The new tweaks seem to help out the warriors. 4 Physical defenses completely gone, another made slightly more costly. Now just to hope they raise the damage a bit too, so that knights can actually bash.

Oohhh, so THAT's why they got rid of stoneskin. Seemed to me like we got just another lame malkuth clone. Remind me to think more carefully next time. *g*

Couldn't they have made warriors a bit stronger instead of downgrading everyone else? I mean, it's not as though Mages can wear armor anyways, and Stoneskin sucked regardless, but now we're no better than newbies out of the portal when it comes to defense.

What Rhysus said. I mean, seriously.

2194h, 3241m, 2712e, 10p, 12405w exkdbp-
Olan wildly swings a shining mace at you. Your right arm is pounded and
slightly bruised.
1620h, 3241m, 2712e, 10p, 12405w exkdbp-
Olan wildly swings a shining mace at you. You receive only a red welt from your
left leg being pounded.
1051h, 3241m, 2712e, 10p, 12405w exkdbp-

Olan also has 17 strength, but I agree.

Ok, so, when warriors were sucking, they sucked, but now that they can actually do damage, you're still upset? Whether they upped Knight damage, or dropped your defense, it would have resulted in your physical defense being that of a newbie.

And at least they're tweaking stuff. If it doesn't work, they can always tweak it back.

EDIT - Also, you can still wear Great Robes, AND you can put lessons into Combat AND Resistance.

I'm not upset that they do damage. I'm upset that they do SO MUCH damage. 1000 damage is half my health, I can't afford greatrobes yet and their protection isn't all that wonderful anyway, and do you expect me to put lessons into Combat and/or Resilience when I only have trans Aquamancy so far, out of all my skills?

Warriors have to trans TWO skills just to hope to hit you.... who has it worse?

That's not true. One word: shortswords.

I don't care about the warriors doing lots of damage. Fine, whatever. Upgrade away. What I am concerned with is a trend that's going to piss off a lot of people down the road. If you want to retain a playerbase, and all of the things people spend money on (ok, the vast, vast majority) are various ways to kill one another, it is far, far better to UPGRADE across the board to balance, rather than DOWNGRADE to balance. People will be far angrier about suddenly not having ability X or having their Ability X be that much less effective overall than they will be if Warrior Y's Ability Z is upgraded so that they do a bit more damage overall. They might still be a little pissy if it causes them to die a bit more or something, but it won't be nearly as long lasting a sense of disenchantment than having something taken away, particularly where they spent money and/or time to earn an ability the way it was. To then have it made weaker is crap. It's like when Microsoft releases new versions of Media Player or something. If all they did was put in a new security feature that made it impossible to play music that didn't have the appropriate security tag, people would be pissed. Instead, they release vast improvements to the performance of the product as a whole alongside any negative adjustments they need to make. And Media Player is free. Imagine if people had to pay to use it and then they were told they couldn't play music they downloaded off the internet with it. There'd be an uproar. Same situation with decreasing the efficacy of skills.

It doesn't really matter what microsoft does with media player, this isn't microsoft.. this is IRE, and obviously, their business model is working. Also, who the hell uses media player, anyway? Just my grandma..

It was an example. *temples* It wasn't meant to be a coverall example, and I don't use Media Player, I use iTunes. Microsoft is just notorious about releasing Media Player with new security updates, and it was the first thing that popped into my head. Regardless, the way they handle the upgrading/downgrading of skills has about...Oh, -ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOVER!- to do with their business model. Different IRE games do it differently already, so placing the behavior under the IRE umbrella is completely inaccurate on top of everything else.

Rebounding, Circle/Pentagram, Parry, Shieldstun and Riposte, Armour, Shields, Resilience, Combat stances, various entanglement abilities.

Those are the many ways to severely hamper a warrior's offense.

But I agree with Rhysus on this trend to downgrade instead of upgrade. And I'm also slightly annoyed that my ability to bash has been downgraded as a side effect. Overall though, I'm pleased with the tweaks, and consider them a step in the right direction.

Something will be downgraded at some point. It's better to get it done while in Beta, rather then wait. Generally, everyone playing during Beta should understand that things will change and be prepared for it.

Considering that there were tweaks to tweaks (maiden I believe it was ended up changed within about an hour) it might be a little premature to worry.

Thanks for the company line Neale, but there's no reason that they should make changes in an Open Beta according to a policy different than they would during Gold. Otherwise you run the risk of upsetting your core playerbase, the people who are actually financing the operation of the realm. If you start off making skill changes that basically leave one group of people the exact same and then make a bunch of other people a lot weaker, you're going to get a lot of upset people. That's been shown throughout the dev community more times than I care to count.

I like the fact that warriors now do some damage when they hit. Of course the trick is not to get hit, naturally. That's the way to fight a warrior, with all the skills available, like Combat and webs and what not.
However, it's also nice to be able to actually stand up to a blast from a Mage. Those aquamancers used to hit me for well over half my health at level 50, now I'm able to stand up to that a few rounds, get my shields up and do something about it.

So, it's a good thing for stability, of course not a good thing if you like being able to regularly crush warriors.

Exactly what I'm saying, they're forming a policy now that will be followed later. At some point something WILL have to be downgraded. (Unless you eventually want everyone to be able to zap.) It's better to start off on the right foot by making some downgrades now. Furthermore, since this is Beta, it's the perfect time to make any foreseeable major changes, since everyone should be expecting major changes.

If you don't make skill changes, and leave one group of people rather weak while other groups are quite strong, you'll upset people. You can't please everyone all of the time. What I believe the Divine are doing is trying to make the game a bit more balanced, and I don't think they'll be sorry if some people are now upset because they aren't quite as buff as they were before. Just think about how much more upset everyone would be if they had no warrior-types to fight against because everyone had given up and become a mage-type.

I don't see why everyone would quit being a warrior and start being a mage if warriors were upgraded as opposed to mages being downgraded, particularly where it was already considered pretty much canon by everyone that warriors needed an upgrade because of all the mess that was involved in their initial creation.

Lusternia has been open.. how long? They've had many bugs, and you are already blaming them. Yes, warriors need an upgrade, but quit your bitching, it'll come.