Very good change Estild. I look forward to seeing how the broader project plays out.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Be nice to Wyrom or I will cut you!

>>In the far future, this will be a requirement for all Empaths<<

I'm assuming this is a joke, right, Estild?

"So, what does that green line on the graph represent?"
"Oh, that's the projection of a hypothetical offspring from a union between Sauron and Cruella de Ville; we use that as a baseline for determining character alignment."

Can I protest the name "Empathic Linking" as it is too close to 1117?

>Just assume everyone means the version for healing since the spell version is rarely used.

because people don't understand how to train for the lore benefits! ;D

>>because people don't understand how to train for the lore benefits! ;D<<

How about "because the spell is broken" as the reason it's never used?

"So, what does that green line on the graph represent?"
"Oh, that's the projection of a hypothetical offspring from a union between Sauron and Cruella de Ville; we use that as a baseline for determining character alignment."

>>Similarly, during invasions, people want to get healed as fast as possible. Waiting 15 seconds per wounded person coming in for healing?

I'd think that if town justice could be turned on and off, this could too. Just sayin'.

Doug

Sorry, but I absolutely hate the idea of this. My character is and has always preferred to be a field healer. Having to link and wait while mid battle is absolutely nuts. Please do not do this for non-F2P empaths.

Shelley - player of Aeavenne

>>One of the jarring things about healing is that an empath can't do anything for a mangled limb, but a mangled and bruised limb is trivial.

yeah, I actually had a bit of trouble explaining to a younger why the Landings Surtey Akrash left scars, when those in town center did not. It is true all over, too.

Clunk

(Buy your swords at CBD weapons in Zul Logoth.)

I've been focusing on other characters, so I haven't had a chance to check out linking IG. However, the more I read about it, the more I'm glad my empath has gotten away from sitting around town healing and has made a competent hunter out of herself.

It also makes me glad that all my other characters long ago got used to munching on herbs due to there rarely being a healer around RR. When I'm leaking blood from several different locations, the last thing I want to be doing is waiting around while bleeding out faster then I can munch acantha.... or worse, being forced into the horrendous RT of TEND before being healed (gods I hope that still requires a character to be laying down like it used to). No thanks, I'll just skip looking checking to see if there's a healer until after I munch my way down to cuts and bruises, then use a healer to save myself the cost and RT of eating herbs to get rid of the bigger scars when I have a lot of them (if one's around). Shame the healers will be missing out on the EXP from the bigger wounds in a town where it's already difficult to advance just by healing.

Starchitin (feeling like everyone involved with this idea forgot that not everyone has easy access to the Landing)

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

I suspected this would be a PIA as soon as I read about it. Crosspost this in the complaints folder; it needs to be addressed asap.

"The enemy are so many and our country so small ...
where will we find the space to bury all of them?"

Healing has long been too much experience for too little actual effort or required training. I look forward to seeing what else Estild has in store for empaths to go along with linking.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Brinret says, "Bring it on."
A bolt of lightning streaks down from the sky and strikes Brinret!
... 16428101 points of damage!
Powerful blast reduces Brinret to a smoldering pile of ash!

"For example - perhaps multiple empaths should be permitted to link. That way, perhaps, the sense of sharing can be brought back." -- Doug

I don't really have any feeling one way or the other about the mechanics themselves.

But the mental picture this called to mind was of the flock of vultures hopping around a road-kill deer carcass. Or maybe a mob of the poorly-done vampires in some schlock b-movie streaking over because "dey vant, to drink, your blahd."

I'd prefer stamina requirements to healing rather than linking. Any day of the week. That way, there are additional benefits to lore training and there would be additional uses for the stamina potions and stamina regeneration crystals that can be made in Empath professional alchemy.

Linking, without any way to train it down? Becomes extremely difficult for new players (especially since old players never had to deal with it), and it creates frustration.

Rishi
- Player of Kembal

---

Speaking to Plur, Belnia says, "You're no Kembal."

<<I'd prefer stamina requirements to healing rather than linking. Any day of the week. That way, there are additional benefits to lore training and there would be additional uses for the stamina potions and stamina regeneration crystals that can be made in Empath professional alchemy.>>

I like this idea, if stamina costs were implemented well, they'd be much more effective at achieving what they seem to be aiming for then a 15-30 second link time. Granted, I have yet to see a name in red spell out exactly WHY it was put in place (and will be expanded), so for now I can only assume it's an effort to both balance healing with other methods of EXP gain and provide a way "encourage" F2P accounts to subscribe.


<<there are lots of RP ways to interact without being forced to link.>>

I sincerely hope this isn't some misguided effort to force RP... there's no such thing as a mechanic that can force someone to RP. If they're not RPing now, they won't start just because LINKing becomes something all empaths have to do... they'll just wait out the process and TRANSFER away. I wouldn't even be at all surprised if this actually encourages more folk to script healing once LINKing becomes a requirement for paying accounts as well as F2P accounts.

If you want to encourage folk to roleplay, the best thing to do is (and always has been) to lead by example and respond to patients that TRY to RP. I can't begin to count the number of times I've stumbled into various healing spots with various characters with bleeding necks and "act opens his/her mouth to speak but only succeeds in forcing more blood to spill from the gaping wound in his/her neck" along with other emotes only to be completely ignored until I finally give up and come out and ask if someone can heal my neck (at which point, it's promptly healed). In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I've succeeded in getting healing without speaking though a hole in my throat and still have enough fingers left to express my opinion of LINKing.

If you (collective you) have a problem with your non-empaths being healed by those that don't RP it out, you can also set your DEMEANOR to a level that prevents others from healing you and making it neutral or higher for those you know will RP (or just set the demeanor on a case by case basis for those that swoop on you).

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

>I like this idea, if stamina costs were implemented well, they'd be much more effective at achieving what they seem to be aiming for then a 15-30 second link time. Granted, I have yet to see a name in red spell out exactly WHY it was put in place (and will be expanded), so for now I can only assume it's an effort to both balance healing with other methods of EXP gain and provide a way "encourage" F2P accounts to subscribe.

They had to create a mechanism to record the last ten patients healed by an F2P empath, so that people don't just roll up free healbots. That I understand, and it explains why linking was created. If the reason for the 30 second wait time (as opposed to a 5 to 10 second wait time) is related to that, then that's a business imperative and it's not going to go away. (I do have a suggestion that blood healing can start within 1-5 seconds....if you heal blood without healing bleeders, there's no exp gain anyway, so at least you can keep someone alive while waiting for the rest of the link.)

However, for paying empaths, if there's a belief that the exp gain from healing needs to be balanced, then maybe the linking mechanism needs to be one option, and the alternate option is that in substitution of linking, there's a stamina component to healing. (I thought of a design already, although I don't want to be stepping on Estild's toes!) If you go with linking, then the patient is all yours and you don't have to pay stamina, but you have to wait. If you don't want to wait or would rather share the patient, then pay stamina and heal away.

I see a linking requirement destroying the idea of empaths sharing incinerator or implosion victims (which I do all the time if there's another capable empath present), hampering invasion triage, and hampering combat healing.

Rishi
- Player of Kembal

---

Speaking to Plur, Belnia says, "You're no Kembal."

Totally agreed on all points. I think linkage is a dumb idea. Herb use is already rampant and I run into people all the time who won't use empaths because they aren't around enough already, and the idea is to make it harder and less desirable for an empath to heal?

While usually I would agree with this, we have a real game example of how it is working for the moment. The biggest problem that I see is that this is unlikely to work in favor of the empath regardless of other abilities put in place.

1) It stops a desperate quick heal. "I'm bleeding out! Please help me!" "Okay wait 30 seconds for me to link."
2) Any inconvenience will drive people to herbs rather than empaths. People already try to optimize their time hunting/absorbing to be 100% efficient. (I know this is not all people.)
3) While yes we have been told that there will be other changes, we haven't been given any idea of what, or even why. A broad idea of what they are looking to do would give more of an idea of what is intended.
4) Active feedback is often a good idea in development process. All too often the people doing the development and the client are disconnected. (Trust me I do a lot of business analysis as part of my job.) These forums are the best venue at the moment to provide feedback and concerns. Unfortunately the communication needs to happen two ways so right now we get...


Developers: "We're going to make you do something terrible that will mess up how your class operates, make it less likely people will depend on you, and make it in general less attractive to play as the main point is healing others."

Players: "We don't want that!"

The game really thrives in my opinion when classes depend on each other to work. If everyone could raise themselves clerics would be turned into chrism farms. Wizards already are reduced all too often to spell bots and enchanting mules.

I personally refuse to not give feedback until we see what happens. At that point it may be too late. We all know that Simu is strapped for development resources, which means it is even better to get it done right the first time. We might end up with a broken system that takes years to fix otherwise.

I would like more feedback so I can understand the "why" of linking. That would be constructive and allow me to give more positive feedback, but for now it is this hidden thing of: "We're going to drop your gas mileage on your car." "Ummm okay, what is going to happen to the car?" "..."

>Again, folks, keep in mind that Estild said there would be a lot of other changes made before linking is required for non-F2P. Might be a decent idea to hold off your naysaying before you start grinding it into the ground. I seriously doubt they intend to "nerf" the empath's healing abilities. This will likely be tied in with other abilities that you may just be impressed with. - COLEMANJ

While I trust Estild to not nerf healing abilities, I do think it's fair for us to understand the vision at this point, because linking is such a radical change for non-F2P empaths. If it's part of a broader plan, understanding how it fits in may get us all to buy in. I don't know if Estild is ready with that or not, so I won't push beyond this post.

Rishi
- Player of Kembal

---

Speaking to Plur, Belnia says, "You're no Kembal."

I don't tend to post much, and read the posts only slightly more often, but this discussion made its way to my attention. Knowing that it is a concept and in no way close to being executed the way it is to be intended (per the original post), consider this feedback for development rather than an opinion on a system that is not truly in tangible form yet.

Setting the linking requirement in non-combat areas only is the first requirement in that type of system. Healing while hunting is not only a mainstay for many of the empaths I know and talk with, but it is often critical life or death actions for those non-empaths in the party. ANY delay in that environment is poorly thought out. If you need some in-game reasoning I would stop at the heightened adrenalin and sense of alertness that comes with being an empath in a group where you KNOW being on your game and reacting instantaneously may save a life. This mental focus supersedes the time needed to 'mentally prepare and link with' a patient that might make more sense in common healing areas, tables or in town or other 'safe' areas. This would also solve the concerns about invasion time triage as the town becomes a non-safe location during those periods as I understand it.

Any time involved in linking certainly should be something that can be trained down with proper lore training, in this case perhaps a combination of a Lore or two. I realize that with clerics that is not the case (although the elder ones can be 'ready' to raise more quickly so it isn't without some moderately related precedent).

Having stamina be a factor to maybe a slightly lesser degree than it was during the Regeneration storyline is certainly workable but the point of that is to limit how much healing an empath can do and seems a separate issue than the linking. If that were to be incorporated the amount of stamina needed per type of transfer would have to be quite noticeably less than it was during that storyline to my recollection though.

The other aspect that I'm not sure on having not dealt with it is if the Link allows the empath to heal the person, or the Link prevents the injured party from being healed by anyone else, or both. I get the impression it is both, and therefore something would need to be worked into the code to prevent abuse of that function, such as an ornery empath Linking to someone, to PREVENT another empath from healing them, and not actually healing the injured party. Even with an Unlink option used by the injured party, the Link RT for the empath would need to stay in play with no RT penalty to the injured party so that there is time between Link 'attempts' by the ornery empath for the injured party to get healed by or Link with their desired or willing empath. DEMEANOR set against a specific character obviously is the long term solution but in that moment of healing need, something like that needs to be taken in to account.

My final thought is I see exactly why this was put in place to limit F2P accounts and I think for that purpose it is not only good but needed to prevent the scene described earlier with mini-healbots becoming a sort of plague of convenience (or inconvenience if you are an empath or hate random script healers :) ). I do not think there needs to be any carryover into paid account characters related to this, but again if it is included, only in safe healing areas would it make sense both game play wise, and enjoyment in playing.

The Drake's Mountaineer

>Again, folks, keep in mind that Estild said there would be a lot of other changes made before linking is required for non-F2P. Might be a decent idea to hold off your naysaying before you start grinding it into the ground. I seriously doubt they intend to "nerf" the empath's healing abilities. This will likely be tied in with other abilities that you may just be impressed with.

>COLEMANJ

I like a lot of what Estild's done. It's probably awful hard to follow through on "Nerf this class into either hunters or town healers" without making at least some people upset, especially when the class has been similar for longer than some players have been alive, though. Kind of a frustrating notion in a just beginning to rebound game too.