Posted by Yep. on September 24, 1999 at 02:52:36:
In Reply to: This is what I would call horseshit. posted by Someone on September 24, 1999 at 00:31:11:
I've decided this will be a good time to take a bit of a sabbatical from CF as well. Or maybe get another character started. Working on a character for 200 hours to be spamkilled by conjurers that you've never even met... not very fun. I consider myself a competent RPer, and was involved with researching a quest when it started. I've spent a lot of hours on that as well, talking with those who know more, searching areas for clues, etc. Now, such things are useless, because all I can do to stay alive is hide underground or underwater, naked.
To the imms: Conjurers are brilliant coding work. They are intricate, complex, and unique, moreso than anything I have seen on any MUD. However, a reasonably competent players with a few friends can turn them into killing machines, and their victims can do very little about it. It's not nightgaunts alone. It's the clairvoyance/clariaudience that lets them know when you're fighting or otherwise vulnerable. It's the nightgaunt softening you up when you're already in trouble. It's the horde of servants that can finish off a 40's ranked character with all relevant skills perfected, decent gear, and all defensive measures up..... in one round. If you beat the nightgaunt, there is no reward whatsoever other than a delay until the next one comes for you. If you don't beat the nightgaunt, it's a MUD-wide summon that takes away more than half of your hitpoints en route. And you will either crash land in between two pairs of centurions or in a room with 3-5 Scourging Masters. Or, once they've had time to rest up, they'll all gate to you.
For true game balance, Conjurers must be fair -assuming their player understands them thoroughly-. The players here are very careful, and play an awful lot. I agree that playing a conjurer looks difficult. However, it is not fair to the player base if the one person who figures out a few 'tricks' can slaughter all enemies in range without taking a single hit. And clairvoyance/nightgaunt isn't the most obscure combination in the world. I remember it being the first thing I saw after reading the help files.
Again, Conjurers are a very cool achievement. Unfortunately, they reward exactly the play style that hurts CF at times. Must we wait for another Severyns/Matraien?
At the very least, it would be nice to see some raw data. I would imagine that you could extract PKill ratios for levels 42-51 from the data that creates those boards on the official page. Are conjurers leading that pack of late? Or is this an illusion, because it's easy to bitch about? I'd bet they outshine any other class.
But I could be wrong.
> I have decide not to make a conjurer and abuse something like this. I just am through with this game. The same thing happened when mutters were redone. They were over-powered as hell. What is the deal with mages and immortals? Why does every fucking new mage have to be so grossly overpowered? Why do we even have a rager cabal when a warrior doesn't stand a snow balls chance in hell of surviving these things. At least three masters...three nightgaunts....Do you just like to make idiots like Arolin think they are a bad ass because they can abuse something like this?