Risk vs. Reward and the different templates

Proposed Problem: some templates (read: Tamers) risk less when they farm in dungeons than other templates (read: dexers and slayer weapons).

Solution ideas:
1: Bring back Pet Skill loss and consider increasing it if needed
2: Consider a Weapon Bonding Questline parallel to the Pet Bonding Quest

I've been thinking that increased availability over bonding is the way to go with slayers. If we introduce weapon bonding in any way then we'll end up with a bonded weapon, bonded dragons and no risk.

What I think would work is a quest line parallel to the tamer quest which results in an instance where 4-5 random slayers are guaranteed. This way we are introducing slayers into the economy in a way that helps with activity too.

I think the dexxer quest could be tied to npc camps and towers randomly spawning a special captive. Once you save all 24 special captives you are granted passage to the special instance. You can charge people admission to join you for their chance to get some slayers.

Since there are fewer npc camp spawns than animal spawns, it seems like you might also have to address the randomness of where they appear.

I dont think that the solution to one template in a felucca shard having no risk is to effectively buff another template by making end game weapons commonplace.

We have already lost the excitement/rarity of vanquishing weapons. If slayers become as common as vanqs are there is not much point in adventuring, dungeon crawling outside of rp scenarios.

Skill loss is a meaningless fix because monsters dont kill high level pets. It would take a gang of pks to kill high level pets, and moreover its not that difficult to train back up. You can even farm while training back up if somehow you do manage to get ddosed and die.

Increasing control slots will slow down farming rates. Removing bonding will add risk. Nerfing tamed firebreath will allow players to provide a bit more threat to tamers.

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I like this idea a lot, Jupiter. I'm also against weapon bonding but having some advanced quests that will result in a few guaranteed slayer weapons seems like it would be a great addition. The way you laid it out sounds great. Plus, it'd be nice for other templates to have their own dedicated quests like the tamer one.

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You're going to have this anyways if we go the bonded weapons route. At least this way we still risk losing them.

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I just re-read Gideon message. I guess the fact that bonded weapons take 7 follower slots could fix this.

I'm just opposed to permanent bonding status. If bonding charges decayed on each use for both pets and weapons, I could see myself buying a ticket for that train.

I hate the 'increase amount of available slayer' proposal.

1. It destroys the market value of them. And yes, I have personal interest that vanq superslayers don't drop from 1mil to 100k. Apart from that, runic weapons and magic weapons will become even more trash than they are now.
2. More slayers do not increase the amount of content a Dexxer can do! It's not the question whether he can deal 50 or 70 dmg hits. The limiting factor is his tanking ability and for dexxer-bards the barding difficulty of monsters.
3. No significant change in the risk. Dexxer still face loosing their slayers. Wielding a +25 vanq slayer doesn't change anything in the risk of dying to monsters or PKs. Instead of loosing 100k in value, the dexxer perhaps looses 50k when the amount of slayers is increased.
4. No dexxer has to use high-end slayers in order to farm efficiently. High-end vanqs are just decreasing the kill time by some seconds usually. That's not necessary and doesn't influence the gold per hour too much. Same with tamers: You dont need a perfect dragon to rock the monsters, medium stat dragons are doing well enough.
5. There are SOOOOO many low-end and middle-class slayers available out there. Have you guys ever checked and counted the incredible amount of slayers that have been auctioned lately? Every dexxer can get a pretty good silver slayer for ~20k. Other mid-class slayers are also in that range. There is no real shortage, just no slayers on player vendors (it's way better to sell them via auctions).

About the bonding:

Bonding one slayer weapon sounds cool. Especially for someone like me that is actually using high-end slayers on the field (I haven't lost one so far! And I farm pretty much). But bonding is so aweful Trammel. And Trammel can't be a good solution to any problem: PKs get less loot, people play less attentive, everybody get their high-end slayer and even more gold is farmed, and overall a bit more of Felucca is lost.

IMO, there is one good solution that many people agree to: Get rid of the extra tamer bonding slots and ultimately the tamer quest reward as it is now. I know, this won't happen, but that answer from staff isn't changing the fact, that this is the obvious solution for bringing Felucca back to tamers. Well actually, it would solve the problem just partly, as freshly tamed WWs are still hardcore enough.

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But Gideon, it doesn't adress the points I mentioned. The biggest problem is, you get Trammel. PKs cant loot the most valuable items off of you (even if its 'only' might slayers). And the actuall available content isnt changed either for dexxers with might slayers or for tamers using bonded pets with decreased stats. It just slows the gold inflow a bit down for tamers, and doesn't enable dexxers to farm certain bosses or play during certain events.

You would have to nerf bonded pets to that point that really feasible content is lost if bonded pets are used, e.g. no big boss monsters can be killed anymore solo.

Introducing monsters that cant be easily handled with a simple ALL KILL command, is also a great thing. Make it necessary to handle your tames with skill instead of unleashing them. But it doesn't solve the Trammel problem either. Making things harder to handle, or creating monsters that have to be teamed doesn't change the situation that no real risk is existing for tamers. Even with significant pet skill loss (why is it actually called stat loss when skill is lost)...

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I give up, sorry.

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Make dexxers trammel like tamers got it.

I like the idea of a parallel quest line for slayers. The zookeeper quest has added fun and challenging content to the game. Hopefully a slayer bonding quest would do the same.

Another ancillary benefit of adding slayer bonding: the number of people that play dexxers (in PvM) would surely go up, which means less people playing their tamers, and we know how much people hate tamers.

One observation: what will happen to the market for slayers if bonding is added? The supply of slayers doesn't seem likely to increase significantly, but the demand certainly will. (Which will undoubtedly create a whole host of additional gripes... "It's SO UNFAIR that tamers can just ROLL into Destard and tame 30 new dragons a day whereas I have to pay 3 million gold to buy a slayer from BlackEye! #NerfTamers").

I assume you would see something similar to the market for dragons, where the high-end ones have their value go way up, and the low-end ones have their value democratized.

Personally I don't think it's a good idea to bond slayer weapons, for reasons BlackEye mentioned. I think it would be far better for there to be an increase in their supply, so you still get *something* in Felucca for killing/robbing/sneaking around and being an opportunist.

Here is my two cents from someone who only plays a dexer...

Black eye said it best, its not all about the output of dmg when it comes to playing the class, survivability is the main factor! A good vanq will still kill shit but surviving long enough is the key. With that being said here are my ideas:

As for weapon bonding/insurance...make it quest oriented and for only a limited time, 1 week is a good amount of time to hold onto a wep and use it before you should have to repeat the quest line.

That quest count be item collection from certain mobs or a total kill count...like kill 100 earth elems, 100 orcs, 100 bone knights...and then turn into a weapon master in some town for a single weapon 1 week insurance ticket.

Also make more sub slayers, and by this I mean...make a brigand sub slayer so that I don't have to fork out 100k for a weapon(repond) to kill brigands...some of the super slayers a dexer has to buy to farm the more manageable mobs are rediculous...earth shatter to kill earth elems for an example, can we get a sub slmobs there that doesn't cross over to the inflated mining bizz. As a dexer I don't mind farming the lesser stuff, slayers make it kinda fun...chopping my way thru orcs in seconds is always enjoyable...but having to buy crazy weps to do this in some of the categories is a bit insane(ie. Repond, earth shatter are the ones that come to the top of my head)

And lastly change a few of the spawn location of dex friendly farming, eradicate slimes in some areas and increase the spawn quantity/quality of dex friendly mobs

Any who that's my take on the whole thing as well as bring back pet skill lose.

heh. I just had a thought, this is probably why politicians can't ever decide on anything.

I would support almost any idea on this topic so long as it is based on our principles. All classes should have something worth NOT dying for (i.e RESET back to 0). Right now, tamers don't have this, mages don't have this, bards do have it, PK's barely have it (oohhhhh long term counts and 14 other PK ready characters so play).

I'll admit i keep letting the stupid topic of Gold Per Hour seep into my arguments, but I care little for that. I just keep wrongfully trying to use it to point out that the 'GREAT RISK' that tamers claim to have is really only a minor set back; it is not a true reset to 0.

Some of the ideas discussed, which I feel fit our principles are:

- Mages/Bards should lose spell books upon death and they should be stealable (yay! a need for making full spell books again!)

- 1 account with 15 character slots (this would resolve the PK risk a little. PK's can't burn off counts while rolling another character 16 feet deep)

- Bonding status for tames should perish/decay with each resurrection

As for bonded offensive and defensive gear, I agree with Cero and perhaps make blessing on items last very temporary (maybe 1 hour or 1 day) and make it very difficult to obtain deeds/items to bond items. This will make people use their choice (as Gideon pointed out) to decide what item they want best to use with their binding ticket.

- Allow permanent blessing on vanity items only (clothing)

I'd be the first to support my own medicine. I can tolerate putting my main rune book in the bank and I'll start rocking a spare rune book that can be looted.