[TheGeek]

Chris Mangano Wrote:Honestly, make whatever change you feel is necessary, we have adapted before and we can adapt again.

Couldn't have worded it any better myself. Online gaming of every kind has always been about adapting to overcome. Patches come out, new versions come out, game balancing takes place, its all part of a process. You adapt or you fall behind. those are you options.

I dontate quite a bit myself and even I can see how donations (more specifically Endurance's overpowered state) are drastically effecting the game. While I have to admit that getting my buttkicked in 5 turns by someone 5 levels below me is annoying, I think you are close to a "best" stat to level calculation Zen. I like Eagles idea of 40/40/10/10 level, stats, equipment, modifiers (cyberware).

Another idea may be to cap each specific stat to a percentage of your current level. Players are still able to train as much as they want in a stat, but only have it effective to their current level, this would also prevent people who are much lower than they should be walking around in composite and a t450.

I think a big portion of what could help is decreasing Endurance's effectiveness on the gym. For the longest time a 1:1 ratio on energy to stats was the "nirvana" of the stat trainer, now there are people in the 50 energy range trippling their energy into stats (without midlan homes).

I seem to remember a very pertinent post at the time, where you yourself said that you wanted to ensure that donating never effected the game to any large degree such as other web based rpgs. I think it may be time, given the recent amount of donations, to rebalance the donation house.

Perhaps more benign donation prizes are in order, more roleplay intensive such as having a weapon or armor with a custom name as we've seen in some of the competitions. Things that are more status symbols than game altering.

just my .02