I'm going to take a minute to talk about Negative change vrs Positive change.

Over the decade that I have been here I have seen a lot of changes take place. I have also witnessed reactions and reacted to some of these changes myself.

I believe that the reaction of the playerbase is largely based on the composition of the negative or positive energy surrounding the change.

Here is an example of a negative change that took place, and a positive change that later replaced the negative change.


Years ago the amount of DMG stat a character could wear was capped, (I believe other statistics were capped as well).
I have labeled this as a negative change because it was a change that took options away from the playerbase. People that relied on huge dmg sets (or simply had built these sets) felt as though the game had changed too drastically for them to continue and inevitably, some of these people left TFC. Probably because they were angry that something was taken away from them.

More recentally the wis/int/chr/luc etc... stats were adjusted to encourage people to diversify their sets. When this was done it became less effective to wear huge dmg sets. Sets without hr fall victom to chr, and sets without int and wis will suffer seriously dilluted spell power. I have labeled this as a positive change because it solved the problem without removing anything from the game, it solved the problem by adding options instead.

When negative change occures, i.e. removing a spell because it is deemed to be too powerful many things take place.

First of all time is wasted. The time it took to originally code the spell, and the time it takes to remove the spell is lost. The time that people spend objecting the removal of the spell is lost. And the time that playes spent learning how to incorperate this spell into their tool-set is lost.

Another occurance is the negative reaction that inevitably will occure whenever any negative change takes place. If someone looses something they value in-game, they will surely be angry. They might not log in for a few months, they might become bitter and argumentive, or they may just leave tfc in general.

When positive change occures a completely different reaction takes place.
I.e. A new spell/skill is added to the shaman/cleric classes to balance the power of the mage class.

Here time is utilized, instead of wasted. The time that was spent designing and coding the new skill will result in use of that skill. People will be given an additional option, instead of loosing one. The old skills that were in question will remain and players should be more likely to feel satisfied with the outcome.

I've noticed that many forum posts suggest "negative change". These are the ideas I will absolutely not support. I would like everyone to take a second look at their suggestions and consider how they can be changed to offer positive change instead of negative change. Most of the time, there is a better option.

-Menelaos