Games at their core are meant to have fun. This game is competive too. But Fun is at its core.

[Cherek]

Current bid string: A whatever take you money.
Replacement bid string: You pay Rommik.

Done? Or you need a tuck in with your story?

Ok ok, fine. You win. It might be a simple change. I am still not convinced it's the best change tho.

[morgzaash]

I am suprised how fast change was made and how long it tooks to make all the talks to design new, better system.

And mine 2cc once more :
while you , up there, are talking and making decisions consider one importent thing :
imbues to be used have to be balanced: cost/time_to_get . It looks like you've made some decisions watching players
like me/Jooli/Morr/Irk - big and grinding a lot or buying a lot of imbues.

[gorboth]

Only Admin have access to imbuement distribution tables. No other wizards. If you believe there is cheating going on, I will listen. I have no reason to believe that any of the Admin are untrustworthy, however. Quite to the contrary.

G.