Alright, I expect this to be an extremely long post, so I will try to break it up into short paragraphs
Okay, first issue, playerwipe or no playerwipe? Full or partial?
"I agree with the pwipe, I actually do. By the same token I don't agree with everyone losing everything. I think it's downright wrong." - Natalya
I agree with the pwipe. I also agree that it is very unfair to everyone, but the issue that many people seem to forget is:
If we do not have a pwipe now, we will have one when the mud dies.
Why?
"but from talking to the coders it's obviously a bunch of hacked together stuff that looks like a cat threw up - not a pretty picture. The way to really get things working right is to start from scratch - coding wise first. Right now, if we just fix things that are broken, all we're doing is putting a patch on it and making the pile of cat vomit look even worse." - Kvetch
It is unfair - because everyone has wasted their time already, on a mud that wasnt upto scratch gameplay wise.
Do not take a pwipe out of context. It cannot be just a reset to fix old grandfathered items, token inflation or whatever.
It
*must* be the end result of totally replacing the hack + slash elements in the game. Grouping, classes, races, char builds, skills, spells, physical stats, all need to be looked at and rethought.
If (and I mean if, I dont hold my breath here) this is done, then we have to have a pwipe. Imagine you play snakes and ladders for 10 years, and then move to playing risk, would you keep your old scores and playing pieces from playing snakes and ladders? No, of course not.
To make the pwipe valid, the game really has to change to be good enough to match the quality of the zones and the playerbase 4D has.
Alright, we have a pwipe if we get stuff fixed. But what is 'fixed' exactly?
"Right now, if we just fix things that are broken, all we're doing is putting a patch on it and making the pile of cat vomit look even worse." - Kvetch
This is why I do not favour the 'skill trees' being proposed. To me, it is exactly 'patching' over the cracks in the game rather than fixing the core elements of the game. We will still have the irritating features that make no sense and limit gameplay.
It also makes little sense in reality.
Ah, bringing up reality in a fantasy time travel mud involving magic where you cannot technically die? Yeah I know, but if something doesn't make sense to you, it's often a good warning that what you want to do is likely to confuse players and limit the game experience.
Prime examples: Charisma increases spell damage and gives you more hitpoints when you level. Damroll is the only important bonus for melee types.
How does being pretty or showing empathy give you a more powerful magic missile or help you absorb more physical damage before you die? Its confusing, and counterproductiove to have one stat
*both* improve your spells and make you gain more HP. Same with damroll - its the only bonus that really matters once you have anything like decent equip. What even is damroll again? Wouldn't like, strength govern how hard I hit instead? Intelligence or widsom affect spellpower more? Dexterity affect my ability to avoid attacks rather than armour?
Who knows what mord was smoking.
So, we get a skill 'tree', where you are limited in the total number of skill choices you can have.
Well we already have normal skills and spells do we not? Are all skills and spells going to be like that or just a certain number of them? The big danger here is that we have a large variation in the usefulness of these skilltree options, making everyone pick the same things... and then there is:
"Option 2: Option 1 + 'skill rank' introduced as a stat available on some equipment. A weapon might have say, backstab +5 which would directly influence their backstabbing multiplier and maybe turn a 2k backstab into a 3k backstab." - Virisin
Okay... IF skill trees were implemented, then this is how they must be done. We need variation in equipment, to get that we need real choices that are genuinely different for different characters. Skill trees would be designed to bring variation and balance to characters to encourage grouping and interdependency.
To bring this to equpiment too, we would undoubtedly need to have items giving some kind of bonus to these choices, such as +5 backstab skill on an item.
But this causes a big issue - you're basicly saying that all the good items in the mud will need to be looked at and such skill bonuses like that to be distributed among them. So, to do the job right imms are going to have a significant amount of work editing equipment already in the game...
Now back to my earlier point - how is it reasonable to limit a character to only learning
*some* skills, and then not learning anything ever again? It seems counterintuitive to anyone coming at it from a fresh viewpoint. While at the same time, if we keep how player stats curretly work, everyone will have maximum strength, dexterity, constituion, wisdom, intelligence, and spellcasters with good charisma. The stats being easy to max.
Characters will only learn a lmited number of skills or spells or whatever, but they will all be super strong, intelligent, agile, etc. etc?
Where is the logic here? My view is that it makes more sense to reverse this - to allow players to slowly learn new skills and spells, but to have a maximum limit on the total level of *physical* type stats the character has.
IE: if you have high str, dex, con etc, and you are a tough melee type, you do not have good int, wisdom, or other spellcasting related stats and so your spells will be awful. BUT you can still learn them, even if your ability is greatly reduced.
Similarly a character built to be good spellcasting will be bad in melee, but they could still choose to learn those skills if they wished to. It is just weak from having poor strength, dex or whichever.
How could you do this? simple: look to remove the hard caps on stats. Make stats the important determining factor in combat, remove hitroll and damroll and speed, so only 1 stat is used in determining success, failure, damage etc instead of several.
You then are fixing what currently lets the mud down, and simplifying the game for new players, not adding another layer of complexity onto an already barely functioning game system.
Of course, removing hr, dr, speed boni etc means editing a ton of good items to make them valuable again, right? But... if skill trees were done correctly some item editing is going to have to happen at some point anyway, to make it worthwhile - so isn't it better to take the harder path and make the game simpler as we go?
Doing it this way also has a major bonus, at least to me: With characters defined by their physical strengths, classes become redundant. You can even get rid of classes if you want to and allow people to train up their stats (with a total stat cap to prevent people being good at everything).
This lets you tailor your character to how you want it, choose the eq you want to improve the strengths your character has, *and* allows you to divide your stats between *types* of character, in effect giving you the option of playing a
*true multiclass* character. That was the original intention of the tier system in 4d before it was then destroyed with grand masters.
This is how my favourite mud did things: Personally I've never came across another mud which came close to the flexibility and freedom it provided players, and the variation in equipment it had. I don't think it wouldd be a bad idea to emulate at least parts of it.
Poll