Lamenting things I haven't been able to play...

[Revenant]

Good point, Asmoth. Personally, I usually look for ways around murdering other characters, and when it's inevitable, I try to drag it out as long as possible, and not just use the code, but make the experience a heavily psychological one for the other player, so that when it does happen, they know the why, they know how, who, they likely even know it's coming long before it happens. I like to turn mercy on, so I can give them at least a few emotes before finishing the job, though they're likely unconscious... and I then lament having to do it, for a long time. I'm not the type to walk into the Gaj and blow everyone up, though, waving a knife and declaring that everyone in the room is going to die by my hand, someday, is something I would totally do (and have done, more than once), and probably never follow up on.

Also, just killing other characters is kind of, not fun in my opinion. If there's no dialogue, no threats, no hints, you give the other player no way to adjust their character's behavior slightly so that maybe there's another option available, nor do you give your character the chance to hear another side of the story that may sway them to alter themselves. In a perma-death mud, PKing is a last resort for someone like me. Despite being a certain type of player, I can appreciate all the work others put into their characters, their social contacts, lifetime achievements, story telling, exploration and learning, and prefer to help (and also explore these activities myself), rather than hinder, the process. Because in the end, the story is the most important, not my story, not someone else's, but the overall outcome and the ripples generated from it. Character growth, to me, is much more important than "winning".

[Synthesis]

I would have liked to have played a warrior before the "defense nerf," whatever that was.

I think warriors were less powerful compared to other guilds because of that change. Though I'm not even sure there was really ever a defense nerf. Staff have denied it if I remember correctly.

It's not so much a a defense "nerd" as it was the addition of a mega penalty to your defense the more pcs or npcs were attacking you. That's what people are talking about when they mention the defense nerf. It was made public when that happened.

The defense nerf and the multiple-attackers penalty are two different things.

The way things were, everything had a much, much, much higher effective base defense (i.e. chance to dodge an attack).  It was much easier to train up your weapon skills, because generating failures was easy.  (However, there were no branched weapon skills, so maxing out your weapon skills wasn't a huge deal.)  Warriors (especially d-elves) could attain fairly ridiculous levels of defensiveness, because there were fewer attacks that made it to the level of parry and shield-use skill checks.  I'm pretty sure there were sparring matches between skilled warriors that could stretch on for RL days before someone had to flee, if no commands were used.  On the other hand, there was also no stamina penalty for using combat commands, so kicking everything to death was a viable option.  (Also, you could regenerate health while sitting during combat, so you could recover hp on bash failures, kick reversals, or after getting bashed, heh.)

Non-fighter guilds were also much more viable as small-game hunters out of the box.  At the time of the defense nerf, I was playing a d-elf merchant in the ATV, and I'd go out and kill my own duskhorn, ritikki, etc.  When they implemented the nerf, it completely put a stop to that.  (I intensely sparred with my last merchant...and I'm -pretty- sure that he could've taken a scrab while etwo'ing...but ain't nobody gonna put that to the test on a fully-branched merchant.) Magickers were also not quite such glass cannons, although a bunch of them got reworked, so maybe their mojo is stronger now to compensate, or whatever.

But overall...yeah.  The nerf made it somewhat easier for anyone to PK anyone in straight melee, and warriors were somewhat greater beneficiaries of that effect.  I was bent out of shape about it at the time because it meant that my PC (in what was almost an iso-clan at the time) was stuck inside the stupid camp doing nothing because now he was about as tough as wet tissue paper...but I suppose everything has more-or-less worked out.  (I still managed to compile about 1,000 of my current 1,300 item list of crafting recipes with that PC.)  It's a whole lot harder to keep combat-lite (no parry or branched-parry) guilds alive out of the box, but it's not impossible.

[Armaddict]

There was also the agility nerf, which made agility's affect on defense far less profound.  City elves really did dodge the shit out of you, before, which seems logical, but when you combined it with warrior defense skills they became -so hard- to do any damage to.

Kicking things to death prior to it costing stamina was not really viable.  Even with high strength, kick did like...3 hp of damage.  Wrist razors were more reliable damage than kick.  Kick was a 'look what I can do' skill that did barely anything.  When they buffed it, people still didn't really give it credit because it started so low damage for high stamina cost, and then I think it was...was it Eldor's friend, who started kicking people for like 25 damage?  Someone got it up and had high strength, and a nerf to it came shortly after.

Anyway, when people talk about 'the defense nerf', I think of the agility one.  Because that's the one that -really- made half-giants and dwarves way more scary than they were back then.

[RogueGunslinger]

I think you're actually just talking about the defense nerf Synth already mentioned, and dodging was probably just more pronounced for higher agility players more so than agility was actually nerfed. Warrior Elves with high agi dodge like fucking champions still. Also do other funny things like pass climb checks and get weapons skills to advanced in a short amount of time.

Makes me want to warrior/slipknife myself a rinth elf.

[Armaddict]

I think you're actually just talking about the defense nerf Synth already mentioned, and dodging was probably just more pronounced for higher agility players more so than agility was actually nerfed. Warrior Elves with high agi dodge like fucking champions still. Also do other funny things like pass climb checks and get weapons skills to advanced in a short amount of time.

Makes me want to warrior/slipknife myself a rinth elf.

You're probably right, but I thought there was another more recent one (relatively) that changed the way defense calculations took place that was unrelated.  Could be completely wrong.  Point remains!

[BadSkeelz]

Interesting post Synthesis, thank you.

I am going to change my lament to wishing I had played a warrior before the group-combat-penalty. Being able to fight ten mobs at once would be straight up heroic.

[Synthesis]

Interesting post Synthesis, thank you.

I am going to change my lament to wishing I had played a warrior before the group-combat-penalty. Being able to fight ten mobs at once would be straight up heroic.

You can still get away with some pretty ridiculous stuff.  When my uber-warrior was maybe...I dunno, 75-80% to his peak performance, he and a maxed-out ranger took down 12 tarantulas, a silt-flyer, and a black beetle.  Very nearly died, but it was pretty epic to duo a mob group that's taken down entire RPTs full of Byn noobs.

[Clearsighted]

Interesting post Synthesis, thank you.

I am going to change my lament to wishing I had played a warrior before the group-combat-penalty. Being able to fight ten mobs at once would be straight up heroic.

You can still get away with some pretty ridiculous stuff.  When my uber-warrior was maybe...I dunno, 75-80% to his peak performance, he and a maxed-out ranger took down 12 tarantulas, a silt-flyer, and a black beetle.  Very nearly died, but it was pretty epic to duo a mob group that's taken down entire RPTs full of Byn noobs.

I can back up Synth's anecdote as being very doable. So you're not suffering THAT much from the penalty.

Still, I love this penalty. You're much better off with it in the game, than without it.

[Rathustra]

DEFENSE NERRRDDDDSSS

[Bast]

A Sorcerer before they nerfed them, a halfling, and a Oash noble. I'm always square in the middle of a pc I love when they role call for Oash   

[BadSkeelz]

With the new interest list, you can app during the role call with the stipulation you'd like to play one in the future, not right now.