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Hey guys. Ive only been back playin again on a limited basis for the last 2 months, but ive noticed that a lot of the same problems that had been around since 2007 (the most recent time i played with any regularity) are still around in regards to player equipment. There are a few things that all culminate into one big problem that i really feel is hurting our pbase, ill explain each of them in detail below followed by the ideas i have to fix the problems.
1. Lack of Lock Lenders
This i think is the key issue that is damaging the mud right now. The way weapons are set up, locks are almost mandatory for creating high end weapons for almost all guilds. Without locks on a weapon, it is pretty much pointless to try and level combat above the mid-level ranges. However, currently on the mud there are virtually no elementalists or sword-mages at all in the pbase. This makes it next to impossible to get weapons replaced if someone above 20-25ish combat loses their gear for whatever reason. When people cannot fight mobs, they gradually or immediately start getting bored and eventually quit.
To fix this, i feel there are two options. The first can be to add a lock lending NPC mob to lend out locks based on certain criteria and make them very expensive (like 10k mcg per lend). The second would be to add things to the elementalist and/or sword mage guilds to actually make players want to play them to high levels. Those ideas can be saved for replies or a different post altogether though. The fact remains however that there is really no incentive for players to play those guilds (especially elems) due to the abilities they have being outdated and underpowered.
2. Armour does not defend against essential blade locks.
This is an issue more pertinent for top level combat. This doesnt affect lower levels as much, but it is still an issue that makes some players impossibly dominant over others. No matter what kind of physical defense you have (even if you have impreg down the board), crits from essential blade will damage you the same way as if you were wearing no armour at all. The only way to defend against them is with TA, but TA can only go so far. This basically makes high level fights come down to whoever gets the first stun because both players usually have good weapons, or can make one player who gets tons of attacks under the new combat system nearly impossible to defend against regardless of spells or level. In the long run, essential blade spells make high level fights almost entirely based on luck, which i dont feel is right for a pk mud.
I think the best way to fix this problem is to make it so essential blades check both elemental defense and TA before deciding the crit intensity. They can still land their crits with the same frequency, thats what distinguishes them from elemental blades, but every crit doesnt have to be a C-E level hit, maybe make some of them A-B randomly and them sometimes the higher crit if the player has good defenses against the element.
3. Okef is way too expensive now.
Its one thing to pay more money to get repairs from an NPC than it would be to pay a tinker, but its completely another when youre paying more than youre making from killing mobs. On some of my recent conbat runs it has been costing me almost 1500 mcg to get my knife repaired every time, and i generally make about that much or a little lower on each full 10-15 minute combat run when i have a haste spell on. The fact of the matter is that because of how expensive Okef is, there isnt much new money being generated into the game. Tinkers that have repair are not on a whole lot (i usually never see one on actually, maybe 1 randomly); if there were a lot of them i can see the argument for Okef being expensive. However, more often than not players are stuck going to Okef, and many players who do not have lots of connections find themselves short on money far more than they did in the older days. Those unconnected players need money to buy chants and gear, and if they arent profiting anything it puts the mud in a situation where if you arent connected with long term friends youre screwed.
I think simply cutting Okefs fee in half would solve the issue. He would still be expensive (750 mcg instead of 1500), but at least people would be making some sort of profit from all their combat.
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