@Thul I'm not sure I can agree 100%. For end-game PK, I have always been told and now truly believe Demigod is necessary. Thousands of credits an Artie's, though, aren't. I do agree that the entry cost is decently high, but it's a roleplaying game, not a PK game. The PK is supposed to happen after you've spent the time learning about the world. If that's not something a newbie wants to do, then Lusternia probably just isn't the game for them. You can't cater to everyone.
And I differentiate PK from PVP. A newbie can still get into conflict via revolts, debates, and conflict quests, like stealing farmers or spiders. PVP in Lusternia doesn't mean killing everyone, at least to me.
@Gorlois I can't agree with you at all. I've never seen demigods who just run around rampaging over squishy newbies. Most everyone in this game is pretty respectful at the end of the day, and understands that is neither cool nor fun for either player. Demigod is SUPPOSED to be a big deal. It takes time and dedication not only to get to Demigod, but to get and use the powers.
It's really cool that newbies can now use NEWTON to go straight there. But I've heard from a few people that the existence (and frequency) of the popup messages means that often new players feel like it means they HAVE to go there now - it can distract them from what they're trying to understand especially if they're newer.
The message's frequency should either be significantly reduced or taken away altogether; change it to a reminder from the guides, or let us put it in help files. That way people are much less likely to get confused by it.
@Liok I've seen interest and desire for a lot of my newbies to get into PvP of any sort. I'm having a harder time telling them to even get near revolts these days, though, with all the explosions going around. Some people are here for the RP, some people are here for the quests, and some people are here for the conflict. But it's hard to participate meaningfully in the conflict side of things at present, and certain mechanics going into the game are just making things harder. That's a hard lesson for all the novices I've got who look at all their abilities and all their side's combatants and say to themselves, "Hey, I want to try this."
@Liok I've seen interest and desire for a lot of my newbies to get into PvP of any sort. I'm having a harder time telling them to even get near revolts these days, though, with all the explosions going around. Some people are here for the RP, some people are here for the quests, and some people are here for the conflict. But it's hard to participate meaningfully in the conflict side of things at present, and certain mechanics going into the game are just making things harder. That's a hard lesson for all the novices I've got who look at all their abilities and all their side's combatants and say to themselves, "Hey, I want to try this."
I totally understand where you are coming from. But Lusty just isn't a game you load up to kill people. I'm sure not every true novice thinks that. I'm sure most of them are just interested in it as a path to pursue. However, you can't feel bad for saying, "Hey, look. If this [pk] is something you really want to get into, it going to be a lot of work. We will help you as much as we can, but you have a lot ahead of you."
I'd like to also just mention that with how easy it is to just brush novices off instead of listening to them and giving them some real face-time, I commend you for actually caring. We need more people like that to step up. Retention isn't going to happen with just shiny new skills or handing demigod out on a silver platter; it's going to happen when older folks actively seek out novices to help them find meaningful RP interaction.
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EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
The farther away you set the bar, the harder it will be for newbies to get there. That is the problem with endgame in every game--people get to endgame, demand more stuff, get more stuff, get bored, demand more stuff, get more stuff, get bored, demand more stuff... each time the bar gets set further and further.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
Agreeing with Tacita here since we spoke about it earlier. I have a friend who is trying to get started in Lusternia with no previous mud experience. She forwent doing her collegium scroll reading because the newton notification popped up. When she called to me for help I went and she couldn't figure out what to do in newton. She was trying to learn questing, had learned influencing, but didn't know how to get the items she needed to open the portal or anything like that. She also said she had no idea how to attack.
She was getting very frustrated and was thinking about quitting because she didn't feel like she had learned what she needed to.
Possible solutions:
-Remove the message -Make it appear after a certain number of hours logged in (say, 5-10 somewhere) -Space out the notification to once every 2 hours. Not so long that if they want to get there they can't see it again/ask, but not so short that it is constantly badgering them.
Most CGHELP scrolls for newcomers already mention Newton, so maybe we should find some other way to introduce the command to them for instant travel there.
"He was well fed, and on his way to being slightly intoxicated--which contributed to his sense of wellbeing. And, most important, he was among friends. There can't be much more to life than this, he thought." -Pug's thoughts on his first Ale (via Raymond Feist)
Honestly, newbies have no problem participating in "important" fights. Nearly any combat that actually helps the org is going to be a group effort, and a 50-60th circle character with a targeting system and a web enchant and bashing attack can meaningfully help in combat. Outside of the unfortunate case of warriors, most guilds don't need too many artifacts to join single combat (and, again, outside of warriors, most don't need titan/demigod). Obviously, there is a much larger investment to become mid-high to high tier, but at that point, it's no longer a barrier to entry.
Lusternia's biggest barrier to entry is the sheer number of necessary common skills. In order to have a chance against any given guild, players need enough Combat for Stance Lower, enough Discipline for Focus Mind, enough Low Magic for Summer (more if they took High Magic, or unless they have Contort), and enough Environment for Tumble (unless they get it from another source). That adds up to about 2375 lessons (nearly another trans skill and a half) on top of their guild skills, just in order to not get trounced by certain guilds. That's not even including building shrug rate through Resilience. Compare to Aetolia, which requires Parry in Weaponry and Recovery in Survival for a total of 601 lessons, plus guild skills (no, none of the Aetolia miniskills are combat necessary).
EDIT: I'd like to reiterate: Make astral beasts unable to go through innocence. Then we can take novices to Astral without giving them the magic equivalent of five coats and getting them accidentally killed.
Now I'm confused. What's astral and innocence got to do with it? If you're planning on power-leveling some Novice on Astral, then you're most certainly doing it wrong. If this is about the Planes quest, well... it's not exactly hard to make them wait a minute or two on cosmic while you clean out the five astral critters up on your sphere. Think I've only lost one Novice on astral due to a planes quest attempt and that was only because they decided to wander off.
That's basically what he means, is for the planar quest. I lose quite a few, especially since I tend to log on from my phone sometimes, and help random newbies if they need it.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
As one of the novices trying to get into PVP a basic glossary of terms and a basic breakdown of each fight class and what kind of damage you have to watch for would be a great start.
There's no way you can learn this except to go out there and die endlessly.
As a novice the Firstaid skill is my best friend. If I don't know what affliction I've been hit with, I just spam FirstAid until the problem is gone. It teaches you what cures what at the same time.
Along the lines of combat-friendliness to newbies: An affliction database! So you can use the database through AFFLICTION SHOW <affliction> which can spit out trigger lines (Delivery, symptom, cure) what the affliction is cured by and a brief explanation of what the affliction does. This is even something that that current players could help with in terms of the "definitions" of the afflictions. I'd also say making config affmessages should be a priority to that end, too.
@Urfion: I'd actually argue that a fair few of the mini skills in Aetolia are essential at a certain point. That being said, you can normally get away with learning up to about Expert/Master for the minimum coverage, but that only applies to certain skills/elements and depends on your class.
@Urfion: I'd actually argue that a fair few of the mini skills in Aetolia are essential at a certain point. That being said, you can normally get away with learning up to about Expert/Master for the minimum coverage, but that only applies to certain skills/elements and depends on your class.
Well, yes, but again, by the time they are essential, you are a mid-high to high tier fighter and that investment is no longer a barrier to entry into combat.
And yes please to standardized aff messages like most (every?) other IRE game. Illusioned affs aren't central to anyone's combat, and new capabilities could easily replace what is lost.
Another point that confuses me is the way AB's are limited to your character's skill level. I am not certain what this limitation contributes to the gameplay and it certainly does not make it easier for newbies/lowbies. Right now there is no ingame way to make a solid decision where to invest your lessons as you have no idea what will come next in the respective skillset. Sure, you can go and ask around or find the (partly outdated) Wiki. But why do I have to do that?
Access to the full view (including the AB <skillset> <skill>) will improve the understanding of the skill set's mechanics and help immensely with the lesseon distribution/planning. It will also add some motivation and excitement to the gold/credit grind when you know there is a really nice/powerful/useful skill just a few day's work ahead.
Colors could be used to mark the difference between skills already learned and the rest to avoid confusion.
@Urfion: I'd actually argue that a fair few of the mini skills in Aetolia are essential at a certain point. That being said, you can normally get away with learning up to about Expert/Master for the minimum coverage, but that only applies to certain skills/elements and depends on your class.
Well, yes, but again, by the time they are essential, you are a mid-high to high tier fighter and that investment is no longer a barrier to entry into combat.
And yes please to standardized aff messages like most (every?) other IRE game. Illusioned affs aren't central to anyone's combat, and new capabilities could easily replace what is lost.
Aff messages are standardized, IIRC, save for those that have hidden affliction messages.
As an aside, if you guys want to help update the lore wiki with stuff like trigger lines and more in depth data on what affs do, I'm allllllll(+lx10) for that. I got a bit frustrated trying to wrangle with the wiki code to make a good and easy to update template to make my life easier, but realized it wasn't working because the wikimedia version we're running doesn't support it without plugins, so I slowed down (And eventually stopped) my efforts to update it. I think I'm over it now, so I'll get back to work on that.
Aff messages are standardized, IIRC, save for those that have hidden affliction messages.
Sorry, I was unclear: in Aetolia, something about the CONFIG AFFVIEW ON make aff illusions non-functional; systems can differentiate between illusory ones, and real ones. I'm not a coding expert, so maybe it's a function of GMCP. It went a long way to reducing the complexity of systems, and making combat with syssins (and people with the artifact) much less frustrating. I know that my system, at least, can be fooled by illusions occasionally here, so I have to assume that isn't the case. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Actually, in Aetolia, it's both a combination of standardized affmessages and actual illusion nerfs that removed illusion combat. Their affmessages are pretty much the same as ours. Illusions in Aetolia are simply no longer very combat relevant at all because the Syssin effectively lost all forms of off-balance illusioning and received abilities to throw cure balances off instead. It's not that their affmessages have something extra ours don't, but rather that they don't have anything else other than one-time, active casted illusions anymore.
Actually, in Aetolia, it's both a combination of standardized affmessages and actual illusion nerfs that removed illusion combat. Their affmessages are pretty much the same as ours. Illusions in Aetolia are simply no longer very combat relevant at all because the Syssin effectively lost all forms of off-balance illusioning and received abilities to throw cure balances off instead. It's not that their affmessages have something extra ours don't, but rather that they don't have anything else other than one-time, active casted illusions anymore.
Ah, I was misinformed then. I'd still argue that aff illusions are a frustrating and metagame-y part of combat.
Actually, in Aetolia, it's both a combination of standardized affmessages and actual illusion nerfs that removed illusion combat. Their affmessages are pretty much the same as ours. Illusions in Aetolia are simply no longer very combat relevant at all because the Syssin effectively lost all forms of off-balance illusioning and received abilities to throw cure balances off instead. It's not that their affmessages have something extra ours don't, but rather that they don't have anything else other than one-time, active casted illusions anymore.
Ah, I was misinformed then. I'd still argue that aff illusions are a frustrating and metagame-y part of combat.
It's a deliberate mechanism that's included by design. IIRC we buffed illusion character length to make sure they were able to compete in a world of "affmessages" once they were introduced.
And while I'm really not familiar with Aetolia classes, we don't really have much in the way of passive illusions that I can think of off-hand, outside of on-entry programmed illusions and that kind of thing. Though of course mages benefit from passive offense where they probably don't.
And I'm not sure following the "Aetolia route" would be a beloved method - going off what Lerad said, it sounds like the route taken was abilities that just stole cure balances altogether - and that sounds pretty powerful in the hands of demesne users. Which, really, that makes the most sense in terms of achieving the same affect (or phantom afflictions which show on DIAG with a chance to show if it's fake based on your ability to detect and that sort of stuff, but I haven't given it much thought beyond it just passing through my mind).
At least with illusions, good systems are generally pretty good at sorting it out.
Warrior runes on rings. Drop the cost of warrior runes. Make getting a full set of runes equivalent to what's "necessary" for other classes (shield rune, 20% magic damage rune, grip rune? maybe throw in that demesne rune for druids/mages as well).
But this has been said over and over. And this is a thread about helping newbies, not getting them kitted out to kill everyone. So whatevs.
Warrior runes on rings. Drop the cost of warrior runes. Make getting a full set of runes equivalent to what's "necessary" for other classes (shield rune, 20% magic damage rune, grip rune? maybe throw in that demesne rune for druids/mages as well).
But this has been said over and over. And this is a thread about helping newbies, not getting them kitted out to kill everyone. So whatevs.
Considering how the 20% magic rune is 1600cr alone, I don't see how that's an improvement, but anyways.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
3,150 credit to fully arty up a set of warrior weapons.
2,300 credits for 20% magical damage, shield, grip and demesne rune.
You tell me, is that an improvement?
I'd say it's 2,400cr for warrior weapons. Add 500 for damage type changes (which are not required to be viable in combat, techically you can be viable in combat with T2 runes at 1,100 credits)... don't see where the other 250 credits are coming from. But anyways, we're kind of going off on a tangent further and further away from helping newbies. I'd say let's get this derail back on track.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
3,150 credit to fully arty up a set of warrior weapons.
2,300 credits for 20% magical damage, shield, grip and demesne rune.
You tell me, is that an improvement?
I'd say it's 2,400cr for warrior weapons. Add 500 for damage type changes (which are not required to be viable in combat, techically you can be viable in combat with T2 runes at 1,100 credits)... don't see where the other 250 credits are coming from. But anyways, we're kind of going off on a tangent further and further away from helping newbies. I'd say let's get this derail back on track.
2400 for the main runes. +500 for damage types, +250 for bleeding runes. That gets you to 3150.
As I stated in the thread where I did comparisons and presented a solution, warriors don't really need the damage type or bleeding runes (they're extras), in the same way that casters don't really need the gripping rune / enchantment rune / etc. The main required runes for warriors are the stat and wounding, and casters need the +20% magic damage rune and the shield rune. Then warriors need pliers too (+1500 credits by itself) or need to kit out a second weapon set.
It's pretty simple to correct it, though. All you really need to do is make these runes attachable to a standard, then they will function like the +20% magic damage artifact (which works on any skill). They simply provide their bonus to your held weapons. At that point you can even raise the price of some of the runes (like the damage type runes) back up a bit, because there's no more need for pliers.
As I stated in the thread where I did comparisons and presented a solution, warriors don't really need the damage type or bleeding runes (they're extras), in the same way that casters don't really need the gripping rune / enchantment rune / etc. The main required runes for warriors are the stat and wounding, and casters need the +20% magic damage rune and the shield rune. Then warriors need pliers too (+1500 credits by itself) or need to kit out a second weapon set.
I'd argue that casters don't really need the damage rune either, outside of a few special cases (Cantors, probably Researchers), most of them have strategies that rely very little on damage. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think that mana/ego damage is affected by the damage rune, meaning that Wiccans and most Bards aren't going to get much mileage out of it; Nihilists and Celestines have their own kill methods that rely less on damage (Sacrifice/Inquisition), and Illuminati use brute sourced damage for their bashing attack. Mages, for the most part, have alternate (and probably superior) kill methods in Psionics, and, from what I've been told, Druids need to stick sap on you to get a kill, and at that point, 20% extra damage isn't going to make an appreciable difference.
Do warriors really need a full set of runes in order to enter combat? I understand that there's a large investment for high tier warriors, but can warriors seriously not get kills against a player with a good system, splendors, and a shield rune without a 2400 credit investment?
As I stated in the thread where I did comparisons and presented a solution, warriors don't really need the damage type or bleeding runes (they're extras), in the same way that casters don't really need the gripping rune / enchantment rune / etc. The main required runes for warriors are the stat and wounding, and casters need the +20% magic damage rune and the shield rune. Then warriors need pliers too (+1500 credits by itself) or need to kit out a second weapon set.
I'd argue that casters don't really need the damage rune either, outside of a few special cases (Cantors, probably Researchers), most of them have strategies that rely very little on damage. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think that mana/ego damage is affected by the damage rune, meaning that Wiccans and most Bards aren't going to get much mileage out of it; Nihilists and Celestines have their own kill methods that rely less on damage (Sacrifice/Inquisition), and Illuminati use brute sourced damage for their bashing attack. Mages, for the most part, have alternate (and probably superior) kill methods in Psionics, and, from what I've been told, Druids need to stick sap on you to get a kill, and at that point, 20% extra damage isn't going to make an appreciable difference.
Do warriors really need a full set of runes in order to enter combat? I understand that there's a large investment for high tier warriors, but can warriors seriously not get kills against a player with a good system, splendors, and a shield rune without a 2400 credit investment?
You need the wounders, and if you put the wounders on you are destroying your weapons so you have to get the stat runes on.
You can do all right with the mid-way runes (1100 credits), but warriors have been tweaked and adjusted around the top end so that means they're kind of balanced around the expectation that they will have the best possible weapon.
I think part of it is that against splendors without runes, one health apply will typically clear (or nearly clear) the wounds off regular hits. So while warriors should be recovering balance faster than their target's health balance, parry/stance/rebounding/rng and any hindering at all means it is usually closer to a 1:1 balance of hits/applies. This makes wound building a much slower progression to a warrior's kill condition than what other classes can achieve. Learning to identify a person's s/p and deepwound curing priorities and how to exploit these can reduce this time, but so do runes without the trouble of doing so!
Unless you stack a number of strong combinations (right race, nightkiss/drawdown/demigod+good str+forging runes and other buffs), you'll need artifact runes. It's mathematically impossible to kill someone with tattoos, splendors or plate/masterplate if their curing, parry and stance are all maxed out. And you don't need to be top-tier to have these defenses. So while yes, an un-runed warrior without all these buffs might be able to kill a squishy-squishy-pushover, they won't kill someone who looked into preparing properly. Some specs also need the raw wounding more than others as well. This, of course, only applies to 1v1. In groups, any warrior can do anything, basically.
Actually, in Aetolia, it's both a combination of standardized affmessages and actual illusion nerfs that removed illusion combat. Their affmessages are pretty much the same as ours. Illusions in Aetolia are simply no longer very combat relevant at all because the Syssin effectively lost all forms of off-balance illusioning and received abilities to throw cure balances off instead. It's not that their affmessages have something extra ours don't, but rather that they don't have anything else other than one-time, active casted illusions anymore.
Ah, I was misinformed then. I'd still argue that aff illusions are a frustrating and metagame-y part of combat.
It's a deliberate mechanism that's included by design. IIRC we buffed illusion character length to make sure they were able to compete in a world of "affmessages" once they were introduced.
Nope. Still 160 characters for a standard illusion, and a 2p power cost per newline (which means you can't fake an affmessage in a normal illusion without paying 2p and having a short original line). Systems just don't tend to use affmessages, and standard illusions are only really used by psionic mages in 1v1 combat.
Another point that confuses me is the way AB's are limited to your character's skill level. I am not certain what this limitation contributes to the gameplay and it certainly does not make it easier for newbies/lowbies. Right now there is no ingame way to make a solid decision where to invest your lessons as you have no idea what will come next in the respective skillset. Sure, you can go and ask around or find the (partly outdated) Wiki. But why do I have to do that?
Access to the full view (including the AB <skillset> <skill>) will improve the understanding of the skill set's mechanics and help immensely with the lesseon distribution/planning. It will also add some motivation and excitement to the gold/credit grind when you know there is a really nice/powerful/useful skill just a few day's work ahead.
Colors could be used to mark the difference between skills already learned and the rest to avoid confusion.
I think some guilds have books in their own guild libraries of the whole skill (those that are available to the guild, at least). I know the Moondancers have such a book, it's a little outdated (one of my many many to-do things), but we do have one!
But generally, I think it's a good idea that the whole of the skill should be viewable, but maybe BOLD WHITE denotes the abilities you HAVE learnt in a skill, and maybe grey/lesser white could be used to represent the abilities you CAN learn in the skill. (Pretty sure there's another Mud (not sure if it's one of the IRE ones or not) that has this feature)
Edit: Not sure how easy something like that would be able to do, but, yeah. It'd be a help all around, for newbies and others that are sitting there going *What shall I learn now*
Comments
And I differentiate PK from PVP. A newbie can still get into conflict via revolts, debates, and conflict quests, like stealing farmers or spiders. PVP in Lusternia doesn't mean killing everyone, at least to me.
@Gorlois I can't agree with you at all. I've never seen demigods who just run around rampaging over squishy newbies. Most everyone in this game is pretty respectful at the end of the day, and understands that is neither cool nor fun for either player. Demigod is SUPPOSED to be a big deal. It takes time and dedication not only to get to Demigod, but to get and use the powers.
I'd like to also just mention that with how easy it is to just brush novices off instead of listening to them and giving them some real face-time, I commend you for actually caring. We need more people like that to step up. Retention isn't going to happen with just shiny new skills or handing demigod out on a silver platter; it's going to happen when older folks actively seek out novices to help them find meaningful RP interaction.
She was getting very frustrated and was thinking about quitting because she didn't feel like she had learned what she needed to.
Possible solutions:
-Remove the message
-Make it appear after a certain number of hours logged in (say, 5-10 somewhere)
-Space out the notification to once every 2 hours. Not so long that if they want to get there they can't see it again/ask, but not so short that it is constantly badgering them.
Most CGHELP scrolls for newcomers already mention Newton, so maybe we should find some other way to introduce the command to them for instant travel there.
"He was well fed, and on his way to being slightly intoxicated--which contributed to his sense of wellbeing. And, most important, he was among friends. There can't be much more to life than this, he thought." -Pug's thoughts on his first Ale (via Raymond Feist)
Visit my personal authorial website. (coming back up soon, with my first publications)
Coding Resources: Mechanic's Corner | Code Academy | StackOverflow
Lusternia's biggest barrier to entry is the sheer number of necessary common skills. In order to have a chance against any given guild, players need enough Combat for Stance Lower, enough Discipline for Focus Mind, enough Low Magic for Summer (more if they took High Magic, or unless they have Contort), and enough Environment for Tumble (unless they get it from another source). That adds up to about 2375 lessons (nearly another trans skill and a half) on top of their guild skills, just in order to not get trounced by certain guilds. That's not even including building shrug rate through Resilience. Compare to Aetolia, which requires Parry in Weaponry and Recovery in Survival for a total of 601 lessons, plus guild skills (no, none of the Aetolia miniskills are combat necessary).
And yes please to standardized aff messages like most (every?) other IRE game. Illusioned affs aren't central to anyone's combat, and new capabilities could easily replace what is lost.
Another point that confuses me is the way AB's are limited to your character's skill level. I am not certain what this limitation contributes to the gameplay and it certainly does not make it easier for newbies/lowbies. Right now there is no ingame way to make a solid decision where to invest your lessons as you have no idea what will come next in the respective skillset. Sure, you can go and ask around or find the (partly outdated) Wiki. But why do I have to do that?
Access to the full view (including the AB <skillset> <skill>) will improve the understanding of the skill set's mechanics and help immensely with the lesseon distribution/planning. It will also add some motivation and excitement to the gold/credit grind when you know there is a really nice/powerful/useful skill just a few day's work ahead.
Colors could be used to mark the difference between skills already learned and the rest to avoid confusion.
And yes please to standardized aff messages like most (every?) other IRE game. Illusioned affs aren't central to anyone's combat, and new capabilities could easily replace what is lost.
Aff messages are standardized, IIRC, save for those that have hidden affliction messages.
It's a deliberate mechanism that's included by design. IIRC we buffed illusion character length to make sure they were able to compete in a world of "affmessages" once they were introduced.
And while I'm really not familiar with Aetolia classes, we don't really have much in the way of passive illusions that I can think of off-hand, outside of on-entry programmed illusions and that kind of thing. Though of course mages benefit from passive offense where they probably don't.
And I'm not sure following the "Aetolia route" would be a beloved method - going off what Lerad said, it sounds like the route taken was abilities that just stole cure balances altogether - and that sounds pretty powerful in the hands of demesne users. Which, really, that makes the most sense in terms of achieving the same affect (or phantom afflictions which show on DIAG with a chance to show if it's fake based on your ability to detect and that sort of stuff, but I haven't given it much thought beyond it just passing through my mind).
At least with illusions, good systems are generally pretty good at sorting it out.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
As I stated in the thread where I did comparisons and presented a solution, warriors don't really need the damage type or bleeding runes (they're extras), in the same way that casters don't really need the gripping rune / enchantment rune / etc. The main required runes for warriors are the stat and wounding, and casters need the +20% magic damage rune and the shield rune. Then warriors need pliers too (+1500 credits by itself) or need to kit out a second weapon set.
It's pretty simple to correct it, though. All you really need to do is make these runes attachable to a standard, then they will function like the +20% magic damage artifact (which works on any skill). They simply provide their bonus to your held weapons. At that point you can even raise the price of some of the runes (like the damage type runes) back up a bit, because there's no more need for pliers.
I'd argue that casters don't really need the damage rune either, outside of a few special cases (Cantors, probably Researchers), most of them have strategies that rely very little on damage. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think that mana/ego damage is affected by the damage rune, meaning that Wiccans and most Bards aren't going to get much mileage out of it; Nihilists and Celestines have their own kill methods that rely less on damage (Sacrifice/Inquisition), and Illuminati use brute sourced damage for their bashing attack. Mages, for the most part, have alternate (and probably superior) kill methods in Psionics, and, from what I've been told, Druids need to stick sap on you to get a kill, and at that point, 20% extra damage isn't going to make an appreciable difference.
Do warriors really need a full set of runes in order to enter combat? I understand that there's a large investment for high tier warriors, but can warriors seriously not get kills against a player with a good system, splendors, and a shield rune without a 2400 credit investment?
You can do all right with the mid-way runes (1100 credits), but warriors have been tweaked and adjusted around the top end so that means they're kind of balanced around the expectation that they will have the best possible weapon.
I'll stick to influencing/questing >.> lol
But generally, I think it's a good idea that the whole of the skill should be viewable, but maybe BOLD WHITE denotes the abilities you HAVE learnt in a skill, and maybe grey/lesser white could be used to represent the abilities you CAN learn in the skill. (Pretty sure there's another Mud (not sure if it's one of the IRE ones or not) that has this feature)