Shattered Kingdoms

Less than 48 hours and already almost 8 pages of discussion!

I rolled Utautho because I did not see any darkie priests and I felt like that was limiting to those who wanted to play dark aura characters. I prefer playing darkies tbh, I feel as though they have significantly more room for RP and subtly of character than lighties do for me. But maybe I am really just a twisted little weirdo inside and that rp calls to me.

With that said, I love that Ayamao and the NW are open for immigration because it reopens those doors for RP. Utautho has RP'd being from the North since day one of rolling her. I even sat and mastered Aghelian before leaving the academy so I could pull it off when meeting people. I think not having those spaces open limits what players feel like they can reasonably roll.

The game is very lightie heavy at the moment, and I have not been back long enough to see if it waffles, or if it has just been a lightie fest for a while.

For those who are discussing changes to gear and areas, what sort of benefits do you see to those things if PVP is not heavily favored among players atm? I am not disagreeing with you, I am just asking how you see that helping the darkie cause because I've never been big on PVP or loot so I genuinely do not know.

What sort of RP do you see being helpful to give the darkies something aside from a power grab? I have personally never really played the power grab style darkie myself, I tend to prefer the quiet corruption. The notion that they are in the right and turning people to their cause. Are there things that the darkies would like to start that could use Imm support from a building/RP sense?

I've been thinking about darkie RP for a while, since Algorab was like "people always try to play darkies as power-hungry monsters or soldiers or whatever" but i'm definitely someone who would love to play like... a chill darkie character. THe problem is that it's still hard to get stuff done, find friends, go on PVE, bc lighties kill you on sight and you simply don't have the means to defend yourself, even with tribunal/cabal spells. What about just like, personally wealthy greedy people? Lackeys? temptresses?

I think maybe the empire could install a "puppet government" in the north to take over uncontrolled chaos. maybe then they don't have enough funding for like, full city stuff. the end RP would just be... the reinstallation of old NPCs and maybe a couple of wandering legionnaires or emissaries from the empire. Maybe the empire has found a mine of coal or diamonds or platinum or something they want to steal from somewhere in aghelia. i mean, the empire always trying to take over places but never the north ??

A pretty common complaint about darkies is that they have few options outside of the Empire. I'm sorry, but I loathe the idea of their expansion. Maybe this exploitation of Northern resources idea could be an RP that would be a catalyst for the tribes to get their [REDACTED] together to fend the Empire off, but I'm gonna say hard no to the old NPCs plus Imperials.

Might as well remove them altogether then. Would you ever fight with a weapon made of dragonscale or leather? Plus, like you said, you gain acc (that you would already have from a weapon) but you lose all the possible AC and AP you'd get from a shield plus a good deal of MP that you lose from the gloves that you can no longer wear. I'd say it's a fair trade.

Right now as it is, the good ones are about 5. Add to that a couple that are most of the time lost to inactive players, then you have about 3-4 items some of which are endgame items.

To Utautho's point, I would state for my goal - there should be an underpinning of even-ish footing for PVP so that its threat doesn't go anywhere and players across sides lose the kind of 'oh that's cute, little buddy' vibe if someone makes threats. I think getting things a bit more level would be enough. It's kind of empty to RP some evil tropes without the ability to back it up in any threatening way. I think Crucible is so underpowered or nebulous in its purpose and doesn't work for something like 5 classes, whereas the kinda coin-flip side of them in the FIST is only absolutely useless(ish) for sorcs, and even then not entirely. I'm okay dumping gear on Crucible to make them appealing.

I try to model the change I want to see in the (SK) world. I try to support the RP that would be enticing, but it takes a critical mass of willing/interesting RP + game knowledge to help break leveling + feel like you're not losing opportunity cost by playing on a side that's weaker + ability to set yourself up to be risk-averse if you want to (via being able to hold your own in PVP and have a crew) + enough people to do 'end game' content.

We're missing a few aspects of that, and I think we can address the risk-aversion and opportunity cost with ideas in this thread.

As far as the area thing - I agree there needs to be a home for bat#$&* crazy cultists and tribes and the Empire isn't it. I think the current Empire could likely support settling the uncertainty in whatever way the north sees fit to help create easier silos to conquer later when everything else is done. I do like the idea of Ayamao being an unsettled tension between eco-terrorists and fae, and the NW being an unsettled tension between blood cults and the tribes. I think the unsettled tension would promote a "we'll agree on 'high murder' being a law and that's about it, the rest is in negotiations' or something like that but know that's not practical.



To get access to the most powerful all-attack parry (inc. arrow) in the game to stack with dodge, a formation breaker skill that doesn't have a resist attached to it (in a world where bash now does), the ability to destroy any enemy's gear, and unparryable attacks that have an additional enhanced damage put on them (unlike any other weapon in the game) - that you can now enchant enough with acc to also not get dodged?

The fair trade was ki straps existing, because in the pre-ki-strap, post-weapon-subtype world the inability to enchant your fists made them soft in the inflation of weapon stats. Accuracy runes are enough to fix that softness. Dragonscale would be enough and you 100% bet your backside they'd be used, it's just everyone's context has been realigned to just default expect fist to be OP. I was one of the most vocal advocates to put them in the game as Ithorim, and I still advocate for their existence - but we have an entire game to think about. It's absolutely mind-blowing to me that people are so accustomed to ki straps existing that the bar for conversation has been set so far away from that as a starting position. Old AF apparently. Even without them you're ruining a lot of people's days, it just didn't scale into end-game without enchants.

Special attack types are absolutely bananas and it shows time and again - who else gets extra enhanced damage post-nerf, let alone the chance to stack that extra buff with overpowered damage types? Someone's been sleeping at the gates of item balance. There should be 0 'end-game' ki-straps (I think I define that as special attack type), as the entire skillset is end game. I can be moved off the mountain of material type, but it'd take an irresistable [insert name of secret room movement skill here]

edit: wanted to qualify this with the fact I'm not trying to completely dunk on something to kill it, I like the 'buff everyone' approach - but it doesn't make reasonable sense to raise every cabal up to the standard something like fist sets so some part of the peak has to come down. this change would absolutely not prevent the cabal's ability to steamroll endgame content.

Ever wondered while most fists are not griffons? Ki straps takes fists skills to a new level, where other factions cannot compete. I figured making them leather would at least give people the chance to use magical vestments to use them. But really they should all be removed except one pair for their special cabal loot like every other cabal gets. Even if it still doesn't compare to the knot or midnight pike.

Also for builders:

I would recommend changing the soul piercer to a darky only kama, curved dagger is not good.

Also, rework pain stick and the psi rod to now have greater magic resistance on them and instead accuracy or another useful innate.

Change Dianambis' suit to energy.

Change the shield and weapon of cowled figures to not be death rot in Krychire.

To be fair, griffons are low in numbers no matter the class/cabal combo.

And besides, you feel that removing ki straps or nerfing them or whatever will balance things out for the darkies?

Oh and in full disclosure (as if it were not obvious) I do currently play a fist.

It's not just about balancing darkies, it's balancing fists vs the rest of the cabals. Their skill set is 100% useful vice every other cabal that is good to meh. Even a sorc can polymorph into a dragon and provide significant meelee help. And since coding changes won't happen this can be done via builders removing or changing ki straps. I know it will make fists less elite, but that is the point. They need to be knocked down a peg. I also believe even without ki straps, fists are still better than every other faction. Just not as good as they are now.

Bringing up the AC loss of not having a shield equipped feels like a bit of a disingenuous point, imo, when the benefit for using ki straps instead of a shield is basically "you literally never ever get hit by anything".

The problem is that originally there was no "gg no re" tier of ki straps.

Now there's like 7 of them? Acid straps, golden straps, spirit straps, lightning straps, radiant whatever straps, some mithril pair with a magical attack, and idk what else. I'm sure there's some that the people who actually play fists know about that I don't.

The spirit ki straps in particular seem like actually a severe level of power creep (when you remember the special trait that comes with spirit damage, you get to completely ignore spirit aura on your opponents), not sure how adding those into the game was considered reasonable, especially when there is not anything even remotely close to that tier of power for darkie-only items from the same RNG drop pool that I've ever seen. I mean, I don't know everything about the game, but I feel like I'd have heard about it.

I'm not sure why an item of that tier exists for a cabal-specific item, especially when the other factions don't have anything close to that.

When I played my cloth armor Fist priestess some 4 or 5 years ago, I could literally put her in the front row for DPS vs Somnium, vs the Frozen Wastes, etc.

Mind you, I'm not really advocating for nerfs (I mean, we don't have a coder anwyays). I am just wondering where this tier of building is at for everybody else.

Honestly, I am thinking a good builder way to look at this is to consider ki straps exactly what they are. A cabal specific item. These items literally can't be used by anybody that isn't a Fist.

Which means I think we're ready to see 15 MC/Crucible/Druid/Harlie/Hammer only items get added to the game too.

I'm not sure why the Fist appears to be the only cabal that has gotten any love in the past half a decade. And I think it's hard to argue that point when you can look at the game and see how prevalent the Fist has been for the past few years.

Double post because, hey, I know we all don't want to sit around and talk about "well we need stuff to make our characters more mechanically strong" because sure, that's not what the game is all about.

But then you look at where the heaviest concentration of players has been for the past however long and....

It's in the Fist, the most mechanically strong (by far) and seemingly builder-focused faction.

The feeling of character power and cool [REDACTED] goes a long way, in my experience.