Invisibility Cloak & Charges

[GhostRiderGrey]

As many of you have now noticed, the Invisibility cloak is now an Arcane Item and uses Arcane Charges. The cloak has a maximum charge amount of 50 and uses a charge each time the cloak is equipped. Once the cloak reaches zero charges, it cannot be equipped until it is recharged. As an Arcane Item, it can be recharged with an Arcane Gem (double click a gem, then target the cloak). It will take more then one gem to recharge it from zero to the full 50.

If you were macroing equipping and unequipping the cloak, be mindful that depending on how your macro is written, the cloak could possibly be dropped to the ground if your macro tries to equip it with zero charges.

Several players have asked why the cloak now uses charges. WP has always had a policy of continuously monitoring and tweaking gear that was overpowered or economy wrecking. I mentioned in a post several months ago that the gold economy in the shard was unhealthy and we would be looking at ways to correct that. As it stood before, once a player had an invisibility cloak, they could to to any and all monsters on the shard and attack/hide/attack/hide over and over with impunity. Basically farming any of our monsters while perma-hiding behind the cloak. More than a year ago we tweaked the cloak to reveal you when you cast, but this was not enough. With this change, you can still attack/hide/attack/hide. No functionality was removed from the cloak. However, now you must also keep watch on your charges and recharge appropriately.

We could have gone several other ways when tweaking the cloak, including making it non-rechargeable or giving it a cool down timer, etc. The direction that was taken was the least disruptive. If this proves not to be enough of a tweak, we can and may revisit further tweaks.

We never look to "punish" players. We (staff) must always look at the overall health and direction of the shard, and make appropriate changes to keep WP alive and functional for the future.

Ghost

[Sting]

I can't begin to tell you how angry, disappointed, and betrayed I feel, with this change.
How can you take the best thing about the shard, and tarnish it?
It feels like someone drew Sponge Bob into the portrait, The Last Supper".

I don't think it has anything to do with the economy of WP. I think the OP gear, weps, and no skill limits cause this. Once you have bought or made your keys, it shouldn't be long before you are able to buy/farm anything.
I play on WP because it is fun to hunt and see friends. I don't have a vendor, but understand if that's what people like, then good for them. The WP economy isn't like regular UO, we can make money fast just fighting. We don't need to put our loot on vendors, in hopes someone will need it.
If the WP vendors want to thrive, they could sell their wares for what they are really worth, and agree to stop undercutting each other.
There are tons of ways to boost the economy, and we could fill many posts with ideas.

I believe we make WP better by adding ideas, events, new crafting recipes, deco, utilities, donation items, and even super rares. Not by taking away from current content, or in this case, handicapping the best item on WP.
Harry Potter's cloak is WP's finest item. We could add to the quest's requirements, like the Thunderwyrm xbow, but please don't tarnish it, like this.
It will just be an annoyance, like having to farm 30 minutes prior to hunting, where I actually want to go, then separating and keyguarding each arcane gem. That's if the dungeon isn't overcrowded with others also needing gems.

Also, less: crusty chests, voting gold, item utility, spellcraft completion ratio.....equals, more fun???
I say, "More, not less" is best. Put it to the test!!!

Please reconsider this change, if not now, perhaps when it shows not to have had any effect, on WP economy.
Maybe a Legacy Harry Potter cloak, as a donation item. I'll make a shard donation to have it reverted back to normal.
My fun level went from 10, to 2, in just a day. Please help. I see 22 people have read this, before my post. Do none of you have a voice, an opinion, or a need to say something? Anything?

Respectfully, Sting.

[Avanthar]

The invisible cloak is the most over used over powerful item in WP. It is the ultimate crutch that undermines technique and effort. For the new(er) player it is invaluable to accomplishing content solo and learning technique. One would hopes that over time as technique is learned the cloak would be of less value...but that has not been the case. It my estimation it has greatly upset the balance of content vs effort. For the established veteran it is convenient and lazy. I, myself, am quite guilty of over using the cloak and relying upon it to farm upper level content. It takes precious little effort to drop most dungeon bosses (Cove, Despise, Ice, Hyloth, Kretcher) and Peerless with a well timed macro of cloak..ebolt/Flame Strike...cloak..repeat with essentially 0% of death upon yourself.

the cloak has 50 charges...it takes 2 arcane gems to recharge...if you spend 15-20 mins farming gems for every 8-10 hrs of game play....you should be just fine....maybe and I mean maybe...after much study...the charges could be increased to 75 or 100 but I would not make that a knee jerk reaction but see how that works over time.

merely my 2.5 cents

Avanthar

the views expressed herein are mine and mine alone..they do not represent the Governing Body of Whispering Pines.

[Mesmerize]

I will have to say, I am a bit confused also as to how a cloak that does nothing but hides you can hurt the economy? There are plenty other things that are hurting it. Players farming champ spawns that run programs to put bandaids on them every few seconds, grab gold/ tokens, they can farm the champs even while doing their dishes. As Ghost says it is not to punish players But players have got used to the way the cloak was and changing it to make it harder to use it by having to farm gems,and remembering to charge it. feels like punishment to some. Perhaps take a vote from the players on some changes before making them get their input? I have played on other shards and when players felt some changes were made and made their game play worse they left. Ghost is shard owner and can and will make changes as he feels But maybe getting the players input before by a vote or something would help. Because without players there is no shard.

[Falkor]

Being able to hide without fail and without any delay basically short-circuits the AI of any foe. You can sit one tile away from them and blast away. As long as you disappear between every hit it has no idea where you are. What good are new enemies when you can do the same thing to them? Their attacks and resists are totally useless when the AI doesn't know you exist. I could allow bosses to see hidden players, making the whole hiding thing a moot point...

If you could accomplish the same thing via the hiding skill, that's fine. The skill can fail precisely because if it wasn't a possibility the skill would be overpowered. It affects the economy because you can farm all the bosses in a boring, predictable routine and pile up items that should have been difficult to obtain. Lose the hiding crutch and all of a sudden hard things are hard again.

You mentioned overpowered weapons and gear; I can't imagine the response if I started dialing those items back! I'm sure some people are still mad that steels went from 3 slots to 4 a number of years ago. Changes are necessary, though, if we want to continue to improve the shard and how it is played. Just wait till I address the faster casting and recovery caps. Blasting circle 8 spells once per second was never intended to be possible. Add a cloak between each cast and there's no mob on the shard that can pose a challenge.

WP will always change. Some of those changes won't please everyone. The shard was created as a place where the founders would want to play. Whether that attracts a large crowd or a small one was never a consideration. I can tell you that I haven't spent hundreds of hours programming to see how much I could "ruin" the game for anyone. There is a lot more yet to be seen. Some will love it. Some may hate it. In any case it provides a future for the shard instead of it withering with no new content. A lot of custom shards have come and gone during WP's span. Ghost and I are determined to make sure we don't become one of them.

[LochLinn]

Okies, time for me to put in my two gold pieces ...

1) First off, I don't see this as a major change, certainly not a game-stopping (or even game-nerfing) one. As a newer character, I'm still working on getting all the toys and items to make carrying/gathering resources easier. I still have to watch the charges on my Bag'O'Sending, I still have to keep track of how many bandies and arrows I have on me, I still have to (occasionally) buy some restock for regs, etc , etc. This is just one more item that has to be on my checklist before I go do any lengthy or dangerous outings - and I consider it just part of my routine to make ensure I don't run out of stuff when I'm out hunting or whatever. Considering that one gem does much more than one charge, it's not even as bad as the trans powder for my Bag'O'Sending. Even with all the keys and the bestest of the bestest hi-end gear and skills, you *still* have to occasionally restock/repair or whatever.

2) I also do not see having to occasionally go out to farm the gems as a bad thing. They're relatively easy to come by, you don't need a huge stack of them, and it gets me out to areas I wouldn't normally go to in daily gameplay - sometimes with some surprises to keep me interested. For instance, I discovered a Pet spawn that I never knew was there until I went gem seekeing. The only type of player I see this really causing any *extra* work for is the one who only logs on to do the high end stuff (champs, Bosses, etc.) - and even for them, the extra work is nominal. As Avanthar pointed out, it is possible to become too dependant on the 'routine' to do things, and this is a (very minor) break in that routine - forcing players to be just a little more aware of what's going on in the game.

* Well, that's my 2 gold worth .. now, where's my change?

[GhostRiderGrey]

It had not occurred to me that some players might have their cloaks morphed. I will work on adjusting the code so that the morphed cloak stay morphed.

Ghost

[Ingwe]

For what it's worth, and with as much respect as possible, I'll offer my perspective on this subject too. I think all the posts made so far really reflect a lot of different positions well. I'd like to see if I understand those positions as well as I think I do. Although this is sure to be a titanic wall of text, I'll ask that you read through it all to get the full picture before starting a reply please.

Sting is a veteran player. For advanced veterans, the only reason to keep logging in to WP after a year or so (a lot sooner for some power gamers) is the love of the players, the staff, and the peace here. Everything at that point has been defeated and can be re-defeated easily. [Let's agree to skip the "Have you crafted wine? Taken up knitting?" rebuttal here. Every veteran has probably not done every little thing but that's not really relevant if they aren't interested in those things, and a lot of people aren't. Also, those tasks don't present challenge, They're just things that take time to do.] You realize suddenly that you're just doing the same thing day in, day out, busting up champs and bosses, taming steels, popping crusties to no real point anymore, and you make the decision - slowly - to do one of two things. Continue on anyway, knowing it's pointless, because it's relaxing and nice here. I know several players that fit this bill and I myself did for quite a while. These players have made a peace with the status quo. They'd be happy for more content but they aren't going to go looking for it because to them, WP is really home. They aren't really worried about an abundance of gold or a deficit of it, whether the content is too easy for them or not, because they are content. When you alter current content to make it harder, you have not made it more fun for this kind of player. There was already no real point in them hanging out and doing that content anyway. If it's made tedious, it's going to take them back to that decision again where they ask - what am I really doing here? Do I stay or do I go? Especially when the change comes with no *new* content that would give this veteran something exciting or different to do.

Please note that I'm not saying the change to the cloak HAS made things tedious - I don't know. I haven't played here in several months (which will bring me to the other kind of veteran in a second) so I haven't tried it out. But the purpose of the change IS to make things harder so, if Ghost accomplished his goal, then we can assume it's more tedious. Additionally, there's this: "If this proves not to be enough of a tweak, we can and may revisit further tweaks." So we know that if players find a comfortable workaround/macro, they'll be taken out of that comfort zone again later. And this: "Just wait till I address the faster casting and recovery caps." A lot more was promised than the one change that happened. And again, what was done or alluded to does nothing to enhance the game for the kind of player already discussed.

Some players, when they hit that "I'm doing the same thing over and over to no real point" moment, whenever it comes, will move on and disappear, or maybe check back in every few months or year to reminisce and say hi to their old buds. I know players of both kinds, the ones gone and never heard from again and the yearly appearance kind. For them, there's no invitation to come back in these changes. The content already wasn't enough to keep them here; making the same old thing harder certainly isn't a draw. This is where I risk offending you guys, and I will try my very best not to because that is not my intention at all. I just want to present facts that I think may be vital to the players and possibly the server. This kind of player realizes that new and exciting content does not come to WP and doesn't hold out hope for it either. Aqueducts are not exciting. They would be a nice addition to a server that is already exciting. Read over the seasonal [MOTD for the past several years, if you need a reminder. You guys have been doing the same Christmas quests for four years running now. The turkeys and Thanksgiving champ have been going on for even longer. The dungeon bosses that represent the endgame here and are most affected by this change to the invis cloak have all been around since at least 2010, some even longer. We move on when we realize that we could leave for two years straight, come back and say "Hey everyone, what's new?" and the answer would be "Nothing."

Also - bugfixes. I'm not a coder. I don't know what goes into it and how hard or time consuming it is and I wouldn't dare to make it sound trivial or easy to do. But you guys don't fix things. Here's a post from 2013 about how 120 Remove Trap was useless at that time: wpshard.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1132&p=3727#p3727 It's still useless. There have been no large weapon BODs since the server started. There still aren't any. The Deal or No Deal timer thing, and so on. The forum goes all the way back and it shows a whole lot of things that are just left broken or useless for years on end, not touched or tweaked or even talked about touching or tweaking. People notice that. It means something. It's not just brushing off whoever is posting at that moment, it's a lasting record of an unwillingness to enhance/fix things.

Then you have the new players like LochLinn. Changes won't much bother new players because to them, they aren't changes. It's all brand new to them. I guess the question is whether or not making WP as it is harder will improve the new player experience and new player stickability, because they are the only players who can possibly benefit from it. Only time will tell, I guess. It might stretch out the time period before they become Masters of the Universe and come to the stay/go decision. There are also several other factors that come into play with that too though - how adept they are at the game and writing macros and scripts, and what their access is to high-end equipment early on. Will it really slow down player progression? I don't know.

I don't believe WP really has an economy. There aren't enough players to even bother with running vendors, we all know that. What makes selling even worse is the fact that some vets give away the few items you might be able to vendor, like powerscrolls and crusader gear. The players who have vendors continue out of sheer stubbornness and nothing else. If there's no market, how can there be an economy? Yes, there's an obscene amount of gold on the server and nothing to spend it on. Making gold harder to earn won't reduce it and it won't create economy where none currently exists. More than that though, this change doesn't make gold harder to earn. If we're addressing just monster-bashing methods of making gold, the obscene gold is earned at champs. Not dungeon bosses or peerless. Like I already said in a now-deleted post, dungeon bosses and peerless are not even necessary. Spellcrafting is not necessary. Chuck Norris is not necessary. They're things that players do for a sense of completion and triumph and the items they give can make players mightier but players don't NEED to be mightier. Players can powerup to the point where they can solo all the champ spawns except Oaks and Deep Sea without ever touching a Spellcrafting gem.

I'm not saying the status quo of it being so easy to farm gold and conquer the galaxy should continue. It probably shouldn't. But there's a lot more to it, a lot of different ways to look at this, and I hope I've shared those views clearly and been as uninsulting as possible in the process. I didn't write this to gloat over my own words - I don't have enough time in my life to waste them. I didn't write it to get my rocks off by tearing into you guys - I'm sure you noticed I slipped away as quietly as possible. I like you guys and I love your server; there's just not enough to keep me here anymore. The reason I wrote this was because I care and because I felt what I had to say might eventually have positive effect. I hope so.

I have to say before I go though that I always used to think that the frequent statements about WP's long run were testaments to more than just the refusal of staff to close the server regardless of how few people were playing on it. I don't know if this was phrased differently than I've ever seen or what:

The shard was created as a place where the founders would want to play. Whether that attracts a large crowd or a small one was never a consideration.

but it gave me a far different impression, and not a better one, than I ever got before.

[Mesmerize]

Very good post Ingwe, you made alot of good points. As for saying what Falkor wrote about the shard was made for how the founders would want to play, wether it attracted a crowd or not, kinda made me feel Alot of players have donated to help the shard and those words i am sure made some feel unappreciated on WP. Wp is a way to relax for me and i enjoy the people, to me the players are what helps make a shard.

[Falkor]

I really don't have a nice reaction to that post so I will put what I can here in PG form.

Here is an entire forum dedicated to new content that you say has never been added. That's an awful lot of nothing, especially considering it comes from one person. One person who isn't a "real" programmer and works all day at a real job too, and then staffs here in the evenings while also managing to get some coding done. One person who had to sacrifice time playing here in order to give others more to do. We've had two large client updates and hundreds of new items added to a server that was long past its prime. It was asked several years ago if players would prefer to stay as we are or delete everything and start over with the newest server and client. The resounding answer was to keep things as they are. But hey, we don't listen to the players, right?

"Hey, add some BODs. Your holiday quests are old. The DoND timer is iffy. Wah wah wah."

Take your entitled attitude somewhere else if that's all you have to contribute. Go try some of the shards that are so much better. I follow the message boards of all the larger shards and have played most of them. They all have their issues. One shard had a ruined economy and a pissed off playerbase and then had an 18 month rollback due to poor backup techniques. You know what they did to capitalize on that setback? They got rid of all the extra gold. They made things harder to do. Their players are happier than ever. I wasn't here at the beginning and we're not about to dump anything completely. We will keep working on balance. Your main complaint is that it's easy to reach end game here. How does making everything easier do anything to help that issue?

You say excess gold from champs is a problem. The original post complained that gold from the champs has been reduced too much. How are we supposed to make both of you happy? The answer is: we're not. We are going to continue to improve the shard the best way we know how. We hope most will enjoy it but we know others will go elsewhere. If you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. Our continued commitment is to the people who stay.

You say we're still here only because we refuse to close the server, yet you complain when we change things. Which is it? This shard isn't a business. It can run with 2 players or 200 and as long as those players are having fun we aren't going to close it.

Rares will soon be rares, yet will be equally accessible to everyone. You won't have to worry about whether someone has been by and harvested them before you arrived. You won't know where to recall in to check on a crusty because they won't spawn that way anymore. You will actually have to play the game to get items!

There are upcoming expansions that I think most will enjoy. But hey, feel free to log in after it's all ready and let us know how it isn't enough, or it's still so boring, or isn't up to whatever standard you want a small shard to uphold.

but it gave me a far different impression, and not a better one, than I ever got before.

You are not mistaken. That was exactly how and why the shard was created and it has been posted here before. No shard can survive by trying to be everything to everyone.

Donations are optional, a gift to be made freely to support the shard. They are not a means to guilt us into changing how the shard operates in exchange for money.