Here's a chat from the monk channel. Pretty much sums it up.


[22:30]:Argonath {monk}: Monks seem to be pretty dead even after the new
skills. gwho monk is 2 players online currently. Other guilds have 11+.

[22:31]:Daerid (monk): you're the only monk ,)

[22:31]:Argonath {monk}: oh right, u are only lvl 3, only gets better

[22:31]:Argonath {monk}: Pretty sure the difficulty of getting type damage as a
monk is the main problem.

[22:32]:Daerid (monk): quite the opposite from e.g. liberator, can do any type
I want :p

[22:32]:Argonath {monk}: Ye, that's what I mean

[22:33]:Daerid (monk): I've got the silly ring too but even with it monk is
lackluster, I mean, random fire/cold damage? bleh :p

[22:33]:Argonath {monk}: Also martial arts is lacking behind without any
martial arts damage gear in the game. Like knuckles or something

[22:33]:Daerid (monk): martial arts used to be #1 way back

[22:36]:Argonath {monk}: templars and monks are dead, long live the liberators
-.-

[22:37]:Argonath {monk}: well, batmud is not the only game where new stuff is
way better than the old stuff.

Also had a chat some days ago with Porkzar that was one of the leading monks in
the game for long until he reinced to liberator and dropped monks. He told me
liberators are waaaaaaayyyy better. Why so big gaps in power level between
guilds? I know that monks are kind of easy to max out since there's no
reputation/material farming that would boost the skills and therefore can't
obviously be as good as the guilds which have those and (need?) to do them in
order to be so powerful. And to not get angry liberators at my arse, my aim
with this wasn't calling for a downtune to liberators but to get some love in
form of weapons for monks(like knuckle dusters with type damage) or reputation
system that would increase monks damage in some way. After all those things are
very plausible for monk guilds to-do-list from coders perspective if compared
to other guilds and systems in this game. And don't get me wrong, I like the
new monk skills, at least it's not boring ip spamming nowadays but if everyone
says monks are a lackluster and I am the only monk playing at sunday evening..
maybe there's something that could be improved without still making it the next
OP like liberators.
btw, knights 0 players online, monks are not that bad.

This is typical Batmud. Though this may sound harsh, it is not my intent, as
most players will admit that what you are about to read is 100% truth. New
pretty things get most of the attention, rather than fixing something that is
broken or not working as it should. There is more ego and glory in creating
versus fixing another person's mess, right? Era said (news display
ideas-wanted 10350) ,'sac formulas could perhaps use some re-evaluting.
However, looking at the code makes one despair....It works, so I'm not going
to try to fix it.' Zerks suggested a change for demon making (news display
ideas-wanted 10351), which got 14/14 rating. Nothing happened.

Let's look at races for another example. 'news display updates 405' will be
used for reference. Centaur is a wished race! But Maximus & Starrlight rocked
the hell out of that race! It had one of its two racial attacks removed and
lost 2 epr! Couple years later, racial attacks were downtuned again without
Centaur gaining back it's attack. Double whammy! Also Gnoll lost 4% exprate!
WTF reason is there to play Gnoll if not for the exprate?!? Barso is
constantly being downtuned, 'finger Lammas' for comedy/truth. Also 'news
display updates 922' for reference. So if a race is too good, compared to
others, the knee-jerk solution is to downtune it. That is what I mean by
typical Batmud! 'Look at the who list and compare it with the amount of races
people actually PLAY not just idle for raceleaders, and notice, that there is
really little diversity, and alot of races unplayed because of too uptight
administration and or too busy!?! coders who could and would and care enough
to do anything.' - Ulver '09 (news display ideas-wanted 10355), which received
8/8 rating.

As for the Monk guild, there was a post about the Monk guild being newer than
Tiger guild and comparing the two. Which do you think was better? Old tiger
guild or newer Monk guild? Check 'news display ideas-wanted 12072' for
reference.

Let's take a minute to thank Shinarae for uptuning Knights. He heard the cries
of the mortals and added some flavor to an old guild. Perhaps more boosts will
come to bring it up to equal power of the new guilds. Nonetheless, this is a
great example of maintaining a guild! I'm sure there are many other example,
but I'm not privy that information.

The end solution is finding a baseline power standard and then finding coders
that will uptune/downtune around that, rather than tuning via community
bitching. Because let's face it Zerks/Shar/Entor types of players can make any
race/guild combo work, because of their game knowledge, eq, wiz items, and
boons. Comparing yourself to people that have vorpal/novas, twinklers, 200+
wis sets, Lok'amirs, and 13 full boons simply isn't how we should tune.

Wow. Your answer blew my mind. Didnt expect such maturity and well constructed
answer with good points from this player base(bat channel is a terrible place
where questions go to die)

But yeah to my own answers which probably aint as glorious.. I bet tigers feel
they need a bit of a boost and I didnt sat that monks would be the only guild
in need of something. But it does help to see if something needs to be fixed
from the amount of players currently playing and not playing certain guilds and
even more so if people themselves talk how OP the guild is compared to some
other choices. Monks have a high exp cost weapon skill which is supposed to
balance the fact that they dont need to purchase high cost weapons. But
purchasing something like reaver axe which aint even high or too pricy, one can
end a fight with autoattacks in 5 rounds compared to 15 rounds as martial
artist against the same mob. So yeah not even close to being the same. Granted
that not too many greligs use reavers axes but the point is still there.

You are absolutely right in that tweaks shouldnt be done according to how
highbies manage with any given guild compared to normal folk but some simple
stuff like what monks are missing compared to other guilds is pretty simple to
fix. And imo fixing the lack of monk type damage by having a 10m+ ring in a
game thats nearly ungettable for solo players is not the right way..
furthermore, having weapons for martial arts would also boost tigers in case
they didnt feel forced to use shelaste claws. But hey, at least tigers have
their guild specific weapon which doesnt cost 10m per piece.

One nice example how downtunes should not be done would be animist tune to
sharing damage with the soul. It had no effect on the highbies but a lot of
effect on those that are low/midbies only trying to level the soul atm or just
playing the game even after the soul is somewhat "sturdy". Batmud is not fair
to those that are not pioneers in the game. When they downtune stuff for the
ultimate players a bit, they make it a lot harder for everyone "normal" at the
same time.

While I can understand this point of view, it doesn't make sense that someone
with this type of attitude would accept a position of Guild Maintainer. Can
you imagine how that point of view would look like for a doctor? 'Doctor, this
drug addict just OD'ed on pills! Please save them!' Sigh, what is the point?
They reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol. If I save them, they'll just kill
themselves later on those. What's my motivation to help them? Just let them
die, because I can't be bothered with it. Would you hire this doctor, allow
him to work on you, or pay him if you ran that hospital?

It's a flawed logic and a mental crutch. As you say it isn't about ego or
glory, it is your job! You are bound by duty and honor to fulfill it. Just
like in rl, people take vacations, breaks, sabbaticals, or even step down from
a position. Is it not acceptable to hold a position for long periods of time
that you are not fulfilling the required duties for in rl. It should not be
acceptable here!

Understandable points from wizards in some way. But they are also kinda saying
that one should first take the guilds age into consideration before reincing
into it because if it's old -> it's not maintained -> it's most likely
underpowered -> and even more likely will stay that way.

So it could be a good point to actually write that down somewhere for everyone
to see so that there wouldn't be forum posts like this(although it's not even
the truth 100%).

And the part I don't get is that if monks get new special skills, why can't
they get something else new too(like the knuckledusters or whatever "weapon"
with type damage or without but then add a new skill to give type damage)? If
new is easier to code, can't it be coded to existing guilds without touching
the old code? The weapon idea for martial arts was btw discussed a long time
ago and was not my idea originally(the forum post is mine though: martial arts
vs everything else = not balanced)

Oh and it wasn't me that started whipping at the wiz's direction. I only wanted
to bring forth the situation of monks as a player and what data I could get on
my hands via tells and statistics. If u could take that into consideration
before you start zapping people.