So you are telling me all the time i wasted gming mining, smith and tinkering is just gone because you decided to make these changes that noone wanted in the first place. When you make changes it would be a good idea to ask your players what they want instead of just implementing anything that you think is cool. The reason i chose the wood elf for all these things is we only have five char slots. And the skill cap was higher so i could get more crafting skills on him. If this stays the same i am sorry but i am ready to walk away and never play this game again. And i am sure you will get the same response from others who feel the same.

Funny, I believe I said keep it civil.

And also, if you would remember, whenever you created the race character originaly, it said SKILL CAPS HAVE NOT BEEN IMPLEMENTED YET, and that you do so at your own risk.

As i said earlier, staff apologize this is as late as it was, but it's not like you weren't warned.

And if you've logged into your race character, you've noticed that you are given an option to convert it into a human or a different race if it is better suited to your build, so it is not like we're just saying screw you.

We're doing our utmost to make the change as simple as possible, but people complaining just because their previously overpowered characters are getting balanced in a way that they knew was comming for years is not going to get listened too that much.

There is nothing uncivil about what i have said and i was told absolutely nothing about a skill cap for any type of skills that i spent countless hours training. Back when i made my char there were houses that only wood elves with mining and smithing skills could enter, silly me to think i was safe training those skills on him. And is there another race where you can GM 8 crafting skills? I don't think so. What you are talking about here is insane amounts of time not just for me but a lot of other players as well gone in one foul swoop.

We play Obsidian because we like obsidian and up until now there has been alot of changes but the game remained the same. I am reminded of another shard that some of us started playing on that the admin there would not listen to the player base and just kept putting things in that noone wanted. That shard is no longer around.

Accusing the staff of not listening is pretty uncivil.
As stated earlier, we do listen. We just also have to take into account game balance. When you created the character, the original menu where you selected your race and your class said that skillcaps were to be implemented at a later date.

And also as stated earlier, you are allowed to change your race to one more suited to your build. If your wood elf is more suited to mining and smithing, why not convert to a human or a frost elf?

It's not a matter of not listening, it's a matter of there are only so many ways to balance out races, and this was what has been planned for races for over 4 years. This isn't a sudden random change on a whim.

Just because you chose to play a wood elf knowing that the skill cap later might prevent you from gming some of the skills you want in combination, doesn't mean we should reward you for it. You chose that, and it said full well when you picked the race that this would be implemented.

The whole appeal of the human race was you have a lower skillcap, but can gm any skill. It's always been like that. I don't follow the logic that just because you picked a nonhuman character we should let you have an unfair advantage just because the balance was put in a little later than originally planned.

As stated before, saying change sucks, how dare you fubar my race, oh noes my race isn't all powerful over humans now, isn't discussion for this topic. How it can be made to work in a balanced way is what is valid.

Now if you'd like to discuss the merits of wood elves having mining and smithing in addition or replacement to their existing skills, that's more than fair for discussion.

I would agree with Belgarion on this.

The issues I have are these: vampires are magical and should use magic.
If not able to use magic vampires should be able to GM healing...they are immortal you see and should have spectacular healing(I know blood bottles blah blah-but they should be an advantage not evened out by dropping healing cap)
Also, magic resist should be good cus they can be only killed by a stake to the heart or head cut off etc.....nothing magical can kill them....we all know this.

So warlocks are necros only? No PvM with a warlock? If they are made for necro, perhaps when you log in as an old warlock, you should be changed to a necro automatically with necro skill added in proportion to any skills lost due to the patch.

As for Belgarion loosing his ice elf skills.....we all know he could change to human, but then he loses the skill cap that went with it. Or am I wrong?
Perhaps those who are harmed by this can keep the skill cap they have had for years when they change races in necessity. And yes he has a point about the ice huts

Thanks!

Well their must have been some merits to wood elves having smith and mining skills or BB would not have made all those little houses where only wood elf crafters could enter. And switching to a human with a char that has 8 gmed skills? That wouldnt work would it? And in what way does taking away certain crafting skills balance anything? I can see why vamps would not have magic etc. But a wood elf being able to mine makes him all powerful? I have played here for almost 4 years now and i have gmed and re-gmed alot of skills due to 8 month roll backs andthings that were out of anyones control. But if you think now after all this time i am going to start redesigning chars when i have finally got them to where i want them after almost 4 years cuz someone just decided to make a drastic change and seemingly put no thought into the effort of the player base that was affected? Forget it what i will do is just not play anymore period.

In common mythos, vampires are actually more succeptible to magics due to their undead presence. Just beacuse they can't be killed by it doesnt' mean they aren't succeptible. Likewise it is hard to have an understanding of healing when your own body is not alive. Vampires are cursed, not really magical in the traditional sense of the word.

That's the backstory reasons for why vamps are capped on magic resist and healing. Both are open for discussion, however it is part of how they are balanced, so i'd keep that in mind and try them out instead of instantly fearing that nongm makes them worthless.

And yes, warlocks automatically gain their necromancy book on conversion, however there will be no conversion of skills, due to the difference in work gaining them. That is broadband's rule, not mine.

As for skill loss when going from a race char to human, if you've done the race conversion, you'll notice that there's a button that pretty much says "wait for a gm to manually transfer a gm skill to another character due to transferring from a race char to a human char." However expect to wait awhile until a staff has time to do so. Only one skill will be transffered, such that it is enough to push you under the cap you would have a human.

So no, you aren't automatically screwed if you have a build that can only fit a human, just be prepared to not use that character for a day or few until staff can catch you on and have time to fix you.

Well that is exactly what my used to be 8 times gm wood elf crafter that i spent like 3 1/2 years perfecting is now, WORTHLESS!

And transfer what skills on to what char? Transfer crafting skills on to fighting chars? And what about those of us that have already put forth huge amounts of effort and maxed out all our chars? This completely fucks us is what it does.

I've ignored the first few attempts at this, but third time is the charm.
Let me translate this for you, so you can see what you're really bitching about.

"My 8 gm wood elf crafter is now worthless because he's not overpowered and can't gm every skill, but still gets extra skill points. "

As stated earlier, complaints that change sucks and that your race isn't overpowered anymore is unfair are going to be ignored. And no, we are not going to raise your skillcap to what it was if you go human, because that's equivalent to saying to all the human players.

"Sorry, those guys whined more and louder, so we're letting them be overpowered even though they knew when they made the character that it wouldn't be able to gm every skill and if they wanted that then they should have went human."

It is not staff's fault that you choose to use up 4 of your 5 skill slots for fighting characters. And staff will not reward you for putting yourself in a situation that inconveniences you when you were warned ahead of time this was going to happen.

Staff is doing all it can to accomodate those that might be inconvenienced by the change in a way so that they don't lose the time invested. However we will not leave the system imbalanced and unfinished like it's been, just because you've set up your characters specifically to take advantge of the unfinished system, and refuse to adapt to change.

I am going to say this once more so that hopefully it doesn't come up again, but more than likely it will.


Statements that change sucks will be ignored.
Statements that change sucks because races aren't omfg overpowered now, will be ignored.

Everyone was warned when they picked their race that they would be unable to gm all skills unless they were human. This was blatantly listed in every race menu and on the website when races were selectable, because it was the benefit of the human race, and the reason they had the lower skillcap in comparison to the other races.

I am sorry if this is comming off a little harsh, but I would rather be a little stern at the start of this thread, and have people read it, than have to repeat myself multiple times as the thread goes on, as i've already had to do twice. This discussion comes up, without fail, on every major change that obsidian has. People will always bitch that things shouldn't change, and that the shard should stay imbalanced because it is better for them and anyone who disagrees is being unfair.

As stated in the beginning of this thread, this is not the place for "OMFG This sucks. Change is bad and you should never fix it because my imbalanced character roxx!". This a place for discussiion of what pieces of the race skills selections are balanced/imbalanced and how those changes can be rectified. If you are going to continue to post, keep it on topic and keep it constructive instead of bitching and whining about a change that everyone knew was comming and agreed to when they picked their race characters.

Ok but skills that were originally designed for that race? When i first started here i made a miner/blacksmith and it gave me the choice of human or wood elf and i picked wood elf because i thought using those houses would come in handy. And again like i had already asked how does a wood elf being able to mine or make armor overpower anything? You know what honestly it is clear to me that no matter what is said here you will stick to your "idea" even tho it wastes years of work for atleast a dozen people that i know of. So good luck with that and this will probably be just the final nail in the coffin anyway.

As I said in my earlier post which you seem to have missed, You're more than welcome to open that discussion belgarion, and it is encouraged.

What you're not welcome to do is just say "change is bad, bitch bitch whine moan this sucks".

Which is 90% of what you've been doing.

Nowhere in any of my posts have i said that this is the final race skills, and in fact i said in the news post that these lists probably WILL change. We shall see.

However at this point in time, you've made no move to actually start a discussion on wood elves having mining/blacksmithing. You've just complained that the change is bad and your chars are worthless and staff should die.

Let me try to help you out with actually having a constructive conversation.

You say that wood elves should have mining and blacksmithing.
Alright, fair enough, now how do we balance that out?

Well lets see, if we just give them mining and blacksmithing, then they can gm every possible craft skill with the exception of tinkering, as well as all animal skills and most of the music skills. In fact the only two skills they would be unable to learn at all would be fencing and tinkering, and fencing won't really matter as they'd use bows anyway. Being able to gm all but 1 craft skill is hardly fair to the humans, as then they could make every cross discipline GM craftable item on one character, excluding tinkering, while a human would not be able to do that.

Any race having all the combat, or all the crafting skills, renders humans worthless. Because most of the benefit of being able to gm all skills comes from the cross-skill bonuses you get from having the same skills gm'd on one character. Tailoring and carpentry, for example. Or tailoring and animal taming. That is not to say that there aren't cross-skill bonuses amongst combat and crafting skills, such as the bonuses between blacksmithing and macefighting/swordsmanship, or carpentry and archery, however those being the only benefit to a human character is rather weak and unfair to them.

Wood elves are a nature race, so naturally metalwork, mining, and tinkering are the most likely skills they woudlnt' have. lowering bowcraft or carpentry would be out of the question given their race, as wood alchemy. Fishing would be a possibility, but that would suffice only for say mining at best, and being as fishing isn't really cross-skill with any other skill, it wouldn't near as much. Likewise you probably wouldn't get away with saying that wood elves are bad at music or animal related skills.

That is a starting point for your discussion, so try it out. Instead of bitching, suggest ways it could be rebalanced.

Well for one as i said before since we only have 5 char slots is it not actually better to gm a many crafting skills on one char as you can? Yes it would be. And I would hardly call pointing out the fact that i have wasted 3 1/2 years bitching about nothing. But the thing is it is a little too late to step in an say you can't have too many crafting skills on one char. I am only the first person to comment on this many more will see it and have the same complaints trust me. Balanced or not it all comes down to time spent. And if you truly value your player base you had better start realizing it.

I never said it was bitching about nothing.

I said it was unconstructive bitching. Especially considering i get the feeling you haven't bothered checking out the other races and how their balanced or considering whether or not transferring your character to frost elf instead of human would suit you better. Or that you've even bothered to read the FAQ at the top after your first post.

And it's not "too late". As pointed out when you MADE THE CHARACTER, and on the guide on the website when races were open, you were to EXPECT SKILLCAPS TO APPEAR, and if you wanted to gm all skills, to go human. It is unfortunate that the change was delayed for so long, the code, as well as the outline for what the skill caps would be, has been in the system for over 3 years, just was never completed due to our admins having time constraints, as usual. And for those keeping track, yes, that does mean that 95% of this is not my doing, and i'm merely finishing the system so that it works the way it was originally intended. That's also why i have no qualms about changing parts of it, and encourage people to DISCUSS how to balance it out.

If you didn't read that, sorry for you. But you don't get to claim ignorance and then yell at staff for being unfair and not warning you. It is not staff's fault that you made a character using a race that was incomplete and that you were warned was incomplete.

I tried to get you back on tract and being constructive with your comments, but apparently you enjoy being shortsighted and complaining about how staff are out to destroy your character and how change is bad, so i'd suggest to you to avoid posting in this topic for a week and give yourself a chance to calm down, to actually view the balance in a neutral light instead of just "OMFG my overpowered char got balanced, NOOO".

To the rest of you, sorry for letting this drag the thread offtopic so much, most of this conversation will be moved over into the bitching forum in a day or so once it has been resolved so the topic is on track.

Now if anyone would like to try to pickup where belgarion almost started an on-topic conversation, he's put up the suggestion of wood elves gaining mining and blacksmithing, so how would that be balanced out to make the race still balanced?

I hope these changes don't stick as losing a race char due to skill change,or having to make it a human just to keep these skills is fuked. The old skill guide is what ppl have been following for yrs and seems to work well now you make a drastic change to these skills and races, i think Belg is right ppl are not gonna want to make these changes like you might think, and im sure youll see alot of ppl just stop playing here.

Simple lil changes are acceptable but this is a bit much for us to swollow all at once. Your taking skills that ppl have had for yrs and basically taking them away without question or making them make a change...yes change is good but your totally redesigning our chars for us for the most part.

I started here on the 2 yr aniv. and finally gmed most skills on my vamp and now your taking away some skill on certain things and taking away (archery)....WHY, this is a fighting skill we should have wrestling is worthless to a vamp as magery is capped at 30 so no polly,why would we want to tailoring and cartography? that not a vamp trait.

I am happy about updates and all ppl really wanted was fixes to bugs but your changing things way to drastically.

I guess i could go on a bit more but im just irritated by this...i guess i'll wait and see what happens.

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I cannot go frost elf because they are capped at 30 taming i can't go human or else i would have to lose atleast 1 skill. And you don't think me telling you that your player base isn't going to swallow this is constructive? I would think that with an already fleeting player base figuring out how to keep the ones that still play would be the most constructive thing we could possible consider. But I have said what i have to say, once again i will NOT totally change my character builds because it took me far to long to get them to where they are. And you will see that the players who were here when races were an option will agree.