Shattered Kingdoms

When it comes to ooc communications and players attitude is it a lack of knowledge/ideas our inability to socially engineer us?

Either I don't know how to socially engineer the item in question or I have previously tried and failed.

I can give you lots of ideas but that is one of those things that would best be solved by having a base of what you are willing to work from and go from there. I would still like to see the paragon in everyone's hand idea and go from there. Allow the accumulation of rewards from other players for things such as rp, sportsmanship, longevity, what have you (requirement being a brief explanation of readers when given fit imm review), these rewards exchange for something.

I'm curious about the hard no to multiclassing (either through a remort system like maxman suggested or through the tradeoff system that I think is a more balanced approach that hits the "personalization" elements that would make it attractive and interesting). Too much of a pain in the [REDACTED] to code, or do you believe it to be game breaking?

No comment on the appropriateness of the game world's alignment issues when they contrast with the penalty-enforced PC alignment requirements? That one's an easy fix.

I don't necessarily agree with the wording you chose when putting a heading on my balancing suggestions. Difficulty is not the problem. That other game I play has some extremely difficult content that's some of the most enjoyable stuff ever released in a multiplayer game (imo). The difference is, the difficulty comes from having to adapt strategy, tactics and approach, and to function effectively as a team not from the NPCs having access to immunities to everything that half the raid group can bring to bear and spawning in overwhelming numbers at random. It's more a balancing/refactoring than it is a reduction in difficulties. If that opens up the more interesting end game content for more casual gamers, great.

More use for loyalty tokens is probably the most effective way you have of encouraging retention of players. It's all well and good to get them in the door, but unless you can offer them some reason to stick around, they won't. Touching on attractive aspects of that other game again, one of the reasons it retains players as well as it does is the personalization options for characters. Sure, there's a limited number of classes (just like in this game), but the way you approach those classes and the look and feel of individual characters even in the same class is what ties people to their characters and gets them to invest time and effort into them. There's no reason this game can't offer the same kind of option to its players. I think you'd probably see characters with more longevity by offering this kind of thing with LPs too.

Trade skills have been something that's made this player base slaver at the mouth for for as long as I've been playing. It's a topic that's raised at least twice a year, and has spawned many long threads about what the players want to see. This goes back to personalization options for characters, too. Making trade skills non-class/race/alignment specific, you offer Pat a way to make his merc different than Johnny and Sally's mercs, and to Pat that means it's a better merc that he's more interested in playing for longer. Moreover, having the trade skills dovetail into one another for the top-tier builds encourages more player interaction as well. This really should be a priority, maybe even above expanded LP options. I think it definitely deserves to be upgraded beyond "SURE."

I'm not sure about some of the categories: did you intend to include pieces on more global chat channels? If so, which category was it?

Sorry, that was the first thing I started to address and then I changed to a list format and apparently forgot to include it. I've edited my original post to include it but the answer is:

Global chat channels - NO

It's really one of the founding principals of SK. We advertise NO global chats as a distinguishing feature.

That's a valid point.

I notice that the only YES on the list is facebook clients, but I have reserved feelings on how delivering the exact same experience inside facebook would get you what you asked for in the OP.

I mean no negative nor trolling intentions, but I want to illustrate a point here before asking a question:

You've logged into facebook on your phone during a traffic jam on the bus.

Do you:



Or do you:



I'm all about the whole "entice people [including grep] to play more," but I fail to see how a facebook app would do that? Basically, I see the kind of games facebook apps are as games that don't really align with SK's design goals, either. Where's all the interest in facebook coming from? It seems like a design feature that would only achieve a larger target audience than any actual kind of "high-impact change." There would be no change at all, just more exposure?

This is so easy to handle, and you've already got the structure in place to do it. It's a huge, huge boon to the new and vet players of that other game as well.

New sub-forums for Classes (builds, guides, discussions), Quests (bugs, guides for rewards/level), Items (guides to acquiring), and Areas (bugs, guides, discussion). Keeping it here on these forums allows you (meaning the collective admin You) to monitor and trim inappropriate contributions. The restrictions on what should and should not be posted on the forums should be slackened as well to make these forums of actual use to new players looking to make the most of their experience in-game.

The OOC communication side is more likely a matter of transparency than anything else, but you've previously stated strong refusals to increase transparency to the pbase.

Facebook will give exposure. I play candy crush on my phone because I don't have the time to focus on the mud, and mobile mud clients are hard to run. At this point exposure is the best thing we could get.

Thanks for the response, D. If you have the time I wouldn't mind my shot at just making a brief case for two elements you noticed.


Exploits is a fitting term here, in my opinion. Any tactic that is very effective yet cannot be countered or prevented by its target (with anything but the most extreme of tactics) is hurtful to the game. I currently only feel that ethereal dispel and AoN fit into this arena. As for ethereal dispel from an MR sorcerer, there is literally nothing that 11 out of the 13 classes in the game that can do anything to prevent it, and the two remaining classes (bard and sorc) also don't have a lot that can truly endanger the ethereal MR sorcerer. There is a player who has made it his mission to never engage in combat that doesn't consist of him sitting ethereal as an MR Fist sorcerer and either spam casting dispel on his enemies with impunity or luring aggro NPCs to his enemies, both of which are very effective tactics. The thought of PvP with this person either on my side or on the opposing side makes me sick from a gameplay standpoint. I don't find a lot of enjoyment out of poking fish in a barrel with a stick.

For Aura of Negation, the mechanic itself is neat as a concept, but in practice being able to dispel 100% of an opponents buffs with a success rate that's anywhere near appreciable is extremely powerful. The difference between possessing on one hand possessing sanctuary, spirit aura, shield, armor, haste and giant strength, and on the other hand having no buffs and incurring fatigue to STR and DEX is the difference between being able to potentially endlessly tank damage if you have enough healing, and being one-rounded. It's like night and day. Aura of negation would be much more thematically suited, as well as balanced, if it worked like spirit aura in that it targeted everyone hitting the MR barb(like spirit horde), and only removed up to 1-2 buffs from each attacker when activated as opposed to having the potential to dispel the entire set of buffs from the target.

I would really prefer to go another step further. Ever since the enchant changes, innate enchantments on armor have become obscenely sought after because they're so powerful. Personally, I think that priests and sorcs should be able to put willpower enchants on armor, and they should stack like the innate enchantments do. That's just me though.

Along the same lines, I'm also still just not a fan of the most exotic weaponry in the game (That which deals half or full magic damage) dealing half to zero damage to MR barbs. It really is an insult to the players who are willing to dedicate the time to gather up those weapons. You're better off with an enchanted weapon from a main city store than with any of the weapons from the entire Nightmares Temple, which is one of the two most difficult and time-consuming places to go. I feel a lot of the people who would like to make end-game content more enjoyable: You're actually -punished- for going to those places instead of rewarded, because the weapons that come from these areas almost always include a magical attack or material if not both, and the armor generally doesn't come with innate saves, which is again, extremely coveted due to the inability to place your own saves on armor now.