Special Abilities.

Hi Nate.

In the BG we have only one ability that people stacks. It's Block. And it's annoying.
I have no complaints about my losses. It's ok. I'm ready to lose some fights regardless of the reasons, because of my bad strategies, because of a good equipment of an opponent, because opponent has a good management, because of luck and so on.
But exactly Block doesn't allows to analyze the fight. It just breaks a fight.

In my opinion, players and developers have an opposite roles in the game. While players are looking for any weak spot of the game to win, developers trying to do this game more ... "clear".
So, the things which breaks a fight must be interesting for You. In my opinion.

Why people stacks Block?
At first, because it's proven way to enhance almost every gladiator, except most fastest of them.
At second, because any experiment to stack other Special Ability may eat few dozen of months. It's an experiment that may be acceptable only for very old and successful gladiators.
But every experiment with equipment is beneficial to the game. So, You interested in these experiments too. In my opinion.

Therefore i suggest:

1. Allow to customize items in the part of Special Abilities instead of permanent enhancement.
In a form: Pay something, get chosen Special Ability on chosen item for N hours.
The quality of enhancement could be defined by quality of item and by something else (We are so lucky!).
Implementation of this feature is "soft" for players: You could change every existing item to its enhanced analog and set enhancement time to 67 years (It's the world average life expectancy at 2010 :). For those of us, who believes that bought in the game things are belong to him.

2. Special Ability balance.

2.1
I see, You tried to balance Special Abilities by pairing "opposites":
Block - Armour Penetration;
Extra Bleeding - Bleeding Protection;
Crit - Crit Protection;
Extra Armour - Extra Damage;
Kill - Life Protection.

But. I'm sure, the best balance principle: "Let every gain has vulnerabilities by itself."
You can not know what the weaknesses are found by players. Perhaps, Crit is more valuable than Crit Protection at the moment and considering these weak spots.
At first, You may change the Special Ability enhancement cost depending from statistic. If for 1000 items, 883 have Block chance and 32 have Kill chance, it seems a good idea to set cost at 8,8 and 0,3 per point accordingly.
At second and perhaps, every enhancement is needed to have influence to common fighting abilities. For example, every enhancement could affect weight of item.
At third, sometimes Special Ability doesn't fit into gladiator's behavior. Like ability to Block while berserking. I don't know how fix it. Perhaps, increasing the chances for "innate" Special Abilities.

2.2 Add new Special Ability, which will suppress any opponent's Special Ability.

Regards.