Posted by Ea! on 01/20
Hello,
I just wanted to touch on a few of the balance issues that people have
raised, either here or in email to myself or Rufus. There were a lot
of good suggestions that came in and a lot of good and constructive
input. Hopefully we'll be able to work on getting some balance
changes into the game in the coming weeks.
I'm really only going to touch on a few of the issues -- we're working
on a fairly long list of potential changes. With this sort of thing,
it generally takes a lot longer to figure out just what we're going
to do than to actually do it.
There were a few suggestions that weren't strictly balance related --
like allowing players to own shops (which has been on our list of
things to do since before housing went in, it's just a long term
change due to the complexity) -- we're always glad to hear your
suggestions. You can always drop us general suggestions via tells,
mudmail, or the idea command.
One thing that we strive to do is to make interesting variety in
different types of characters. One complaint that we often here
is that mages are too hard at low levels and too powerful at high
levels. If you stop and think about it, doesn't that fit right in
with the standard Legends about mages and magic wielders? We
haven't balanced mages out over the levels because we think it's
one of the things that makes them an interesting character type.
It's interesting to hear a lot of the same issues raised with
snipers, only in reverse: they're too powerful at low levels and
too weak at high levels.
There's a difference, of course. Whereas it's not an unreasonable
thing to pay off hard work over a lot of levels with a fair
amount of power at high levels, it's a bit more dubious to punish
someone for having an easy time at low levels -- and we don't
want to do that.
Another big issue was luck in pkill. As some people pointed out
it serves a purpose to give everyone a chance. It also adds a
bit of surprise -- the unexpected turn in the middle of combat.
Of course, there's no question that most of the outcome of pkill
should be determined by skill. The trick is to find the right
place where luck makes things more interesting without becoming
a frustration to the participants in the combat.
-Ea!
From: Ton
Thursday, January 20, 09:51AM
I'd just like to say that this whole writing email to imms, to share ideas
is a good one in my opinion, and its something that should be done more
often as well. Kudos for doing it this time.
Ton
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