I've been wanting to make this thread for awhile, and I just had an interaction with a newer player that convinced me to finally do it. For those who remember, twinking back around 2014-2016 was amazing. For many people I talk to, those are our fondest memories of pvp in this game. Many people long for the days of old when twinking was truly active. I honestly believe STS could revive twinking to resemble what it once was. It would require bold action, but I think it payoff greatly. Before I get into how to "Make Twinks Great Again", I want to address what caused the decline of twinking and pvp in general.
Back around 2015-2016, you could make a nice twink for a few million gold. Get a weapon with a para gem, a decent arcane pet like toor or maridos, and everything else was pretty cheap. It was accessible to most players. Yes there was some power discrepancy between people with 1 para and people with multiple paras/eyes, but those could be overcome by being a better player. Eventually we were introduced to taverns and location buffs. For those that could afford it, they had to spend several extra million gold on their twinks. For those who couldn't the power discrepancy grew. Next, we were introduced to egg slotting. Now instead of 1 arcane egg, people were using 2, or even 3. The cost of twinking and the power discrepancy between players rose even more. Which brings us to the final nail in the coffin, awakenings. A system in which someone can basicly spend infinite gold until they have a statistical advantage.
So how can twinking can revived? Well, I think it's evident that twinking thrives on accessibility. Twinking at the moment is too expensive for most players. Gear is scarce because most old twink players quit with their gear due to the reasons I mentioned above). If there was more gear that was affordable, twinking would be more accessible and more active.
HERE'S MY SOLUTION:
-Add a legacy vendor. This vendor would offer some of the most common twink items from the past including ancient druid sets, icescale sets, lurid bows, devourer bows, storm swords, dark watch swords, (I could use some input on mage weapons lol), tarlok amulets, eerie amulets, the power/legend/enchanted/ensorcelled rings, etc.
-The items would be given at the same level as your character(up to lvl 40 or somethin like that) and would be purchased with tokens
-These tokens would drop from low level bosses and would be locked to your character(So you can't just farm them on an endgame character with speed set). If you've entered a low level map recently, it's usually empty. This would provide a reason for experienced players to farm low level maps, creating a more active atmosphere for new players leveling up for the first time.
Lets get a few things straight because I already know some of the concerns. First off, it wouldn't be easy to obtain the items from the vendor. Each one could require 500 tokens(or 500 boss kills) and that's just for 1 item. This system would be for people who don't have the gold, but are willing to dedicate the time to farm out a twink set. Or, for others, they could use this system to farm items and sell them(providing another method for new players to make gold). Yes this would devalue the twink items currently in the game. However, these vendor items would be clean, with no awakenings. So the people who already have twink items with great awakenings, those items are still going to be valuable. And let's be honest, to the people who are still twinking, do you really care if your items become less valuable if pvp becomes more active in return? Most people would take that trade all day. I know I would. Let's get back to the vendor(and maybe the most controversial proposal)
-The Vendor would also offer Eyes of Syrillax and Paracelsous soul stones for tokens(maybe 1000, and 2000 respectively). Why? Why should STS bring something back that they worked so hard to remove from the game. Because despite all their efforts, paras/eyes are still around and still have an influence on the game. Lets say they added in all the stuff I mentioned above but not paras/eyes. There would still be a limited amount of para gems that only some people have. There would always be that discrepancy between people with a para gem and people without. Para gems should be more common imo. It's one of the communities favorite visual effects of all time.
-STS created a new jewel system and limited gems to lvl 46 and below because a select few eyes and paras had been hoarded across expansions. If they brought back paras/eyes, they wouldn't want them to intrude on endgame. Since some endgamers may use lvl 30-40 artifacts, STS could make it so that these gems cannot be slotted into artifacts.
How does any of this benefit STS? Well, lots of new twink items would need awakenings. Awakenings have become one of their primary revenue streams and this system would further drive that revenue stream.
SECONDARY SOLUTIONS:
-Add a pvp damage modifier that starts at lvl 1 and scales all the way to 30 or 40. Why? Armor awakenings are very strong at twink levels. Ideally, lvl 10s would never have been able to get +300 armor on a piece of gear. At this point, they've been around too long imo for STS to make changes to the awakening values. Instead, a damage modifier would help to speed up pvp at low levels whilst retaining the value of awakenings that people already have. This damage modifier would be greatest at low levels, and slowly scale down to zero as your level increases. A damage modifier would likely need testing and iteration, but I think twink players would be more than willing to assist in that regard by providing feedback until satisfactory levels are reached.
-New CTF Map. The reskinned TDM map was a success. But Let's be honest, most people wish CTF was the primary map. There's a lot more strategy because of the walls and the layout, and 5v5 is better than 4v4. I think the community would embrace a new CTF map.
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I'll probably come back later to see if I missed anything, but these are my initial thoughts on how to Make Twinks Great Again
