As for the actual thread, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Intelligent (not the statpack) people with artefacts have always had a huge advantage. Bad people with artefacts have always been heros until coming up against a person or person's who know how to not get steamrolled by artefacts/trick of the week/etc. The same still applies (you could argue more so, as there are a lot bigger penalties for being put in an unfavourable situation due to the smaller chance of that being caused by bad luck on the rng).
Back "in the day" when Iriaen played your heavily artifacted people were almost universally horrible. Most of the good players didn't have heavy artifacts because most of the world was so incredibly terrible that you didn't need them as long as you could heal half-assedly and put together something resembling an offense. It was not only possible for some unartifacted-yet-talented player to thrash six kinds of hell out of some massively artifacted juggernaut, it was the probable outcome; the assumption was basically that if the artifacted player were any good, he wouldn't have had to buy artifacts.
Iriaen seems like he's still running off of the assumption that anybody who's heavily artifacted is a bad player, because good players don't need artifacts. This is not the case; your heavily artifacted fighter nowadays as likely to be an Iluv or an Azefel as he is a Zokor or a Zenigra, because Imperian is a much older game now and we've accumulated toys over time.
I always felt Imperian's PvP can be summed up by Artifacts, Cheap Tricks and Ability (to write a good system).
Back in the day, I was a Master at Cheap Tricks who hated Artifacted players and envied players with Ability. Now, I'm heavily artifacted, have pretty decent systems and hate people who use Cheap Tricks ( I still use them too :P).
edit: Oh and then after you hit that trifecta and are competing against others who have also hit it, then it goes into the ever shifting realm of Profession Balance.
Sarrius said: OK, OK. I'm sorry. I'm just a spreadsheet using beta male, I don't know how to take any initiative, even in my own learning.
haha spreadsheet using scrub get good
Pls send me 'How to kill everyone in Imperian'. Thx.
Go monk
Learn to count to 12 or so.
Victory
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Let's imagine we're playing chess and you take someone's piece. Because they spent more money than you, they can reverse it, instead of them losing their piece, you lose your piece.
That's how Imperian as a damage game works. Because you dropped shield and hit them and they have artifacts, you actually lose ground for attacking them because they can tank your hit and hit you back for much more. And there's a lot of shield-hatred here from players with tons of artifacts.
Sure, Imperian was always sort of like that, but it was OK in the past because you had a chance to crit and take like 3 of their pieces instead of 1. And once you did that, even if you lost one of your pieces in the process, the fact that you got a crit could mean that the other guy would choke and it would be all downhill for him from there. Even with that huge disadvantage based upon the other guy having artifacts, you could potentially still win.
Did the people with artifacts get better, or did they just take out everything that could cause the rough equivalent of a critical hit? Who knows, it's not even the point, but they did take it all out.
Now truly, the artifact chessmasters, the PvP accountants, the theorycraft kings, the spreadsheet heralds (I could go on) will not like having crits unrelated to artifacts in the game. Why would they? This fetishism of fact management as skill, coming from anyone who is willing to buy a disproportionate advantage, it is bringing about the end of Imperian as a real PvP game because pay-to-win fact management is the least popular model in all of gaming.
So what we're saying now is that instead of building something that has building costs and incentives to use cleverly at different times during different situations...
We're going to go with dice rolling.
See, here's the thing. Using a random system is never the best way to do something. Rather, it's the lazy way to do something. You're right, Iriaen-- the singular effects of spells can make for a linear combat such that Iniar had described.
However, it's due to their singular nature of X does Y that creates this boringness you complain about, not because they're not random. Rather, these things should be X does Y IF this Z IF this at the cost of A. We can see that's been attempted, but doesn't work quite well-- No, not because it's not random, but rather because the Y an Z effects are still singular in nature.
In real life we sometimes ascribe randomness to things which aren't random. "I think the Lakers have a 70% chance to win" or "I think this stock has a 70% chance to go up in value." In reality of course, it's not a 70% chance based upon RNG, you say 70% because you are approximating the scope of your knowledge.
In a game, and especially in a mud, we can't approximate the scope of our knowledge because someone has to code in every possibility. You can't get away with typing "wyver" instead of "wyvern" much less move your character an inch further to the left than another person might have.
So with that in mind, how do we limit the scope of knowledge in order to generate variety and risk? RNG is the only way to do that in a MUD. As I keep saying, RNG isn't inherently bad, and luck is a skill insofar as managing risk (RNG) is a skill. For example, you consider that something has a 70% chance to get a certain outcome and then you formulate a plan based upon that 70/30 split and your current situation, which could itself have come about due to a different random modifier. This is the only way to approximate scope of knowledge in a MUD, you have RNG and then force people to learn its implications.
Let's look at my suggested taint related skill in this context. You can remove some taint from yourself, but take 1-2 random whispering madness afflictions as a result. The player weighs the following possibilities:
1. Do I want to take on an affliction or two, or even more than two, in order to avoid damage from taint.
2. If I do it once and I only got 1 affliction, do I want to do it again and gamble on getting only 2 afflictions, when I risk getting 3 afflictions?
3. Which afflictions have I gotten so far? Some are worse than others. If I already got the bad affliction and am doing OK, or if I didn't get the bad affliction yet and don't want to risk getting it, this could impact my choice.
Let's compare the above with "I attacked, he hit me back for more damage and got taint on me, I can't get rid of the taint, I can't possibly tank this, I am dead now."
Imperian has clearly been losing players and the spreadsheet scions are all like, it's not the fault of our policies, the game has been getting better, let's nerf limb damage and take out random afflictions, obviously those people all quit because we haven't done enough of what we've been doing as they were quitting.
This stuff matters to Imperian, back when Khizan was teaming people with original bowmanship, the game's population dropped off sharply and eventually an intervention of sorts had to be staged, now Imperian has been letting people like Khizan call the shots for I don't know how long and there's 35 people online on a week night.
Your chess analogy would work if, like, in the middle of a chess game you could bust out Street Fighter and then if you win that you automatically win the chess game, too. Because, see, it's not all about linear damage trading, and there are avenues where artifacts offer reduced gain, or can be superseded. The key is that knowing that is also - wait for it - a skill-based element, and both avenues require you to play to the hilt.
I'm surprised you haven't made a poker analogy here, probably because it's both a) the best relation to what you're suggesting and b) shoots your point to hell. Poker is, as anyone knows, a heavily random game where player skill and ability to play the odds still matters. The trick, though, is that good poker players are measured as such across hundreds and thousands of hands, and a large portion of their skill comes from knowing which fights not to pick. Not only does Imperian not have the luxury of you getting into hundreds of fights a day, but you're sitting here arguing against people picking their battles. Yes, an injection of randomness can evoke skill by forcing reactions to it, but the randomness itself is not a skill-based element, nor is skill downplayed by removing randomness. Moreover, when it comes to game design, unpredictable randomness in player skills tends to be a net negative factor, as bad rolls ruin even unoptimized player strategies and good rolls both can't be influenced by the player and are often - frankly rightfully - seen as '**** RNG' by those subject to them.
I'm also perplexed by this rational actor-esque idea that players have perfect knowledge of all skills, strategies, etc and never make mistakes or forget things and therefore we need RNG. It's funny, because Imperian PVP is 99.9% 'that guy made a mistake, now I'm going to eat his skull'. Similarly, while yes, artifacts are probably past a critical mass of being a **** influence on the game, they're also predictable, visible factors, and they also constitute the income stream for the game. Unless your goal is to increase sales of artifacts by adding uncontrollable factors that people have to bulk up for since they can't anticipate them, these two concepts are at odds with each other.
Really, it sounds like what you want is another game, since nobody here possesses time control to banish you back to 2005 with. Yes, it's sad that it's moved away from the game you liked. It has for me, too. But denying it and demanding that the game people wanted is invalid and inferior and it should instead be the game you want is, well, silly and entitled.
People stopped playing Imperian for reasons totally irrelevant to anything you just posted. The game was in a state of administrative and balance decline. The roleplay was stale and events were not occuring. We had very few gods. There were no areas released. Nothing was happening.
This has nothing to with combat. Imperian is a niche game in a even more niche genre of gaming. Imperian is the most cutthroat and combat focused of all IRE games. That means we need the most sterile, balanced environment. MUDs just do not garner the kind of attention they used to. Imperian lost a lot of players because of failings in the game being ran. Those people went to other IRE games and never came back because the grass was greener and they became rooted down there.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Personally I never needed an admin to start an event for me and a lot of people used to play for the PvP. Imperian was supposed to be the PvP mud. I read a manga some days ago where the main character is a manga writer, he keeps getting letters from people who collect anime figurines and make them make out, saying that they will not vote up or read his manga unless he includes more lesbian scenes. He says to himself, "if I give in and listen to these people, my manga is doomed." Imperian is like that manga. Somewhere in Ahkan's apartment, a naked plastic tsundere is on top of another figurine of a girl in half of a robot suit.
This isn't Street Fighter Ashel. I can't believe you tried to make that analogy. In Street Fighter you have all sorts of reflexive and positioning factors that interact with each other, none of which are possible in a MUD.
Personally I never needed an admin to start an event for me and a lot of people used to play for the PvP. Imperian was supposed to be the PvP mud.
Sorry to pick apart your post but please to not create this mindset to be the only.
1. What kind of game is Imperian?
Iron Realms Entertainment makes what are called MMORPGs. (Or just
MMOs or MUDs. Different words for the same thing.) That stands for
Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
Imperian is essentially a virtual world where thousands of people live alternate lives and interact in real-time.
Personally I never needed an admin to start an event for me and a lot of people used to play for the PvP. Imperian was supposed to be the PvP mud. I read a manga some days ago where the main character is a manga writer, he keeps getting letters from people who collect anime figurines and make them make out, saying that they will not vote up or read his manga unless he includes more lesbian scenes. He says to himself, "if I give in and listen to these people, my manga is doomed." Imperian is like that manga. Somewhere in Ahkan's apartment, a naked plastic tsundere is on top of another figurine of a girl in half of a robot suit.
This isn't Street Fighter Ashel. I can't believe you tried to make that analogy. In Street Fighter you have all sorts of reflexive and positioning factors that interact with each other, none of which are possible in a MUD.
Dear diary: today on the Imperian forums Iriaen tried to tell me that reflexive and positional factors don't matter while arguing for RNG so that people have to operate on reaction instead of foreknowledge.
Also the roleplay element of the game mostly dying out during the Forgotten Years is pretty much why the game entered its perceived state of decline, and the fact is that it still hasn't recovered.
I know it's not exclusively a PvP game, but that was the original intent behind Imperian, that it would be more PvP-oriented than other IRE games.
I think the player base has shrunk because a fighter used to be someone who stands around at the spring acting tough, or raids people running caravans. Now the core of the fighter population is made up of artifact chessmaster types who believe that this is analogous to street fighter: queue eqbal quicken, or queue eqbal affliction attack, when I get three afflictions stacked based upon time passed, I get a damage bonus.
Iron Realms Entertainment makes what are called MMORPGs. (Or just
MMOs or MUDs. Different words for the same thing.) That stands for
Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
Imperian is essentially a virtual world where thousands of people live alternate lives and interact in real-time.
I was pretty sure it was a 24/7 Glitter Party, but maybe that's just Khandava.
The decline has pretty much nothing to do with PVP, frankly, as much as we like to make everything about us. The cycle of fighters in fighters out has stayed relatively static since forever, and conjecture about how 'game changes ruined X Y Z and everyone left' has always been just that.
Also either you don't understand high level Imperian combat or you don't understand high level fighting games, or maybe both. The parallels are pretty obvious, even though the twitch mechanics are different.
Personally I never needed an admin to start an event for me and a lot of people used to play for the PvP. Imperian was supposed to be the PvP mud. I read a manga some days ago where the main character is a manga writer, he keeps getting letters from people who collect anime figurines and make them make out, saying that they will not vote up or read his manga unless he includes more lesbian scenes. He says to himself, "if I give in and listen to these people, my manga is doomed." Imperian is like that manga. Somewhere in Ahkan's apartment, a naked plastic tsundere is on top of another figurine of a girl in half of a robot suit.
This isn't Street Fighter Ashel. I can't believe you tried to make that analogy. In Street Fighter you have all sorts of reflexive and positioning factors that interact with each other, none of which are possible in a MUD.
Dear diary: today on the Imperian forums Iriaen tried to tell me that reflexive and positional factors don't matter while arguing for RNG so that people have to operate on reaction instead of foreknowledge.
I fear I have been trolled. X
Nice try but you're obviously conflating reflex with reaction, they aren't the same thing. The only reason to have a unique reaction in Imperian currently is if you didn't manage your facts well.
People were saying that it wasn't the combat environment when bowmanship was killing the game too. If many of the past PvP players were still here, the game's population would be higher, that much at least should be conceded.
Just to point out the obvious, if combat in Imperian was so great, there should be people who do 1v1 combat regularly just for the enjoyment that they get out of 1v1 combat.
There used to be people like that, there aren't anymore, because even if one accepts the premise that a linear pay-to-win game isn't terrible, the game still has no replayability. If it did, people would be replaying it. Like they used to.
Most of the "fighters" remaining in Imperian were never the type to do 1v1 regularly to begin with, so they don't appreciate that their egotistical quest for a perfectly fair game has killed off all replayability.
People like Khizan, Ahkan and Ashel will log on every single day, but go days at a time without fighting and who knows how long at a time without doing 1v1 combat, and yet the mods let people who don't do 1v1 combat, never have and apparently never will, direct the course of 1v1 combat.
We only JUST lost Brishi because he went Hunter and realized that it was needlessly over-complicated for no real payoff as compared to the other classes he had been playing. Back when he could target limbs, he was entertained, but Hunter apparently killed it for him.
And someone like Sarrius will be like, GOOD, I don't want someone who starts trouble in the game, I need gods to create events for me, and somehow, the mods have been listening to people like that.
Just to point out the obvious, if combat in Imperian was so great, there should be people who do 1v1 combat regularly just for the enjoyment that they get out of 1v1 combat.
wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Did you just rush to the store for straw to stuff this new argument with?
There is a very small one versus one demographic because combat is fun when it is fair. Combat balance has recently turned a blind eye to the duelist community because the game doesn't make as much money off of them as they do off of team combat systems, where everybody gets to compete. @Jeremy has constantly promised us he is 'thinking about' a 1v1 system, but of course, like most things he promises or claims, he tends to forget about them the next hour and we're left hanging out to dry (can you tell I'm bitter about something else going on right now?)
The game isn't about duels anymore because there's no support for it. This is like asking From Software why there's no Super Nintendo version of Dark Souls 2.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Most of the "fighters" remaining in Imperian were never the type to do 1v1 regularly to begin with, so they don't appreciate that their egotistical quest for a perfectly fair game has killed off all replayability.
People like Khizan, Ahkan and Ashel will log on every single day, but go days at a time without fighting and who knows how long at a time without doing 1v1 combat, and yet the mods let people who don't do 1v1 combat, never have and apparently never will, direct the course of 1v1 combat.
We only JUST lost Brishi because he went Hunter and realized that it was needlessly over-complicated for no real payoff as compared to the other classes he had been playing. Back when he could target limbs, he was entertained, but Hunter apparently killed it for him.
And someone like Sarrius will be like, GOOD, I don't want someone who starts trouble in the game, I need gods to create events for me, and somehow, the mods have been listening to people like that.
To the bolded statement: Ashel hates playing this game about as much as he hates you, I expect. He hasn't logged on to do a day of gameplay in actual ages. He mostly just tools off on the forums when somebody is making an electronic spectacle of their own stupidity, re: this thread and you.
To the italics: We lost Brishi because Brishi made a bad decision, got griefed for it, and then thought he could hop to another circle's overpowered affliction class. When he realized he doesn't have the head for putting on a sweater, let alone a class where he cannot turtle out to a win, he quit the game. He didn't quit over some kind of combat inequity. He quit because he can't hack it without a class that basically plays itself.
To the italics/bold: Player-driven events are fine, but gods and admins have far more resources to make events interesting than players do. See this rebellion - there's nothing interesting about it because Vanmoriel is absolutely bonkers and she is about stubborn. There's no resolution there. Admins and gods create events where there is a forced resolution.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Just to point out the obvious, if combat in Imperian was so great, there should be people who do 1v1 combat regularly just for the enjoyment that they get out of 1v1 combat.
wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Did you just rush to the store for straw to stuff this new argument with?
There is a very small one versus one demographic because combat is fun when it is fair. Combat balance has recently turned a blind eye to the duelist community because the game doesn't make as much money off of them as they do off of team combat systems, where everybody gets to compete. @Jeremy has constantly promised us he is 'thinking about' a 1v1 system, but of course, like most things he promises or claims, he tends to forget about them the next hour and we're left hanging out to dry (can you tell I'm bitter about something else going on right now?)
The game isn't about duels anymore because there's no support for it. This is like asking From Software why there's no Super Nintendo version of Dark Souls 2.
So how would you make a good 1v1 game? The linear model has failed in 1v1. There are less people doing 1v1 now than there used to be, despite the lack of a need for a system.
Jeremy doesn't need to make a 1v1 system. He already had a 1v1 system. The problem is that a bunch of people who liked to imagine themselves doing 1v1 didn't like that system because RNG isn't fair, even though it never mattered since they didn't do 1v1 then and aren't doing it now even after they got their way with most classes. Don't blame Jeremy, his only fault was giving you guys what you say you want.
Yeah I haven't fought in earnest in something like two, three years? Of course last time I fought seriously I was killing basically everyone I met on the road with Mage solo and in teams so I mean, I know a little something about stupid broken unfun mechanics. I also keep up with the mechanics changes because people like Sarrius, Khizan, and Juran won't let me forget the game exists.
Also I hate/d 1v1 because, well, hey look it's another fighting game comparison: 1v1 in Imperian between competent players was and is largely down to matchup, and some classes had large advantages in matchup against.. most others, including ones I liked to play. Or in some cases was playing, since a well-played old Mage was 10/0 against roughly everything except Monk against whom it was.. 9/1. Either way I lost interest in it and it lacked a lot of the meta-strategy that I eventually came to enjoy more.
The quest for 1v1 balance was pursued for a really long time and eventually people started to realize it wasn't really working and started incentivizing team combat instead.
The linear model is perfectly fine for one versus one, it's just that there are far more voices that shout down the minority that wants it exist. The problem is that all of the things we have removed were problems in one versus one, but in the process of removing them, we have replaced them with powerful tools that are meant for groups, so they are either too impractical for single combat or are too powerful for single combat.
There are also no systems that provide catalyst or impetus for duels, re: shardfalls for team combat.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Einstein quote: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a difference result.
What are you going to do to make linear 1v1 interesting and have replayability? Make Hunter even more complicated? Make some more taint moves that you'd use in the same way every time? That stuff is a dead end.
Imperian's always had a smaller playerbase than the other IRE games because Imperian's always had incredibly lax PvP rules. Prior to the induction of city bounties and such, getting involved in one fight could earn you a dozen or so deaths, which was incredibly offputting. Combine that with the way Dranor went AWOL when he was running the game and it's not surprising Imperian's got the lowest population. It has nothing to do with class balances or the like, and everything to do with absentee administration and the deleterious effects of utterly unrestrained PK(which has largely been reined in, now).
Imperian is more approachable now than it has EVER been; in most cases, I can take a newbie who's played for less six hours and take them to a shardfall or an obelisk, where they can play a fairly important role in the fight and maybe get in on some sweet PK exp. I can even take them to a city raid, if I want, and I can feel comfortable in doing so because I can tell them "Antioch'll put a bounty on you for this, you'll probably die one time because of it, it will not cost you experience." This is, quite honestly, the best time to be a newbie in the history of Imperian, from any kind of PvP standpoint.
If Imperian had been as well designed at release as it is now, it would be the largest IRE game out there. As it is, if the administration hadn't vanished for several years in the middle of things, it would certainly be the second largest.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Einstein quote: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a difference result.
What are you going to do to make linear 1v1 interesting and have replayability? Make Hunter even more complicated? Make some more taint moves that you'd use in the same way every time? That stuff is a dead end.
Hunter is not complicated. Brishi (and obviously, you) just doesn't know how to play Imperian, so the class looks daunting.
The class is actually crystal clear to anybody who has anything more than passing experience with affliction combat.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Einstein quote: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a difference result.
What are you going to do to make linear 1v1 interesting and have replayability? Make Hunter even more complicated? Make some more taint moves that you'd use in the same way every time? That stuff is a dead end.
Hunter is not complicated. Brishi (and obviously, you) just doesn't know how to play Imperian, so the class looks daunting.
The class is actually crystal clear to anybody who has anything more than passing experience with affliction combat.
So you have no idea, maybe you don't even expect or want to see 1v1 combat in Imperian.
@Iriaen - I can sort of see why you would want something like what you asked for @ the original ideas offered and though I'm not as prestigious on the PvP scene & IG as Sarrius & Khizan etc might be, I think part of the problem is a lack of need. The addition of randomizing afflictions would not really affect that much since where there's something to be coded, someone is going to code around it, period. Again, I know I'm still a semi-newbie but that's basically what it sounds like - a lack of need and even were it needed, it would be easily out-coded. That then just took x amount of time from administration to implement also, when they could have been doing something more effectively influential in the game.
As far as stagnating vs. other games and 1vs1 - I wouldn't still have played if Combat was a buy-in and like @Khizan said about it, its more approachable this way, with team-encouraged combat being a central focus in PvP. (Though I play for RP personally but PvP can be RP too. )
The problem is that spammy walls of text was never a good medium for a team combat game, but now IRE is stuck with it because people who didn't like randomness, timers, fundamental input changes like aeon and retardation, they have pretty much killed off 1v1, even though they were never interested in 1v1 to begin with. It's a shame. This used to be a great 1v1 game, now the 1v1 game is practically gone and it's frustrating because it all presents itself as if there was a 1v1 game here.
Comments
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I'm surprised you haven't made a poker analogy here, probably because it's both a) the best relation to what you're suggesting and b) shoots your point to hell. Poker is, as anyone knows, a heavily random game where player skill and ability to play the odds still matters. The trick, though, is that good poker players are measured as such across hundreds and thousands of hands, and a large portion of their skill comes from knowing which fights not to pick. Not only does Imperian not have the luxury of you getting into hundreds of fights a day, but you're sitting here arguing against people picking their battles. Yes, an injection of randomness can evoke skill by forcing reactions to it, but the randomness itself is not a skill-based element, nor is skill downplayed by removing randomness. Moreover, when it comes to game design, unpredictable randomness in player skills tends to be a net negative factor, as bad rolls ruin even unoptimized player strategies and good rolls both can't be influenced by the player and are often - frankly rightfully - seen as '**** RNG' by those subject to them.
I'm also perplexed by this rational actor-esque idea that players have perfect knowledge of all skills, strategies, etc and never make mistakes or forget things and therefore we need RNG. It's funny, because Imperian PVP is 99.9% 'that guy made a mistake, now I'm going to eat his skull'. Similarly, while yes, artifacts are probably past a critical mass of being a **** influence on the game, they're also predictable, visible factors, and they also constitute the income stream for the game. Unless your goal is to increase sales of artifacts by adding uncontrollable factors that people have to bulk up for since they can't anticipate them, these two concepts are at odds with each other.
Really, it sounds like what you want is another game, since nobody here possesses time control to banish you back to 2005 with. Yes, it's sad that it's moved away from the game you liked. It has for me, too. But denying it and demanding that the game people wanted is invalid and inferior and it should instead be the game you want is, well, silly and entitled.
This has nothing to with combat. Imperian is a niche game in a even more niche genre of gaming. Imperian is the most cutthroat and combat focused of all IRE games. That means we need the most sterile, balanced environment. MUDs just do not garner the kind of attention they used to. Imperian lost a lot of players because of failings in the game being ran. Those people went to other IRE games and never came back because the grass was greener and they became rooted down there.
1. What kind of game is Imperian?
Iron Realms Entertainment makes what are called MMORPGs. (Or just MMOs or MUDs. Different words for the same thing.) That stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
Imperian is essentially a virtual world where thousands of people live alternate lives and interact in real-time.I fear I have been trolled.
X
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Also either you don't understand high level Imperian combat or you don't understand high level fighting games, or maybe both. The parallels are pretty obvious, even though the twitch mechanics are different.
So how would you make a good 1v1 game? The linear model has failed in 1v1. There are less people doing 1v1 now than there used to be, despite the lack of a need for a system.
Also I hate/d 1v1 because, well, hey look it's another fighting game comparison: 1v1 in Imperian between competent players was and is largely down to matchup, and some classes had large advantages in matchup against.. most others, including ones I liked to play. Or in some cases was playing, since a well-played old Mage was 10/0 against roughly everything except Monk against whom it was.. 9/1. Either way I lost interest in it and it lacked a lot of the meta-strategy that I eventually came to enjoy more.
The quest for 1v1 balance was pursued for a really long time and eventually people started to realize it wasn't really working and started incentivizing team combat instead.
Imperian's always had a smaller playerbase than the other IRE games because Imperian's always had incredibly lax PvP rules. Prior to the induction of city bounties and such, getting involved in one fight could earn you a dozen or so deaths, which was incredibly offputting. Combine that with the way Dranor went AWOL when he was running the game and it's not surprising Imperian's got the lowest population. It has nothing to do with class balances or the like, and everything to do with absentee administration and the deleterious effects of utterly unrestrained PK(which has largely been reined in, now).
Imperian is more approachable now than it has EVER been; in most cases, I can take a newbie who's played for less six hours and take them to a shardfall or an obelisk, where they can play a fairly important role in the fight and maybe get in on some sweet PK exp. I can even take them to a city raid, if I want, and I can feel comfortable in doing so because I can tell them "Antioch'll put a bounty on you for this, you'll probably die one time because of it, it will not cost you experience." This is, quite honestly, the best time to be a newbie in the history of Imperian, from any kind of PvP standpoint.
If Imperian had been as well designed at release as it is now, it would be the largest IRE game out there. As it is, if the administration hadn't vanished for several years in the middle of things, it would certainly be the second largest.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
As far as stagnating vs. other games and 1vs1 - I wouldn't still have played if Combat was a buy-in and like @Khizan said about it, its more approachable this way, with team-encouraged combat being a central focus in PvP. (Though I play for RP personally but PvP can be RP too.