layman choices - good vs evil (partly rant)

[Tapakah]

The certain differences between aforementioned guilds also find an expression in guild tax. However, myself I suppose that the guild tax becomes less relevant with huge players. Maybe all guilds should be normalized to the same guild tax, with some guilds nerfed and some improved to be raised to the same bar.

T.

[Makfly]

Maybe all guilds should be normalized to the same guild tax, with some guilds nerfed and some improved to be raised to the same bar.

T.

Yes please!
I've been advocating for that for a long time.

In my opinion, it should be the Admin's aim to balance guilds against each other, to alleviate some of the gross imbalances that exist in the game today.
Now, I am certain no matter the Admin does, some players would cry Imbalanced!, but atleast any _actual_ imbalance would be unintentional.
I'll not bore people with a rehash of all the arguements for normalizing guild tax across all guilds of a certain class (OCC, lay, race, craft), though. The search button here and on the previous forum can dig them up.

Also, Laurel, your original post was basically just a rant, where you try to exagerate the power of the layman guilds available to you vs the ones available to the evil side. That's why it was a post better suited for the Flames section.
But to please you, I'll feed you a little - For instance, offensive power of the Necromancers? Are you talking about the lightning? The skeleton? I find it's sustained offensive power to be pretty low. Now the Necromancers have _the_ best utility spell in the game via the portals, though.
But the Heralds also have a very potent utility spell in the Peace spell. See previous rants from was it...Hades? Bofur? on that particular spell.
Sure the Peace spell won't help you grind faster, but not everything from a layman needs to be about direct killing power.

[Laurel]

The biggest problem for the last years was with a guild that had several perks/features/boosts "balanced" with huge tax ... and it's members belonged to the biggest in the Game.

"Balance" at it's best, I'd say

For instance, offensive power of the Necromancers? Are you talking about the lightning? The skeleton? I find it's sustained offensive power to be pretty low.

compared to Heralds ANY offensive spellcasting (even minstrel's vibrato) makes a difference

[Onton]

Maybe all guilds should be normalized to the same guild tax, with some guilds nerfed and some improved to be raised to the same bar.

T.

Yes please!

Hear, hear!

Would mean you would only have to consider things you can see (abilities) rather than things you can't see (tax) when choosing guilds.

[Laurel]

Would mean you would only have to consider things you can see (abilities) rather than things you can't see (tax) when choosing guilds.

you have been choosing guilds based on their tax? can I have access to that wiz-info as well?

[Cherek]

Btw Laurel, minstrels arent a neutral guild, are they? So there's another goodie layman thats pretty useful. Atleast heal and pax are two good skills imho.

Manowaaaaaaagh!

Personally I think most laymans we have are pretty balanced against eachother, and also in terms of good vs evil.

which layman is the goodie counter for AA lay? militia? can't honestly believe in that
which layman is the goodie counter for necros? heralds?

I have no idea what Manowaaaaagh means so I cant comment on that.

You cant just dismiss the neutral guilds, they too add to the balance. And yes, whats wrong with shieldbearers or militia? Are they so inferior to AA lay? If they are then perhaps someone should "nerf" AA lay then. But I gotta think they actually made it similar in terms of "power" to the existing laymans.

If you wanna be a goodie layman spellcaster you can choose between minstrels, elementals and valar. I never found necros to be super-powerful in any way. If they were, wouldnt there be more than a handful neros around one might wonder?

To use tax to balance things was always an odd way of doing it imho, escpecially since tax doesnt do anything in pvp, which is where balance is most important. I thought the whole idea of the rebalancing process was to balance guilds against eachothers, and not use tax for balancing at all...?

[Onton]

Would mean you would only have to consider things you can see (abilities) rather than things you can't see (tax) when choosing guilds.

you have been choosing guilds based on their tax? can I have access to that wiz-info as well?

Like you said, the more powerful guilds are balanced by higher tax (which isn't detailed)... So, if all guilds were equally powerful and equally taxed, it would make things a lot simpler.

[Laurel]

I have no idea what Manowaaaaagh means so I cant comment on that.

(...) whats wrong with shieldbearers or militia?

Manowar - an officer in the AA, minstrel ...
SB gives ONLY offense and is NOT usable for any non-short race AND to use it, one has to loose 1 weapon hand (not to mention the "joining" process )
militia is really usable by polearm users only - compared to the wide array of applications AA lay offers ... it blows

[Tive]

Laurel, you could always join AA lay and stay incognito if you like them so much
or try...

[gorboth]

Personally, I do not think we are going to go and take another 2 years to rebalance the already balanced melee guilds.

The goal of Genesis balance efforts has been the idea of "asymmetrical balance" which, while being much more difficult to pull off, is at the same time a great deal more interesting. The idea that a sword swing is exactly the same in terms of function to a damage spell ... well ... that is certainly balanced. But, is it interesting? That is not necessarily what is being discussed here, though, so is perhaps not an apt comment.

The idea with taxation is that it changes the speed at which you gain experience. Thus, a guild with higher tax gets more abilities, but also is forced to gain experience more slowly. A person who joins all the highest taxed guilds in the game will definitely be able to kill faster than someone who joins only one low-tax melee guild. But that solo-melee-guild member will gain exp as fast if not faster than the player with the bloated guild membership and high tax if they play their cards correctly. (at least, in theory!)

G.