Hi Fellow dueling enthusiasts,
I really want a place to share my thoughts on the recent changes to dueling. I haven't really worried about the past changes because I could find ways around them to still enjoy the West experience.
I know there's three core elements to playing the West: questing (which involves jobbing), fort fighting and dueling. Take away one element... and the West experience is less somehow. Think about it... a world with no dueling? or with no fort battles. Would it be the same? Not imo.
The point behind the latest 10% min motivation effort is to increase every duelers duel level? so over time workers and fort fighters will be able to play this game without being dueled?
Well... the reality is simple: Duel players will start to win 10 duels to get the xp and then they will equip the bible and lose 30 duels. This will mean resistant builds will be favoured as it can better handle the losses. Duel records (wins vrs loss records) will no longer be a source of pride. So the world will see a very one dimensional dueling playing field.
Honour duels? With skill buying, how can a player seriously pick duels that will give honour points with hidden aspects such as this? Well, they can't.
Possible solutions:
Erase the duel level. It is actually an out-dated feature. Skill buying scuppered it. (Eg: A lev 80 player with a duel level of 140 can now duel a lev 130 player (d/l 150) who has bought 20 levels of skills... and this is supposed to test the lev 80's duel ability?).
Instead any level player can duel +20 levels or -20 levels.
Make fort fighting and dueling skills compatible. Leadership becomes shooting or vigor, stamina become toughness, hiding becomes reflex. (dodging and aim remain the same
) Why? A town now has many more players who can enjoy two aspects of the game (dueling and forting).
New feature:
Sheriffs. Sheriffs are nominated players of a town who defend the citizens of their town. (Can be done much like a founders/councilors hat feature). When a duel is initiated against a town member, if they are within a certain vicinity of their town, then the duel gets enacted on the closest sheriff (is based on player level however). If there is no available sheriff (sleeping or KO'd)... then the town member gets to face their own duel. (Hence why making fort skills and duel skills compatible).
What might this feature mean? 1) Workers can be dedicated to their field of choice (helping their town) and know there is a nearby sheriff who will defend them against attacks.
2) Duelers/Soldiers who are Sheriffs will become a vital feature of a town's prosperity.
Any thoughts on this?
Personally, I am really grasping at straws atm to keep dueling... in fact... to keep playing is also at risk here for me. Why?
On one world (Dakota) I was #1xp dueler for a time, but now find myself armed with a bible trying to lose duels just to get some new targets. Dueling there was no fun at all because the strategy of dueling was gone. (0-5 targets world wide tends to do this).
No hitting enemy players before fort battles, no revenge duels for our lower or less duel-able players, no contributing in town vrs town fueds, or alliance vrs alliance wars. No getting easy income from plain old armed robbery duels either.
After 4 weeks, I now have about 19 targets in the world. How many of them duel me? Just two, and that is because they realise from chatting to me that I am now such easy duel and game xp. I have even helped put another player up to #2 spot there. This upsets me no end as I had to fight my way to the top. While the current #2 dueler is a good dueler and nice person, I somehow feel I am cheating him by putting him from #5 to #2 spot through my many bible wielding loses to him. ((I need to point out that it is not I alone who fights fairly to get to #1 xp dueler. I apologise to any dueler who is doing just what I did and is dueling like crazy to get to #1 spot.))
I just don't want to spend a dime on that world as I am only playing to lose, lose, lose. After years of playing there... I am really struggling to enjoy that world atm. Who plays to lose? I played to enjoy the win, and to help my town mates.
I am now in a town of one there, because how can I contribute to a town/alliance when all I do is lose duels?
On El Dorado, I was a zero motivation dueler... with a nice duel record... but now... slowly my duel xp is rising. Yes... slowly. Again, I find no duelers who are targeting me. Why would they? Where is the advantage of taking out a rival dueler? There is none.
I won't some day enter a level where there is just duelers to test myself against because already players are losing duels to keep their duel level low... but also because somehow dueling is continually being relegated, down graded... censured.... to the point where the once formidable duelers I battled hard against have quit and gone on to new pastures.
At some point I will need to forsake my duel record... and start the process of losing? to keep this game interesting??
I am not spending on that world either... what is the point?
I am trying to highlight how the West is becoming very 'correct' and 'sanitised'. The fun part of this game was the strategy and the coming together of a town...and this was always intensified through battles and wars with other towns/alliances.
Remember when shops were actually useful? and when building the town... the builders were prized and protected... as any 'good' items your shop had could give your town the advantage over rival towns? Where duelers would hover like angry hornets to protect their builders... and where town wars erupted from dueling them?
With all the many great changes to this game... some changes have not helped at all.