Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

This is a Quote from Birk's Post: The Newbie Experience
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17538

... The first thing you find outside the WD newbie temple is a weaponsmith with an inventory of some 300+ weapons, most of whom are expensive masterwork pieces in all the colours of the rainbow. Still, even with 320 weapons in stock, a masterwork rapier isn't one of them. Moving on to armour. In a similiar system, the city sports merchants that stock a staggering selection of psychedelic half plate pieces, but from all my scouring of WD, Westgate, TT, Shadowdale, Silverymoon, ++, I've still not been able to procure a full suit of basic light mail or brigandine. Now- this isn't an insurmountable issue. I can get by fine with a normal rapier, and swapping out the brigandine for heavy mail or studded leather. But it's symptomatic of an item system that really is very user-unfriendly. There are what, 50-60 distinct weapons in the game- scouring a list of 320 without finding what you need is disheartening. For armour, you're searching for seven distinct pieces, and you need to examine each one from LIST closely to find out what it is, which is often anything but apparent (major issue in itself). I've seen different "breastplate" items count as brigandine, half plate and fullplate, while "mail" is also a highly ambiguous keyword often employed in descriptions.

As long as shops aren't player-driven, I think outfitting will keep making newbies balk until imms make it more accessible. We already have glory-driven recolours, so there really shouldn't be a need to keep fifty shades of gem-studded greataxe in stock. At any rate, even if said greataxes are kept available, there should at least be other places where full sets of generic gear can be obtained. This is also an issue of scope- across the entire Sword Coast, Dalelands, Tethyr, Amn and so on, obtaining basic gear really shouldn't be as difficult as it currently is.

I've been to the shops Birk is talking about, the two directly outside the Dripping Dagger, and the new newbie zone. I agree with Birk on the size of that weapon inventory, and the quality. However, I disagree on pulling things that let you customize your character. Character customization is HUGE even in the big MMORPGs they make most of their money off selling the novelty armor skins and appearance modifying items because its such an important aspect. I think for a beginner seeing these is a good sign. It shows them what they can work towards, they are just in the wrong spot.

I looked at the list of weapons earlier and there's everything from enchanted masterwork exotics to standard fare on that list. There are some weapon types missing though. Most seem to be renamed masterworks, and about a third were enchanted. Having enchanted and unenchanted weapons on the same list is a real mess even for older players. Unless you are a cleric or mage its a bit of a roulette wheel buying from that list. 100 plat might get you a fancy rename, or an enchanted fancy rename, but you don't know till you can either drag it to a friend or drag the friend in.

I think perhaps some of Waterdeep's merchants have been in business long enough that their shops might consider expanding. Especially Saern and Riven. Instead of piling it all into one merchant, add a few more rooms to their shops. Saern can move to the back of their shop and sell the high-end magical weapons, an employee in another room can set a full set of basic weapons, and another can handle the fancier renames. The same can be done for rivens, separating out the basic from the renamed and enchanted. This will trim down the size of the lists, allowing for an easier browse of the items, make it easier for newbies to find what they want, and be able to see what they can aspire to without getting overwhelmed. It doesn't pull anything from the game and it organizes things for even the older players.

Hey. I agree that the existence of the multitudes of coloured weapons and armour aren't a problem in themselves and I have no intention of lobbying to have people's shiny toys taken away.

But the diku-based shop interface FK uses is just not user-friendly enough for the sort of item clutter some of these shops experience. The weapons aren't even the most problematic. Most characters only need one or two, and in shop inventories the listing tends to have a keyword that makes them easily identifiable, ie a pretty greataxe is going to be a gem-studded greataxe rather than, say, a gem-studded francisca. It's also not -too- much trouble finding a basic mundane edition of most simple and martial weapons around, so for your character's basic needs, you'll be set pretty quickly.

The troubles with the system only get really bad when you start looking for armour. Has it been considered before to switch the armour system from seven pieces to just one?

I do really miss the old merchant system, where you could sell to multiple merchants for a fair price not just a few merchants that could afford to give you at least half the value of an masterworked item. I know the old system was not based on canon sources, but when I have to cycle through 180+ items each time I hit list at the same three or four merchants, there is a problem. Maybe its time to add more merchants to areas and give them a more restrictive economy? I will say this, ever since the rmi and restrictive merchant system came into play, the old issues we had with economy (merchants not being able to afford anything) are gone. The admins fixed one of the worst problems in a a single update, but in doing so, they crippled trade with standard vendors and merchants outside of special cases. Most of them are now furniture, we don't buy from them, you'd have to be mad to sell quest rewards to them and yet they still exist. I didn't like it until I was told it was canon, I grew to accept it, but there are still things we can improve, we may need to find a way to refresh merchant inventory or to stagger merchant locations. I would look into maybe adding two or three more speciality merchants capable of large purchases and better selling prices to various cities as well.

I was only using the weapon shop as the example. The armor shop has the same needs, and I mentioned that in my post. I just didn't see value in restating everything again for the Riven Shield Shop.

Moving the enchanted items to a shop and the masterwork renames to another will greatly reduce the clutter on those lists. Sure people will still sell a few oddball items to them, but that usually doesn't make that much clutter, and is cleared everytime the server is reset. I think this would help with the immediate issue of the overwhelming store listing. Especially since a new player coming out of waterdeep will see that as their first impression and not know that there are very few stores in game that are that cluttered.

As for the other parts, they fall a bit outside the scope of my suggestion. I'm not suggesting a complete overhaul of the armor system. I rather like the 7 piece sets, even if it can be frustrating at times to find the complete set. I'm definitely not a supporter of going down to single piece armor sets. I'm more in favor of finding armor sets that have missing pieces, and requesting that those pieces be added to the game than completely redoing the armor system. I see why you want it, but I don't think it would serve the game well, this is why I didn't include it in my suggestion.

I know a little bit of how the equipment is added to the game. Each area's builder adds their own little renames to their areas, whether its quest reward or a shop item. Over the years there's been a ton of different builders. Going through and renaming every renamed item to bring them all into line would be painstakingly long, and I don't think it would really organize anything that well. There will still be incomplete sets, and sets that are only half complete unless you join a faith. Changing all Helms from coif, great helm, skull cap, bassinet, armet, sallet, and barbute to "helm" greatly reduces their descriptive qualities also. MUDS don't have the benefits of pretty graphics so we have to use colorful descriptions to fill in what cannot be viewed visibly, and even there you have a limited amount of space for the description.

A lot of the quest rewards are generated randomly, meaning that we get a completely random roulette of items at the end of a questline. I would recommend discussing the armour system in its own thread. Personally, I have an invested interest in leaving the current armour system as is and enjoy the customization and layering immensely.

Im with Gwain. I dont really understand what you ment by armour being the issue. Theres all sorts of armour available from merchants in game through all category types. If anything -material- is armour is lacking for the druid/ranger side. Theres light chain shops that are accessible, brigadine, banded, half, full, masterwork, non-masterwork. Certain masterwork materials being worse than non-masterwork items of a more durable material. I think armour is pretty fair too. Not just realm wise, even locally in Waterdeep or other 'larger' newbie starting cities.

I'd also like to be able to use merchants throughout the realms as Gwain said. Im not really sure how its cannon to pay 2 gold for a masterwork fullplate +2 chestpiece though. Not at all. Which is what happens sometimes. Granted you can find an appropriate merchant and get maybe 15-30 plat or 60 plat if you are a pretty fellow in the right place. But when you drop identify on something and see a value of 500 plat, and loose it for a tenth. I've had more success at pawnshops. Quest items are largely held onto by a good chunk of players for use as an alternate bartering system, but even with this in mind, I've got chars with PACKS of crap.

While this used to be a MAJOR problem, other alternate means to making coin have been brought into the game as well. Through some of these, I've seen chars offer completely appropriate prices of platinum. I have no qualms dumping 300 plat onto something nice that fits my character. When Im grinind for xp, I dont even pay attention to the level command. I watch worth and run by total coin gained rather than xp. Just my bit though! And not nearly as put together as I'd have wanted it!