Shattered Kingdoms

I enjoy pain lets make getting to mentor hard as hell so master is the new GM!

I always make alts four months before I plan to delete a character. Not because I enjoy it or need to have distraction from my main, but simply because I am absolutely horrid at leveling. It is a strategy I can wholeheartedly recommend, though far from optimal.

I agree that making leveling harder is a bad thing, I do however think that you put way too much stock into the obviously twinkish methods of luring NPCs out where they can't get you.

I lollered. I suck so horridly at levelling. I was like a crack addict needing a fix when the bonanza bonus stopped.

At least you got the goods for a while. I barely got a taste.

Yeah, managed to leech off it til Expert. Sooo worth it.

This thread makes me happy, and this quote is why.

There are other ways to go about toning down twinkish levelling. In my opinion, give GM or champion levels age / hour requirements. If certain character is under age XXX, then theres no way they could be experienced enough to be of that rank. This creates too many child prodigies running around anyways.

As for AoE levelling, it's a legitimate strategy. It's used in many games, and if you can use the terrain to your advantage and exploit a weakness against a NPC, it's a legitimate strategy. It's basically saying that before centaurs had bardings, you couldn't aim lower vs them because it's not fair. They cant defend themselves. It's something that's hard coded into the game, so it should be legit.

Although SK is still infinitely easier to level in compared to most games I've played, it's very boring to level. Pair that with the difficulty of patrols vs extended times spent in lawful areas, and well this kinda screwss over darkies and some greys. From my experiences playing, you get NO respect generally until you can atleast defend yourself, and that's around mentor level because A. Level thieves wt fpwn your gear until then. and B. your skills available to you are generally all, if not mostly accessible. This of course, is common sense though.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you don't want the game to "start at mentor" then stop making levelling harder and find a way to make GM / Champion status actually valuable. Apparently, the armors you can wear at these levels are a big boon, so they shouldn't be able to be rushed to in a week, no matter how easy / hard levelling is.

I vote take this code out and put in a age OR hour requirement for Champion. Again, it only makes sense. It limits twinkery and child prodigy and powerlevelling all in one blow. Boom, problem solved. Just not sure how hard it would be to code. No matter how hard you make levellings it's the newbies who suffer. Think of that. Compared to people who have played for years, my knowledge of the game is very minimal. They go out, they GM in like 80 - 200 hours where as it takes me AGES. If you're so against it, find a way to limit it without hurting the newbies (who have it rough enough already. No offense but SK is NOT the most newbie friendly game..).

I'd agree with your opinion, if the change I'd made was to make NPCs invincible when you get them in a helpless situation. That's not the change I made. You can still kill them and you can even reap some reward by looting them of equipment. However, I do not feel that standing around, yawning, and throwing fireballs at effectively immobile targets constitutes a "learning experience". But please do feel free to throw your fireballs at the start of a fight and then have your elemental and group mates bear the brunt of the damage afterward while you learn from dodging enemy attacks and using your spells in a more engaging fashion.

A clever combatant, with the right allies, can still keep a group of NPCs at bay while slamming them with assorted attacks.

I find a bit of fault with this. You throw a fireball into a group, you learn something. You see how effective your magic is against them. You do it again and compare the damage done. Once again, it is a learning experience. So, you do it a third time, once more learning. Even if it is half experience than normal of if you have to stand there and get beaten senseless over and over, which you should get half exp for because you are helpless against your own stupidity, you are still learning something by doing. Your character is learning by doing, even if the player is yawning. If the people in question aren't smart enough to move, you are still learning. If it is being worked on that helpless NPCs leave when taking damage but unable to fight back, that is great, I am all for it.