Alright, I am going to put down my thoughts, and by extension some of my thoughts on the state of mundane classes, which has been directly affected by this. I will preface this by saying that I play this server day-in and day-out, and will go to the lengths of calling myself proficient with the mechanics and balance of the module as it stands in many respects. I highly appreciate the work the Developers put down for the Hak update, bringing us all this delightful new content, and this may seem a bit harsh or unfair to some of you, but it needs to be said.
You are correct in saying gold is currently weightless and worthless. There is no denying this. Personally, I do not enjoy grinding for it, and I do not seek it out at all, not even on PCs that are supposedly merchants. My characters earn money purely through roleplay, and even then it's large quantities only once in a while, so I'm set in that regard.
However, to perform what was once the basic function of my class, that is, to stealth (and I am using this as a personal example because I do not self-buff with scrolls that often), I will now have to spend 24k gp to do that for a week, casually, maybe an hour or two every 2 days. That's a huge amount of money, and I would argue that 12k was too much for that same amount of scrolls to begin with, but I understand that may appear as biased so I will not. Claims that this is a crutch are fairly unsubstantiated and unrealistic. "Play a Ranger and use those spells instead!" is not a viable argument, because it further degrades the Rogue into uselessness. Ranger already outshined it in almost every department, including damage (which is a Rogue's primary appeal alongside skills[!!!]), as did Bard, the other stealth-oriented class that has a stealth spell, albeit just one. There is at the moment no sense in playing a rogue, because everyone else does what you do better. Traps and locks? Wizard. Stealthing and damage? Ranger and Bard! This is made all the truer for the latter with all those fancy new feats Bards have gotten in the Hak update, which is another point I'd like to touch on, perhaps on a different thread (on how the most broken classes currently on the server were buffed further for absolutely no reason).
Returning to my statement about 24k gp, this is further made ridiculous by the new changes to merchants, potentially ruining returns by 50% to 75% from dungeoning/ninjalooting. Not only does this mean mundanes will have to fight
four times as hard to get money for gear that they are 100% dependent on, they will then have to grind to do it
four times as much (if I hadn't made my point clear yet) to gather the money for
ONE USE, WITH ARCANE SPELL FAILURE, CRAPPY DURATION AND CASTER LEVEL of level 2 and 1 spells. The price for 30 such scrolls is utterly exorbitant (24k), and doesn't last for nearly as long as anyone might think.
To elaborate on my anti-crutch stance, mundanes sorely need that crutch to come near their non-mundane peers. If someone tells me not to use a crutch on a mundane and play a non-mundane instead, that is purely terrible balancing, and not a solution, because mundanes will always need that crutch, be it UMD, or something else. Gear is available to everyone, so it won't be that. No one seems to bother to want to give them actually good new feats, unlike the barrage of feats to the non-mundanes that have been now made all, as a collective, much stronger. I fail to see the gameplan of the development team, here, and nothing I was explained thus far comes close to answering any of this in a convincing manner - and I've included my rebuttals to those statements in this long-winded reply.
My suggestion is to change the merchant modifiers on level 0-3 scrolls, specifically. Those are not the best spells out there, and they are not all that useful in dungeons to the players that could afford a bunch of them. Instead of a doubling of price, perhaps 1.5x, or 1.3x. I don't think this is much to ask in terms of balancing, but it may be in terms of work.
Were they considered OP before? Rogues?
Yes, though misguidedly so. They are strong in the hands of mechanically apt players that spend a lot of time getting rich to buy scrolls / traps with. A rogue that is not mechanically apt or has no time or desire to buy his way into actual utility, will not be good. Ever. They are second-rate in combat, if they are your primary class, without the
utility crutch (apparently) of scrolls.
Apologies for the loaded reply.
EDIT: Someone said somewhere that gold being weightless, as I have said, shouldn't impact me on buying scrolls. To clarify, it is weightless to those that pursue it, and as I said in my post, I do not.
