Sorcerer's and BLUDTUPOWA

[Darvin]

[Abraxas]

That sounds much too complex for what is supposed to be a beginner-friendly class (as does, to a lesser extent, the CP on pick-up idea).

[Blovski]

[Wargasm]

Thing is, if you get 2 JJ mana boons, you actually get more mana from the 2 potions you have left than you would have the 4 total. To say nothing of buying a 5th potion, let alone Gnomes. Hence why Mystara's boon is terrible by comparison. I admitted in the post the MB is viable once in awhile (basically CYDSTEPP and APHEELSIK), but since CYDSTEPP spamming is limited to one class and only a few classes benefit from using APHEELSIK vs. having more inventory space/converting, that's of limited use. Amusingly, if MB gravitated towards 4 instead of 5, it would be IMMENSELY better, since ENDISWAL, WONAFYT, HALPMEH, and IMAWAL would then benefit, BURNDAYRAZ would cost 4, and GETINDARE being 4 would still be affordable, and PISORF wouldn't cost extra. That alone would make me squeal with joy and actually take MB on non-Warlords.

Right now I only use Wizard when I want a Hoarder badge, because I can use a couple of extra spells that way. That's literally the only use for the class to me right now.

[q 3]

As a less drastic change, how about having the Wizard get one or two extra glyphs on the map? Possibly with reduced conversion values, possibly not, depending on how it would interact with the less/more glyph preps. (Maybe also have PISORF as a guaranteed spawn, both to encourage new players to seriously consider using it offensively, and to enable vets to use it without scumming or prepping Binlor.)

[Darvin]

Maybe wizard should just start with both PISORF and BURNDAYRAZ in his inventory?

[The Avatar]

On the sorcerer: I was envisioning (spell cost/2)•level. 3 per level with BURNDAYRAZ, and it nullifies the B2P problem.

On the wizard: What about making him a glyph magnet class? Less CP maybe.

[Nandrew]

Will probably look at sorcerer, considering that lvl1 bosskills are generally a big no-no.

Wizard? Well, maybe. Not what I'd call game-shattering right now, and certainly not something that we'd consider radically altering our game deployment schedule over. O_o

It's like Darvin said, patches and expansions can deal with minor issues like these. It's crashes, showstoppers and design issues that significantly poison large areas of the game that we'd halt progress for.

Not to say that we don't listen to balance feedback anymore, it's just that we kinda do other stuff first.

[Wargasm]

[Nandrew]

Hah, I'm not trying to say that it's a problem, really. We obviously don't want to wilfully say "let's ship an inferior game", but I'm starting to think more and more that getting all of the design sorted to satisfaction (in other words, uh, perfection) is a little unrealistic considering our particular situation.

It has been an interesting few years and admittedly I think what's needed most from us right now is a little distance from the project to have a chance at that "big picture" look. Getting a formal release will also bring in a lot of new players and the vocal base for trends and developments will become that much larger. After a bit of time, releasing a hypothetical DLC pack would hopefully improve the game far more effectively than just making repeated, time-consuming tweaks right now.

Done correctly, many games go from good to amazing in the time that follows their release. We want to put our best foot forward on release day, but I think it's also realistic to assume that we could always do better, too.

Though I think I'm just rambling now. I reckon I had a point in there somewhere ...