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Isildur
1. It would kill some peoples' motivation to play, for whom the "fun" comes from trying to create a rambo / wrecking ball character.

I imagine most of these players have already quit due to such small numbers and rare opportunities to actually be rambo / wrecking ball.

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Isildur
2. It could significantly alter the attractiveness of some classes. Classes whose power is currently amplified by the availability of pimp gear would become less attractive. Classes whose power is currently not gear-dependent would likely become more attractive.

All class abilities would be amplified. Having the best gear and best preps won't overshadow your class quite so much. This would likely cause some balance issues. But CF always has balance issues. For how many years did trapper thieves and hunter rangers suck at pvp?

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Isildur
3. It could result in less PvE. I'm not going risk my CON delving into some dangerous place if there's no longer much of a payoff.

Yes, of course. If a main motivation for PvE is better gear for PvP, then why not cut out the middle man and just get right back to PvP? Keep in mind, I do still want the best items to be hard to get. Instead of exploring to swap out an avg 28 sword for an avg 31, I'd like to see it go from 25 to 26. On the flip side, I'd love to see very high end items with more RP flavor, instead of very low end items. Like the coin, the bag of bones, coconuts, and things like that. Those should be valuable and hard to get from PvE.

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Isildur
Also, this isn't really a side effect, but what to do about preps? Remove them? Collapse "preps" down to a few that are super-easy to obtain (e.g. devil's backbone, vial of holy water, enlarge/reduct, flight, etc.)?

I'd reduce the effectiveness of protections by 1/2 or 2/3, and damage bonuses by half.

- Paul