Dark Legacy MUD Forum

Note - I deliberately left this as a non-voting topic. If you want a say about it, post your opinion and the logic behind it.

As it stands, being epic level 500 won't get you in the top 10 on highscore epic anymore, and we have one character already more than twice this level, yet crafted equipment remains capped at e500. Most players don't have any e500 gear anyways, the vast majority of jewellery is below e300 and weapons and armor rarely exceed e400. Epic mobs beyond e500 get stronger with each level, and yield less xp with each level, but your equipment is capped at a maximum of e500, and in practice it is limited to e400. This discourages players from taking advantage of the limitless levelling system in Dark Legacy and makes gameplay rather stagnant at high epic levels.

Simply uncapping the crafting level won't do any good, as the difficulty of crafting rises exponentially with level; the current crafting system wasn't intended to scale even to epic level 500. Epic level 500 equipment is either impossible or insanely difficult to make without a godforge, and anything higher than that is even worse.

I have a possible solution to this problem; I've been thinking about it for a while and presented it to a few of the crafters in the game. While support for it wasn't overwhelming, it received generally positive responses. It goes thus:

Increase the cost of an initial forge attempt for each epic level of the item being attempted. This could be a linear increase of x ingots per level, or it could be a doubling/tripling/whatever per x levels. Cap the chance of success on each roll at the current success chances for level 50, or at some other reasonable rate. Increase the cost of reforge for each epic level of the item being crafted, possibly by one ingot per epic level. Jewellery can either raise in ingot cost, gem cost, both, or stay capped at e500. Non-metal crafts aren't my area of expertiese, but I'm sure Eventine can come up with a suitable solution for wood and Ocardus can come up with one for silk/cloth. I don't know who uses any other materials regularly.

This would have the effect of making gear of any level craftable, though it would take a lot of effort to craft items in the thousands of epic levels, to say nothing of the difficulty getting a character to those levels to use the item. This would encourage players to epic and make high-level play more competitive and fun. It would also create a continuous demand for new crafted equipment, though it would also create an excess of lower-level gear as it was abandoned for new, higher-epic-level gear. It also makes gear of "good" metals harder to create than bronze gear; so that making a bronze sword doesn't automatically give you a mitrill, adamantite, or meteorite sword. Crafting would be a balance of gathering bronze and higher level metals, instead of a crapshoot with tons of bronze followed by 156 ingots of a good metal.

For example, if the ingot cost per attempt and per reforge increased by one per epic level, and success rate for an MP was 10%:

an epic level 1 sword would take an average of 290 bronze and 157 ingots of whatever metal you ultimately want the sword to be.

an epic level 500 sword would take an average of 6280 bronze and 656 of whatever metal you ultimately want the sword to be.

an epic level 1000 sword would take an average of 10280 bronze and 1156 of whatever metal you want the sword to be.

an epic level 2000 sword would take an average of 20280 bronze and 2156 of whatever metal you want the sword to be.

These figures are just examples, and the actual values can be any number deemed appropriate.

I would like to point out that while this makes epic level 500 items, which are currently "uber" and "ultimate", much easier to craft, those items are not intended to be the ultimate gear ever possible to make. DL's levelling system is open-ended, and as time passes "high level" is redifined; already e500 is only "mid level". High-epic-level characters will have access to much more poweful gear than they have now, but their opponents will be similarly powerful, be they players or mobs. Epic mobs already scale with epic level, and immortals can design supermobs to be however powerful they want. Other players, of course, will also have access to high-level gear. This also allows players to get powerful gear without having access to emeralite or being lucky enough to find a godforge; if you can't get emeralite or a godforge, just hit the epics, level up, and make yourself some gear higher than whatever emeralite/godforged items your opponent has.

Many of you that have debated this issue have taken the point of view that Torrim, among others, just want to make characters even MORE overpowered than they already are.
While i understand your viewpoint, i believe you are mainly thinking in terms of pvp only, and let's face it, with the exception of Torrim, whom i believe can own anyone in pvp, with any of his chars, for the rest of us mere portal pkers, level already equates to dominance in pvp, though certain race/class combinations *do* allow a lower level char to dominate someone 200 levels higher than them. In most cases it comes down to who's better equipped, and that will almost always be the higher levelled character, and why is that wrong? They worked very hard to get to their level, AND to craft gear of their level.
Having epicced Torrim's level epics, on HIS character, i can offer a point of view on this no one other than Torrim himself can.
The increasing difficulty of the mobs you are fighting at e1000+, far FAR outweighs the capabilities of e400 to e500 eq to compensate for.
Currently, without using a godforge, i don't know of anyone that has successfully made anything e500, though i have heard a rumor of it happening, i know that a group of us tried for more than a MONTH, using more than a MILLION bronze ingots, and never got 1 mp e500 sword.
The exp gained from e1000 mobs is simply not worth the time it takes to kill them, unless you have a very strong group it just takes too much time to kill one mob.

Am i saying that e1000 epics are too hard? No, but i am saying that if e1000 is that hard and that slow, by the time you get to e1200 or maybe 1300, it's going to take so ridicuously long to get a single level, that players simply won't bother anymore, and the game will stagnate.

Everyone likes to belittle Torrim's accomplishments because of his eq, or his complexities, thinking that those are all he needs to handle mobs of his level. Those who think this way are misinformed, and living in a fantasy world. As i said, i have epicced the character Torrim myself, in fact i did quite a bit of epiccing as Torrim, soloing mostly because that's my style, and that was a couple hundred levels lower than his current level, and even then, it wasn't easy.

Currently, here's an example of what it takes for him to even *attempt* to improve his eq, read this, think about it, and ask yourself this..."Would *I* be willing to make a deal like this knowing that the odds of succeeding were very slim?"
Yesterday, Torrim asked me if i would attempt to make a BD ring for him, we debated for a while what level to try for, and decided on e300, to get the amount of BD and meteorite we used in the attempt, he traded 2 surps, and 1.5 mil in gold, and in the end got nothing for his efforts.
Anyone else out there think they'd be willing to make a deal like that with no guarantee, and even little hope of success? I doubt it, but this is the ONLY way he can currently be more powerful than he is.

Basically, if the cap on crafted eq remains at e500, what we are saying is "ok, i know you take a size 42 jacket, but i'm sorry, you're going to have to wear this size 20 for the rest of your life...enjoy".

If that happens, you will see players get to the point where it becomes impossible to go any further due to eq level restrictions, and they will become frustrated and find something else to play, and others that SEE this happen, will say "wow, i'm not even gonna bother wasting all that time just to have that happen to me", and they will find something else to play. And let's face it, our pbase is pretty small already, we can't afford for it to be any smaller.

Also note that I currently have the best gear of anyone in the game, and it's likely that in the current crafting system no one will get gear better than mine any time soon or possibly ever.

I also have the highest epic level of anyone, so players NOT being encouraged to epic leaves me on top of the pile.

I stand to lose the most, gear-wise, from crafting being uncapped. Yes, I can then get e1000 gear, but I already HAVE "uber" gear and with this change, other players can >e500 gear too and will eventualy get e1000 gear like mine. My mid-epic level emeralite gear and my epic level 500 godforged blue diamond ring that I recently purchased at great expense would no longer be "uber" like they are now. I do NOT stand to personally gain from this change going in; my reward is that I will hopefully have some competition for epic levels, gear, and dueling.

In the current system, I get to be the "ultimate" character without lifting a finger beyond what I've done already. With this, and some other changes that I will put up after this goes in, I will either have to work to keep this status or lose it to another player.

My suggestion for crafting is not to scale it like Torrim suggests but, rather, to to change the formulas involved and uncap it.

First of all, I suggest using a formula in which the current amount of espace on an e500 is on either an e750 or e1000. This will weaken new crafted equipment initially, but the problem in levelling is not at the lower end of the spectrum so this will not have any serious adverse effects. Past e1500 or so, this formula should have diminishing, but not non-existant returns. I would imagine that the difference between e1 and e1000 (slightly stronger than the current e500 equipment) would be the same as the difference between e1000 and e5000. This means that it would still be worth it to upgrade equipment over time, but not completely essential. It also serves to balance medium epic players and high epic players in terms of equipment. This recenterring will initially weaken new crafted equipment for all but the highest epiccers. This gives more reason to epic and achieve the ability to use equipment past the current cap. It also encourages greater use of mob equipment on the low end and opens the ability for viable use of mob equipment later on.

Obviously, it would seem a bit odd for a level 1 crafter to be crafting e5000 equipment, so I suggest a system in which crafting becomes easier as you level. I would imagine that trying to craft equipment more than a couple hundred epic levels above your current level would, while not completely impossble, would be very difficult. It will be argued that a crafter who worked to achieve 100% mastery should be able to craft as well as any other who achieved the same thing, but this is not true. While initially getting your crafting skill up to 100% is the mastery of creating cuirasses in much the same way anyone else creates them (and thus up to a reasonable level...maybe e250), the personal experience gained by levelling gives you the ability to improve on designs and make them better than what your average crafter could do. This serves to motivate crafters to level their crafting alts if they wish to make high end equipment, while not forcing them to if they only wish to create items for low end epiccers.

The other possibility is to take an idea which Isabelle suggested. This idea is to have crafting quests, the mechanics of which I will not broach. As you complete quests, you gain the ability to craft higher level equipment, assumedly by either being taught by legendary smiths or by being divinely inspired by the deities.

Well, I feel it is time to put my viewpoint in on the subject.

Quite bluntly, I feel that any increase in max crafting level, especially in conjunction with making it easier to craft like Nuitari's system, will be horrible for DL as a game. It essentially completely turns it into a textual version of diablo 2 with no level cap, and equipment that just keeps getting better. Thats that.

There are certain aspects to a MUD that I enjoy, but that DL seriously lacks. The central aspect to all of this is good storytelling and challenging areas balanced towards players. The main reason where there is not a lot of this currently is because of the huge variance in players. The gap right now is massive, but it has something going for it in the fact that people are nearing the shadows of the wall of the crafting system.

Why is a wall in crafting a good thing? Because it puts a cap on how much you can infinitly grind for very large bonuses. If you have no wall, then nobody ever has to care about anything, except maybe some mundane trick being used against them, which will of course later be assimilated and immunized against regardless. Without a wall, theres no hard line of what to design an area around. You could argue that areas could be made for specific level ranges, but that would only open your area for small ranges of players in specific points of their life. Exactly the same as non-epic areas are viewed as now. Just a curiosity, to level, or collect mobile equipment, and then just largely ignore.

Nothing ever truly significant can happen in a game for the story, theme, roleplaying, you name it, when people can level to infinity for huge bonuses. Even if it was made difficult and time consuming, it simply doesn't matter. When that power limit is gone, so goes any semblence of teamwork. Right now, epics are already effectively infinite. Nuitari, despite what he says, is not even nearing the halfway point of the /theoretical/ limits of how far the crafting system can take you. And this is especially a moot point considering that it has already been expressed by the immortals that quests and new areas could offer rewards passed what the current crafting system can get you.

And that is fine with me, as long as that too, is not unlimited and crazy. There comes a time to choose what to make Dark-Legacy into as a game, as in what kind of direction you, Celeborn, want it to take.

An unlimited crafting system is a PvP/competitve haven to established players. It is, however, going to be incredibly difficult to increase the playerbase of DL when there is this massive intimidating gap. The gap that is there right now is already frightfully large.

A system where the crafting is capped means that there is a boundary that can only be surpassed by teamwork. I am not referring to epics here, but teamwork in areas, and just overall effectiveness. Epics will always get you that extra edge, in the form of 1 complexity per 30 levels. More if you get a magic bonus. You could argue that these bonuses are a smaller and smaller percentage of the whole the farther you get, but the fact of the matter is, it's one more fec, or one more dur, than the next guy. And that's all that matters.

I invision Dark-Legacy slowly transforming into a game where there can be meaningful areas at the end, that take teamwork, time, effort, and thinking to get through, rather than just blugeoning through all that by just heading back into epics and getting yet stronger equipment.

To quote Richard Dawkins:
"When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong."

There is no halfway here. Raising the cap is not going halfway, it will just increase the amount of take it takes for a meaningful amount of players to reach the wall. It's the same as the opposite side. So yes, please Celeborn. Embrace one side or the other.

And this doesn't mean anything for the decision making process, but I'll say it anyway. Anything like this going in would personally be my last straw for Dark-Legacy. At some point the grinding needs to end and the story needs to begin. I cannot continue to play in a MUD where the sole purpose is to grind.

And please, nobody try to debate me about this. I will not waver in these ideals, and if any of you read through this and is still not convinced, then theres nothing else I can say to you on the subject, either.

As I've told you already, increasing the crafting level does not proclaim doom on the fun of DL, kill creativity, turn the entire game into a grind, destroy 1/3 of our crops, or kill our firstborn children. An infinite levelling system does not prevent the game from having theme, story, or good epic areas. If you don't like "grinders", don't play with them and don't design your areas for them. Just because you don't like the epicing aspect of the game doesn't mean no one else should be able to.

Celeborn seems to have already decided to make DL open-ended: we have infinite epic levels and complexities were recently made to increase with epic levels, showing some support for epic levelling.

I know that a lot of your oposition comes from the fact that you already have the best possible weapons in the game and the level required to use them - raising the crafting level would force you to epic more and render your godly swords un-godly. You said as much in our ooc and MSN discussions already. That is a valid concern - IF crafting is uncapped, existing godforged items should receive a reasonable level bonus, brining them to the "high level" point of the next patch(which would probably be considered about e1000). (To everyone other than Weems: I've said from the start that if crafting levels are raised godforged items, especially Weems' unenchanted godforged swords which he has never used, should be increased in level so as to avoid devaluing godforges found before the change. As only a few godforges have been found, this shouldn't be too hard.)

If you want to play a game with finite levels, where everyone has the same gear and levels and "tricks" are the only thing that matter, go play another game. There are plenty of games out there with finite levels, including diablo 2, that offer the kind of gameplay you seem to want. That kind of gameplay DOES have merit, but I don't think we should sacrifice DL's unique infinite levelling system just to make another game like every other game out there.

I might value your opinion more highly if you weren't in a position to benefit immensely from the crafting level remaining capped. Epic up to e1500(if you even can with a max of e500 gear) and possibly get rid of your pair of the best swords in the game under the current system, then see if your opinion on uncapping the crafting level stays the same.

Before you say that my opinion doesn't matter because I stand to benefit from levelling being uncapped, read my second post. I *DO* benefit, in much the same way you do, from level remaining capped. I have more "uber" equipment than you do, plus raising the crafting level will make epicing easier and devalue the epic level's I've already gained. I benefit from crafting NOT being uncapped, but I still acknowledge that it is the best course for DL.

No. I have no problem with all my equipment being scrapped for the better of the MUD. I will not throw accusations at you over how this could potentially benefit you or, or whatever. I have propsed many things in the past that would personally hurt me in comparison with other people. I will not stand for **** accusations like this, especially when I have already told you, and EVERYBODY on the MUD, that I would happily delete my swords if it killed all other current and future godforges. I don't care if people catch up with me in the game, either through equipment, levels, whatever. In fact, I will help them.

The rest of what you said, I will ignore, out of respect for you perhaps missing this part of my post:

No one wants anyone to debate with them; we would ALL be happy if our ideas were simply agreed with. Posting a controversial opinion on a public forum and telling people not to debate with you is like punching someone in the face and telling them not to hit you back. If you don't want to be in a debate, don't start one(which is what your post was, debating my idea)

As for the swords - that isn't an insult or a/an "**** accusation", it's a simple statement of fact: you have already admitted as much in previous conversations. Anyone in your situation would want their e500 godforged emeralite swords to remain the ultimate weapons in the game.

No, I didn't start a debate, I simply stated my opinion on the subject, hoping that it would be respected for what it is. You want to know who gains the most personally from an uncapped crafting system, right now? Me. Simple as that. Why would I benefit so much? Because of my mining skills. The mines will, eventually, be fixed. And that combined with an uncapped leveling system, would give me a simply massive headstart on everybody else. And yet I still don't want it to happen. As it stands, my equipment will only get worse compared to other peoples in time, and I am fine with that.

I am rather mixed, on one hand players need equipment that can support their level so they can enjoy increasing in the epics.

On the other hand I agree with weems, it's dangerously close to becoming a hack and slash game. ESPECIALLY with no more equipment scrapping.

My compromise- increase the cap, decrease the difficulty, bring back eq loss. It would also help protect against stockpiles of eq, and give people something else to spend their gold on.

Thinking more on this I have come up with other solutions:

Cap the mobs at a comfortably hard level where it takes days to level, or just make it so eventually it becomes more worthwhile to wear epic mob eq. By this I mean make them drop armor as well as weapons. And have them have a % chance of dropping a masterpiece one of their epic level. I'm thinking .001% chance. 5% chance of high quality and 94.999% chance of normal.

i like avestifal's idea, as long as the weapons and armor wernt TOO powerful, and it took glory to enchant them it shouldnt be too much of a problem.

What is wrong with Cele's old idea of giving everyone who crafts the ability to make something at like e300 and then everyone being able to purchase or train a higher level of eq 1 level at a time.

In reality this really only boosts power every 8 levels. But regardless it'd be a way to make process.

I didnt read everyone's reply but i've read torrim's initial note.
I think that torrim's idea will push the mud toward a pvp arena. There will be a point where no pncs can be adjusted because making them stronger would only balance the ubber players leaving a hug population of the mud too weak to do anything. If we were to choose not to tweak the monsters, the few super high lvl characeters will play God. Maybe there's nothing wrong with people playing god if they worked hard for it.

here's an idea of mine(i thought of this without much consideration):
remove the lvl of gears cap. Change the "unsucess" rate of crafting items from an exponential growth function to a linear growth function. The catch is that the requirement to make the items are no longer linear as the way how it is currently. Intead, the cost to make items grows exponentially. What does this mean?

This will remove rediculous caps
this will extend the possibility of getting better equ but at a higher price. Since this price grows exponentially, the limit will be decided by the players. At some point, a player will realize that it is no longer worth the effort to gain that extra bit of power. This also mean that the people with the most money/time will get the best stuff (as it should be).

So how far are you willing to pend to increase your gear by a few extra levels? The decision is your!

The crafting part is exactly what I said.

As for NPCs, I don't see why no one seems to realize this, but you can design mobs for players of different epic levels. "supermob" does not have to mean "tailored towards the highest-level character in the game". There can be supermobs for single-avs, dual-avs, e1 characters, e500 characters, e10000, characters, and whatever. All of the NPCs in the game don't have to be geared towards one epic level.

Also, just because you CAN epic infinitely and get ever-increasing gear doesn't mean everyone has to. You can stay at any level you choose and explore, do quests, craft, or duel people of your level. Just because the possibility of getting super-high-level exists doesn't mean everyone has to do it.

I wanna see more mobs like Michael and the Dragon. Challenging but not a super-mob. With items that aren't outlandish but just good stuff you might wanna get for levelling gear.

It'd be instadeath for a char levelling in the area, but someone like e100 could cruise into an area and have a nice challenge killing this guy for some nice eq for a lowbie.