lets see if I can at least help a bit with this 'battles' problem.

well the first and most important thing I will say is that you folks are thinking too big, don't bother with wars, seriously. it requires too much attention and a bit of laziness is all it takes for people to get bored with it when the intended action isn't performed. to rectify this I would advise ditching the whole 'War' aspect entirely (yes I know wars is in the title of the site). Skirmishes and Duels are simple things, at least if you let them be. now if people didn't need to concentrate on a big picture then they could do nothing for a while and then just pick up from where they left as they don't need to be bothered by their country being over run and being pressured to level up to protect the place.

the second revolves around character creation. now, many people are notoriously lazy by nature, and putting thought into a character can be beyond some fellows attention. maybe you should revert to using base classes such as Cavaliers and Shamans. give the people a set stat line then let them tweak it (but only a little bit), lower one stat growth by 5% or 10% then raise another by that amount though Generals can't have their Speed increased at all but they may get special bonuses, such as if you take 10% off Speed you can add 15% to defense to represent their desire for ultimate defense. but that may be an unnecessary complication. and by doing this you DO NOT need to make the classes evenly matched, such as an Archer would lose against many different people because of his stats but he has the great ability to mot be hit when he has a nearby ally. or a Spell Caster will always have poor survivability in a bad situation. you may see more people stepping in for an easy to make character, plus the obvious bonus of not needing to worry about arch types. oh, and I was never too fond of genders, but I don't have much to say on that.

and lastly, a little correction to my lovely 'weapons creator' (which has been given some nice upgrades btw). all I need to say is for you to remove the option to get more uses for the weapon. just say they have 30 or 40 uses and be done with it, I'm sure you'll agree

if you agree with any of them I may be more specific. but you could work out the details on your own. i might not be here for a while though, there are many distractions in my world.

Well, I do agree with you on something, the system should be simpler (although I havent really checked it out recently :P ).

I also agree with you on the wars to an extent. From the looks of it, they look like they are a pain to judge. I suppose taking them away would be a simple solution, but also figuring out an easier and better way to judge all the battles, or to make the wars more concise would be cool too I think. Dont look to me for the solution, I havent really looked into the system much at all, but this is just what I think. If there is no way to do that, then just get rid of the wars. Or you can get rid of the wars and maybe an idea will pop in well the wars are gone, I dont know...

I liked the system they first used, I liked the system they used second for character creation, I dont know what they've used these last past times. But anyways, if the characters arent evened out, it would ruin the whole skirmish idea if you dont have wars I think. It would atleast make battles substantially tougher to accomplish anyways if I am seein this right. If they werent even, and they each had their own rolls to accomplish on the battle field, then it would be great for wars I think.

Creating your own custom weapon with such a dire limit sounds really meh to me then. However, it would probably be for the best I suppose. I think you should just make it some ridicolous amount to repair the uses on it. But then again I guess it all depends just on how strong the weapon is, considering I dont recall what the stats are like for custom weapons and such.

Theres my opinion.

oh?, and what might the early versions be then? I've heard them complimented before. maybe you folks should learn from Nintendo and don't mess with a good thing.

I never said I disliked the first system(s).

wa?, you must have misunderstood me, i was advising you to use the old system again. if it was good then you should have kept it. too bad accents and tones don't translate over the internet

Ah, heh, guess so then.