Regarding Traits and the next Patch:
I know that a number of people have had and expressed concerns about some things in RS2....the Coward trait, for one. Multiple Roman Rebellions, etc. Rest assured this stuff will be fixed, but it's going to take some time, and I want to explain why.
First of all, and primarily, the trait system in RS2 was largely (but not purposely) thrown together by Tone and myself at the 'last minute' because of Calvin's passing. That's kind been common knowledge, but the problem was that both of us had to first LEARN how to fix the mess, and then try to do something meaningful. Tone did a magnificent job getting the Roman Leadership working (since Calvin had never really finished it or tested it much). I pretty much took all the other traits besides levy army stuff and tried to 'muddle through'. And, yeah, it's muddled. In fact, as I've been spending 8+ hours a day every day for a month or so going through this mess, I've found inconsistencies, things broken, stuff I 'thought' worked but wasn't, things missing....you get the picture. The traits just never got the kind of attention in RS2 that everything else got.
That's getting fixed. I have finished a back-breaking wee-hour 'first pass' through the whole system...re-organizing, categorizing and redefining a lot of traits...and getting this thing ready to put in a gob of things we never got around to for RS2's release. It's the last 'major' part of RS2 I wanted to do. And hopefully, with the help of some good folks who are working on the concepting of this all, and perhaps some ideas from you folks as well, this trait system will be as 'original' as much of the other stuff in RS2.
First, let share with you something that occurred during our testing and development that sheds a great deal of light on how important the traits system is. Back when Calvin was alive and working on this, the rest of us were heavily involved in testing balance and economy. We got it nearly perfect....admittedly, much better I think that it is now.....when Calvin passed, and then we realized that the ONLY thing working in RS2 traits was the Roman leadership. NOTHING else was working at all. The hasty effort to put back a ton of things that should've been working but wasn't resulted in all our balancing efforts being tossed into the grinder! Restoring the traits, in otherwords, threw the economy way off.....and I don't think we ever recovered from that. It was just too much for us to get RS2 done and released, AND learn how to do traits, AND get them all working and tested. So we did the best we could with the talents we had, and released.
Second, things are different now. I know a lot more about traits and how they work than I did 6 months or a year ago. I'm pretty confident I have a good grasp of it all, and make this system work great. So that's what's happening.
Third, there are\were a number of concepts and goals that Calvin and I were after in reworking the traits in RTW. The system was 'gamey', unintuitive, and tended to 'reward for nothing'. Like the economy in RTW, the traits were on a virtual 'cruise-control' of giving and giving and giving bonuses for very little effort by the player, and certainly no real proficiency on the part of the characters themselves. People 'came of age', got a slew of traits, and then the game just randomly hiked them up to higher levels 'just because' it was written that way. I would much rather have traits be something worth looking at and studying, with a LOT more role-play and effort on the part of the player involved. That will make RS2 much less a 'cruise-control' mod, I'm afraid, but that's the goal.
Fourth, there will a much great 'divide' between Governors and Generals. Perhaps even 'startling' to some. Characters in settlements meant to be Governors will get almost (if not) all of the traits that are involved in Government and governing. Likewise, Generals will be the fighters, and will get the military traits. Roles can be switched, but it won't be easy or quick. Sons that 'come of age' will largely do so with nothing of value except health and genetic traits....no more run this 16 year old off to battle, or stick him in a settlement as a governor right off the bat. Thanks to an idea from one of the 'Brain Trust', he'll 'go to school' for a while in a settlement with an academy or above (or the related building in any culture), and go through a 'mentoring' process after which he'll gain a trait that allows him the right to gain any others.....especially government traits, because these are the ones that have such a good or bad effect on the economy. One of our new members pointed out that by the time you get well into a campaign, buildings were in many cases costing HALF the intended price because of governor traits excessively taking 10, 25, 50% of the cost off buildings. That's ok for a few very talented Governors, but by and large such a trait or 'ability' should be rare. So the goal is to create a certain percentage of really good guys, another percentage of kinda bad ones, and the much larger percentage of just 'normal' people who aren't either really good OR bad.
Fifth, Generals and their traits, as well as the various bonuses they get have been a problem in RS2 from the moment we re-enabled all of the traits. First it was the 'lack of' command stars, and now its better but still a bit excessive IMHO. The Coward trait is obviously broken and has been fixed as well as redefined. A general who gets this trait will be accused of committing a 'cowardly act' for whatever reason...with penalties. But there is now an 'Anti_Coward' trait that allows the General to redeem himself through battle, and the bad trait goes away. In other respects, Generals will earn 'most' of what they can get through battle. Not much will be a 'given'.
Sixth, several guys are working on some really great Celtic and Greek leadership traits....the Celtic ones are particularly extensive at this stage. Other factions that will get specific attention will be the two 'nomad' factions, Armenia, and the Free Greeks.
We need more knowledge on the Nomadics, Dacians, Parthians, Ptolemies and the Seleucids. So anyway, a lot of work is being done.
Feel free to contribute in this thread any ideas or brainstorms.
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) And thanks for putting all this hard work in even after the mod's release, it's good to know you are still trying to polish things off 
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Originally Posted by Rex Basiliscus
