Adjustment vs. Advancement

[Chakravanti]

Every starts with some 100 base stats. Capable of reaching, say, 200 peak.

Getting 200 would put every other stat at about 10. Now, I'm just pulling numbers out of my ass here it could very well be 3 or 500. The actual number is NOT important here, neither is the starting numbers. The important thing here is that based on what you eat, and how much of it, you can adjust your stats. It's not a matter of improving them sio much as achieving IMBA for spec toons (e.g. credos). Getting 200-300str requires sacrificing other stats. If you want con too, you'll never be able to achieve str so high. COmbined with some combat skills that force players to be locked in combat this make tank units viable, Hardliner beseker characters. etc.

This would in fact, make direct buffs to stats by credos meaningful. Make Character permadeath meaningful. NOT make starting a %25 char feel completely worthless.

Given all of this, it might not seem so unreasonable to give us a method for mass consumption of FEPs.

Naturally, Palisades and brick walls would need to be rebalanced to reflect whatever base, ratio of development, etc.

Some might be worried that this breaks one directly into late game content and would skip the wilderness survival aspect of the game. Truly this is more a matter of finding food and reworking combat and HP could be factored off of this system. HP being 1/4 or 1/2 con would easily put us into the margin of more manageable numbers. meaning a character with 300 con probably doesn't have much ability to dodge (AGI or whatever) or to hit (Dex) or damage (str) but he's probably stacked with armor anyway and can take a seriously hardcore hit even from major weapons. He's probably got a skill that forces whatever enemy that's attacking....to attack him. Force them to engage in combat with him somehow. Almost every PvP tank unit has some skill like this. Often it's either a skill by the tank unit or a spell by a supporting unit: roots, stuns, etc. or a natural game mechanics (ZoC, wesnoth).

-----------

Variation: Adjustment + Advancement

I can hear people shrieking altpoclypse already. It's a simple matter of using a system standard advancement by setting several in game tasks to allow a character to 'grow up' from creation to the 'standard' I mention above. Choosing a credo would not be something that's done from any menu but a matter of which tasks you preform to advance.

Abstracted, every character begins as a pre-teen. Certain basic tasks would be preformed to advance your character. For example, building a log cabin, hunting a boar, etc. (low level tasks), or building a mine, crafting jewlry (mid level), or PKing (High level). These tasks would reflect the particular IMBA 'credo' or whatever that a player is trying to achieve and obviously progress in difficulty. It would also mean that a new player must invest the almost same amount of time as a player in a huge village. E.g. it's not a matter of just sucking down several cupboards of str food and slapping on a thanes and armor/weap ons and hunting for a day.

Some might argue that this standardizes character development and removes the sandbox aspect from the game but I would argue that the opposite is in fact true. Combined with a list of a dozen or so tasks a character may choose to preform, each which will advance a character uniquely between each stage of development to achieve a certain IMBA. The purpose here is that this teen-trial sort of ordeal gives a player a chance to achieve a particular IMBA more quickly than simply scarfing down a shitton of food. In fact, Scarfing down a shitton of food, while possible even for an optimally developed IMBA will not provide significant returns.

obviously specific tasks would need careful consideration. THe purpose here is to encourage IMBA over standard balanced development because the former is so significantly easier and the latter is significantly less effective. You need a ranger type to forage and track. You need a rogue type to assasinate or steal.

It also seems to me that singular tasks may be too insignificant to make for advancement. It could be a combination of tasks. Which would be even more epic and reflect more diversity beceause at each level there could be dozens of tasks to choose from each affecting the resultant character development where a player has to choose 2-5 tasks from thsoe available and depending on what they are they figure into an algorithm that determines the advancement.

I think this has a lot of potential to have lore attached to it by making them rituals of manhood/womanhood involved. It also makes sense to me that there should be disparity between genders, in that they should have some moderate affect on character development. Neither is 'better' but depending on the desired end result one might find them better suited for certain character types.

------

Keep continual advancement

Just remove it from players. Things that should be continually developed should be items and village constructs. Minimize player development to a series of choices and prevent altpoloclypse by making characters desire to invest into their village by continually upgrading their walls, ovens, weapons/armor, etc. This makes community and village development more important than individual character development. Brings the focus to resources rather than character. Gives us motivation to defend our village from raiders. Combined with AW for a quicker way to develop back into the anscestor that died, makes permadeath just insignificant enough to risk defending the town but not completely meaningless. Getting back to where you died can be a matter of just sacrificing X numen. Lets say there is a 10 level system to standard advancement. Each level requires 10 numen. Meaning to get back your fully developed anscestor you must spend 100 numen. No small task there and it may be easier to spend 60 or 70 numen and finish the last tasks oneself. Maybe.

ANyways, it's an abstract idea proposed as an alternative to the insae level of character investment the current system holds.

[Jackard]

[warrri]

Why are you so desperately trying to sap our dominant position. You(by you i mean all your friends, basically the Xanadu/Cop faction) are the only ones that repitetively keep nagging on this issue, no one else cares.

And what the heck are you trying to accomplish with this idea of a tank class in every single recent suggestion. This is no fucking WoW or w/e. We don't need fighting classes where you choose if you want to be the tank, the healer or the range or melee damage dealer.

So i have to quote Jackards location here!

[Jackard]

women should get +20% cooking and sewing they just have a natural aptitude for it

[Potjeh]

No, all the world's best chefs are men. Women should be inferior at everything, but they should have a charm spell that makes you lose control of your male character.

[Jackard]

No, all the world's best chefs are men. Women should be inferior at everything.

no they're pretty good at kneeling

[Chakravanti]

Why are you so desperately trying to sap our dominant position.

I'm not. First of all, I appreciate what you guys have done for PvP by pointing out game balance flaws. Furthermore credos have been promised in some incarnation or another. Third, any game with interesting PvP has diversity. WIthout diversity you only have Stat v. Stat which is pretty fucking boring.

You have your position because you have a lot of active players. Any change to the system will not affect that unless players quit or leave your community. Furthermore, no one is suggesting anything WoW-like.

[Sever]

If I'm understanding this correctly, there would have to be a balance line for a certain amount of time investment between players who play and hour a week and those who play 8 hours a day. The extremes would be lopsided because someone who invests a little time in the game can presumably progress in one task rather quickly, but someone who invests a lot of time is going to get squeezed into their niches in no time. If they're spending more time on a variety of things, I think they should have the option of being better at each of them without resorting to alts.

I think, much like the new combat system is supposed to do, that each hearthlings ability should be limited in such a way that further advancement in a single area slows down greatly at higher levels; a person can only be so strong, or so dextrous or so hardy. It could still be possible to reach a sort of 'legendary strength' state with great effort, though.

[Onionfighter]

I like being able to do anything. If I had to choose between, say, farming or fighting, or doing both badly, I would have quit long ago. In my opinion, there already is as much specialization as there needs to be, and the vast majority of threads suggesting ways of promoting specialization would make the game less fun. (Credos, as suggested by Jorb, would be an exception.)

[burgingham]

I like being able to do anything. If I had to choose between, say, farming or fighting, or doing both badly, I would have quit long ago. In my opinion, there already is as much specialization as there needs to be, and the vast majority of threads suggesting ways of promoting specialization would make the game less fun. (Credos, as suggested by Jorb, would be an exception.)

I absolutely agree here. When you have a closer look at every big and sucsessful town in game, you will see that there is a huge variety of crafters who all are specialized in one or two fields to achieve the best possible work for the whole town.