I think that is exactly the reason why the exp for mobs has been changed. Why group when you can solo everything? Why play with other people when you can play with yourself? Why meet people on the mud and decide to stay a while when its so boring because all you do is run and solo mobs all the time.

Human beings are social creatures, if they develop friendships because of being in a group on Arctic they will be more likely to stay. This changes make 100% sense and should not be changed.

Dave

Education replaces force with reason.

"Circle 1-2 nukes are worse than regular weapon autoattck, and the circle 3 nuke is hidden far away, and terrible in many indoors rooms. What was so wrong with druids having a useful nuke at level 8?"

Low circle druid nukes are easilly strong enough to support fast exping. Circle 3 nuke was changed and is useful now. Frankly I find low-level druids infinitely easier to level than mages (but that could just mean I'm an awful mage player).

Just my personal take based on a few wipes of experience, but I think druids are vastly more useful than mages with a small selection of tablet spells, unless the mage in question has top-tier book spells. Anyone who knows mages feel free to correct my ignorance here, btw.

Kapis/Dave-

I agree with what you say, but grouping could be encouraged by giving a smaller bonus. The argument is like- healers are needed to zone, and zoning makes the mud healthy, so lets give the heal spell to every class so everyone can zone. Yes, grouping is good, and fun, and I agree that the ponit of the mud is to group instead of solo all the time. But it's a little bit ridiculous when 2 people can xp with one of them afk 99% of the time and get the same xp as if they were soloing. It reminds me of a nwn persistent world I played on with a similar xp system. It was very common to xp in in large groups with half the people afk for hours at a time, but because of the grouping bonus there was no reason to kick the afk people from group.

I think there is a viable middle-ground where grouping gives *some* bonus xp, but not so much that players are rewarded for sitting afk while on follow. To me that would make for a better game.

James-

To me, until 25+, leveling speed is really all that matters. Am I wrong? Is there something fun to do before 30 other than level?

I'm not sure why you find druids to be easier to level. Without giving away game information, I think it's safe to say magic missile is more damage than thorn spray. Shocking grasp, at least until level 20+, is more damage than burning hands. Lightning bolt is more damage than elemental fist outdoors, and indoors it is a LOT more damage. Acid blast is similar in damage to flame shroud, at this point druids start to catch up, but the problem is even acid blast is inferior to the best mage nukes for leveling, so having a spell equal to it is not any amazing thing.

I'm not sure why you find leveling as a mage to be slower than leveling as a druid. For the most part, my leveling process is to find a mob, nuke it down, find another mob, nuke it down, then mem to full. Sometimes you can kill a 3rd mob, sometimes if the mobs are above level you can only kill one before memming. But the basic system is the exact same with both classes. The difference is that druids take longer to kill the same mob just because they have spells that deal less damage. As a result it takes more spells, more higher circle spells, which means more mem time. In addition, druids need wisdom, so usually have a lower int than mages which also means more mem time.

The end result is on my mage I might kill 2 mobs every 2 ticks, while on my druid it's 2 mobs every 4 ticks. All else being equal, killing mobs twice as fast means you level twice as fast.

I agree with your analysis of low level druids, they suck compared to low level mages. We don't even need to add the fact the mages get hold person at 4th circle AND invis at 2nd circle, which means that a mage can solo many mobs without risk that a druid may need to risk a little to win. Add the fact that a mage gets some of the most useful utility spells (locate object, relocate, etc...) and I think a mage is a stronger class. However at top levels a druid with elite spells can solo much, much tougher mobs than a mage with elite spells (I seem to recall a druid soloing Stone Bluff in times past).

As for your analysis of levelling speeds, I think you are missing a major factor at the lower levels. Yes, I can level multiple characters at the same speed as I can level myself, with them being afk and not assisting. The fact that they are not assisting means that I will only level as fast as I can solo. However if they are around, and assisting, then I will level much faster. I have noticed this effect myself, I level much faster with a group than without a group. I used to play DKs all the time and in previous wipes I usually levelled faster solo than with a group, which certainly encouraged a lot more solo play. This effect is actually MORE pronounced after level 20 or so.

Education replaces force with reason.

2 mobs every 4 ticks on your druid?? Are you kidding me?? I think the discrepancy here is that I'm bad at levelling mages, and you're bad at levelling druids. I'll just say "to each his own" and bow out at this point.

Druids can have far more damage spells memorized at an equivalent level as a mage. And since you don't need that much xp to level, why not level your druid in an outdoor zone? I usually pick a zone with a mem room in it to speed leveling. I don't find mages to level particularly quickly until they have a couple of acid blasts and a couple of lightning bolts.

When a mage first gets the lightning bolt slot they get 1, when a druid first gets the elemental fist slot they frequently get hrrm stretching my memory -- three?

Higher level druids with tablet spells can be quite powerful.

Thing is, mages get lb at 7, druids get ef at 8. Mages get lb in a useful town near many starting zones, druids get ef out in the damn middle of nowhere. If a druid fails ef, he is totally worthless for another level, if a mage fails lb at 7 he can still learn it at 8 and have it just as soon as a druid would have ef. Mages are more likely to have high int and less likely to fail. Mages have other viable nukes in the form of magic missile and shocking grasp, while a druid's thorn spray and burning hands are virtually worthless at those levels.

As far as fighting out doors, in zones with mem rooms. That makes sense, and that is what I do, but that doesn't give druids an advantage- it just reduces the disadvantage. Mages can also level near mem rooms, and even outdoors ef seems to do less damage than lb, and the overall damage of the druid is always going to be lower because his lower level nukes are terrible.

Extra slots doesn't really speed up kill time, it just means you can do a little more damage before you mem, but when you do mem it'll take longer. Even still, I bet a mage using mag mis and shock gras and lightning bolt can do a lot more damage than a druid even if the druid has a 3 more slots for ef compared to the mage's lb.

...

So many years ago, druids had acid blast as a 3rd circle spell. At the time they were a fun class, the first 7 levels kinda sucked because you had no nukes ast all (this was before thorn spray/burning hangs going to guild), but you were rewarded for getting through them with some amazing nukes at level 8, assuming you didn't fail to learn acid blast. Later acid blast was changed to flame shroud, but it was still 3rd circle and druids were still fun. Then, for some totally bizarre reason, flame shroud was changed to 4th circle.

The "old" druids were fine and balanced. They had a lot of good nukes in 3-4th circles, but with acid blast and later flame shroud being a heavy fragging spell mages were still desired over them for dps. Of course now with the current insane damage of melee and scouts, there isn't much reason to bring a caster for damage anymore. So the main thing nukes are used for is leveling, and druids just suffer for no apparent balance reason.

Drakantus,

Just regarding some of your points, the exp bonuses are their to encourage more grouping at lower levels, but if you think that its destroyed soloing, you're sadly mistaken. For one thing, especially after the first few days of a wipe, its not always easy to find a group of the appropriate level to exp up with. For another thing, many of the people I know, myself included, still prefer soloing up anyway--you're not wasting time getting formed, you can hit some zones that perhaps you dont want everyone seeing, and on top of it all if you're good you're not at that much of a disadvantage.

As for druids at low levels, I've never had any trouble leveling them up. Thorn spray and burning hands (now good) are enough to get the job done, and a smart player can do just fine with a shop weapon if you know where to go. And as for elemental fist being in an obscure location--this might be a disadvantage to a newbie, but it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to use the magic of refresh to stack up on the needed druid spells within about 2 minutes, whereas a mage can on travel so quickly if they happen to get a teleport book dropped into their lap. (Which given the state of mud, they'll probably find on the floor of the inn at some point, but you can't count on it.)

If complete parity between druids and mages at every level is your goal, its not going to happen. For as long as I've played, druids and mages have been different in terms of utility in zoning and difficulty of development, and I think people both realize and accept this. And if it upsets you that mages have the advantage of lightning bolt a level early, I suppose you're going to have a coronary once you see how shamans stack up.$$

Time to level is all that matters. I don't think any experienced player has trouble leveling any class, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. All I said is that leveling a druid is slower than any other class.

If warriors had mage hp, they would be harder to level. But players could still level them, and I feel that a few hardcore players still would, just because bash is such a powerful ability, but the class would be far weaker than it is now and arguably the weakest class in the game. That is where I feel druids are now- yes, some players level druids, it's not hard to level them, but they are arguably the weakest class in the game. Yah, you can potentially get amazing spells like stoneskin, but even the "elite" druid spells are weaker than other class equivalents like heal and regen.

And yes, a druid with refresh and fly can go and get elemental fist in 4-5 tics depending on how far they have to go, but this relies on first learning fly, and then learning elemental fist, and then after this 5 minute delay to get a crucial spell, they are still below par compared to every other class in the game. That is my concern.

I don't whine about the heal quest being hard, because clerics do it and they get heal and become the most powerful class in the game. But for druids, they go through all this extra effort to level up for what? To frag worse than a mage, heal worse than a paladin, and mass refresh? Refresh, as the token druid spell, is nice, except every scout can cast it. If a certain potion was removed from the game it will go a long way towards making druids useful in groups, but I don't see that happening.

Why not add a heal potion to shops for a wipe, unlimited and 50 coins each, see how valuable clerics are for groups? Obviously that will never happen, but the point is you can't balance a class around having a spell (refresh) and then give that spell to every class in the game in the form of a very easily obtained potion.

Every class should have advantages and disadvantages. I am not saying mages and druids should be clones of each other, but on the surface both classes are casters, neither can heal, so they *should* be comparable in damage output. In the past, druids were amazing fraggers when fragging important gear didn't matter, and for fights where you didn't want to frag some valuable item the mob had mages were superior. That was a balance, mages had a use and druids had a place, but then flame shroug was put into the same circle as cone which basically reduced the number of frags a druid could mem by 50%. Now I don't see why a group would ever want a druid over a mage.

If it was my decision, I'd rework the whole druid spell line.

Druids would have good frags for 2/3/4/5 slots, but they would be heavy frag type spells, except leaving cone as it is. Mages and druids would have pretty similar single target damage, druids would have more slots at lower levels but it would be counter balanced by mages having magic missile and force bolt to cause damage without fragging gear. For the higher circles, druids would have even higher dmg single target spells, and a few weak aoes, like they do now, and mages would be the masters of aoe damage with elite spells. That would be balanced. What we have now is mages are best at single target nukes, best at aoe nukes, and best at nukes that don't frag, and most spell slots for useful nukes. Making mages the best in all catagories.

Well, judging by the number of people who play druids now, Ｉthink people seem quite pleased with their potential for fragging (or nuking as you call it) and area (or aoe in wowspeak). Mages are great and they have their role, but in general I'd rather have a druid over a mage in my groups any time, even without considering wagg, (and with scouts and shamans, I often dont).

As for your point regarding that potion, I think its been a long time since having wagg has been considered to be a major advantage of druids. The entire point of the last few wipes has been to make classes interchangeable, but not identical, to try to change things so that no class is absolutely indispensable in every situation while ensuring that each class retains its distinction. In other words, to make sure Arctic isn't a game where every high level group MUST have X, Y, and Z classes, but at the same time not going back to the days where rangers and paladins were basically bashers with different hats. Obviously, if people couldn't buy refreshes, the value of shamans, scouts, and druids, and to a lesser extent dks and paladins, is slightly diminished by market forces. However, given that you consider the shocking 5 MINUTE DELAY to get druid spells to be such a huge disadvantage to the entire leveling shelf-life of a druid, I'm surprised that you think nothing at all of having to either schlep, without refreshes, to said city every time you zone to stock up on potions, or to adjust your rent town around proximity to said refresh store, is no inconvenience at all.

You also completely overlook the fact that druids are easier to spell up than mages. I'm not entirely sure I like that particular means of balance, but its what's in place now, so instead of plugging my ears and demanding it's changed, I simply accept reality for what it is and take it into consideration when comparing the classes. People throw away ice storm, which only frags a very limited range of gear, as cone does. Tornado takes some effort but a lot of moderately experienced neutrals have it, and every great druid player does for sure. Swarm isn't that much harder, and doesn't frag either. On the other hand, less players have color spray than tornado or swarm, and while color spray arguably has some advantages over those two spells, especially tornado, there's no arguing that tornado and swarm do more raw damage. Fireball is the only easy mage area to acquire, and while its certainly become very useful in groups this wipe, it doesn't exactly make a mage a powerhouse, and the spells that do--prism, pws, tent--are reserved for a very limited few.

If you're comparing a fully spelled mage and a fully spelled druid, then I'd probably take the mage most of the time (probably all of the time if I also had a shaman in group). But it's not easy to find a mage with top tier area, or to develop one, where as its not hard at all to find a druid with a lot of useful damage.

If you want to retool druids (and there have been mumblings to do so again for a while now), I think everyone would welcome that, but I dont think you need to take quite so drastic a stance as you propose. Instead, just give them a few more spells scattered through out th circles that give them some more utility. Maybe make it harder to get the high areas, or reduce their power, and add some more difficult spell loads so that there's something other than lit storm to separate the elite from the merely good druids. Or maybe we're both wrong, and the staff simply want druids to be a class where a less elite player with a less powerful clan can still develop a solid spell caster, while the mage remains the domain of the elite (at least, if the mage ever wants to be really buff). I can't really say that's a bad thing--as long as trashy newbie druids aren't unbalancing the game, I think its great that there's something there to encourage the neutrals to keep playing.

Indeed druids suck.

I first agree with most everything the orignal poster stated. But I also agree that druids are somewhat balanced with mages (being a sort of poor mans mage), it is easier for people to aquire druid spells.

I'm not certain if the original poster remembers circle 7 ice storm and choses not to mention that refresh (and mass) is (are) now divine, also it's much easier for people to wagg and most scouts are too lazy to flap, surge the whole group. Also mountain scouts don't have refresh, just to clarify that. The thing they do have is more or less powerful depending on the circumstances.

Now as far as refresh is concerned....
Basing a class on refresh is a loser concept in the first place. Refresh? Who cares... It's quite artificial (basically like putting traps on chests so that thieves have a use because really let's face it only skilled and/or very well equipped thieves are group useful other then disarm). I do NOT advocate the removal of the potion mentioned simply to give druids a purpose again (although I feel we have only limited this purpose not totally eliminated it).

Druids need a massive revamp though... I don't need them to summon, I don't need them for area (emphasize need please), and the mass transit uses are somewhat limited. Stoneskin has uses for sure but it's really way too much effort for the reward at present. Upping load percents on the friggin items required for various quests relating to popping the most useful spells a druid has (imho) would be welcome. Lowering other loads might also be a good idea, or moving them to more difficult locations. Changing entangle to something useful would rock (as well as making it more difficult to load, see delphon guildmasters version for some ideas) make it a weak tent or something (one damage round instead of possibly 10-12 if it lands etc. I would advocate the complete removal of cone, flame shroud, and elemental fist and try to think of some more natural alternatives (ice storm too). These don't feel druidic to me, I think others have said this. Some D&D druidic things such as shapeshifting (into elementals or wolves, bears etc.) would be cool and certainly some nicer charmie spell (druids really hurt here) maybe more then one charmie spells like mages and clerics have, or perhaps something like ancestral spirit, that is very nice and creatively done. Give druids more flexability basically. Earthquake not harming group in any way would be nice too. This spell does have uses of course but those are quite limited. I still like druids of course but they are WEAK. Please consider them next for a complete and TOTAL revamp. After that please consider revisiting scouts :P

http://mud.arctic.org/stats/stats.011808.txt is telling.

Now, make sure you read it properly. For example, if you look at it without analyzing the data at all, it looks like paladins are the least played class. Instead of looking at the total number of players of each class, I'd just look at level 25+ Further, for classes like DK and Paladin, they are limited to Good or Evil, so if they were equally desirable compared to the alternative classes for each alignment, they *should* be about 33% as common, since they can only be one moral alignment.

Looking at only 25+ chars, I get the following:

15+9+24+12+7+42= 109 mages
10+10+11+8+10+99= 148 clerics
8+9+6+7+7+39= 76 druids
16+10+9+17+17+94= 163 warriors
9+6+9+10+5+36= 75 paladins
13+7+9+7+9+36= 81 thiefs
11+5+4+5+4+37= 65 dark knights
9+10+9+7+11+51= 97 barbarians
15+9+6+8+10+64= 112 scouts
6+12+6+7+9+47= 87 shamans

Dark knight and paladin are the least palyed at 25+, but if you discount them based on the alignment restrictions druids are the next most rare. Thief isn't far off, and as a class that there have been numerous threads about how broken thieves are in big grouping that makes sense. Next follows shaman, which I think are just rare because they are so new, and barbarians, which suffer from the problem of being pretty much useless if they aren't the tank of the group.

In any case, I think the stats support the idea that druids are the weakest caster, in a game where casters in general are weaker than melee until the super endgame.

It would be nice if there was some way to get the stats of only the main classes each player plays, only counting their highest level character. Then you could see really how people choose classes, as looking at the overall stats I bet at least 30% of the people I counted were actually alts.

I'm not sure I understand what Drakantus is talking about... the token druid spells are stoneskin, icestorm, tornado and swarm... it's not refresh...

I don't use the same terminology as you, I guess.

People group clerics because they heal. A cleric gets heal solo, at 23, fairly easily, sometimes it takes a few tries but generally it'd be pretty rare to see a level 26+ cleric without heal, no?

So I think of heal as the key reason to group a cleric.

For druids, I don't think any druids below 30 have the spells you mentioned, except ice storm... but ice storm is barely better than fireball, is it not?

If a group wants area, they could bring a mage and have much more effective area, even if ice storm has some slight advantages over fireball a mage with 7 fireballs slots can do more area than a druid with 4 ice storms, plus mages have better single target dps, faster mem times, strength, etc.

If the druid equivalent of heal is stoneskin, why can't level 23 druids solo the stoneskin quest? There is no way.

I am saying one of the following should be true-

1- druids have a key, easily obtained spell that makes them actually desired and wanted for groups

2- if they don't get a key spell, they should at least be on par with mages for dps, because if neither class has a key spell that makes them wanted then they are just going to be brought along for dps

Stoneskin, swarm, ice storm, etc don't count because they can't be soloed. Yeah, a druid with those spells will be desired by groups, but he can't get those spells unless he already has a group. If he has a group to farm him spells, then he doesn't need those spells to get a group and the whole situation is redundant.

From the January stats:

Druid:
ice storm : 67 (36.81%)
tornado : 25 (13.74%)
stone skin : 12 (6.59%)
insect swarm : 25 (13.74%)

Cleric:
heal : 163 (45.15%)

Just for clarification, for those of us who haven't/don't play WoW as well, what do you mean by dps? I had to spend a bit of my life figuring it out from WoW sites, and in the context of mud I'm not entirely sure what you mean. (That mages can directly do more damage per round than druids on a single target, that they do more when you account for area, or what?)

The funny thing about statistics, they're almost entirely meaningless without context. Yeah there are almost 3 times more healers than ice stormers, but let's put this into perspective: Both overall and at high levels, there are twice as many healers as druids, period. Even accounting for this, stone skin is still obviously harder to get than heal, both in complexity of quest and level at which you may try, but its foolish to ignore the fact that there are twice as many healers trying.

To be honest though, I think comparing any class to healers doesn't prove much of anything at this point. The game is still too dependent on heal at high levels--that's why heal was made a solo quest, and not a tedious group run as before, and its why a decent healer always has a lot of pull in a group. Shamans are a very creative attempt to change this paradigm without simply sticking heal on another class, and whether or not its been effective, it'll take people a while to adjust to the idea of trying decent sized zones without a healer. From the same statistics you cited, its obvious that the only class with numbers anywhere near comparable to the healer is the warrior (with only a few less at 30 and far more total)--despite all the creative skills that can do certain things that bash does, especially healing/casting stoppage, sometimes you just need bash.

The comparison to mages makes a lot more sense, so I'm surprised you didn't spend more time on that. Yeah, fireball is much easier to solo, and the statistics bear the fact that, between ease of loading and being 2 circles lower, there are a lot more fireballing mages than ice storming druids. My question is how much better it is? I haven't extensively damage tested the two, though my general sense is that ice storm probably does more damage than fireball, and its far less fraggy. (Clearly, there are situations where fragging everything in th room is a great side effect, but since everyone makes a big deal about non-fragging spells giving mages such a big advantage, it would be something of a double standard to ignore that advantage in ice storm, which only frags some really wimpy materials). Some argue that ice storm is irrelevant because its not soloable, but trust me, its as soloable as force bolt is, and in most discussions of mages v druids, force bolt has been cited as a relevent mage advantage. Beyond fireball, I think mages have a harder time at area than druids: there are 24 mages with color spray, which displaces fireball slots, and 25 druids with tornado and insect swarm, respectively. There are five prismers too, of course, and its arguably superior to any area a druid can ever get, but I don't think anyone is denying that at the top-tier, mages take more work and get a commensurate reward.

And since you brought up the topic of druids/mages who basically can't get groups by merit of anything but their spells (and by this I suppose you mean players who only play that one class who are completely anti-social, and have zero useful group zone knowledge). While I wouldn't boot a basher to make room for a random unspelled anything, I also wouldn't deny a mage or a druid a free spot even if their only useful spells are fly and flame shroud/acid blast, respectively, unless they turn out to be incredibly obnoxious or keep fragging loads despite repeated instructions not to, or otherwise bring down the group.

Its also a matter of who you compare, really. Its harder to cite statistics on this, but my sense is that if you're leading Mael/Outlaw, you can build a better mage than a druid easily. If you're a couple of steps down in experience/connections, you can probably still play a decent druid while your mage would be restricted to color spray. And as you pointed out, if you're one of those 60 or so players with the ability to solo fireball, but without the proper alt/the single friend needed to pop ice storm, then the mage has a huge advantage in terms of area. And of course pretty much anyone who can level a healer to 23 and can pay attention in group can easily play a much more useful healer than a player of comparable skill on a druid or mage.

This also raises the point of how newbie friendly we want this game to be. I've always been an advocate of this--while the older players all want things like more wipes and more fighting, specifically to bring back older players taking breaks from mudding, I realize that if we focus on that, the best we can do is not lose people. However, there is a question of whether its necessary--or even wise--to tailor every class around being newbie friendly, in order to make the mud more so, and I remember when I started, I was specifically told that mages and druids were hard classes to learn the game on. If you're getting started and dont want to have to learn much solo, play some sort of tank class. If you want to immediately be useful to groups, play a cleric and beg for info or stumble upon the heal quest yourself--it'll be a lot of dying and hard work to figure it out, but the rewards are pretty big once you do.

And while I'm one of the biggest advocates of preserving the solo aspect of the game, the game would be pretty unbalanced if you could get exactly the same things soloing as you could in group. Part of that reality is that both druids and mages can't always expect all the spells they want solo--another part is that grouping consists of more than a calculating, mechanical comparison of stats and skills. I've spent a lot of time helping random, newish druids and mages spam some basic 2 man spells, because I had the spare time and I liked them, and I hoped in the future they'd be both willing and capable of helping me--I've also more rarely refused to group with some very spelled casters or stacked tanks because I, or my group, didn't enjoy grouping with them and didn't want to help them, even if they'd be helping us a lot as well. I don't deny being a newbie or neutral druid or mage with few friends is hard, but that's true of any class, tanks included.

DPS is an acronym for damage per second. Basically in any of these sort of games, there are 3 main types of classes: tanks, healers, and dps. Sometimes there is a 4th sort of class, a utility class, that doesn't do any of those things but it buffs other classes, but such a class doesn't really exist in arctic.

In arctic, most classes can cover multiple rolls, a few can't. Clerics can dps or heal. Warriors, scouts, paladins, dark knights can all sort of tank or dps to a degree. Barbs can only really tank, mages and druids can only really dps. Thieves also only dps, though they are somewhat of a utility class as well, since they can do some things with pick and disable that can't be done by any other class.

Barbs, since they can only tank, should be the best tanks in the game. I think they are, when geared correctly.

Mages and druids can only dps, so arguably they should be the best dps in the game. They sort of fail at this, miserably at times. A spelled out mage with all the spells in the game can put out some amazing dps, but due to the needs of memorizing spells I bet in an average zoning group the mages don't really do much dps compared to the classes that dps the entire run. However this is okay, because the need for strong dps is much higher for some fights than others. As long as mages can put out the best possible dps for the hard fights, it's fine if they sit and mem a little during the easy fights. Druids basically play the same as mages, but the problem they run into is that the "some fights" where heavy dps is needed most are sometimes also fights where fragging loaded items is really bad, which can render a druid almost worthless. Or, if the druid is free to cast all his fraggy damage spells, he is still sub-par to the mage, without offering any utility advantage.

Arctic, as a free mud with a small player base, isn't really "tested" as hard as a real mmo with millions of players. It can get away with having inferior classes, because new players don't know any better, and some players just like to play every class on various alts. No matter how bad druids are, some players will play them, me included- I just would never play one as my main, as long as it just plays like a mage with worse frags. Furthermore, despite my comparisons of druids and mages, I don't think bring druid frags on par with mages would fix all the problems, because IMO mages are also somewhat weak, given that they can only dps, and scouts or bashers are considered more valuable in most groups. Both classes should probably have some more useful group utility spells.

Just hypothetically, if I had the ability to redesign the class, this is what I am thinking right now.

Rework the spell table.

I'd remove the very weak and rarely used circle 1-2 frags, reduce refresh to 1st circle, move around a few other spells.

These would be the new circles for changed spells:

circle 1: refresh

circle 2: faerie fire*, fly, water breath

circle 3: flame shroud

circle 4: cure serious

circle 5: paralyze**, thorn spray***

circle 6: ice storm (maybe it's already 6th circle), cure critical

circle 7:

circle 8:

*faerie fire should be buffed. this could be a key spell for druids, remove any saving throw from it and just make it work 100% of the time unless target is AMS. It would give an increased chance to hit(which i guess it does already) equal to +3 hitroll or similar. This would make a big difference in a group full of melee, and make bringing one druid worthwhile, without giving the druid an overpowered ability for soloing

**make paralyze guild, remove hold monster/daze from druids completely. as a unique "hold" type spell that lasts hours even out of combat, this gives druids a special role in lower level xp groups. or if not guild, make it a quest spell with an easily soloed quest, but IMO it's not strong enough to justify a quest.

***thorn spray reworked as an aoe, damage similar to fireball but no fragging, could be made a rare tablet or not, personally i think area spells are overrated in arctic and it would be fine to have some more easily obtained or even guild area spells, but it'd work either way

These changes are based on the theory of keeping druids similar to what they are, just making them more competative for fragging compared to mages, reducing the "cure" spell circles slightly, and adding more area.

An alternative way of changing druids would be to either make stoneskin easily obtained, and remove the ransom instant-death aspect, and they would be justified for that one spell in groups. Or, add a new spell simialr but weaker than stoneskin that does something similar.

I strongly disagree there... Having played WoW A LOT (6 different classes at level 70, epic gear all around), I am convinced that Arctic classes are superior to WoW ones. For a start, have a look at the WoW forums.. They are full of people of every single class that complain all day long about how much their class sucks compared to others in both pve and pvp. This has been the case with every class (except maybe warlocks, who only complain when their absurdly imbalanced abilities are nerfed) for as long as WoW exists. Furthermore, several (maybe most) skills and spells have the same effects under a different name, mucking up many classes. This is the case in Arctic too, but to a much lesser extent, and we always try to make each class unique by modifying and reshuffling skills and spells.

That said, druids will probably be the first to be revamped, once the robed mages are done.

WoW, as a mass-marketed game, has all kinds of players. If you read the official forums, yeah you will see what all the idiots in the general population post. But there are other sites, where the top raiding guild players post, and you can pretty much get accurate information from those places. The people who are in the major raiding guilds or top arena teams take things very seriously, and if class X gets 5% more dps than class Y they will only take class X, for example. I mean you get people arguing over the difference between two different pieces of gear where there difference is less than 1% damage, that is how serious they take things.

All I was trying to suggest is that if people playing arctic took the game as serious as that, groups would be like 1 barb, 1 paladin, 2 healers, and 6 scouts. The current class balance doesn't seem to be balanced. Druids would never get anywhere, because they wouldn't get invited to the groups they need to run in order to get crucial tablet spells. Now, most of the people playing arctic aren't that super dedicated to winning at all cost, such that they will take whatever they can get to make a group even if it's less than optimal, so you get what we have.

Furthermore, the basic setup of arctic such that information is hidden from players prevents any sort of damage meter addon, so most groups have no idea how poorly or good a particular class is at dealing damage. It would be interesting to try to write a damage meter for a mud client based on average damages caused by whatever types of hits are seen, but spells would be pretty much impossible to estimate. I'm not suggesting that things be changed from the players point of view. It just means it's for more important for the immortals to note the damage capabilities of various classes and make sure they are actually where they should be. If, with endgame gear, warriors do more damage than casters and never have to stop to mem spells, that would be an example of things being broken and needing to be fixed.

As far as comparing wow and arctic, I played wow a couple years, I am back to playing arctic, there is a reason for that. I think wow was much more challenging in pve in general, but the risks of failure were pretty much non-existent. A wow zone was designed so that an average group would wipe a few times figuring it out, and probably even wipe knowing it if they make a mistake, while arctic zones are designed more forgiving because the penalty of dying is much harsher. The lack of any meaningful rewards or punishments for pvp in wow is the mian thing that brought me back to arctic though.

There are some things I liked done in wow though. For example +spell damage gear. In arctic, I can increase my warriors damage multiple ways through gear. +hitroll pieces, +str piecess, +dmg pieces, better weapon, offhand, +str, +dex to a lesser degree, + weapon skill. While on my mage or druid, there isn't a single piece of gear in the game that will increase the damage I do with spells, directly or indirectly. It's sort of depressing going through the game getting pieces of gear but none of it really improves my character in the way I want to play it, as a damage dealer. Sure, I'll have more hp, and memorize spells faster with my shiny gear from zoning, but my damage is the exact same as it is naked, while scouts and warriors and dk and paladin damage keeps going up each time they upgrade a piece.

Well I will repeat that, unlike WoW, Arctic is NOT about stock dps... As a trivial example, a warrior may do more dps than a mage/druid along a zone but a mage/druid can cloudkill and solo a mob (or a bunch of mobs) that would normally take a group of 5-6 to kill. A Dark Knight/cleric can darkness through mobs that would rip a group of 10. A thief can solo an amazing number of high end content and is just absolutely necessary in several zones. Someone mentioned that this dependence on thieves is artificial (i.e. we just add locked doors/containers and traps so thieves have a role), but this is like saying that we make monsters hit hard so tanks have a role... In WoW, there is a policy that you are not allowed to "skip content". In Arctic "skipping content" is often key to survival. Of course dps is important, but it's not the most important factor. Don't compare Arctic to WoW... the philosophy is entirely different.

Btw there ARE items (and ranks) that increase spell damage, both directly (an increase to spell damage dealt) and indirectly (a decrease of opponent's saves, which usually means increased spell damage). These items are rare, as they should be, but they are out there.

All scout groups suck because there are really no backup tanks in case anything goes wrong, which frequently it does. The optimal group composition really changes quite a bit from one zone to the next. A properly equipped group of 2 healers and 8 warriors is actually quite nasty.

Warriors don't have to stop to mem and who cares what the dps of a scout is compared to a warrior if the scout isn't still alive to do the damage.

In my experience in large clan groups druids with only guild spells can get group slots over any mage that doesn't have prism. Druids with ice storm and mass refresh even more so. Refresh potions are not a viable mechanism to keep a 10 man group moving around from zone to zone.

Yeah, I just pulled that "1 barb, 1 paladin, 2 healers, and 6 scouts" out of nowhere, I have no idea what the best possible endgame group would really be, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't be based around caster dps.

Why is that, just refresh? Or the greater hp of the druid? I can't think of any other reason...

I don't think the games are as different as you think. On wow there are "stealth groups" with rogues and druids that sneak past most of the trash in a dungeon to just kill bosses. There are many cases where skilled or well geared players have soloed instances normally intended for groups of 5. And there have been shady sorts of things, for example a mind-controllable mob near void reaver (a 40-man raid boss), some guild killed the 40 man raid boss in about 1/4 the normal time because this mind controlled mob had an instant attack with no cooldown at all- it was quickly labeled an abuse and players were warned to not do it or get banned, and fixed later in a patch, but it doesn't seem so far off from some of the stuff in arctic- I played 8 years ago, there were a lot of amazing charmies that have become immune_charm over the years :P

There was a (totally legit) solo kill of the first 40 man boss in SSC by a warlock. It's not that different from what arctic chars can do.

The thing is though, I wow as being balanced around the main raid roles of the classes. If a class is normally dps in raids, it's dps is competative with other classes. Maybe warlocks have some nice tricks for soloing, but wow doesn't penalize their raid dps to compensate for that. I think arctic should be the same. Maybe in a few specific cases a druid or mage can solo some really difficult mobs with cloudkill, but I don't think anyone plays the class just for that- they should offer dps to a group comparable or superior to the alternative classes. Don't get me wrong, I love all the little "tricks" and things in wow, but for the most part any trick that lets a player solo something nasty becomes self-regulating. Either the trick gets nerfed, if it's too strong, or the mob is spammed so much that it rarely loads any useful gear anyway.

Good to know.

It all really depends on who you're talking about. For Drakantus, the category of players who matter encompasses people 25+, which given the experience changes in the last few wipes, is actually a pretty wide range of people. For the less experienced, or less connected players of that range, they are rather restricted in how they want to 'customize' their characters--yes, they can pretty reliably expect to get dam handworn, and str or maybe dam body worn, but in general tank classes only really have a choice between an enchanted AC set, certain soloable sets, and whatever they can find. And while you may look down on +int/+wis/+slot caster gear, memming more/faster is just as effective a means of dealing more damage as getting your hands on some of the rare +spell_damage eq out there. It reminds me of the tanks I know who scoff at hr because they prefer annihilate-miss to massacre-massacre.

I absolutely agree with you, though, that every class, druids included, would benefit from having more variety of equipment, and having +spell_damage/+spell_power eq at mid-high levels would give people a lot more choice. However, given the gear-competitive nature of Arctic, it needs to be well thought out in its implementation. A wipe or so ago, the imms tried to change that dynamic by raising the limit on some gear, and removing the limit on others, reducing the timers on some accordingly. With the lower end gear, it did give, for example, less experienced druids easier access to +wis without -stat, but the increases in the higher end, limit stuff, just resulted in more gear concentrated on the same guys. In a game like WoW, you can have sufficiently plentiful copies of an item, and people with identical gear sets to compare, (and even then they needed the whole artificial binding system to prevent the market from being flooded with second-hand gear). When certain wrist dams became nolimit and low% load, on the micro-scale it meant some players became happy that they could hit a bit harder without having to fight over the same few pieces of EQ, but on the macro scale it meant that tanks who didn't spam and respam this gear would be comparatively falling behind. (Probably resulted in a lot of spare dams on storage alts too).

One of the good things about WoW (kind of) is that it has masses of people dedicating their lives and effort to it, and large paid teams to respond to their complaints. This means that its actualy feasible to have classes that are pretty closely balanced, at every level of experience and skill. And WoW has a culture that demands that.

I would like to think that most people in Arctic are just a bit more relaxed. Yes, we want classes to evolve, and yes, we have our ideas about what the game should be, but in general we talk about broad ideas, not figures of implementation down to three significant figures. In this sense I think the information hiding style of Arctic is great--not only does it give the all-volunteer staff a bit of a break when it comes to things like one scout path doing 0.5 more damage per round than the other, it also drives the focus of discussions onto the big things (i.e., is tornado cheat, are scouts/shamans still overpowered, etc.).

Incidentally, I overlooked one thing in your prior post, regarding DKs/Paladins: How many people actually play with alignment as their first consideration? For your statement that DKs/Paladins are 1/3 as common (technically DKs would be 1/10 as common as they would be otherwise now, thanks to path considerations) to be true, it would mean that 100% of players in the game always start a character thinking, "Okay, I want to be Good/Neutral/Evil, now what can I play to let me be that." Okay, mathematically that's not accurate, for it to be exactly 1/3, the hypothetical guy would have to first pick DK/Paladin, and 2/3 of them would have to think, "Crap, I wanted to be another alignment!" and then roll a scout or something. In my own experience, I first what class I want to play, and then considerations of alignment/ranking are secondary.

And regarding the mage/druid comparison--yes, there are more 25+ mages, but they classes are pretty even in numbers at 28+, and while this may sound elitist of me, those are what I consider to be the levels of casters who could rank, but don't due to relearning considerations. Once you've got some basic spells and/or groups, its not hard to rank a mage if its own of your two main alts. Obviously I'm not discounting the people who play their druids/mages seriously but simply haven't gotten past the 20-28 range at this point in the wipe, but I feel that among the mages, the primary alts are outnumbered by the utility mages, while very few of the druids in that range are utility. (If you want a utility druid, basically someone who can travel really fast and look at something, you need refresh and fly. If you want a utility mage--pretty much a locator/puffer, then you need locate, you need puff, and most people I know try to get themselves at least 20+ or so, preferably higher, so they can locate better and flee past certain aggro mobs.) I could be wrong of course, maybe those 24 mages are simply stuck at level 27--they are, after all, kind of fragile.

I don't really think I have any special game knowledge or skills, and I certainly haven't been hitting "elite" level zones, yet even my warrior with only 2 days played has +2 dex, +1 str, +1 dmg, +3 hitroll, etc. It's really easy to pop items that increase the damage of a melee class.

On my casters, I have had several +int items, +wis items, a few +hp items, and some +slot pieces, but none of it actually increases the damage I do.

See that isn't the same comparison. +hitroll DOES increase the damage of a warrior, for example. +wis or +int does not increase the damage of a caster. I guess your argument is that if a fight goes on long enough, a caster will deplete all their spells, and extra slots will mean extra damage in those cases. While technically true, those sort of fights are rare, and the vast majority of the time a caster will never have time to cast all of their spells in a single fight. Increasing caster damage by 5% on 2% of the fights in the game is an overall increase of about 0.1%.

I should hope so, because if they don't they won't be paladins or dark knights for very long :P In all seriousness, when you zone you are limited by your alignment for the most part. While a DK could come to an evil zone and kill mobs, he wouldn't really gain anything from it. And a paladin can't even participate in killing anything in a good-aligned zone. So "serious" players, the players who intend to level up and rank their character, they need to pick a class that will actually be able to go to the zones they do. If not that, the other option is to just play the paladin or dk with an alt, as a character to go to the zones where alignment is a problem, but again that means there should be fewer of them because every player who plays one will also be playing some other alt.

Casters are put into endgame groups because there aren't enough tanks around, they are needed in a utility fashion for a particular zone, there is a particular fight that caster dps is better for whatever reason (engaged characters take more damage, the mob is fireshielded etc). For most dragon fights, mages are booted from the group for tanks, and druids are usually brought for their resist spell (I'm not sure if this is no longer the case because of shamans). It does vary greatly depending on the zone, but a mage without prism is nowhere near as useful as a druid with swarm and ice storm for standard endgame zoning.

Mages and druids have a huge advantage are are particular needed at beginning of wipes. Their dps is required to finish fights before the tanks die. Once the tanks have levels, hitpoints, and equipment, and the healers have lots of heals caster dps isn't so useful. What matters more is how quickly the entire zone is finished, not how quickly the one boss mob is finished, and in that case tanks have a huge advantage over casters due to no need to memorize spells.

Druids also have limited cure spells that let them keep themselves alive versus requiring healers to keep them cured.

And once druids have some minor tablet spells -- summon, ice storm, mass refresh -- they are almost certainly more useful in a group than a force bolting color spraying mage.

Drakantus, you've just proven my point. As you point out, as long as you're not against a mob with such crap AC that you're hitting 100% anyways, HR and dex increase your effective damage, even though it doesn't give the shiny oblits people drool over. Yet you claim 'wis and slots dont increase damage at all.' From a WoWish "dps" perspective, I suppose that's semantically true, but in practice its not. If your natural int/slots are already high enough such that you're literally spamming your best frags constantly, (or I suppose if your main healers are either low int or horrible at mem management such that you're stuck resting 2 ticks after ever minor engagement anyway). I'm not saying that int/wis/slot is somehow the perfect analog of str/dex/dam--its not, and in my opinion at least, its a GOOD thing that fraggers and tanks aren't basically the same thing, but with different names on their most useful stats--but if you take the long view, its equally useful.

As for the high end fights, perhaps you don't hit them as often, but last wipe there were enough high hp fights were my druid could unload 12 ice storms, 10-12 fire storm/tornados, 6-8 swarms, and 6 stones, and still have plenty of time to spam lower level frags before the thing died (this was, obviously, back when the limit on certain druid shinies was broken like hell). Granted, our clan wasn't exactly known for our high damage tanks, but obviously in those situations, my +wis/+slot gear wasn't worthless at all in increasing my damage contribution to the group. And while it wasn't exactly more damage, last wipe I found +tent gear to also be incredibly useful (mostly since I lucked into tent and was literally useless after I was done casting them).

A decent fragger knows how to frag enough to be useful, without burdening the group with his mem--if you unload everything and finish a fight without a heal used, you may or may not get the group through the zone faster, but if you've still got 3-4 ticks of mem by the time the next big mob comes, they won't be happy about it. Especially with the great mem_factor bonus from high int, extra int means you get that much more between.

Arctic is designed to let you play the way you want, but within limits, the main one being your own skill and resourcefulness. I have a friend who likes hitting hard on his healer/druid, but he wouldn't be able to do that at all if he didn't have the knowledge to pop good caster weapons and caster-restricted dams, and the clout to get non-restricted dams and weapons over tanks. If you wanted to build a high hp caster or a high int/wis caster, you could do so easily with less knowledge, while it would take more power to build a high heals set, and much more to build a hard bash set or a +spell_damage set. With tanks, its easiest to build a +bash set, or a high str/dex/hr set with 1-2 dam, but its slightly harder to build a very high hp tank, and much harder to build, say, a 6+ dam tank that doesn't sacrifice how often you hit. And if you want to build something slightly random, like a high int/learn/wis tank, or a 2x regenning one, then you'll need to go out of your way a bit to do it.

And regarding paladins, obviously alignment is a consideration, I simply disagreed with your assessment that "since paladins can only be 1/3 of possible alignments, ergo there are 1/3 as many paladins as there would be otherwise." While you're right that serious players take ranking/exping into consideration, most serious players also know that 1) paladins can handle any zone short of NG without penalty 2) high end zones (hell, most zones) tend to be more frequently evil than anything else. Obviously, DKs are a bit more screwed by the zone balance, but it helps that 1) they can still do most evil zones, even if they get no exp for it 2) they still rank for everything except unholies killed with impunity, and a handful of dk/cleric rank mobs that aren't unholy 3) their intrinsic bonuses vs goodies are less pronounced, so their relative disadvantage against evils is also less, 4) they have impunity. While the restrictions clearly need to be considered, if you think that 2/3 of the people who would want to play DKs (or paladins) choose not to because they're afraid that once in a while they're do a zone they might not get exp/ranks for, then I think you're greatly underestimating the resourcefulness of that half of the mud. I know few players who play nothing but a paladin (but I know few players who play only one alt, anyway) since righteous indignation is still a pain, but I know many who pretty much zone with a DK no matter where--of course, these guys spend much of their time already at 1x so they don't care about the zero exp usually, they're smart enough to realize that there's more reward to zoning than just exp/ranks, and they actually enjoy zoning for zoning's sake, so maybe they're not like the average mudder in that regard.

Just some comments on balancing of the classes.

1. The system at which Arctic is sitting on is uniquely balanced, not by the mechanics, but by the closed info on most of the stuff. No one player knows for sure how everything works and one can always argue either way. This is better than that etc etc.
2. The main problem lies in the interaction with zone mobs and players. One hand, there is a need to deal with pk and on the other there's a need to deal with single boss type mob. Eg, it takes 10 ppl to kill a boss mob in 20 rounds. It takes the same 10ppl to send a player to the log in screen in a round. Now, that is unbalanced.
3. Every time we tweak something so that zoning is reasonable, it will change the ppl vs ppl interaction. So we keep getting these pk abuse and boring bulldozing zoning comments throughout the years. We fix one part, we unbalance the other.

Now for some balancing ideas, here is a guide:
1. It should take the same amount of effort for a lvl 1 to kill a lvl 1 mob, and 10 group of lvl 30s to kill a lvl 30 boss mob. No more, no less.

2. Throw out the addition/subtraction system. It doesn't work well in a broad span of levels. You add 20 hp to a lvl 1, that means alot. You add 20hp to a lvl 29, that means you are still gona die when you get oblit/anil. Things has to progress in percent. A level increase at lvl 29 should have the same effect as the level increase for a lvl 1. That means, if a lvl 29 has a 50% chance of killing a mob, when he comes back at lvl 30, he should have 80% chance of killing it. Not staying the same. Then, leveling will be meaningful.

3. Going on the same line of thoughts, druids/mages can gain balance compared to melee hitting classes by the following. Make the support spells a function of levels. A shield/blur/str from a lvl 30 mage onto a lvl 30 tank should have the same effect of a lvl 1 to a lvl 1 tank. That means, you don't take 1-5 (or watever) from AC. You take a percentage AC based on the level. That way, utility spells will help in zones. You can replace a tank with a utility castor because it increases the efficiency of zoning. (For balancing purposes, a lvl 30 casting the same spell on a lvl 1 would have limited/capped effect compared to a lvl 30 target.)

4. Melee classes and castors differ in that one needs mem and the other needs nothing. Have spells add damage to melee weapons and those damage xp goes back to the castor. Eg, Magius casts flaming aura on Huma. Huma's sword glows in red. Each time Huma hits with the sword, it creates additional damage due to Magius spell. Huma gets xp from sword, bonus hit from spell and if mob is icebased, extra damage. Magius on the other hand, gets xp from Huma's magical damage. If Magius has casted that spell onto his staff, he wouldn't have the ability to HIT (low HR) and also he would be tanking. Here we assume there is a penalty in joining melee fights.

5. We can specialize the classes this way. Druids can boost elemental protection, xps received from damage protected. Mages can enhance fighting/elemental abilities of group members, xps received from extra dam done. Cleric can boost health/constitution of tanks, xps received for health gained by party during fights.

6. So we now have a system where you can choose combinations that suits your taste. Hitting element heavy zones? have druids for protection. An army of mobs to clear, have mages to increase tank melee powers.

Now the hard part is trying to change the existing system. It has proven to work all these years even with the 'unbalance' system. Maybe being balance isn't the answer to the problems the mud is facing.

edit:
It is like going to the middle of the Pacific ocean and say "Hey, wouldn't it be perfect if things were a little drier, and less windy, and more land?" Arctic's strength is being unbalance and the ability to exploit this by all the users over others give the competitiveness of the game.

------
Gulca stops following you.

Xyril-

I later said that yes, on some fights extra slots increases damage, but these fights are not very common, and I'd say that increasing damage by 5% on 2% of the fights in the game gives an overall increase of virtually 0. Extra mem slots doesn't give a net increase in damage for trash, because for every extra spell you cast, thats extra mem time added on. Maybe you can argue that for certain levels of wisdom and certain memorization times you can add 1 more spell without increasing the tic time, but for the most part extra slots is not a noticeable damage increase. It's sort of like a warrior carrying a 3rd weapon incase one weapon gets fragged. You might say that 3rd weapon increases the warriors overall damage, because if one of his main weapons is fragged he can continue to deal damage, but in the reality of the game those situations are rare and the actual increase in damage is very small. Intellect gives a larger overall damage increase for a caster, when viewed this way, but the increase is still far smaller than the increase a melee character gets from gear.

My feeling is that all damage types should scale about the same with gear, to make for a balanced and consistant game.

Lets say, hypothetically, this is the current situation:

case A: With vendor gear, a level 30 mage deals 80 damage per round to a single target until out of spells, while a level 30 dw warrior deals 30 damage per round.

case B: With average/neutral gear, a level 30 mage deals 80 damage per round to a single target until out of spells, while a level 30 dw warrior deals 40 damage per round.

case C: With elite endgame gear, a level 30 mage deals 80 damage per round to a single target until out of spells, while a level 30 dw warrior deals 60 damage per round.

Does anyone see a problem with this? Ignore case A completely, as it's not really a valid comparison- no level 30 warrior should be running around in vendor gear, it's just too easy to get better gear. The main comparison is between case B and case C. The issue is not that warriors can do any particular level of damage, the problem is that it's impossible to balance warriors and mages if warrior damage scales up dramatically with gear while caster damage doesn't change. Anyone should be able to see that.

If you balance for elite gear, then all the average geared warriors damage will be too low. If you balance for average gear, then the elite geared warriors damage is too high and casters become useless. That is basically how things are now, based on what Suf said.

I know adepali said that some gear exists to increase caster damage, but the availability of it just doesn't match up with the availability of melee dmg gear. The fact that such gear exists is a step in the right direction, but it seems like it's still a bit too rare if even the top 5% players in the mud zone without using any mages at all.

There are a couple very easy solutions, that are somewhat artificial.

1- dramatically increase the AC of high level mobs, which would basically reduce melee damage taken while leaving magic damage alone. this might make some fights which are currently difficult virtually impossible to do.

2- cut back on the liberal AMS flags on boss mobs and cut back on spell saves, instead just make them immune to the few spells that would trivialize them, but leave them vulnerable to things like paralyze, hold monster, etc. imagine:

Drakantus focuses harshly on Lord Soth.
Lord Soth freezes in place.

It wouldn't be a free win, bosses would still have fairly good saves, but being able to land some of the powerful debuff spells occasionally would make casters very valuable and might justify bringing a 250 hp mage instead of a 600 hp warrior. You could even set mobs so that after being held they become AMS for 5 rounds, so it's impossible to keep them held the entire fight, but the spells could be used occasionally.

Such "easy" fixes wouldn't really fix the root problem, which is that physical dps classes scale much better than casters. If melee get +dmg from strength, maybe casters should get a damage increase from wisdom or intellect. Or if not a direct damage increase, a reduction to opponents chance to save.

This is miles away from the original topic though, which was mostly based on ease of leveling. Leveling, casters are fine, because I don't know very many warriors who level with +dmg gear stacked. Druids are just particularly annoying to level, in my opinion, because it feels like i'm leveling a mage- only weaker.

gulcagulca-

It's like "security through obscurity". The problem is the game isn't really balanced, but few players know enough of the game mechanics to argue about it so it goes unchecked. That doesn't make for a good game. I like the obscurity of the game mechanics, but I don't think it should be used as an excuse to leave unbalanced aspects of the game alone.

The balance, supposedly, would be that now those 10 players are flagged and all suffer from being known as random pkillers. Or, if it was a clan fight and not a random pkill, you just learned an important lesson about walking around alone when large groups of enemies are active. I don't see a problem with this. Sure, the game *could* be balanced in such a way that player survivability is so much higher than player damage dealing that a single player could escape a group of 10, but if the game was balanced thus 1vs1 pkilling would be virtually impossible.

Aren't most real boss mobs higher than level 30 anyway? Why is this important to you? The level of a mob is arbitrary, if imms wanted to follow you idea literally without changing anything for exisiting fights all they would have to do is change the levels of some mobs. However, if you are complaining about mobs that are far stronger than their level indicates, I'd agree that it's annoying- nothing worse than doing a zone where every mob cons as "easy kill" or similar, and yet the last boss type mob wipes your group in 3 rounds because the guy designing the zone decided to give him a crazy aoe attack that does more damage than mobs many levels higher.

I disagree. I *like* the fact that going from level 29 to 30 is only a very small increase in power. If players doubled in power every level, a single level 30 character would easily destroy groups of level 25 players, for example. I like the fact that lower level characters can band together and kill someone higher level, and sometimes a lower level character can simply solo a higher level character though superior tactics or skill.

I'm not sure of the exact mechanics arctic uses, but this is probably already the case.

I suspect attack rolls and spells are a static roll system, not % based. So for example level 1 a mob might need to roll a 10 or higher to hit you, and shield gives you enough AC to make it so the mob needs an 11 or higher to hit you. At level 30, the mob might need a 1 to hit you, but all your armor makes it so the mob needs a 10, and then adding shield on top of that makes it need an 11 or higher to hit you. So it could still help the same. I don't know if the mechanics work this way, but in my experience it never hurts to keep blur and barkskin on the tank. The problem, if there is one, is that these buffs are fairly low level and easily obtained from scrolls and potions, so they don't really encourage groups to bring a caster. What could be done is adding other temporary buffs, higher level, with short duration or other limitations to make them too expensive to get from potions and scrolls alone.

That would be exactly what I just suggested, adding new temporary buffs. I think giving xp to the caster for damage delt by a buff would be too complicated and not worth the effort, though.

I don't think xp is the problem the casters face so much as being desired in groups. If there was a good reason to bring mages and druids for every group then that would fix them enough IMO, no need to add complicated code just to give them a little bit of bonus xp for casting spells.

I'd rather see a system where EVERY group would optimally want one character of each class (for the most part, an obvious exception would be having a DK and Paladin in the same group). Give druids a strong mid-level tank buff- something not as amazing as stoneskin, but something they could cast every fight and it would make bring a druid more beneficial than bringing a 4th basher or 3rd healer. Give mages an uber melee dps buff like you suggested. Make fireshield and iceshield castable on others, but limit the duration to 10 combat rounds, it would still be amazing damage for a lot of fights and would be a great reason to bring a mage and druid to almost every group.

Some people have different definitions for the same word. I don't think of balance as meaning "everyone is average and the same". A balanced game can still have super "overpowered" abilities. The balance comes from the fact that every class has a couple of these overpowered abilities, so in the end they the classes are mostly equal.

Wow DraK, you do write a lot!

I wouldn't want to defend my ideas. There are meant to be discussed and meant to be stripped and analyzed.

I would just like to comment on the "addition/subtraction" comments. In the current game where level gaining is NOT a problem and relatively quick, it balances out the small gain you get from lvling. When I say lvl 30 should be more effective than a lvl 29 (after averaging out the random gains), I failed to mention to gain that lvling would also take something of the same scale, meaning hard!

Now, you would argue that a five lvl 25s group would have no way of killing a lvl 30. I disagree. It would just be similar to a group of ppl trying to kill a bossmob (albeit a smarter one that can run around). First off, if you are low level, you do not want to mess with a high lvl, just like you wouldn't want to go to high lvl zones with lvl 1s and expect to win. But that's just my opinion.

2nd, we can easily implement group bonuses to compensate the differences. 1vs1 zero bonus. 1vs2, 10%. 1vs3 15%. 1vs4 20%. 1vs5 25%. 5vs5 zero bonus again. etc.

3rd, we'll let things regulate itself. if someone/group wants to spend 3 months lvling to a lvl 30 and use it to kill lvl 25s, then theres not much of a difference of what the big clans are doing now. Someone will have to jump in (admin side) or some other groups would have to come in and take care of these trashes. Except that with the exponential increase of the needed xp to lvl 30, I doubt there will be lots of trashes around.

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I think if we give bonuses to underpowered classes in different ways, then maybe we will see more flavors to the game. Not everyone would then have to aim for greatest stats or eqs. It is good to be short sometimes (lumber for example. You get sawed for being strong and tall). Not everyone is a superstar.

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Gulca stops following you.

Drakatus, I later said that... where I disagreed with you was your assessment that A) important, long fights make up only 2% of the game B) assuming that those fights make up only 2% of the game (where do you get 2% btw, in terms of mob count or play time?), then any help you get for those fights is only worth 2% as much, and C) that just because you don't deplete your spells in a fight, doesn't mean that int/wis was entirely worthless.

The thing about WoW (and forgive me for bringing up WoW so much, but since so much of your vocabulary is more in line with the WoW community than the Arctic, its hard not to see many of your suggestions as the most recent in a long and noble line of "what we should emulate from WoW" posts), it has so many players with such a varied range of free time and intelligence/stupidity that it needs to largely have a system where at every level, there's a smooth curve of return vs commitment--that way, whether you're Mavlad Jenkins or a casual weekend gamer, you feel like you're getting something out of the time you put in.

In Arctic, the curve is bumpier, and different for various classes. Once you find the shops, BAM!, your damage just went from 1d6 to 2d5/2d6. You explore some basic zones, you might get nothing but basic apply gear or armor, or you might suddenly find an autofly, or some str or dam. Or you might find fireball and suddenly your mage feels huge. You join a mid level clan, and you're finding +stat and +hr gear more often, and repopping your decays more consistently, but as you learn more and the clan gets slightly stronger, you find slightly better gear, but the marginal benefit isn't nearly as great as it was before, when suddenly you stumble upon a lesser known zone, and its wrist dams or great offies all around. For casters, the curve is even jerkier, with big boosts in return at those cusps where you move from "can maybe kill it once in a while without dying" to "we can kill it consistently enough to pop X spell." Some people prefer the slow morphine drip of WoW, but others crave the less frequent, but more potent, crack pipe of Arctic, with its unpredictable highs and lows. And with casters, this distinction is simply more pronounced.

Forgive me if I'm giving away game info here but, the thing about Str.... it doesn't give you +dam for every +str you have. Intelligence is thus comparable, in the sense that it only lets you mem more of the big stuff at every few levels, as you say, but it has a smoother effect on mem_factor overall.

By the way, your third weapon analogy is a entirely worthless, since having spare EQ applies to both classes, and while frag and int/wis bonuses might seem superficially analogous in the sense that "both only happen sometimes," how they occur are entirely incomparable. You could argue a good player can predict his decays and have an idea when his gear is at risk of fragging, and plan according, but ultimately whether that spare weapon becomes useful is up to luck. Whereas, since the effect of int/wis on slots and mem time is deterministic, a player can't blame the fickle hand of fate if he casts an extra swarm and it just barely pushes him into another tick--if he had cast an extra ice storm instead, he would have gotten it "for free," and once he realizes that, he can take advantage of that bonus constantly, until he either loses some int/mem_factor, or decides to run nothing but sleet for a few weeks. That, and doesn't everyone carry a spare, mediocre, low rent weapon or two anyway?

Mages and druids aren't really balanced--in terms of frag alone, druids, I still believe, are huge assets to players and clans of the strong, but not BSP/Outlaw/Weenor level of skill and manpower, while with the same time investment and knowledge, they could have solid, and incredibly useful, utility mages but not nearly as much area damage. Whereas at the elite level, mages have access to globe, pws, and prism (in addition to eye, clair, tent etc that you could get at the previously level), whereas druids get lit storm on top of what they have. (Gains from gear are comparable). There's a vocal movement for a forced parity of druids and mages, and maybe that will gain strength, but most players.

Tanks aren't casters--for one thing, its generally easier to play tanks, just assist and you're doing half your damage, and then knowing when to instinct/kick/punch/charge, and you're doing the rest. Obviously, to play even a secondary tank well requires much more skill and attention, but even a half-afk support tank is useful as long as he assists. To play a caster usefully takes more work; you have to pay attention to resistances, ticks, weigh out whether its worth burning area on small numbers, etc, and even at the bare minimum level, you need to cast and rest without holding back the group.

You compare mid-level eq, and conclude that their damage scales better, and to an extent that is true, but you make several implicit assumptions that aren't entirely true. You entirely ignore spells, or rather, the fact that people consider spells to be character development just as much as skills or eq. Obviously, the dynamics of getting spells and getting eq are different, but the druid who gets call light or tornado is scaling up his damage through zoning. Obviously these are one time gains, but these gains are also hard to lose.

Maybe some people want a game where the main difference between casters and tanks is whether they're screwed by reflect mobs or by auto-stoned ones, but I'm hoping we go in the other direction. This may sound a bit elitist, but if you don't like a class, throw out some ideas, as you have been, but if your suggestions aren't widely embraced by the community and implemented by the staff, it may be that you're just not a good fit for the class--especially if your suggestions largely involve forcing said class into the mold of another existing class.

There isn't a player on the mud who doesn't think that druids couldn't use an update or even a full revamp, especially in the context of shamans who fulfill their anti-element and support healing roll far, far better than them. However, changing the equipment loads so that int/wis become entirely analogous to str/dex, and +mem_factor +spell_damage gear load like +hr/+dam isn't necessarily a good thing. That's not to say I wouldn't be loading said gear eagerly if your suggestion were implemented, but I simply disagree, vehemently, with your assumption that if mages/druids don't load analogous gear at the same rate as tanks, they are intrinsically broken.

I think basically that's our fundamental disagreement. As you said, you think that damage must scale consistently with gear in order to make for a fair and consistent game. I don't believe that consistency (in terms of rate of gain per level or per bit of gear) is a necessary prerequisite of fairness, nor do I believe that the WoW standard of raw dps is necessarily the be all and end all of a particular class or character's utility. On the contrary, my feeling is that its not only acceptable, but desirable, for the game to find creative ways of making each class more powerful, instead of making each class simply a different balance of damage rate, healing rate, and tanking ability. And finally, I believe that player satisfaction is far more important than precise balance in the numbers. If 9/10 druids wants to take most int/wis out of the game, and replace it with +spell_damage or +spell_power gear, then we should seriously consider that revamp. If those same druids feel that the current gear they can load make them sufficiently useful enough that they still enjoy playing the class (and obvious, if we're talking about a plurality of druids, most of them aren't even considering elite gear), and a handful of people want a more warrior-like equipment scheme, then maybe those people are just better suited to playing warriors.

I think, to some extent, you recognize this as well--your suggestions regarding more buffs and more major mob vulnerability to support spells seem to indicate this. You may feel that having someone around to puff/fly/invis/wind/refresh/eye/barrier/sust etc is a mere convenience, or too rarely useful to be desired, but they nonetheless add value to the character, and a lot of leaders recognize this value. You apparently disagree with my explanation of why being able to mem faster gives you more damage over a given period of time, but I still think that its a good thing. Even with healers, having 28 int may not help you do a harder, area heavy fight the way having a couple of +heals would, but having a noticeably faster mem time means clearing the zone faster, moving onto the next zone faster, and in a competitive game with scarce eq such as Arctic, I don't see how that's not a great thing.

And while you may look down on information hiding as a cop-out for a lazy staff, its part of Arctic's identity and a lot of us like it that way. It's kind of like the PK system. When we personally want to know exactly how to increase our headbutt damage, we'll complain that the code is hidden, just like we'll complain when some randomer jumps us outside the inn, and at the moment we can't see how exactly it helps the game, but when someone suggests radically restrictions on PK, these same people will band together to protest the transformation of Arctic into CareBearMUD. (I don't know why, those furry little bastards are vicious as hell.)

While I think its, umm, great, that so many players with a rudimentary understanding of high school statistics and a lot of free time are able to effect such a rigorous oversight of WoW that the staff needs to balance every class down to the tenth of a percent, and that even the casual WoW player benefits from knowing with 100% certainty that no matter what class they play, they'll have no overall advantage over any other class, that's not Arctic.

This is a game where people have to work to figure out all but the most basic game mechanics (even if for some people "work" involves sucking up to everyone in sight), and where people who prefer to have an intuitive sense of what works better in which situation can still thrive just as well as the number-crunchers (and I'm speaking as someone who, by training and inclination, would gain a pretty big advantage as a number-cruncher).

Explain your answers then. 2% figure is just something I pulled out of the air, but the point was that a 5% increase (1 extra slot for a char with 20 slots) that only helps on a small percentage of fights equates to a very small overall increase. I am not stuck on the "2%" number, but go ahead, call it 20%, even if 20% of the fights in the game allowed a druid/mage to cast all useful frags, 20% of 5% is still 1%, and a 1% gain in damage is a lot smaller than what a melee class gains from hitroll or damroll. Also, keep in mind there are TONS of "long important fights" where a druid or mage *can't* use all of their frags. Many bosses are flatly immune to certain types of spells, some reflect, some are nomagic fights, etc. And most importantly of all, many load items, keys, or other things which require that casters abstain from using fragging spells- I saw just today the key on some high priestess in dko get fragged by an elemental fist of air, I would have laughed if it didn't mean we wasted 20 minutes on the zone and now we can't finish it.

If you don't deplete your spells in one fight, the gain from wisdom are useless. How can you dispute that? Is there some hidden bonus that mages and druids get if they have unused spells memorized after a fight?

I'm fully aware. However, unless the character is at the point where he never misses, +hitroll does give you a damage increase for every point. +damroll always gives a damage increase for every point. And when str doesn't increase damage, it might be allowing you to wield a better heavier weapon you couldn't use with your previous strength.

I think it's a perfect analogy. You do not benefit from +slots if you never use those slots. How can you disagree with that statement? You also can't predict when they will be useful either- you might plan to go all out on "caster boss #2" in whatever zone you are in, but then the group leader says "don't frag he loaded!" so instead you use your couple of non-fragging spells and then either sit or melee the rest of the fight while the warriors do the real work.

Funny, I feel it's close to the opposite. The only thing interesting to do as a caster is flee/rest before tics if you are stuck in combat, otherwise play is extremely straightforward and the same every time. I don't know scouts or dk etc, but as a basher it actually requires you to pay attention to bash the right mob when it stands, use kick/punch instead of bash when another basher already bashed, bash the right mob when there are multiple casters in the room while attacking the same mob as everyone else.

As a caster you just type "fb knight" until you are out of slots, then "ab knight", then "lb knight", then "mm knight", then you rest.

Spells=skills. It's easier to train up skills, for the most part, but they both come about the same way. Spells are not gear, you don't really lose them. The sheaf system is a cool idea, but since I came back to playing I have never died and been unable to get my sheaf, and I doubt it happens very often at all.

Funny you mention that, because every auto-stoneskinned mob I have seen has been killed just fine by all-tank groups. Unless they make them immune to specials this will never change.

I don't see how adding +spelldmg stats to gear would be turning mages and druids into the mold of another class. What are you referring to?

Why not? For what reason do you justify melee damage gear dropping vastly more often than caster damage gear? I'm curious what your reasoning is.

Okay. Lets make some more silly examples.

Level 30 characters, "normal" gear, warrior does X damage, mage does X2 damage

Level 30 characters, "elite" gear, warrior does 2X damage, mage does 2X damage

If the game is fair with normal-geared warriors doing half the damage of mages, how can it *also* be fair with elite geared warriors doing the same damage as elite geared mages? Either mages are supposed to do more damage, and normal geared players are balanced, or mages are supposed to do the same damage, and elite geared characters are balanced. I don't see how both can possibly be balanced when the classes don't scale the same at all. Basically, if you are saying "thats fine how it is", you are saying you don't care how much damage casters do, they are balanced regardless- because with one class scaling and the other not scaling, that is what happens.

The only reason I could think for this would be something like-

Well, that is the advantage of casters, they don't need elite gear to do damage. And that is the disadvantage of casters, elite gear doesn't help them do more damage.

If that is it, I can just say I totally disagree. That is the singular reason why the trash pkilling rules exist as they are, a couple trashy geared or naked casters can kill an elite geared char just by landing a lucky blind or hold, because the casters don't need any gear to deal damage they aren't at a disadvantage.

I hate the idea of democracy deciding game balance. 9/10 druids don't really play a druid as a main, and they will suggest things that benefit the actual main they play rather than druids.