Capture the Flag Discussion Thread

my 2 cents for what its worth as I play a dexxer 95% of the time in CTF: The only reason dexxers are viable in CTF events (not OP at ALL IMO), is magic weapons. Having participated in GM only tournaments, I can without a doubt say that GM equipment is a joke. If we were to implement GM only equipment into CTF, we would see the massive majority of players using mages... massive. I have never counted, but the current proportion of players using dexxers and mages seems fairly balanced.

I agree with most of your suggestions lightshade and mes, except for this bit about gm equipment. I am more then willing to give it a shot, but I just don't see how the damage is going to be there for a dexxer to be anything but a detriment for your team by not playing a mage instead.

CTF is fun and I will play whenever I am able regardless, but it would be a real shame if we turned CTF into a mage only event.

I personally think dexxers, if played appropriately, are over-powered in the confined quarters of a CTF Match....but IF we accept that they are not and that they NEED runics in order to be equal...then I think that goes into a MUCH larger issue of PvP Mechanics. Immediately, though, it brings into stark contrast that we've setup CTF's to be a Rich Man's Game and I don't think that is good for the server in anyway.

As far as the PvP Mechanics that make players feel they need Runics to be equal...that I think is better off discussed in its own separate thread, to be honest. I have actually, from a different angle, been attempting to address that. Alas, that discussion takes me down the road of nostalgia and balance and trying to stay 1 billion miles away from production UO. I've always been against super weapons as they only have ever created problems with balance in UO and widened the gap between the elite and the "screw this I quite!" crowd....but that gets back into that whole "Normalize Weapon Damage" discussion....and is probably pretty off-track for this CTF discussion. I am glad that CTF's are bringing this larger issue back into the spotlight, though, as I think that needs some work, also.

Minus the incognito. Everyone would know me by my sexy hat anyway.

New idea: in addition to, or instead of, Incognito upon start, CTF should POLYMORPH each character too. Srsly.

"That slime kicked my ass from start to finish."
"I'm pretty sure the dire wolf was wielding a valorite runic, he hit me for 44."
etc.

We had a brief time when "some" folks were casting Polymorph to turn into chickens for the duration of CTF. I personally just changed my hotkey from Target Nearest Enemy (Humanoid) to Target Nearest Enemy.
It was pretty funny but I don't think that's quite what we're going for here.


Lightshade, valorite runics are not super weapons any more than 30+ AR Eval Mages are super characters. The fact that mages in this era can wear armor at all, is why these runic weapons exist, in my opinion. Until I see two-hit kills on fully armored players as a COMMON occurrence, I'm going to remain confident in my opinion therein.

this couldn't be more spot on

It isn't just the armor either. There are a lot of things that add up. Another factor is the need to balance stats for mind blast. Less strength and less dex means hits are fewer and weaker.

Really though, I think people are overestimating the effect all GM gear would have. If you are nerfing both armor and weapons simultaneously, what are you really accomplishing?

Because people can't afford 10k for a suit of magic armor. They can afford 2,5k for a suit of GM armor, but they can't afford 10k for a suit of magic armor. So if you remove magics, all the richy-rich and their fancy suits of magic leather won't have a massive advantage against a 5-hour old sheep herder in Ocllo that wants to try out CTF.

Again,

Balance all the mechanics / weaps / armors as much as you want. If a majority of the experienced PVP/CTF players hop on same team, it won't matters.
GM stuff or not, all the other teams are outmatched.

There will be so many sad pandas if you even out the field.... But exactly my point Dalavar that I was making 36 pages ago on this thread.

Out of the context of my post but, ironically, supported by what I was saying. I was disagreeing with el horno (and lightshade) that GM gear would ruin (or be a magic bullet for) CTF and the relative strength of dexers and mages therein.

I don't think runics vs 38 ar is going to be as different as people think when compared to exceptional weapons vs 25 ar. I do think that it favors mages, but I'll hit test shard and get some actual numbers. (Also for dexer vs dexer with whatever ar gm bone/plate gorget is.)

FTFY

Less sassy translation: I agree with you.

for the people who are wanting weapons and armor to go all gm to make it less of a rich mans sport, keep in mind. you need to cut out all colored ores for metal armor and no specialty leathers for the gm leather suits as well, gm barbed leather suits might as well say fortification above them hence making using a gm weapon the equivalent to pissing into a strong wind. that being said, testing would need to be done to see how nerfed or not nerfed dexxers will truely be.

Ok, I guess I was wrong. The runics did way more damage vs 38ar than the gm did against exceptional regular leather 25ar.

Test was run for ~300 hits with a 90 strength lumberjack.

33 damage per swing for the exceptional valorite runic two handed against 38ar (equivalent to invuln leather)
24 damage per swing for the exceptional iron two handed against 25ar (exceptional regular leather)

I will not be playing a dexer if there is gm gear ctf.

Something doesn't smell right. Going from Val Exceptional to plain Exceptional is 9 less damage, without even getting to the armor change.

Tactics mod? I don't know. I ran the second test twice because I thought I did something wrong. I was checking my stats and my axe and my skills. The 2nd results were marginally worse. I'll be running the first one again too.

I'm not sure where I mis-represented myself here, but i've been trying quite hard to get this morphed into a game that everyone can enjoy. I was under the impression that it was quite clear. It's actually my guiding light. Maybe i'm misunderstanding your wording here, but I truly think that GM Gear would absolutely level out the playing field and encourage a wider range of players to play these games. I know i've said as much in several discussions, perhaps I wasn't as clear as I needed to be in this thread.

Anywho, I see a lot of people that keep saying things to the effect of "Just gotta have better this and better that," which completely ignores that the average player does not have "better this or better that" at all. These games need to be designed around the typical/average player. Right now we've got the players that are either incredibly rich or put all their time and money into PvP speaking up the most about this. They typically know mechanics quite well. I'm sorry guys, but you aren't even close to the typical player and you've completely lost sight of why your opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Design these games so that its closer to everyone being able to enjoy them. Right now.....its pretty much a rich man's game.

Horseshit. Because if there was some group of people that was aching to play CTF, but not doing so because they felt they were under-equipped... If you really cared about having them in the game, you'd just give them what they "need". Right? Wouldn't that solve your problem too, without any coding or GM intervention?

if you make this go all gm gear, your gonna turn this into a mage only game end of story.

the cost for gear is not that intense... you would be in great shape with a vanquishing weapon for 5k gold & a suit of barbed leather for 1.8k. If a player cant afford a total of 7 - 10k for a decent setup, they have bigger problems then ctf.

verite exceptional weapons vs vanquishing, your talking about +/- 2 damage difference vs 10k / 200k price difference. The real difference here is not damage but more of i got tons of money at this point and nothing better to do with it. I personally did my first ctf with a Vanquishing that cost me 5k gold and still got a best killer trophy...

i dont think your gripes are about making the playing field even, i think your are grasping at a way to give mages an advantage.

this i liked in fact, i might just start doing that. i got a vendor house in glow ill throw up dirt cheap gears all day to help out all these under equiped poor ctfers.
Although we would need an honor policy boys, send all the scrubs my way for cheap gears and not buy it all out to resell on your vendors

I believe you are out of touch and only furthering the problems. Regardless, I believe that you believe you are doing right by the shard, however entirely misguided you are.