It isn't anecdotal that nightmist is a strategy based text game. More than one person made similar points that evidently evaded you.

 

Just to connect the dots closer for you.

 

blake did this,

piddy did that,

someone stole my pots,

so and so said this several years ago,

 

Its like a 5 year old telling their mom what happened at school today and has nothing to do with whether or not nightshades are OP or if they're good or bad for the game, its just a rambling story about one off things that are inconsequential gibberish. 

 

 

Exactly what you have been doing the entire post. thanks for pointing it out. Get your thief yet? lol

 

 

You'll know when the stuff you're hitting has no gold.

 

 

I get my gold from players. Thanks tho

 

What you do in the dark alley is your own business

No spin here... MG anecdotal points:

Nightmist has never been balanced and is only strategy based.

Utilizing the functions of the game to kill and avoid being killed is an intended and fun part of the game.

Training is more than twice as easy as it was.

Xp loss is significantly lower.

Shades are a solid tool for defense.

bravo my friend

 

 

It isn't anecdotal that nightmist is a strategy based text game. More than one person made similar points that evidently evaded you.

 

Just to connect the dots closer for you.

 

blake did this,

piddy did that,

someone stole my pots,

so and so said this several years ago,

 

Its like a 5 year old telling their mom what happened at school today and has nothing to do with whether or not nightshades are OP or if they're good or bad for the game, its just a rambling story about one off things that are inconsequential gibberish. 

 

 

Exactly what you have been doing the entire post. thanks for pointing it out. Get your thief yet? lol

 

You'll know when the stuff you're hitting has no gold.

Dude get over yourself. You died once and are crying to get shades removed. End of story. Maybe some day ill use it as an anecdote about how soft the world is becoming.

Just to discredit your narrative once again. I made this post on Thursday, died on Friday.

It isn't anecdotal that nightmist is a strategy based text game. More than one person made similar points that evidently evaded you.

Just to connect the dots closer for you.

blake did this,

piddy did that,

someone stole my pots,

so and so said this several years ago,

Its like a 5 year old telling their mom what happened at school today and has nothing to do with whether or not nightshades are OP or if they're good or bad for the game, its just a rambling story about one off things that are inconsequential gibberish. 

Stig and Banishment win.  They made some valid points.  I'm not evading those comments, nor did I bash any of them.

Caesar ingame

 

 

I want to add one more thing and im done, because this is just going to be more of the same bs...

 

 

Crane said it wasnt good for the game that it was hard to train back in the day. I disagree. There wasnt botting, and for me, it was fun to move training spots every 20-30 minutes to avoid walt/piddy (with jp giving out our locs on a staff char- was admitted to me and I think was the reason he stopped being staff).. Its exciting... and we hunted back. And they shaded, and we shaded. And we pkd each other at token bosses. The works. It was fun, and balanced via strategy (tarmas/alternative routes/withdrawing a dungeon key and going to banshee).... /spying ktps. using bait characters to kill the pker. endless hours of choice-based and strategy-based fun, vs hit and running the same spot over and over.

 

Additionally, training weapons and xp loss changes already made his point moot. Its extemely easy to lvl, even with pking. Double exp was soooooo mooseing dope.... and now you have it every day...

 

the amount of deaths by players isnt only dictated by pking... you have a lot of control in that department.

 

 

 

But if yall wanna chill without watching the screen the vault is the best place to be. 

 

Thanks again for anecdotal story time.

 

Valid point training weapons make XP easier.

 

 

He has added more to this convo than you have so far, he was just telling you that pking was much worse years ago and only after a few kills there has been more complaining then there was when pking was constant. You got pked once and made this post because you're scared that the one time you leave town you got pked using shades. Removing nightshades changes nothing, pvp isnt balanced on here and never will be, stop sitting in town and fight back. 

 

All I'm seeing is "blah blah blah I'm super thirsty for a pk, please come play with me"

I want to add one more thing and im done, because this is just going to be more of the same bs...

 

 

Crane said it wasnt good for the game that it was hard to train back in the day. I disagree. There wasnt botting, and for me, it was fun to move training spots every 20-30 minutes to avoid walt/piddy (with jp giving out our locs on a staff char- was admitted to me and I think was the reason he stopped being staff).. Its exciting... and we hunted back. And they shaded, and we shaded. And we pkd each other at token bosses. The works. It was fun, and balanced via strategy (tarmas/alternative routes/withdrawing a dungeon key and going to banshee).... /spying ktps. using bait characters to kill the pker. endless hours of choice-based and strategy-based fun, vs hit and running the same spot over and over.

 

Additionally, training weapons and xp loss changes already made his point moot. Its extemely easy to lvl, even with pking. Double exp was soooooo mooseing dope.... and now you have it every day...

 

the amount of deaths by players isnt only dictated by pking... you have a lot of control in that department.

 

 

 

But if yall wanna chill without watching the screen the vault is the best place to be. 

Thanks again for anecdotal story time.

Valid point training weapons make XP easier.

Remove shades and some classes will dominate others, keep shades and any class will dominate any class.

This is a great way to put it.

How many times do we have to say its a text based game that has never been balanced and that shades are actually a BENEFIT to the balancing. You refusing to read what we have to say doesnt mean we didnt provide points. 

 

 

Shades were what made us competitive when thieves were extremely overpowered. Just like craig said, they help in the balance, not hurt it. The PVP aspect of this game is almost 100% strategy and always has been. 

This is just deflection.  "The whole game is broke so why try to fix a specific part".   With that logic we can stop updates all together.

 

 

The game is fine. I already stated that.

 

I was pointing out what caused the pking, which led to the crying. Nothing to do with shades, as it is just an excuse to advance towards the overall goal of MSN Messenger with swords and dragons... 

 

You provided a 3 paragraph rant about anecdotal events that has nothing to do with the topic....

 

Also, just add a deadpan delivery to my post and cut out the whole "criyng" "angry" "upset" narrative.  I've been pk'd 1 time in the last 2 years. There is no salt or tears coming from me....

 

My intentions here are to keep the largest player base possible for as long as possible.  That's it.

 

 

If that's the case why even bring up shades then? someone is Obviously mad or upset about it if you're worried about keeping the largest player base possible. You started this post and shades been fine for how long? removing shades will do nothing

 

Because I'm not a narcissists and can express concern regarding things that do not directly effect me? 

The game is fine. I already stated that.

 

I was pointing out what caused the pking, which led to the crying. Nothing to do with shades, as it is just an excuse to advance towards the overall goal of MSN Messenger with swords and dragons... 

You provided a 3 paragraph rant about anecdotal events that has nothing to do with the topic....

Also, just add a deadpan delivery to my post and cut out the whole "criyng" "angry" "upset" narrative.  I've been pk'd 1 time in the last 2 years. There is no salt or tears coming from me....

My intentions here are to keep the largest player base possible for as long as possible.  That's it.

You know exactly what it has to do with, and your disregard just got you added to my KOS. Good day.

Your original post made zero points for or against why the game was balanced or not balanced as is...so no I really don't know. 

I may let up if Cody gets his stuff back tho.

You're offering staff to stop pk'ing if they return a banned account back to a player? 

 

I'll say what I really want... I need a break.  It seems I'm struggling with understanding different psychologies and playstyles.

 

I really think thats all it boils down to. When I last played pking was the game /shrug. I came back and everyone was just "tapping" their macros all day.

 

Enough so that they let a perm banned player swoop in and join all our parties. The same as with the botting accusations being thrown around at everyone in CC jokingly, everyone joked that the new guy was obvious blake and blake not whover and phils brother. The jokes and jabs went on for a while before Blake blew up and admitted it was him.... he was obviously perm banned or he wouldnt have been hiding his identity...

 

I was relatively peeved at this, but not enough to do anything. But he was botting Illuminated tunnels so I popped him. A few days letter our mage is getting its stats checked because the cheating perm banned player started some bs.... all while he (blake) is going around deleting our pots and mana and making it look like adam/zeb's account... 

 

Yall want someone to blame for pks, there ya go. Its me and blake. I pk'd him and he set the server on fire. As we warned when we called him out for being blake in the first place.

 

.  

 

 

So there is your argument against pking.. grown men being upset enough they try to get characters and or items removed from the game. 

 

 

It has just been a few damn pks /shrug

 

What does any of this nonsense have to do with whether or not the game is balanced PvP?   

 

Nightshades on Multi-alt make sense, they give an advantage but its not enough to wipe out the the party you're attacking before they have a chance to mount a counter attack or flee.  The concept just does not convey correctly to a 1-alt version where a busy day you've got 10 people playing and most days its only 4 or 5 people playing.

 

PvP on a balance game, 80% or more of the encounters need to go something like this....

 

Player A, attacks Player B (of similar level)

Player B uses pots and issues a counter attack

Player A and Player B duke it out for few(1 or 2) MINUTES using skill

Player A or B acknowledges they're losing the fight and has the opportunity to attempt to run or flee if they do not want the penalty of dying

 

I think we can all agree this is not how most PvP encounters are going on 1 alt currently.   

 

To that point, I think the game is not balanced for PvP.  We need to take action to balance the game.  If its not removing nightshades, then maybe its consider the EXP loss and knock that down a significant amount.

That's more of a duel, and how a fair fight should go, agreed.  With PKing it's a little bit more lopsided, especially as PKers will often wait until players have used all or most of their stamina before mounting their attack, and the victims are usually caught by surprise (so don't have macros set up and will probably take a second to process what just happened), meaning you can't run away or attempt to kill your attacker before they've done all they can.  The main problem is that the penalties for getting PKed are incredibly harsh, what with the lack of cap on XP loss - for example, if you have 1b XP, you will lose 5m XP if you get PKed... for most people who can't commit to more than a couple of hours a day, that's more of a day's training and is nothing short of demoralising.  The other problems is lost gold and loot, especially if it's valuable loot (e.g. you might need to switch weapons to take out the Bolted Chest, for example, and there's nothing stopping a Cobalt Staff of the Winds from dropping and a PKer taking it for themselves).

 

i have campaigned to have the XP loss locked at 5,000,000 maximum before, but JLH is reluctant to have it capped even at such a high value.

 

For Nightshade Elixirs (which are generally not allowed in sanctioned duels), my main problem is that they can be used in such a way that one player with one crit can commit a total party wipe, since you can, for example, kill the party leader, instantly use a potion to recharge your stamina and heal any hits the other party might be able to get off, kill the next player, rinse and repeat, especially Mages with Devastate due to its fairly reliable damage.  Such asymmetric power is, put bluntly, unfair and unfun.

 

At one point in the past, Nightshade Elixirs were changed so they had a chance of killing you on use, but this destroyed the potion completely, even legitimate uses in PvM or in defence of PKing (which is hard because you can get killed first and drop it, and then it becomes potential fuel and return of investment for the PKer).  I have fixed some things like reducing the /examine in the Laboratory (which I originally added about 15 years ago because it made sense given the /read in the area) from daily to weekly, but I don't want to go down the path of making Nightshade Elixirs completely unviable again.

 

The current situation is unique because, as some people have put it, these are a few players who 'maxed out their party' (i.e. trained up Grandmaster Mages, crafted a Scroll of Devastate and decked them out in Intelligence-boosting quest items) and then 'went rogue', so they have a lot of power behind them with items that were originally obtained from working together for the greater good and have the financial (gold) backing to buy, examine or craft (yes, you can craft them, but it takes effort) Nightshade Elixirs as well as buy the Mage-specific mana potion from the Grandmaster guild (although this is probably moot since there are so many on /websell).

I don't want to remove PKing, since it has some legitimate uses (e.g. in response to a drop steal), but what I ideally want is for the game to be fair.  I confess it's been a complaint of mine since I started in 2004, but it's extremely unfair on the victims while the PKers really get no penalty.  Just to note... a PKing a victim loses 0.5% of their total XP, all the gold they are carrying, may drop most of their inventory, and get a permanent -1 to their character score, while the PKer gets no real mark other than an incremented kill count but get all the spoils from their target.  Unfortunately a lot of potential solutions require changes to the game's source code, which is somewhat difficult these days.  This includes the Nightshade Elixir... its effects are hard-coded.

 

To give credit where it's due... buying a Barrier Ring is not a bad idea!  You use a tiny bit of armour if you have to replace a ring, but incoming spells have their damage reduced by 10%.  Spell Absorb is not completely cumulative (in imprecise terms, additional spell absorb gets less effective the closer the total gets to 100%), but it's close.  Wisdom (Intelligence for Mages) also affects incoming spell damage and the chance to resist, but this is highly dependent on the level gap between the attacker and the target.  And though not exactly helpful since they tend to be Mages themselves, Gnomes also get a natural buff to magic resistance.

 

Thanks Stig for this post.

Thanks everyone for a good healthy discussion.   This game is a community and we all can help provide input on what might make the time we have left most enjoyable.

other ideas....

-Make some areas nopk and some contested, anything under 65 or 70 POD is nopk

-Make nightshades 1 stam regain not full regain

-Make exp loss minimal

-Increase armor, anti-magic, etc

-Make nightshades harder to obtain, 100k each and not craft-able

-Make it so you can only use a nightshade after being attacked by a player within the last x number of seconds

other ideas?

Nightshades on Multi-alt make sense, they give an advantage but its not enough to wipe out the the party you're attacking before they have a chance to mount a counter attack or flee.  The concept just does not convey correctly to a 1-alt version where a busy day you've got 10 people playing and most days its only 4 or 5 people playing.

PvP on a balance game, 80% or more of the encounters need to go something like this....

Player A, attacks Player B (of similar level)

Player B uses pots and issues a counter attack

Player A and Player B duke it out for few(1 or 2) MINUTES using skill

Player A or B acknowledges they're losing the fight and has the opportunity to attempt to run or flee if they do not want the penalty of dying

I think we can all agree this is not how most PvP encounters are going on 1 alt currently.   

To that point, I think the game is not balanced for PvP.  We need to take action to balance the game.  If its not removing nightshades, then maybe its consider the EXP loss and knock that down a significant amount.

If PvP on 1a is here to stay then we need to balance PvP

remove shades and make it a fair fight

To Greg's point,  the original suggestion of stats for the tier 1 "Cobalt Staff" are probably a little high.  Something more like 23 base and .1 vamp  OR 18 base and .15 vamp and a 1,000,000 price tag in line with other training weapons.

The goal with the (tier 1) weapon is   

1) provide an affordable survivability weapon, so people can pick between mod weapons or survivability when training

2) provide an entry point to start the crafting of tier 2(current cobalt) and tier 3(.3 vamp cobalt) vamp weapon.

As a side note, there was some discussion about tinkering with base damage and vamp, and I think we need to keep clear separation between which items are better between the following vamp items:

7. "Cobalt Staff"

6/5. "Blood Axe",  "Demonic Axe"

4/3. Cobalt Staff of the Winds,  [new CSOTW equivalent]

2. [upgraded .3 vamp CSOTW]

1. DragonClaw Scythe

A bridge of parity between CSOTW, mod weapons, and craft-able weapons

Suggestion:  Introduce a way to craft a Cobalt Staff of the Winds equivalent.  

A series of 3 weapons that can be upgraded:

1) "Cobalt Staff" shop purchase item ~1,500,000 gold  ~23 base damage,  lvl25 to equip,   ~.15 vamp

2) [first upgrade weapon name TBD]  same stats as Cobalt Staff of the Winds, can be obtained via crafting [Cobalt Staff] + craft items OR exchanging Cobalt Staff of the Winds with NPC.

3) [second upgrade weapon name TBD] same stats as Cobalt Staff of the Winds (except .3 vamp instead of .2 vamp), can ONLY be obtained by crafting the [first upgrade weapon] + craft items.

Purpose?

1)  From now on encourage people to go the build it route instead of the buy it route.

2)  Give legacy/grandfathered cobalt owners the option to either exchange 1 for 1 with the upgradable item, OR sell theirs back and go the build it route.

3)  Give zerks an entry level,  lvl25 shop purchasable item that can be seen as their training weapon.  

NOTE: Its debatable, but I think increasing the CSOTW sell back to 9m would encourage players to go the build it path even more....

You would have to be an absolute potato to get PKd in this day anyway.

Aren't we all kind of potato's?  This is a 20+ year old MUD with 2 dozen active players.

"Oh good necroing posts that were already decided on."

I didn't realize how old the OP was dang....lol

I've got a crazy thought.   Instead of dealing in absolutes.  How about we try it for a month and see how it goes? If we don't like it we'll switch it back.  Give peace a chance.

As pointed out above, this game requires teamwork and co-operation.  in a PVE world the bad actors will be ostracized instead of PK'd.