In general, I like the changes...
I have been a ZMD and the reason I chose that route was to make sure I wouldn't run out of dueling targets like so many duelers have in the past. I really didn't want to have to run all over the world trying to hit the possible dozen or less targets that happen to be awake, not in a battle, and not KO'd. I gave up on dueling after I was no longer able to lower my duel level via NPCs when they split the Dueling and NPC dueling mots. I wasn't a very active dueler, but I didn't want to get a high dueling level while I was focussing on other parts of the game.
When the duel mot split was done and ZMDs raised a fuss, we were told to "suck it up" by most of the non-duelers who were happy that we were being forced to travel all over to get our duel mot down... Although that kinda backfired since a lot of low levels wound up being dueled so ZMDs could lower their mots... So I actually think that was worse for the non-duelers than the duelers... The ones who gave the least amount of XP were dueled more frequently just to lower mot... Whereas before the NPCs soaked up the mot and allowed the ZMDs to go after larger prey.
So, now that the duelers are finally getting an update that will (hopefully) make dueling a lot more fun again, all the non-duelers are upset. I'm not surprised... This started out as a DUELING game... Forts came later. When I started, there was only a rumour about forts... no one knew what they would be like. When they finally did show up, they made a nice addition to the game. But still, dueling was the best... No Hotel cooldown... Real camping at a town and dueling everyone from the town's Saloon no matter where the actual townie was... and of course, NO PANTS! :laugh:
My main concern that pushed me into ZMD was to make sure that dueling wouldn't become dull with only a few people to duel... With the Duel Level cap, I think that will help out a lot! And I also like that you can lose duel experience/levels if you lose duels... That makes sense. I understand the concern that some people may exploit that... But a real dueler wouldn't want to lose a duel... They like their win/lose ratio to favour the "wins". So I don't see this as a problem.
Having the non-duelers lose 1% of their dueling XP each week will help keep their duel level down if some noob duels them and loses. Good addition.
I like that the Duel Protection has been increased to 72 hours for the non-duelers... That will hopefully keep them from complaining a lot for not having the Job KO bug anymore. I never liked that bug... I thought it should have been squashed a long time ago. I really really like that a dueler can remove the Duel Protection after only 24 hours by initiating a duel... Having to wait 48 hours to duel is a lifetime for a pure dueler. Especially when you just got killed on a stoooooopid job.
I'm looking forward to giving this update a chance... I hope others will too.