This is more directed at devs, but I suspect it can start some interesting conversation as well. I'm a very (very) old-school AC player, I started when the game was still new and a level 60 was a very high level player. I haven't REALLY played since WoW came out, although I always liked AC better than WoW, I couldn't go back due to a number of reasons (outlined in a rant later in post).
The point of this post:
I'd be interested in running an Asheron's Call server from those versions of the game, before component bags, and when the "spell economy" was still a thing. While those early versions of the game had a lot of flaws I still feel that they also did a lot right, and there's something to be said for a game where your decisions matter.
Another request would be the ability to base the tapers required for spells on something other than account name, basically so people can't cheat in all their level 3-6 spells with everybody's favorite old-timey plugin. Preferably the ability to muck with the entire formula, or even make them character specific rather than account wide. Magic is very powerful in Asheron's Call, there's no reason it should be easy.
The rant:
I'm also a bit disenchanted to find that I can now choose to be an Olthoi, Shadow, or other strange races, it somewhat cheapens the game. I have a lot of ideas for how I'd update Asheron's Call, and I must say I would have taken it in a completely different direction, it seems like it's trying to compete with WoW and other current-gen MMOs, where the people who really loved AC (all 200,000+ of us that were playing back in the day, I still bump into them in other games from time to time, and no one ever says they wished AC was more like this new game, usually the other way around). The reason most of us have trouble going back to AC is the interface is very old and clunky, and many of the game mechanics are archaic, but there are ways to update them while keeping them true to the original spirit of the game. The generalized weapon skills are a good place to start, although I feel like there should still be very good reasons to stick with one or two weapon types (like axes vs maces or swords). Skills like recklessness, dirty fighting, etc just feel overall wrong/arbitrary to me. Endurance providing life magic-like buffs was also a good move, although I always felt a bit cheated that those "innate buffs" only went up to level Vish spells. I rather enjoyed playing my endurance-based axe character (I had specced axe, healing (to deal with very high hp for my level), and I think melee defense and arcane lore, one or more of those may have been specced after character creation with a gem. Took item at some point, and decided I would never take life magic, just to buck trends. I of course at later levels had points to put into things, so I got cooking, and carried around a number of dried rations and a cooking pot for when I ran low on stamina, I found I could survive pretty much anything through healing and eating those rations. The game was much different then though, this build was considered gimp, but I loved it.
Which brings me to what I hate about WoW, there are no gimps, I can't make a weirdo character and just enjoy playing it and surprising people with a build that bucks trends. I obviously don't know what the trends are now, but it seems like they've done alot to try to make a "pure melee" character non-gimp, but they seem to have done it by giving him the ability to cast spells with their weapons, that's a bit of an underwhelming fix, and also it just makes characters more similar, rather than more diverse.
Assess _______ skills went the way of the dodo, the problem with them is they were too specific! In my ideal updated version of AC tinkering wouldn't exist, nor would skill-capped items, instead, durability, the usefulness of a weapon goes down until right before it breaks its stats are reduced by 50%, and when it breaks, it's scrap metal, that can be used for a blacksmithing skill, which works like you might think. An item enchantment spell can make a weapon always work as though it is at 100% durability, blacksmiths can also repair weapons, but each time the maximum durability will go down, all weapons and armor will eventually be unusable, this takes care of the inflation issues AC has, even pyreals would be spent more, to purchase new armor and weapons from VENDORS of all things... Where was I? Oh yeah, assess blank skills... There should be one "assessment" skill, it translates 1:1 to assess person, as for other things, it would use the relevant skill, the lower of assessment or finnesse weapons skill, for instance, would be used to identify daggers, a blacksmith would automatically be able to see the stats of items he made, other players would still need to assess. A similar system would be in place for wands/etc, and you should be able to cast without one, but at a skill penalty to all magic schools and mana conv. No more always using the best everything, and it keeps AC's unique gearing system. Atlans, Composite, and quest items would need to be rebalanced, perhaps composite bows you could repair durability loss with more of the components in making them, something similar with atlans and motes. Hmm, not sure what to do about quest items that don't have components... Maybe they'd all have some way to repair. I could see the Dagger of Tikola for instance requiring something exotic like grievver acid to repair. You of course can only have one, so you'd have to either get the acid, or hand it off to a cryer and repeat the quest with some of those other weapons!
Unarmed combat would be a trained skill for everyone, along with "improvised weapons" (now we're talking about AC3 I think), which is used when you pick up something from the environment to use, like a rock, or a branch. Those are purely for when you have nothing else, but I bet we'd still see people running around with specced UA/IW :P
(If all this seems like it would make it harder to min/max everything, that's kinda the point :P)
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, various versions of the server and client please! And let us modify the formula for determining what tapers were used in the old spell component system. I feel like EVERY version ever would be a little overwhelming, just versions where major changes were made, like the latest one before each major change. IE: the patch before the spell system was changed, the patch before respec gems, etc. etc. Or even just organize them in a way so that you know the major points when picking...
The point of this post:
I'd be interested in running an Asheron's Call server from those versions of the game, before component bags, and when the "spell economy" was still a thing. While those early versions of the game had a lot of flaws I still feel that they also did a lot right, and there's something to be said for a game where your decisions matter.
Another request would be the ability to base the tapers required for spells on something other than account name, basically so people can't cheat in all their level 3-6 spells with everybody's favorite old-timey plugin. Preferably the ability to muck with the entire formula, or even make them character specific rather than account wide. Magic is very powerful in Asheron's Call, there's no reason it should be easy.
The rant:
I'm also a bit disenchanted to find that I can now choose to be an Olthoi, Shadow, or other strange races, it somewhat cheapens the game. I have a lot of ideas for how I'd update Asheron's Call, and I must say I would have taken it in a completely different direction, it seems like it's trying to compete with WoW and other current-gen MMOs, where the people who really loved AC (all 200,000+ of us that were playing back in the day, I still bump into them in other games from time to time, and no one ever says they wished AC was more like this new game, usually the other way around). The reason most of us have trouble going back to AC is the interface is very old and clunky, and many of the game mechanics are archaic, but there are ways to update them while keeping them true to the original spirit of the game. The generalized weapon skills are a good place to start, although I feel like there should still be very good reasons to stick with one or two weapon types (like axes vs maces or swords). Skills like recklessness, dirty fighting, etc just feel overall wrong/arbitrary to me. Endurance providing life magic-like buffs was also a good move, although I always felt a bit cheated that those "innate buffs" only went up to level Vish spells. I rather enjoyed playing my endurance-based axe character (I had specced axe, healing (to deal with very high hp for my level), and I think melee defense and arcane lore, one or more of those may have been specced after character creation with a gem. Took item at some point, and decided I would never take life magic, just to buck trends. I of course at later levels had points to put into things, so I got cooking, and carried around a number of dried rations and a cooking pot for when I ran low on stamina, I found I could survive pretty much anything through healing and eating those rations. The game was much different then though, this build was considered gimp, but I loved it.
Which brings me to what I hate about WoW, there are no gimps, I can't make a weirdo character and just enjoy playing it and surprising people with a build that bucks trends. I obviously don't know what the trends are now, but it seems like they've done alot to try to make a "pure melee" character non-gimp, but they seem to have done it by giving him the ability to cast spells with their weapons, that's a bit of an underwhelming fix, and also it just makes characters more similar, rather than more diverse.
Assess _______ skills went the way of the dodo, the problem with them is they were too specific! In my ideal updated version of AC tinkering wouldn't exist, nor would skill-capped items, instead, durability, the usefulness of a weapon goes down until right before it breaks its stats are reduced by 50%, and when it breaks, it's scrap metal, that can be used for a blacksmithing skill, which works like you might think. An item enchantment spell can make a weapon always work as though it is at 100% durability, blacksmiths can also repair weapons, but each time the maximum durability will go down, all weapons and armor will eventually be unusable, this takes care of the inflation issues AC has, even pyreals would be spent more, to purchase new armor and weapons from VENDORS of all things... Where was I? Oh yeah, assess blank skills... There should be one "assessment" skill, it translates 1:1 to assess person, as for other things, it would use the relevant skill, the lower of assessment or finnesse weapons skill, for instance, would be used to identify daggers, a blacksmith would automatically be able to see the stats of items he made, other players would still need to assess. A similar system would be in place for wands/etc, and you should be able to cast without one, but at a skill penalty to all magic schools and mana conv. No more always using the best everything, and it keeps AC's unique gearing system. Atlans, Composite, and quest items would need to be rebalanced, perhaps composite bows you could repair durability loss with more of the components in making them, something similar with atlans and motes. Hmm, not sure what to do about quest items that don't have components... Maybe they'd all have some way to repair. I could see the Dagger of Tikola for instance requiring something exotic like grievver acid to repair. You of course can only have one, so you'd have to either get the acid, or hand it off to a cryer and repeat the quest with some of those other weapons!
Unarmed combat would be a trained skill for everyone, along with "improvised weapons" (now we're talking about AC3 I think), which is used when you pick up something from the environment to use, like a rock, or a branch. Those are purely for when you have nothing else, but I bet we'd still see people running around with specced UA/IW :P
(If all this seems like it would make it harder to min/max everything, that's kinda the point :P)
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, various versions of the server and client please! And let us modify the formula for determining what tapers were used in the old spell component system. I feel like EVERY version ever would be a little overwhelming, just versions where major changes were made, like the latest one before each major change. IE: the patch before the spell system was changed, the patch before respec gems, etc. etc. Or even just organize them in a way so that you know the major points when picking...