Save your $7-$9 and buy yourself lunch 5-50 times, unless you want virtual leaves with every single spin and 3 credit bombs all day and every day. Getting leaves every f-ing spin is infuriating.
Get leaves, a bomb, and 1 gladiator ticket on a spin and get a stellar 0 credits, 3 credit, and 4 credit value(if you win). Gladiator ticket pool should be a random 1-5 pool and not a flat 1.
Prizes have been lowered at the pit and you can no longer win 3K or 1K, with a max of 600 only while the other IRE's still have 3K-1K prizes. Yeah, we have gold gambling and they don't, but good luck even winning 10:1 odds now. The only increase in value is to lower 'sure' bets' going from a previous 3 credit value to 4 as stated above. So you're adding a gamble inside a gamble. Gamble on the wheel, but if you want your full 4 credit from the gladiator ticket, you'll need a gamble again at the pit.
I love to gamble, but this is too much.
Yes, I'm salty.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
One thing IRE I think dearly needs to learn is the same promotion that works on Achaea isn't going to work here. Or on Aetolia or Lusternia, for that matter.
Even when we were healthier, Imperian really was a distinct population, and any potential new players need us to have things and experiences that they can't get in Achaea.. There are some exceptions (people truly "born" on a non-Achaea IRE), but the one thing that most people in a non-Achaea IRE have in common is that they very intentionally left Achaea behind and felt like they found something more suited to them. At the very least, they found a change of pace, and rotated the two games in order to have different experiences. I'd even go so far as to say that your main potential market boils down to "people who actively dislike, or are at the very least temporarily bored of Achaea".
But more specifically to this conversation, I felt that one of the things that Imperian always offered over Achaea, was value on the dollar. I always figured it was partly because you're not playing on the flagship, and the other IREs seem to be somewhat similar in that respect, but whatever the reason, it was very appealing.
As someone who's first IRE game was Imperian and who would return to Imperian if it started to resemble what it used to (more focus on solo, wayyy less on groups humping against each other and spamming damage attacks) I disagree entirely.
I play Achaea now, and it's far, far better than what Imperian has become. I've already written up a huge post about why I believe Imperian has been rendered down into the tiny population is has now and why I and everyone else left so I'm not going to bother doing it again - but I wanted to chime in and say that your statement, at least for me, is totally off.
Sarthan, you're not wrong. I don't want to totally re-cover a bunch of ground that's come up in other posts over the past month or two, but Achaea has one of the best devs to ever work an IRE. Tecton also really seemed great. Speaking of Tecton, Starmourn has talented, committed people spending their paid man hours crafting it. Imperian has talented people, but it has whatever time and energy they have left after other duties, either in IRE, or in another day job entirely. And it's been that way for awhile (I'd say at least several years). But yeah, the only reason to play a non-Achaea game would be because it offers something Achaea doesn't. That's always been true, but it's in extra sharp focus now. It may be that the right answer for drawing a healthy population is catering heavily to a certain kind of 1 v. 1 crowd. I even suggested a super "hard core" mode for Imperian as a possibility (I'd never, ever play that game and if they did that it would be truly game over for me forever, but I've heard people hanker for such a thing).
Sarthan, you're not wrong. I don't want to totally re-cover a bunch of ground that's come up in other posts over the past month or two, but Achaea has one of the best devs to ever work an IRE. Tecton also really seemed great. Speaking of Tecton, Starmourn has talented, committed people spending their paid man hours crafting it. Imperian has talented people, but it has whatever time and energy they have left after other duties, either in IRE, or in another day job entirely. And it's been that way for awhile (I'd say at least several years). But yeah, the only reason to play a non-Achaea game would be because it offers something Achaea doesn't. That's always been true, but it's in extra sharp focus now. It may be that the right answer for drawing a healthy population is catering heavily to a certain kind of 1 v. 1 crowd. I even suggested a super "hard core" mode for Imperian as a possibility (I'd never, ever play that game and if they did that it would be truly game over for me forever, but I've heard people hanker for such a thing).
hardcore 1v1 isn't the answer. I truly think a rewind is. Circles separated the population and isolated them into small pockets, which is what having too many cities/guilds did essentially. Sure they were the answer to Runedancers and junk, but that could have been fixed with making adjustments to 'buff' skills like Achaea has. (Algiz only providing protection against mobs, etc). Killing off the Gods? Eh, I know a TON of people who just couldn't wrap their mind around the system that came after, but I can understand that it might have gone that way because there wasn't enough volunteers to populate a Divine Pantheon. The Smithing change where all weapons were standardized was a bad idea. Half the draw of being a knight was the fact that if you invested hard enough you could have amazing axes or sabres, which was fine. It allowed different types of knights and made the people who LIKED being a Smith happy. It added FLAVOUR. You could still buy two Fleshrender axes if you wanted to ALWAYS be able to DSL people to death with damage. So much of that is gone now. I don't know how it could be done, but honestly, reverting these changes would go al ong way to making me and many others I'm still in contact with consider returning:
Circles Smithing Change Divine pantheon being killed Group combat focus on skills being changed/designed via classleads/etc Group combat objectives being the only important thing to do Shards. Getting rid of things like Metrazol (I don't care what anyone says. sure it could be griefy, but the same people being griefed could do it back. Flavour.)
I know I'm forgetting a ton of stuff, but honestly, it's been so long now (at least 2 years since Imperian has been on life support mode) that it shouldn't be held against me.
To me this post reads like "I want old metrazol sabreknight back" and that to me seems awfully selfish and frankly silly. Metrazol wasn't fun before, because it meant any weapon class could just endlessly stall out a fight and stack hinders, whilst building to a limb break finisher. Smithing being attached to knights was bad, because it meant they had all their combat stuff crammed into two skills, and a monopoly on a tradeskill. Both those things were silly and not-fun and pointless.
As for killing the Gods off, it sucked for my character, but it sucked more when a god would get a new volunteer and change attitude abruptly.
Metrazol dsl sabre knights weren't fun for anyone other than metrazol dsl sabre knights.
Our biggest problem is actually the ability to completely dominate, in both 1 v. 1 and groups. I think it has affected Achaea at times too, but they're better able to weather those storms than the smaller IREs. It's an incredibly hard problem to solve. Well, you CAN solve it, at least with groups, or at least improve things. You'd have to forceably split up strong teams (sort of like league is never going to let a bunch of golds smash a bunch of bronzes day in and day out). Good luck selling that to people in a MUD, but it would definitely work. 1 v. 1... I've seen how guys can easily completely break a 1 v. 1 system. If you're a "Challenjour", you break every single IRE you ever play. If you're a gold or plat in a sea of bronze, you can do the same if the player base is pretty small. And while yes, everyone can improve, League is an absolutely perfect example of how people some people improve faster, easier and/or put in many hours. The best players often have both things going for them. So there's bronze, and silver, and gold, and so on... so that while you're improving, you're not getting pulverized by an actual Challenjour every game.
Sarthan, you're not wrong. I don't want to totally re-cover a bunch of ground that's come up in other posts over the past month or two, but Achaea has one of the best devs to ever work an IRE. Tecton also really seemed great. Speaking of Tecton, Starmourn has talented, committed people spending their paid man hours crafting it. Imperian has talented people, but it has whatever time and energy they have left after other duties, either in IRE, or in another day job entirely. And it's been that way for awhile (I'd say at least several years). But yeah, the only reason to play a non-Achaea game would be because it offers something Achaea doesn't. That's always been true, but it's in extra sharp focus now. It may be that the right answer for drawing a healthy population is catering heavily to a certain kind of 1 v. 1 crowd. I even suggested a super "hard core" mode for Imperian as a possibility (I'd never, ever play that game and if they did that it would be truly game over for me forever, but I've heard people hanker for such a thing).
hardcore 1v1 isn't the answer. I truly think a rewind is. Circles separated the population and isolated them into small pockets, which is what having too many cities/guilds did essentially. Sure they were the answer to Runedancers and junk, but that could have been fixed with making adjustments to 'buff' skills like Achaea has. (Algiz only providing protection against mobs, etc). Killing off the Gods? Eh, I know a TON of people who just couldn't wrap their mind around the system that came after, but I can understand that it might have gone that way because there wasn't enough volunteers to populate a Divine Pantheon. The Smithing change where all weapons were standardized was a bad idea. Half the draw of being a knight was the fact that if you invested hard enough you could have amazing axes or sabres, which was fine. It allowed different types of knights and made the people who LIKED being a Smith happy. It added FLAVOUR. You could still buy two Fleshrender axes if you wanted to ALWAYS be able to DSL people to death with damage. So much of that is gone now. I don't know how it could be done, but honestly, reverting these changes would go al ong way to making me and many others I'm still in contact with consider returning:
Circles Smithing Change Divine pantheon being killed Group combat focus on skills being changed/designed via classleads/etc Group combat objectives being the only important thing to do Shards. Getting rid of things like Metrazol (I don't care what anyone says. sure it could be griefy, but the same people being griefed could do it back. Flavour.)
I know I'm forgetting a ton of stuff, but honestly, it's been so long now (at least 2 years since Imperian has been on life support mode) that it shouldn't be held against me.
If you are an old Imperian flame, you know my history. I think you've got some fairly selective memory about your time in Imperian. Suffice to say, I think your proposal that we go back to the stone age is a pretty silly idea. I'll step up to bat here and talk about your points:
1. Hardcore 1v1 is not the answer, but 1v1 as a returned focus is. We're too small for the shardfall 'everybody get in here!' approach to work anymore. I don't think you disagree here, admittedly, but I wanted to throw my hat in to the ring on this. A 'hardcore' system sounds ridiculous in a game where some of the players have invested upwards of three grand or more on their characters. I believe that a game needs to play to its strengths, and turning the small community in to a strength is the first step to that.
2. Circles ruined the game short term, but probably saved it long term. Circles forced people in to the us vs. them mindset. We tried ignoring circles as an RP construct for the past two years, it seems, and it didn't work out. We're finally back on track with Antioch giving a **** about magick users, ally statuses are getting thrown out/revoked finally. and people are back to being angry at each other. It took a few instigators on all sides, but we're finally back on the rails and fighting for a reason. Without circles, we grow too interested in just being friends with everybody to take the paths of least resistance during events, conflict systems, etc.
3. Smithing changes were all positive. The game needed that standardization of statistics so that every knight was on a level playing field. We could not even begin to balance Knights without standardizing weapons. This also attached a true purpose to buying any and all artifact weapons - they provided a tangible benefit you could not replicate with smithing, no matter how hard you tried. I do not think 'half the draw of knights' was that you could smith weapons as good as artifacts - the draw of knight pre-reform was sabres being an extremely competitive aff route option and your tertiary being a nice tack on to that. Lets not kid ourselves - sabres with the king of knight weapons, all other weapons were useless, sans claymore DSL (RIP Bathan.).. even level 3 axes was never that great of an approach.
'Blacksmith RP' is the closest thing to the concept of 'masturbatory RP' that I can stomach acknowledging the existence of. I hate that phrase, but I also hate purposeless roleplay, slice of life roleplay, etc. Blacksmith roleplay falls under this category. It has no purpose. It has no forward drive. Even the Hattori Hanzo of Blacksmith RP is just a blacksmith making a badass sword that isn't going to do anything except get wielded by some chucklestick knight with the money to cough up. It would take that sword being a magickal artifact of worldrending import for anybody else to 'care' about his blacksmithing story arc. I doubt that power is being put in player hands, ever.. and if you claim it ever was in our hands, you are lying to yourself.
4. Pantheon being killed - I go back and forth on this. My overall feelings are that killing the pantheon was a shitty move and Jeremy should consider reversing it somehow with our new big batch of entities. In an ideal world, we should wipe the slate clean, delete all sects, and let those volunteers being generous with their time build their own cult or sect to attract players to. I know this won't happen, though, so whatever. The real purpose of killing the pantheon was to answer an ages old problem about gods going inactive and then coming back: the 'amnesia effect' of a god valuing your character, then suddenly getting a new player and going schizo as they redefine. We could have solved this by taking the Aetolia approach: every 'God' is simply an aspect or comprised of a conceptual essence and that god can and will die without a player.. but the essence never dies and will reform as a new god when a new volunteer wants that role. Instead, we took a hamfisted approach. Truth be told, it isn't all bad.. good/enthusiastic mortal players got the chance to write religion concepts. I think we need a hard reset on that list, as I said above, so this generation of players gets that chance too.
5. Group combat/group focus - I agree that group combat is a shitty thing to focus on because it implies your game will always have enough players to fill out the teams. That's not the case here. See above, point 1 - we need to swing back to a duel-centric way of life, at least until we get the pendulum back to the middle. We have the makings of a focus on a 1v1 objective in the form of champions; it is merely a poorly implemented/tested system with a lot of room for improvement.
6. Shards were the single healthiest conflict system Imperian has ever made use of. Everybody got to play the game, for once. Their rewards were too strong, but we scaled them back. The only problem with shards is that they frankly don't matter whatsoever right now. There's not enough people to stop me from logging in, looting a shardfall, and having enough shards to last me the week. There's no constant drain on the shard supply in my inventory; just incremental costs per fight. I don't get enough fights to deplete my shard storage. There's no systems that matter that cost shards - lookin' at you, leylines!
7. "Just because it was OP doesn't mean we should take it away! You can use it too!" - lmao cool, can I keep my OP shaman class and have flickdancer power put back in Berserker? I miss disemboweling chumps for ~900 damage and them not being able to do anything about it. While we're at it, can we get old qjab and tipslash damage back, old sabre speed, etc? Maybe we could look in to giving old Lament back to Bards so Kinsarmar can keep everybody indoors all day? What about old sketches? The game is much better off from a design perspective now than it was during any of the times you allude to. Every class, sans Monk, is unique to Imperian. Every class has the makings of a 1v1 route. Every class has team utility. Plenty of the most frustrating aspects of combat - the aspects taken advantage of by experts that shut out amateurs that wanted to grow - have been taken away. We're better off without pre-nerf metrazol or any of the other myriad of examples you might throw at me later in this discussion.
You've been gone years. The nature of your complaints strike me as straddling the line of 'time-tested issues' (okay to complain about) and 'last era's gripes'. @Swale and @Galt put it fine as well.
<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>
I should have clarified what I meant by hardcore. I didn't mean perma-death or something like that. What I really had in mind was that both rules and mechanics that support "griefing" would be even looser than they are (the rules, at least, are already looser than most non PK-ers realize) and that there would be fairly punitive penalties for losing (one obvious biggie being XP loss). There is definitely a hunger for this kind of gameplay amongst some of the elite players across IRE. The problem is always maintaining a pool of uh, victims. But that sort of thing. There's sort of a spectrum for "hard core" I guess, and what I had in mind was basically, that you could try to appeal to a certain portion of the PK elite across IRE. I'm not so much suggesting "they should do this" as saying "of the many tacks Imperian could take to get back on its feet and be a distinct IRE, this is one that could work if you think it will fill a niche for enough people".
Now, on the other hand? I refuse to 1 v 1 (too intense, not good enough) but I do absolutely love group combat. So if keeping players who roughly fall into the same category as I do is a goal, you don't want to shift the pendulum too much towards 1 v 1. The biggest thing I can think of that supports group combat as anything other than "raid defense 6666 against the best PK-ers in the game" is Free PK scenarios, and especially Free PK scenarios that don't involve XP loss ("real" XP loss, not PK XP). I can't be hunted down by Le Challenjour later because I "teamed" him at a shardfall. Things that support 1 v. 1 are: punitive consequences for losing (XP loss) and things that grant "cause". Of course you can also literally enforce it mechanically, a la green shards or champion instances. But you still have to get people to participate. One of the dirtiest (but admittedly effective) ways to make that happen is to have Open PK (not Free PK) bashing areas. But they have to be very enticing areas in a sea of... pretty bad bashing areas. Our game has pretty good bashing across the board. The best example of something you could do in our game, for example, would be to make DP Open PK (that will force all of the gold farmers to think twice) and Kilathu as well (no gold, but amazing XP). Let me go on the record as saying I'd absolutely hate all of that, and I have the self-discipline to stick to the "shitty" bashing areas when something like that is in play (unless I really am up for some action), but there seem to be enough players who just can't help themselves. So then, your elite PK-ers basically get to bash bashers. It's definitely akin to feeding deer so you can shoot them. But it definitely seems to work, and it makes your elite PK-ers happy
I agree they're going to have to consider bringing back gods. I hate gods, and wish that mortals would take the stage, with admin driving the story at times - but with mortals as the focal point. I will do just about anything to avoid dealing with gods. But enough people want it, and that's not going to change I think. It's truly nothing but a huge downside for some us, but I've felt it's coming for some time, and probably has to, really.
I am so thankful smithing changes finally happened. It was a long, hard fought road across IRE. For other "OP" stuff, I am unsure. You might have to judiciously leave some in. I realize how outrageous that is. I HATE it. But again, one of those things that certain people really, really like.
So there you go, a bunch of stuff I hate so much it makes me all frothy, but all of it does have enough fans that it probably has to be considered by a smart admin.
I feel like Sarthan is right, at least when it comes to groups "humping" each other to death. Sure, we don't have the population right now for that, but it wasn't too long ago that this was still the deciding factor for group combat. Who could zerg who better. There was even discussion about it and ways to change it so that it is more fun at least, especially when you have new people who want to pk, and group being the best way to start. It's not fun for newbies to be focused by 5 people and dying within one combo. It got to the point where I first started I wouldn't join the group until the fighting had already started. And I'd still get focused by smarter teams. I feel like this discussion just got swept under the rug and promptly ignored, even though it brought up valid concerns. I also know of at least one person who doesn't really pk anymore because of that.
Anyways enough derailing the promo complaint thread let's necro this thread(http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/780/group-fighting) for group fight discussion, and start new ones for the other things because I think some good things are being discussed.
So, I am disappointed with the website purchased spins. I got 2 gladiator tickets in one spin twice in twenty five spins. And 11 in all. Even the credit purchased spins are better than that because ultimately its a lottery ticket with poor odds. Further, I'm told that big prizes on gladiator tickets have been nerfed.
Sorry, but gladiator tickets have no place in the $ purchased spins. We need a better selection than that. Unless we can actually exchange these for credits it doesn't feel like it does justice to the website spins.
Wheel is a dud promo. It's not fun, it isn't high enough value, it doesn't bring much new to the game..
However, I think the leaf items are great design space we should explore more often. A load out of herb buffs that are mutually exclusive from one another, harvestable only in very rare circumstance, but provided by promos as tack-ons (not the main event) is a great idea. Just don't go Full Lusternia on us and we should be OK.
Hoping December is a great promotion.
Also hoping we have a deal today or Monday. I am growing doubtful however.
<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>
There will not be a Black Friday or cyber Monday deal this year. It’s something That IRE has discussed a few times, and the consensus has been that if we’re going to offer a bonus, we’d rather do it for the full month.
Pixies were bugfixed to detect groups (yesterday? 2 days ago? Something like that), so I just wanted to say again that they are pretty swell little spies.
Still dunno what I'm doing with my high cost emotes that can hide my name.
Comments
Save your $7-$9 and buy yourself lunch 5-50 times, unless you want virtual leaves with every single spin and 3 credit bombs all day and every day. Getting leaves every f-ing spin is infuriating.
Get leaves, a bomb, and 1 gladiator ticket on a spin and get a stellar 0 credits, 3 credit, and 4 credit value(if you win). Gladiator ticket pool should be a random 1-5 pool and not a flat 1.
Prizes have been lowered at the pit and you can no longer win 3K or 1K, with a max of 600 only while the other IRE's still have 3K-1K prizes. Yeah, we have gold gambling and they don't, but good luck even winning 10:1 odds now. The only increase in value is to lower 'sure' bets' going from a previous 3 credit value to 4 as stated above. So you're adding a gamble inside a gamble. Gamble on the wheel, but if you want your full 4 credit from the gladiator ticket, you'll need a gamble again at the pit.
I love to gamble, but this is too much.
Yes, I'm salty.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I play Achaea now, and it's far, far better than what Imperian has become. I've already written up a huge post about why I believe Imperian has been rendered down into the tiny population is has now and why I and everyone else left so I'm not going to bother doing it again - but I wanted to chime in and say that your statement, at least for me, is totally off.
Circles
Smithing Change
Divine pantheon being killed
Group combat focus on skills being changed/designed via classleads/etc
Group combat objectives being the only important thing to do
Shards.
Getting rid of things like Metrazol (I don't care what anyone says. sure it could be griefy, but the same people being griefed could do it back. Flavour.)
I know I'm forgetting a ton of stuff, but honestly, it's been so long now (at least 2 years since Imperian has been on life support mode) that it shouldn't be held against me.
As for killing the Gods off, it sucked for my character, but it sucked more when a god would get a new volunteer and change attitude abruptly.
Metrazol dsl sabre knights weren't fun for anyone other than metrazol dsl sabre knights.
1. Hardcore 1v1 is not the answer, but 1v1 as a returned focus is. We're too small for the shardfall 'everybody get in here!' approach to work anymore. I don't think you disagree here, admittedly, but I wanted to throw my hat in to the ring on this. A 'hardcore' system sounds ridiculous in a game where some of the players have invested upwards of three grand or more on their characters. I believe that a game needs to play to its strengths, and turning the small community in to a strength is the first step to that.
2. Circles ruined the game short term, but probably saved it long term. Circles forced people in to the us vs. them mindset. We tried ignoring circles as an RP construct for the past two years, it seems, and it didn't work out. We're finally back on track with Antioch giving a **** about magick users, ally statuses are getting thrown out/revoked finally. and people are back to being angry at each other. It took a few instigators on all sides, but we're finally back on the rails and fighting for a reason. Without circles, we grow too interested in just being friends with everybody to take the paths of least resistance during events, conflict systems, etc.
3. Smithing changes were all positive. The game needed that standardization of statistics so that every knight was on a level playing field. We could not even begin to balance Knights without standardizing weapons. This also attached a true purpose to buying any and all artifact weapons - they provided a tangible benefit you could not replicate with smithing, no matter how hard you tried. I do not think 'half the draw of knights' was that you could smith weapons as good as artifacts - the draw of knight pre-reform was sabres being an extremely competitive aff route option and your tertiary being a nice tack on to that. Lets not kid ourselves - sabres with the king of knight weapons, all other weapons were useless, sans claymore DSL (RIP Bathan.).. even level 3 axes was never that great of an approach.
'Blacksmith RP' is the closest thing to the concept of 'masturbatory RP' that I can stomach acknowledging the existence of. I hate that phrase, but I also hate purposeless roleplay, slice of life roleplay, etc. Blacksmith roleplay falls under this category. It has no purpose. It has no forward drive. Even the Hattori Hanzo of Blacksmith RP is just a blacksmith making a badass sword that isn't going to do anything except get wielded by some chucklestick knight with the money to cough up. It would take that sword being a magickal artifact of worldrending import for anybody else to 'care' about his blacksmithing story arc. I doubt that power is being put in player hands, ever.. and if you claim it ever was in our hands, you are lying to yourself.
4. Pantheon being killed - I go back and forth on this. My overall feelings are that killing the pantheon was a shitty move and Jeremy should consider reversing it somehow with our new big batch of entities. In an ideal world, we should wipe the slate clean, delete all sects, and let those volunteers being generous with their time build their own cult or sect to attract players to. I know this won't happen, though, so whatever. The real purpose of killing the pantheon was to answer an ages old problem about gods going inactive and then coming back: the 'amnesia effect' of a god valuing your character, then suddenly getting a new player and going schizo as they redefine. We could have solved this by taking the Aetolia approach: every 'God' is simply an aspect or comprised of a conceptual essence and that god can and will die without a player.. but the essence never dies and will reform as a new god when a new volunteer wants that role. Instead, we took a hamfisted approach. Truth be told, it isn't all bad.. good/enthusiastic mortal players got the chance to write religion concepts. I think we need a hard reset on that list, as I said above, so this generation of players gets that chance too.
5. Group combat/group focus - I agree that group combat is a shitty thing to focus on because it implies your game will always have enough players to fill out the teams. That's not the case here. See above, point 1 - we need to swing back to a duel-centric way of life, at least until we get the pendulum back to the middle. We have the makings of a focus on a 1v1 objective in the form of champions; it is merely a poorly implemented/tested system with a lot of room for improvement.
6. Shards were the single healthiest conflict system Imperian has ever made use of. Everybody got to play the game, for once. Their rewards were too strong, but we scaled them back. The only problem with shards is that they frankly don't matter whatsoever right now. There's not enough people to stop me from logging in, looting a shardfall, and having enough shards to last me the week. There's no constant drain on the shard supply in my inventory; just incremental costs per fight. I don't get enough fights to deplete my shard storage. There's no systems that matter that cost shards - lookin' at you, leylines!
7. "Just because it was OP doesn't mean we should take it away! You can use it too!" - lmao cool, can I keep my OP shaman class and have flickdancer power put back in Berserker? I miss disemboweling chumps for ~900 damage and them not being able to do anything about it. While we're at it, can we get old qjab and tipslash damage back, old sabre speed, etc? Maybe we could look in to giving old Lament back to Bards so Kinsarmar can keep everybody indoors all day? What about old sketches? The game is much better off from a design perspective now than it was during any of the times you allude to. Every class, sans Monk, is unique to Imperian. Every class has the makings of a 1v1 route. Every class has team utility. Plenty of the most frustrating aspects of combat - the aspects taken advantage of by experts that shut out amateurs that wanted to grow - have been taken away. We're better off without pre-nerf metrazol or any of the other myriad of examples you might throw at me later in this discussion.
You've been gone years. The nature of your complaints strike me as straddling the line of 'time-tested issues' (okay to complain about) and 'last era's gripes'. @Swale and @Galt put it fine as well.
Now, on the other hand? I refuse to 1 v 1 (too intense, not good enough) but I do absolutely love group combat. So if keeping players who roughly fall into the same category as I do is a goal, you don't want to shift the pendulum too much towards 1 v 1. The biggest thing I can think of that supports group combat as anything other than "raid defense 6666 against the best PK-ers in the game" is Free PK scenarios, and especially Free PK scenarios that don't involve XP loss ("real" XP loss, not PK XP). I can't be hunted down by Le Challenjour later because I "teamed" him at a shardfall. Things that support 1 v. 1 are: punitive consequences for losing (XP loss) and things that grant "cause". Of course you can also literally enforce it mechanically, a la green shards or champion instances. But you still have to get people to participate. One of the dirtiest (but admittedly effective) ways to make that happen is to have Open PK (not Free PK) bashing areas. But they have to be very enticing areas in a sea of... pretty bad bashing areas. Our game has pretty good bashing across the board. The best example of something you could do in our game, for example, would be to make DP Open PK (that will force all of the gold farmers to think twice) and Kilathu as well (no gold, but amazing XP). Let me go on the record as saying I'd absolutely hate all of that, and I have the self-discipline to stick to the "shitty" bashing areas when something like that is in play (unless I really am up for some action), but there seem to be enough players who just can't help themselves. So then, your elite PK-ers basically get to bash bashers. It's definitely akin to feeding deer so you can shoot them. But it definitely seems to work, and it makes your elite PK-ers happy
I agree they're going to have to consider bringing back gods. I hate gods, and wish that mortals would take the stage, with admin driving the story at times - but with mortals as the focal point. I will do just about anything to avoid dealing with gods. But enough people want it, and that's not going to change I think. It's truly nothing but a huge downside for some us, but I've felt it's coming for some time, and probably has to, really.
I am so thankful smithing changes finally happened. It was a long, hard fought road across IRE. For other "OP" stuff, I am unsure. You might have to judiciously leave some in. I realize how outrageous that is. I HATE it. But again, one of those things that certain people really, really like.
So there you go, a bunch of stuff I hate so much it makes me all frothy, but all of it does have enough fans that it probably has to be considered by a smart admin.
Anyways enough derailing the promo complaint thread let's necro this thread(http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/780/group-fighting) for group fight discussion, and start new ones for the other things because I think some good things are being discussed.
Sorry, but gladiator tickets have no place in the $ purchased spins. We need a better selection than that. Unless we can actually exchange these for credits it doesn't feel like it does justice to the website spins.
Also Happy Thanksgiving!
However, I think the leaf items are great design space we should explore more often. A load out of herb buffs that are mutually exclusive from one another, harvestable only in very rare circumstance, but provided by promos as tack-ons (not the main event) is a great idea. Just don't go Full Lusternia on us and we should be OK.
Hoping December is a great promotion.
Also hoping we have a deal today or Monday. I am growing doubtful however.
Still dunno what I'm doing with my high cost emotes that can hide my name.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.