London as a hometown

Posted by Dune on 03/02

I think that its silly that Londoners have such limited access to skills. I cant think of ANY reason to be a Londoner when you can be a Liman and have brew skills on top of shooting skills. With dip, this brew advantage makes Limans even more attractive. In addition, the fact that Londoners dont have access to the juggle skill is super mega silly with a carnival full of jugglers right next door (not to mention a severe hinderance on London pkillers). Well there are other reason why Londoners seem to be second class citizens on legend. So of course... I have some neat ideas to make them cool!....

I think that London should be the only hometown were characters have access to "Chemist" skills -beam-. I think its a really neat idea. With the right amount of mind or perc or whatever.. A londoner should be able t to learn skills that "resemble brew"... just like create mages and cause mages have kinda of the same spells.. but not really.. (major illusi and illusion.... dopples and animate dead..... armor and create armor.. chant kere mahi rudh ex orb and flash of vision..etc) I think that a chemi chemist should be able to "brew" create mage-like vials. (ack getting spammed)

For example.. a chemist could brew a blind flash vial.. some weird concoction that explodes like blinding flash when it hits and shatters on the floor. or maybe a vial that explodes when it hits its target.. kinda like a damage spell... but throwable. Or a mixture that when brewed makes a cloud of poison gas.. like create's "poison cloud".

over all I think that fighters need some of what I call "trix". hit and damage roll are nice advantages to give to fighter types.. but if all you can do is kick and bash and stuff like that... it gets kinda boring. Chemistry seems to have a natural place in London can could really spice things up... there are so many possibilities!... maybe you can make time bombs.. or bombs that you can set off from the next room... or special drinks that increase stats like perc.. things that just dont exist that will give fighters a "true" advantage.. ace in the hole.. against mages. Well these are just some ideas. I hope they are accepted with the enthusiasm I posted them with -beam-

Dune:)

From: Lara Friday, February 27, 06:46PM

I agree...London people are at a bit of a disadvantage. Maybe it's worth looking into when the new London goes in.

From: Chaykin Saturday, February 28, 01:54AM

-nodnod- And maybe something could be done with firearms as well. Giving them better damage perhaps? When you think about it, if we're aiming for increased realism in the fight system, one of the most ridiculous elements is the silly damage that things like machine guns and shotguns (which in RL are usually lethal with one shot) do. Of course I'm not suggesting that guns be made as devastating as they are RL, but as it it they don't even remotely resemble real guns. :P

-Chay

From: LadyAce Saturday, February 28, 11:12AM

We know London isn't much of a hometown right now. Leila's huge expansion is designed to compensate for this.

The skills problem you mention will be addressed in skill trees. Some examples of the new skill trees which Londoners will have access to are the stage magician tree (vanish, mesmerize, ventriloquism, etc.) and the medic/surgeon tree (disinfect, pharmacology, make pills).

These two trees should have similar affects to those Dune mentioned. As far as I know, we don't have any plans to add skills which are not already in the trees system and on our todo lists.

We'll have to do some work to make London and Lima more distinct, but we will do it.

Thanks for the suggestions -- I'm sure the coders will find them useful as they code and revise the remaining skills on our lists!

(Also, in response to Chaykin: Guns will probably never be like real-life guns -- our interest in realism is generally informed by an overall desire for better game play -- but look for some fun new gun skills in trees.)

-LadyAce

From: Ronnie Saturday, February 28, 05:56PM

Okie, about the guns:

Why can a bow do about twice as much as a flintlock? Even though the flintlock is crude, its still devastating. Maybe flintlocks and other guns that use the same ammo could induce lead poisoning too? Or maybe add some kind of pistol whip skill?

From: Dudley Saturday, February 28, 07:55PM

Bows can do tons of damage, and flintlocks really aren't that reliable anyway.. try firing a flintlock in the rain or something :P

From: Asmodean Saturday, February 28, 09:03PM

In regard to Ladyace's append....sure, this will be fixed in -skilltrees-, but what about now? There are people that were born in london NOW that su suck because nothing works right. I think maybe some of these skills should be into'd before trees to make things a bit more fair. Maybe thats jumping to conclusions, but i dunno, just doesn't seem fair to me? I'm sure what i just said will be pegged as whining, so why do I even bother...

-Asmodean, the -Unclanned- -=Coattail=-

From: Mats Saturday, February 28, 10:18PM

From: Rufus Sunday, March 01, 11:23PM

The problem with adapting skills that are already in skilltrees is that it is a major rewrite of the code to move it over. Under skilltrees, skills are handled entirely differently, converting them so they 'fit' under the current system and are reasonably balanced is very difficult.

Along with that, some of the skills (such as the trap setting/etc) have a lot of additional code required that is not directly related to the skill itself. Trust me, I've been working on moving over the trap stuff for a few weeks now, and it's not pretty.

Anyway, London for a while longer is going to be a pretty down hometown compared to the rest... kinda like it has been for the last 4 years or so.

Many of the 'hometown' revisions and balancing of hometowns also lies in the fact that we're adding 5 more hometowns, and adding additional axioms to more fairly split up skills/spell levels/etc this is not something that is at all 'easy' to add to the code, and from a design standpoint, hardly feasable until the actual conversion to tree'd skills goes in.

-Ruf

From: Lethargio Monday, March 02, 10:09PM

how about an extra advantage with the skills now? for example maybe a better snipe that stuns more than 1/2 a round, or a higher rate/amount of healing with surgeon skills or something...

Leth