Shadowdancer ideas.

[etadan]

About not keeping devotion in reincs, sounds good, altough we're gona curse about it. Sould be based on how long player has been away from the guild, so reincing back into shadowdancer wouldn't have penalties.
Instead of keeping poison recepies in reinc, we just need better poison research system. Or better helps about the current one at very least.
Old bugs.. yes, we have them, but they don't spoil the gameplay much, they're just little sad. Fixing them is not 1st priority imo.
Teleporting with shadows is just a bad idea, and saying that being avatar of dark gods should give you something.. try 'burning' something in the sacrifical fire(out;east from Ceawin). Dark gods are away from the realm(might be a bug btw, since i never saw them here). Chronolevel is all you need to get to Graemor fast/for free. Can't see the problem with needing quick access to the guild, since i only go there oce per day anyway, to train with dummys. Then again, i never was complete newbie sd, who get experience needed for training few % of the skills quite rapidly. They can use teleport, since it's cheaper for them. Portals are very conveniently nearby, and a mount can get you to graemor even faster. Sure 5min wait for ferry is bad, but on the other end, if graemor ever gets attacked, they'll be stuck waiting for ferry too(tough even one chrono in that party will ruin it all, but chronos will ruin any citydefence, unless we get some jamming magic to disallow opening rifts inside the city).
(stuff removed coz it seams i had no idea what i was talking about)

[khallandor]

The only bad thing here is the pvp killing rule. Everyone can freely come to graemor find something to kill, but in everywhere else it is forbidden. That concerns the raid including playerkilling *sorry my bad english* And thats one of the reasons i wish that the rules could be modified somehow, or just make the "event" actually a real event instead of "event" if you know what i mean

[zohlor]

That <burn> thing has got nothing to do with the guild. It was an feature coded by an now-gone wiz, just like the one Huck coded. (OOHOHOOBOBOHO SCARY DARK EYES)

Read Zaec's post again. Then read it again and understand it.

Now, back to the ideas:

The meaning of devotion should be increased. Back when I began playing an shadowdancer, you DID suck big time without good devotion even when you had high skills. Now the case doesn't seem to be like that.

The poisons could be further improved. There have been ideas of ep-draining and paralyzing poisons and so on. The difficult part is finding the balance factor in there.

The guild holds huge potential in it but it doesn't come near to what it should be.

[artic]

What I don't understand during that time was that folks cry about getting a Vaerlon vs. Graemor event...and then when they get one, they turn around and cry foul. You're welcome to attempt to raid Vaerlon just as folks are welcome to raid Graemor....it's not necessary to wait for admins to prod folks in the guild along so they actually do something.

I know that this is not what this topic is about,but...
I'm not welcome to raid Vaerlon the way you raided Shadowdancers for several reasons:
1) the shadowdancers are weaker. DO not argue about this, i have considered all the guild NPC in vaerlon and other guilds outside it. (except socerers - i cant swim that well).
2) Shadowdancers dont give bad rep in city, every one in Vaerlon does.
3) In Graemor you can flee and hide in the rift, in vaerlon you can't.
4) An assault on the city is what a Templar or Militia man would do. I am an assassin. I don't want to fight the city guards to get your attention. I want to stab YOU (read not you personally, but anyone from vaerlon or that has wronged me or my guild) when you least expect it. I'd like to stab you when you are fleeing from a fight and think you can regen by sleeping in the safety of you camp.
6) None of these things can ever be changed. If there were given some more freedoms to anyone, there would be someone to abuse them and say I did it just because i could, not because it would make sense in a RolePlay way or it would fit the guild theme.

P.S I can't whine about the raids agains Vaerlon, cause i was not in the first raid and in the second one, no player noticed we had killed half the city. And when we tried to make them notice they issued us for unlawful playerkilling. Thats just sad. Considering we stopped your raid by giving you immense amount of nether effects.

P.P.S Rangers don't have 1 skill and 1 spell. Who sayd that? Rangers have 5 different subguild, that all have different feats. Now thats motivation for getting new levels. Youst three more levels and than i will get to 'slow' monsters, instead of 'Well this subguild gives me a slight dex bonus, and the other two give str, hmm... And milita has stike to wound, injusre, stunn, kick, headbut, shield bash, shield wall and a choice of any weapon class.

[dyzmal]

"Dyzmal, your devotion title is young. i think that says a lot about how much you know about the guild."

"Well, easy for you to say. *Tsk...* You havent pplaeyd that long yet. And you cant have air_priests in the guild quests, mostly those were the things I meant. Consider all the sides and dont get stuck on every little thing."

I think I've played long enough to know what I'm talking about. This isn't my first character. And even if I was a complete newbie, looking back on my posts, I think that in my opinion I making a hell of a lot more sense than most of you. It seems like a lot of the posts in here make absolutely no sense, at least I take the time to quote things people have actually said and strategically bat the arguments away, rather than resorting to slander.

"When i was a 'young' i too thought the guild was uberpowerfull. Hell i even though the guild was really out of tune, cause i could kill really big stuff. Than i realised that killing a 25K monster with 6 stabbs wasn't all that good."

Are you stabbing, running, waiting, and repeating or are you actually fighting?! We can train melee/shadowstrike for a reason, you know. Also your level might have something to do with it. Either way I'm level 19 and I can take a 10k mob in a couple runs. So I think the problem is with you, not the guild. Maybe you should rethink your battle strategy?

"Poisons didn't work."

Well they do now. Have fun -.o"

"Portal sickness became too lame already. Virzuduz got greedy"

Then buy a damn mount, or get some levels in the Chrono Guild. Still two completely obvious and EASY solutions to your problem.

"And we were not allowed to retalliate at least not in the unexpected-sneaky-assasin way."

You can backstab their guildleaders. That's unexpected and sneaky. And don't think of them as being harder to beat than the mobs at our guild, think of them as being filled with more EXP.

"Zohlor was complaining that the guild did not offer any rewards for staying there longer than your boredom limit would allow."

There's this great feature in Icesus that allows you to change guilds if you get bored with the one you are currently in. For more information, read 'help reincarnation'.

"As a mage you first get the arrow spell, than as you advance enough you get the rain and the storm etc. See investng really a lot of time and more exp into the guild is rewarding you get new options at high levels. Shadowdancer stay the same from level 3 to level 33 and further."
As a shadowdancer you get to upgrade your guild weapon as you advance through the guild and get evil-ass titles that are based on devotion, which you also get as you advance through the guild. Both reward you for your time and efforts. Also, as we level we get more skills that help us in combat. Being that we are melee fighters I personally feel that skills that assist us in doing so are much more valuable than say, for instance, an arrow spell like you mentioned. You can't compare our guild to the mage's guild. What are you asking for? More spells? If you want a bunch of spells they have quite a few guilds for that already.

"I wish that some of the pvp killing rules could be modified a bit, backstabbing mobs gets really annoying after all.. But pvp would bring the "thing" to it. Making it more exciting and all.. Just my thought."

Guess what??!?! Icesus has PVP!!! You want to kill other players, go to Graemor. If no one is there? Guess no one wants to play PVP... Sucks to be you, go play another MUD where everyone can run around and kill everyone else if that's what you want to do with your time but apparently the majority of people in Icesus don't swing that way. And with matters like this I think majority rules.

[Edit:
"None of these things can ever be changed. If there were given some more freedoms to anyone, there would be someone to abuse them and say I did it just because i could, not because it would make sense in a RolePlay way or it would fit the guild theme."

Roleplay is not mandatory in Icesus, in fact, it's not even encouraged. Roleplaying is ALLOWED. What this means is that if you want to hold conversations with NPC's and think up an interesting background for your character, that's up to you. But when it comes down to interfering with people by way of PVP, i.e., killing them, it's getting a bit out of hand. If you are interested in roleplaying a reiteration to an attack someone did to you or the guild mobs, give them an OOC (Out of Character) tell and ask them if they want to participate, or kill them while they are in Graemor.

And the thing about guild theme, have you ever heard the saying "loyalty among thieves"? It applies here too, I think. Shadow-dancers are solo-ers. Lonewolfs. That's the theme of the guild. The lone assassins, creeping through the dark with poison-coated daggers. The guild does not revolve around killing other players and seeking revenge for the lives of NPC's.
]

[odovacar]

"Dyzmal, your devotion title is young. i think that says a lot about how much you know about the guild."

"Well, easy for you to say. *Tsk...* You havent pplaeyd that long yet. And you cant have air_priests in the guild quests, mostly those were the things I meant. Consider all the sides and dont get stuck on every little thing."

I think I've played long enough to know what I'm talking about. This isn't my first character. And even if I was a complete newbie, looking back on my posts, I think that in my opinion I making a hell of a lot more sense than most of you. It seems like a lot of the posts in here make absolutely no sense, at least I take the time to quote things people have actually said and strategically bat the arguments away, rather than resorting to slander.

I agree that the time one spends playing does not necessarily reflect on how gamewise they are.

Are you stabbing, running, waiting, and repeating or are you actually fighting?! We can train melee/shadowstrike for a reason, you know. Also your level might have something to do with it. Either way I'm level 19 and I can take a 10k mob in a couple runs. So I think the problem is with you, not the guild. Maybe you should rethink your battle strategy?

Thing is, soloing big mobs is tough. For anyone. What's the solution? Form a party! But hey, shadowdancers are solo-ing guild. When I compare best solo kills, higher level dancers dont outperform higher level templars (they even lag behind). So much for being uber-solos.
And shadowdancers are the worst party members. The darkness needed for the effective use of their skills, usually prevents players from joining them, hence no back row shooters. And our melee is crap compared to other melee guilds. You never get more than two '*' for melee damage in summary stats. And you can't sneak with non-dancer parties. And there's a lot more to whine about our tanking capabilities and I'm sure other guilds share our crapiness in this area or that, only other guilds can make up for that with parties.
And answering myself, there is a solution to that to in the form of dark-tolerant cancun archers/shadowperson infecti/dark elf sorcerers and I assume earth priests will be of some assistance in this department. I just think they prefer exping with real tanks.

"Poisons didn't work."
Well they do now. Have fun -.o"

And they are much harder to learn/use than ranger poisons for example and hardly as useful. Almost every dancer I know of uses ranger instant deadly poison and not some guild poison (except the leader perhaps). And that's the guild whose members are supposed to be poison masters! Sure, poisons work but, like said before, there's a huge potential not used here.

And the thing about guild theme, have you ever heard the saying "loyalty among thieves"? It applies here too, I think. Shadow-dancers are solo-ers. Lonewolfs. That's the theme of the guild. The lone assassins, creeping through the dark with poison-coated daggers. The guild does not revolve around killing other players and seeking revenge for the lives of NPC's.

This is a topic open for discussion. The guild theme is not properly defined, imo. If we're not seeking revenge, how come one can get banned from the guild for attacking npc guild members? If we're vicious killers and kill our own, what with all the organized raids/prayers thingies. On the other side, what's with the last man standing events?
There are a lot of conflicts in the guild that need solving.

Now I get to the bottom line.
In my opinion, the shadowdancers guild is the coolest guild in Icesus, but it has a lot of downsides and it is a difficult guild. The argument is whether it is too difficult or not. I think it is playable to say the least, but needs a lot of work. The edge shadowdacners should have as soloers isn't sharp enough and is too sharp to allow partying, it seems.
I do think ideas for improvement are welcome and shouldn't be flamed and considered as greedy uptune requests. I avoided saying if I agree/disagree with the mentioned ideas and the talkbacks on purpose. Some are better, some worse and some can turn into neat features with some work. And I dont think the guild in its current state is anywhere finished. Too many things are undecided and unclear about it, and it seems that nobody has the time/energy to do something about it (though perhaps there's backstage wizardry going on, I wouldn't know). Perhaps it should even be closed for a while and re-designed, like the earth priest guild, because this guild can be so much better than it is now, and by better I mean in terms of fun playing, not effective exping.

Thank you for your time,

Odo

[artic]

Now that is exactly what i always wanted to say. I concratulate odovacar on hes spreme performance.

[felgand]

There has been much debate with the difficulty shadowdancers have with partying partially due to their weaker partying skills (backstab and relatively weaker melee aren't as conducive to partying) and their need for darkness to execute their skills. I still maintain that shadowdancers should not get better melee skills unless backstab damage was reduced to compensate for the change, however I do understand that the darkness issue is a troubling factor for dancers who wish to party. Therefore, it may be interesting if dancers with higher reputation were able to cast a globe of obfuscation that would have the same effect as darkening a room in their victim's eyes, but cause no change in the lighting in the environment. However, this globe is not perfect and would not be as effective as carrying around an actual globe of darkness (hence their skills would still be slightly weaker)...but would allow a shadowdancer to party better than they do currently. Also, they cannot carry a globe of darkness and obfuscation at the same time.

[artic]

Therefore, it may be interesting if dancers with higher reputation were able to cast a globe of obfuscation that would have the same effect as darkening a room in their victim's eyes, but cause no change in the lighting in the environment.

Why would i need higher reputation for casting a spell? if i want to party i need to be good?

And causeing the victim to think its darker in the room wouldn't help. The skill 'shadow strike' (the only offencive maneuver useable in battle) requires the room/enviorment to be dark, not the victim to think its dark. Thus the globe of obfuscation would not work, at least not in a way you describe it.

The way a shadowdancer could party with other guilds and light dwelling races were if the dancer would bring along a bunch of ring of seeing's. Or if the shadowdancers would be able to cast a spell on the party member that would allow for a greater vision in darkness for a bit longer than any of the existing 'extended vision' kind of spells.
Dancers used to have a glow in their eyes. It was removed for a strange reason of someone thinking it wasn't cool. It would be nice if dancers could cast such a glowing eye thing on other people.

[felgand]

Thanks for pointing out the typo, replace reputation with devotion. As for the obfuscation...I'd like the spell to only be castable after a player has gained a certain amount of devotion in the guild...let it be an offshoot of the globe of darkness ability as the shadowdancer becomes more attuned to dwelling in the shadows...they can manipulate them with better skill. Shadow strike and other darkness related skills wold be modified to be affected by the obfuscation...but if you'd rather cast infravision spells on others, that works too. Just requires more spell points. Regardless, I think the skill should only be available to a shadowdancer after gaining a certain amount of devotion....why you ask? Because you fellas want devotion to mean something, so now it will (a bit more).

[khade]

a useable skill that i think shadowdancers should get, and to a much lesser degree everyone else could learn, except for the psionicists, who would have it in full, is paranoia, when it is on, you are more likely to detect a backstab or spells being cast at you, and it would have a small drain on ep and sp, but could eventually, if left on for too long lead to seeing things and hurting yourself.

[felgand]

Well, spells are detectable already given you've met the stat requirement, though a reasonable case could be made for adding backstab to that list of detectable abilities.

[khade]

i have given a lot of thought to this in the hour or so after i wrote that, and i think that the coven, shadowdancers, sorcerers, and the earth priests, since everyone(rp) pretty much hates them, would need a paranoia skill; the rangers could get a skill that might be called situational awareness: where you know what is going on at all times around you; air priests could have a sort of divine intervention; psionicists could have paranoid scitzophrenia: they could have it active, and it would increase spell power, but drive them insane faster, and with more spectacular results; militia and templar could have a veteran mastery, that gives them the general "this is not a good situation" idea and increases general fighting skills. another thing we could do is, the monsters we fight always do something to warn about the attack commencing, so maybe players should do something like that, they start the attack, and usually get the first blow in, but there is a half second before it hits, where a very aware enemy could get in a hit or start to run away, and these skills could help with the noticing the attack before it hits.
if people think this does not go in this post, i will start a post for it.

[dyzmal]

"When I compare best solo kills, higher level dancers dont outperform higher level templars (they even lag behind). So much for being uber-solos.
And shadowdancers are the worst party members. The darkness needed for the effective use of their skills, usually prevents players from joining them, hence no back row shooters. And our melee is crap compared to other melee guilds. You never get more than two '*' for melee damage in summary stats. And you can't sneak with non-dancer parties. And there's a lot more to whine about our tanking capabilities and I'm sure other guilds share our crapiness in this area or that, only other guilds can make up for that with parties."
I concur that maybe the guild needs to be uptuned as far as melee is concerned.

"And they are much harder to learn/use than ranger poisons for example and hardly as useful. Almost every dancer I know of uses ranger instant deadly poison and not some guild poison (except the leader perhaps). And that's the guild whose members are supposed to be poison masters! Sure, poisons work but, like said before, there's a huge potential not used here."
I agree that the shadowdancer mix poison system needs to be refined, but the instant deadly poison isn't a Ranger thing. I mean, you can go and get the recipe and make it just as well as a Ranger can. Sure, it seems weird that you can't make a better one, but until they fix it at least you have the instant deadly poison to fall back on?

"This is a topic open for discussion. The guild theme is not properly defined, imo. If we're not seeking revenge, how come one can get banned from the guild for attacking npc guild members? If we're vicious killers and kill our own, what with all the organized raids/prayers thingies. On the other side, what's with the last man standing events? "
Either way, if you see someone kill an NPC from the shadowdancer guild, and want to get revenge, the best thing to do would be to kill NPC's from their guild. If you catch the player before they make it out of Graemor, by all means, kill them, but there is no reason that Shadowdancers should be allowed to kill other players for killing their guild's NPC's.

Odo, you made a lot of good points.

Felgand, that's a great idea about the globe of obfuscation.

Khade, that's also an awesome idea (the paranoia thing), and maybe if somehow it got implemented it would lead a way towards a thieve's guild. (Though from what I understand, Icesus is going to get a thieve's guild as soon as Vampires become a playable race.)

[artic]

I think dancers should get new poisons after getting certain amount of devotion. So youd get a new poison say after every 100K devotion (wich by the way is very hard to get). these poisons should be far more pwerful than those that you get via research (wich suck by the way), but not more pwerful than the leader poison (or the leader poison should be made even more pwerful). Different effects of poisons would aslo be nice. Like dont make the poison take even more Hp, but give it aslo a sligh ep or sp drain on the wictim and i would already say its a better, more poerful poison.
This way the devotion would be a thing more valued and soughtafter and the poisons would be used to the max. (Currently it seems assasins got the most weakest poisons, and theres so much more the poisons could do than just hp damage over time.)

If such new poisons are added, it makes sense to remove knowledge of the leader poison after you are no longer the leader.