People may have seen me post this before, but please bear with me... apparently, some people need a giant compendium.
A lot of people keep railing about how, in the bottom half of the level numbers, casters are too powerful. I disagree. I say casters are SUPPOSED to be powerful. The problem is, they are too NUMEROUS. If you consult most any volume of classic fantasy, be it Tolkien's rings or Conan novels (or in a stretch, movies), you will find they make magic users powerful enough to take out ARMIES. The trick is, there is maybe 1 magic adept for every 10000 people. But in a game like this, everybody and their cousin wants to be a magic user.. and woe be unto him who tries to tell those churning masses that they can't. (No magic? WTF!!) I had a working theory for a "numbers balance" system which is mere conjecture, it will never be put into practice because it's too much of a hassle, and frankly, I haven't thought it all the way through, so there's bound to be big bad problems inherent to it. I'll go into my system in a subsequent message, for those who are interested. But first, I think we can all agree on one thing: The looting/bindrushing/whatever system is SCREWED as it is... not to mention that the pit fights at my bachelor party pretty much ruined 3 or 4 of my factions ;)...
First, Looting. This kind of comes down to a "sliding bar" between "Realism (risk)" and "PVP Encouragement". Now, first of all, that slider can never get all the way to the left, because that would entail character deletion for death. A little farther from the left would be full looting, then on down the line all the way to the right, where no looting at all exists (like on the Test Server right now). A lot of people like and want realism and risk, but for the vast majority, this highly discourages large and small scale PVP once you start to get some nice equipment. After all, who wants to camp another tommy for 30 hours just because you decided to excercise a racial hatred to make the RP experience more enriching for everyone? This leads to the "PVP disappears after level 20" argument we've seen so much of.
Char Full Limited Verylim No
Del Looting Looting Looting Looting
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UO EQ
EQ is about around "Very limited" looting. You can't open bags. You can only take one item. But it's got problems. These problems stem from the fact that while the looting system SOUNDS even, spread across the board, it isn't. This stems from the fact that the classes are different enough to be affected differently by the looting system.
It works down to a simple equation. A class needs an object to be viable. For warrior types, it's weapons and armor. For caster types, it's spells. But while weapons and armor fall under the "tangible lootable things" list, apparently, spells have been chosen not to be tangible or lootable simply because you keep them in an apparently imaginary book instead of in a bag or worn on your person or held in your hand. Hence, the now almost overused term... Naked Mage Syndrome.
Many say the solution is obvious: Make spells lootable. It would even the playing field. But do you want to even the playing field by bulldozing down the high side, or filling in the low side? Some say that making worn equipment UNlootable would also level the playing field (by filling in and raising the low side rather then digging down the high side). Both these suggestions are true, but they both affect that slider up there. If you make worn/wielded items unlootable, the slider moves right.. make spells lootable, it slides left.
Some argue that making spells lootable is like trying to loot things like the monk's mend ability or the warrior's kick ability. But this is not the case, and is a flawed argument. The ability to mend or kick is not a spell, it is an ability, much like the caster ability to meditate or specialize. They enhance the character, but are not essential for effectiveness. Also, they are intangibles... so they should not be lootable. However, swords are tangible. Scribed spells are tangible. Whether you pry that BBC from the warrior's cold dead hand or tear out the combust spell from a fallen wizard's spellbook, it's the same. Taking a spell is like taking a weapon or piece of armor, not like taking an ability.
Back to the slider.
Some people argue that the farther to the right that the slider gets, the more it really DISCOURAGES pvp... this is another fallacy. It discourages people who PVP purely for loot. But it ENCOURAGES things like Roleplayed battles, encourages tournaments, and RP driven Wars and such. Plus, it means you can have your fun killing human opponents without you worrying about losing your spells or armor or whatnot, and the same goes for him... he will also fight back, rather than bagging his equipment and sitting down. It becomes more about good vs evil, individual vendettas and bragging rights, and gives greater allowance also for non-stop killing frag fests like that AG person claimed RZ would always be. It seems to me that this, given the inherent unrealism of the EQ game anyway, is a win-win situation. If you're going to claim that it isn't realistic that there is no looting, talk to me when you are ready to slide that slider all the way to the left. And that means making the spells lootable too, btw.. so you can be picked clean by buzzards and your corpse left to rot while you sigh and roll a new character...
That's just about all I have to say about that. |