Post:Enchanting, and guilds losing specialities - 03/18/2012 - 14:39

Re: Enchanting, and guilds losing specialities · on 03/18/2012 02:39 PM CDT	5691
The answer to this is complex and mutifaceted. How can we fairly sprinkle creation systems between Guilds? Someone is bound to be left out, especially as we do not have one Advocate per Guild (and never have). We have several Lore Prime guilds with no creation systems, and all the "good" creation systems are already taken. Part of the allure of playing a Trader or Bard is having some use for their Lore skillset. By opening the systems up suddenly those Guilds become more enjoyable. Second, if we didn't open the crafting systems up you would probably never have seen a new one developed. The time involved with developing a system from scratch is too much for the resources available. Just maintaining all these old and poorly documented systems is beyond imagine! Starting over and utilizing a Core set of mechanics was the only possible way to address it. Especially when you consider all the fun cross-interactions we wanted to have. Enchanting weapons, crafting siege engines, and so on. A third reason is more and more players are hitting 150th every day with little to look forward to. Ok, I am a barbarian and I can cap basties. Kind of lame after sitting there with nothing new to do for 4 years. But if an outlet exists for other crafting systems - even if they'll never be the best at them, it gives you something to do and retains the player base. A fourth reason is the big picture. Workorders, Prestige, commodities, the RP behind the Societies and tool systems. All of that requires a rethinking of the game and including more people. Honestly, we had so few people forging it didn't make sense for us to invest resources in maintaining/updating that system. The math, the bugs, the exclusiveness. Really it boils down to - do we open this up and expend some resources making it awesome, or do we continue to let it languish in a poor state forever? With regards to the 3.0 changes, you are seeing a period of contraction. This is necessary to get the game balanced in preparation for some of the fun additions we want to bring out. For example, right now circle 150+ critters are impossible to make and boss critters are harder than hell to make. This limits the enjoyment GMs and players can have with events and quests. But there is no simple way to fix this because of Ability X, Y, Z and Q that can one-hit obliterate such monsters. The answer? Well, that is to push everything back and make it fit into a single set of maybe 20 mechanics to balance. Not 450 different mechanics that we have no chance of balancing. There IS light at the end of the tunnel. Once 3.0 is out and the bugs are wrung out, that is when you'll begin to see diversification added back in. At that point we'll have a solid foundation - a foundation that has long been missing. Once when we get the floor properly laid can we hope to get out of the dreaded "Spell Review of Eternity" cycle that has been occuring since I began playing DR :P I hope some of that makes sense. There is a long term goal in mind, and we are just asking for some patience while we work towards it.
This message was originally posted in Discussions with DragonRealms Staff and Player \ General Discussions, by DR-KODIUS on the play.net forums.