[This is a partial repeat of a post I threw over at Game Mechanics. I'm reiterating it here since it's a different audience here and I'd like to see if there's any substantial difference in responses.]
Hi,
Okay, I'm just curious.. who here actually can self-equip their weapons? That is, can you take it off and put it back on?
The reason I ask is that IMHO, Funcom needs to take everyone's critisim (i.e. it's too easy, etc) with the realities of that person's playing style.
Before I get into it in more detail, let me wax nostalgia. AO started off great because it was flexible. People who wanted to 'max-out' the stats of their characters could, at expense of losing certain things - money being the most obvious one of them. They lost however, the ability to hold things in their hands as well.
Then there were players who valued the world that AO created. The ability to hold drinks in your hand. The way you could /greet people without the risk of poking them through the gullet with your warblade.
These two play-styles coexisted in the world of Rubi-Ka. You could generally tell them easily apart by their attire as they ran through Omni-1 or Tir. But aside from that, one did not affect the play-style of the other (unless of course, the RPer was foolish enough to go PvPing in his Miirr suit).
Now though, it feels more and more like one of these is taking over the game mechanics of the other. Mission mobs have been becomming harder and harder at the bequest of a few that thought it felt - "too easy". We've heard boasts of "I just made XXX mils simple!" on this board so many times.
But before Funcom touches a single line of code for "balancing", I ask that they take a close look at the character info (including implants, weaps, etc) of those who make such claims. I believe you'll notice something interesting. Something that doesn't readily show itself on this board, where names are still quite detached from reality.
If only you could /con on this board and get people's equipment list....
Thanks for listening.
Sincerely,
Tap
ed: topic changed Feb 15, 2002 ... or maybe not