I hate magickers, official thread.

[Nao]

Wait a moment.

I'm NOT saying that anyone should be friendly with magickers all out the sudden.
I'm saying that you don't have to continue the abuse no matter the circumstances, especially when it just doesn't seem to make sense anymore.

Fear decreases when you see constant exposure, but nothing happening as a result.

And your char might find it hard to suddenly start hating an old friend no matter what they are or what they've done, I know I do. They also might feel betrayed, there's several possibilities.

[Shoka Windrunner]

Hold up.

I haven't finished reading the explosion of posts here but let me interject something.

I did NOT call Hymwen a twink.  I said she proved simply that yeah someone can do it.

I still believe you get two idjits together who want to twink and spar rest all day you will have a similar result.  Anyone want to test that out?  

The problem is not the number of skills...comparing spells to a warriors skills is silly.  Hell a warrior or ranger start out with quite a few more skills than a magicker.  Magicker gets six.  Plus sub class.  Warrior ranger?  I don't know off the top of my head.  But more than six.  A Warrior probably gets at least 6 combat skills.  To make it similar it would be like warriors starting with skill dagger, then branch to skill longknife and then on to skill half sword and then on to skill scimitar...get the idea?

We want to do that with mundanes and they can branch just as fast as magickers go for it.  

Let me squash this right now.  Unless you have lower than average HP there aren't any spells that can one shot you.  If there are I've never seen them, never had them, and most likely would require a mon component of such rarity you would weep if you ever had to use it, since you would be waiting RL weeks trying to get another.  It is a myth.  There is no one shot spell I can even think of, unless like I stated, you have lower than average HP, then maybe.  

I like playing a magicker, LOVE it actually.  Especially now, since most of my memories date back to the days of being forced into being a twink just to get one spell to actually fucking go off.  I think it took me 2 and a half days of play time to get 1 spell to mon, and then it still only worked like half the time.

Yes that isn't the point that some of you are trying to make.  But some of you are saying then need to be regressed to some form of this.  Yeah they'd be rare.  Practically non existent.  Like they were once upon a time.  But regardless, it seemed that all those magickers back then teamed up, and if someone did fuck with them, they wouldn't live long.  Why?  I played that character for 3 RL fucking years.  I mastered 4 spells.  I didn't want to have to try to do it again.  I was still a bitch ass.  

Now they've been given teeth, I'll admit teeth that in some cases are 2 foot long and super pointy.  But at least they are playable without being forced into having to resort to spam casting away.  

I'll agree with LoD on one thing, magickers need a place in Armageddon MUD.  A way to interact with mundanes.  Currently that place is as a gemmer.  You can at least be one, and not have to be super secret James Bond about it.  You can play a magicker and it has opened up roles for them that haven't existed since way back when people ignored the docs and would actually befriend and hire them.  It made it a better place for everyone I felt.

Actually two things LoD.  They maybe do need to be policed some.  But can you blame people for wanting to try something new before they won't be able to?  Yeah the End is a long way off, again.  But it wasn't that far off that long ago.  Was June, now September.  So yeah, the mad rush is still in crazy effect to play everything you haven't.  Some people are going to twink it.  That's because they are taught to do so from playing warriors and rangers in many of the clans.  I'm not saying those clans are wrong, but you spar and spar and spar and spar and spar.  So they get a magicker and they cast and cast and cast and cast and cast, and look at that!  I branched...Wow!  So they cast and cast and cast...wondering what's next.  Many people can't control their curiosity, or their thrill at playing something so vastly different than what they have before.  I think skill wise, mundane characters need a tweak as much as Magickers.  That experience with Shoka burnt me out on playing a character, who is unable to do what their class states they should be able to do, without practicing skills all the time.  I'd rather be decent in skills at the get go, and be able to do what I'm supposed to do without doing the sparring, casting, practicing, foraging, crafting that you have to do otherwise.  I, and this is my personal feelings, fucking hate that.  I don't like sparring, cause I've never seen it done in a fashion that didn't make me feel like it was directed, completely at building skills, and thus seemed fake and phony.  My opinion, everyone elses will differ I'm sure.

I think that it's perfectly reasonable that magickers should run around with sparkles and flames and invisible and cloaked in shadow or whatever they cast on themselves.  Hell, I don't want anyone to know who I am?  Don't want to have to worry about someone trying to kill you?  Easiest way to do that is pull your hood up and walk around on fire.  Who in their right mind would even approach them?  No one.  Sounds logical to me.  It's dangerous out there, let's just scare everyone off ahead of time.  Do I agree they should do it while leaning against the gates of 'Nak?  No.  So yeah, you still need to be careful with what you do.  But running around in the desert, well just leave me be if I'm not causing you trouble and I'll leave you be.  How many people here would walk up to a group of ten people, wearing black hooded cloaks with their weapons out in the desert?  Only the foolhardy.  I don't think it's unreasonable that a magicker could possibly be seen as being just as dangerous.

Maybe there are a lot of magickers in the world.  I play one and haven't seen what I would call a tremendous amount of them.  Or even evidence of them being around.  I think if I had to guess, I've suspected, or have seen no more than maybe ten magickers at most at any given moment.  
Even back when I played Shoka there was more than that.  Most people just never met them.  (I think the reason was that people didn't have as much knowledge of the world back then and didn't have the crafting skills requiring them to go out in the wilderness to that one cave where you can get the pink panther diamonds, which happens to be way away from other centers of civilization and are upset that it is occupied by a magicker.)

So I'm guessing probably twenty magickers in the world.  Okay.  It's the end of the world.  People want to play them.  Even if you don't.  So deal with it.  Other people are having fun to.  Not just yourself.  Sorry guys.  It's not actually about you.  It's about whether you are having fun or not.  For every individual.  And since I don't pay to play this, and don't get payed to play this, I have no obligation to play how, who, and where, someone else would rather I do so.

I'm done with this.  Some people are upset at magickers.  For whatever reason they have.  Whether they are truthful about it on here or not.  You have the same feelings of annoyance with a lot of classes.  Everyone does at one point in time or another, for a myriad different reasons.  

Bottom line is this, there are twinks.  They are going to twink.  They will continue to twink in any manner possible that they can.  Cause it's what they do.  It's been stated that twinks are bad by the Imms.  If you think someone is twinking send a mail to the mud.  Then go on with your life.  And if that alleged twink is still around, either the Imms have decided they aren't twinks or they have had a serious talk with an Imm and have hopefully straightened up.

I'm done arguing about magickers.  Seriously.  I hear many of you state something must change, but I've not heard anything that doesn't either impede on someone else's fun in some way, or that hasn't been proven to not work well in the past.  I've already posted my ideas for solutions to this 'problem' in previous posts.  Look them up if you want.

[Fathi]

So I'm guessing probably twenty magickers in the world.  Okay.  It's the end of the world.  People want to play them.  Even if you don't.  So deal with it.  Other people are having fun to.  Not just yourself.  Sorry guys.  It's not actually about you.  It's about whether you are having fun or not.  For every individual.  And since I don't pay to play this, and don't get payed to play this, I have no obligation to play how, who, and where, someone else would rather I do so.

Not to nitpick, but pretty much everything you've said can apply to the opposite side of your argument as well.

People who want to play dirty mundane grebbers without having to worry about running into ridiculous amounts of mages out in the desert have no obligation to play how, who, and where -you- would want. They also are under no obligation to roll over and "deal with it" simply because you like an aspect of the game that they don't. The GDB exists so both sides of the discussion can voice their concerns if they think the game's balance is an issue.

I think the fact that this thread is twenty-two pages long says that more than just a handful of the playerbase is worried about the magicker/mundane balance in the game, and a lot of people are worried that it's only going to get worse as the game draws closer to an end.

By answering "deal with it" to a problem like that, you're basically saying that you're all right with alienating a portion of the playerbase that's significant and vocal enough to help propel twenty-two pages of discussion on the GDB.

I've never staffed a MU* personally, but I have run several large-scale roleplaying boards and groups in the past, and from an administrative standpoint, if enough of your players express a concern, it isn't something that should be answered with "deal with it" because there could be a legitimate problem. And if it's a problem big enough to impede your players' satisfaction and immersion and you don't even allow them to discuss it, you risk alienating your playerbase as well as potentially losing them.

And considering the amount of people that have been quitting and/or playing infrequently since Arm 2's announcement, I think it's more than a little irresponsible for players to take up a "deal with it" attitude on an issue that several people in this thread have said is enough to make them want to play less if it worsens.

When players quit, the game suffers.

People aren't trying to impede on your fun if you play a magicker--they're simply addressing what they see as a legitimate concern because it is lessening their enjoyment of the game.



Edit: To clarify, Shoka, I wasn't claiming you said the staff should tell players to deal with it or anything of the like; I was just using my personal experience adminning RP projects as an example.

[Malken]

I still believe you get two idjits together who want to twink and spar rest all day you will have a similar result.  Anyone want to test that out?  

First of all, that requires two people to do your 'comparison', two people are much easier to spot and deal with than one guy hiding in his apartment or secret cave spamming spells once in a while, with a semblance of roleplaying in between to keep the line between obvious twinkery and the basic roleplay required on the mud.

Second, doing so would be near useless, because the stat that dictates how often and how fast you gain in your selected skills is WISDOM, and how many warriors do you know of with anything above average wisdom, compared to the number of magickers you know of with anything LOWER than very good wisdom?

So even if two warriors with average wisdom were to spar all day, that'd be totally useless because their skill progression would probably lock after within two minutes and then remain locked for another hour or so (I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air, here, for the sake of example), but with your magicker with exceptional wisdom, their rate of advancement is MUCH faster due to the stat PLUS its much faster due to the fact that they've made advancing and branching in spells much faster to help out the magickers, so what you've got is a bonus to skills advancement + a bonus to spells progression = Magickers gaining new spells much faster than it's probably supposed to be like.

I hope I'm making sense.. It's no big secret that wisdom is the stat that deals with skills and spells progression, it says so in the help file. So now that you have 90% of the magickers with exceptional wisdom, and a much easier time learning and branching spells, of course it's a recipe for disaster in the long run..

[Naiona]

Just to add on to everything that Halaster said earlier:  "Ditto".

[Belenos]

Much as many people hate to admit this, there is no perfect solution.  Different players like to play different things.  Some despise magick, and would just assume it not exist anywhere in this gameworld.  Others are of the opinion that there are not enough options for the magick user.  That by giving them mundane choices, rather than being the lepers of society that would reign in the excesses.  Still others want magick to be elusive, rare, and scary.

In the grand scheme of things it is impossible to please everyone. The best we can do is offer choices, so that you can gravitate to the type of play that you enjoy.

Unfortunately many people (not all) posting on this thread do not respect the other person's position.  There is a lot of chest thumping, and outright name calling. We encourage people to discus issues, and present ideas, but leave the hostility for the game.

[Gimfalisette]

This is "anecdotal" data, and yet it's like this pretty much every weeknight now in Tuluk:

Code Select Expand

who
Immortals
---------

There are 0 visible Immortals currently in the world.

There are 52 players currently in the world, other than yourself.

Count of PCs in Tuluk's three major taverns at 8:15 pm Pacific time, "peak", same time as "who" done above: 0

Time I've spent tavern-idling alone tonight: 20 minutes...about as much as I can stand.

[Only He Stands There]

Nobody tavern-sitting?

Sounds like a great thing to me... it means that people are actually off in their clan halls, doing work, or on missions, or doing business privately, or etc. etc. etc.

[Hymwen]

It more likely means that very few players choose to play in that area of the game.

[Malken]

This is "anecdotal" data, and yet it's like this pretty much every weeknight now in Tuluk:

Code Select Expand

who
Immortals
---------

There are 0 visible Immortals currently in the world.

There are 52 players currently in the world, other than yourself.

Count of PCs in Tuluk's three major taverns at 8:15 pm Pacific time, "peak", same time as "who" done above: 0

Time I've spent tavern-idling alone tonight: 20 minutes...about as much as I can stand.

I used to think that this was only happening in Tuluk, then I created a PC in Allanak just to see, and during my CST peaktime weeknights, I would often only see the same 2-3 PCs in the tavern sitting there, always going, dammit, I should have stayed in Tuluk, it seems like this Gimf chick is throwing RPTs every week or so, don't tell me that now that I've switched back to Allanak all the players went back to Tuluk?

So if you think it's just a problem in Tuluk, let me tell you that you'll be disappointed if you switch location thinking it's any better on the other side of the playground.

[Marauder Moe]

Let's blame the Kuraci next.

[Jherlen]

Fuck that.

[Synthesis]

Considering the world is likely about to end (or be horribly ravaged) in a magickal cataclysm, there may be a good reason for the increase in the number of magicker PCs being approved.

What are the odds that a group of 8 random, mundane warriors (your average Byn unit, assuming 5 of them aren't really assassins trying to skill up) is going to dramatically affect the outcome of a large-scale magickal confrontation? Slim to none.  What are the odds that a group of 8 magickers is going to change the outcome of the same confrontation? I'd say they're probably much, much higher.  There could be a -storyline- reason that more magickers are being allowed to play:  the under-represented magicker classes need to be represented in order to fully tell the story of the final conflict.  I'm guessing that having the only two Vivaduan PC gemmers in 'nak face off against the zombie of Luir Dragonsthrall and his Doom Legions isn't exactly representative of the kind of power that the entire Elementalists' Quarter can muster.

Beyond that, it's quite likely that the reason you keep seeing so many different magickers is that so many keep dying.  In the past week, I can count four...and these were magickers who had branched the "uber" spells that everyone is so worried about.  No amount of spam casting can correct the poor judgment of an inexperienced player.  Can irresponsible magickers be a pain in the butt? Yeah.  But generally, an irresponsible player, like the ebola virus, is self-limiting:  it sucks a fat one if you get hit by it, but in the end, it can't sustain that level of suck for very long.  

I had a long-lived, awesome PC get killed by one of these twink spam-casting magickers...did it suck? Yeah.  But guess what...about a week later, that twink spam-casting magicker got the attention of some dudes in the know, and all the spam-casting in the world couldn't save his bacon.  I once logged in with a magicker character, and at the same time another character of exactly the same element logged in...a week later, this guy had branched -way- beyond me, and I was feeling pretty stupid (because hell, I'd never branched a spell before -ever-, and I'm pretty damn good at powergaming other classes...I once got a half-giant warrior with poor wisdom branched in 10 days).  One day, the guy goes off, thinking he's all badass, and I never see him again.  Stupid is as stupid does...what goes around comes around...you reap what you sow...etc, etc.

Bemoaning that there are "too many" magickers around and that this makes them "not as scary" is silly.  The fact that there are many of them makes them even scarier:  what happens if you've got a badass-on-his-own elementalist running around with magickal powerups from three other elements?  If you're not scared, it's not because you ought not to be:  it's because you're allowing your jaded player's worldview to influence your character's actions, and this is likely to end badly for your character.

If you think someone is playing completely irresponsibly, and should no longer be allowed to play mages, e-mail the staff and let them know, and I'm sure they'll look into it.  Beyond that, griping is just sour grapes.

[Only He Stands There]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5069&start=0

[Gimfalisette]

I used to think that this was only happening in Tuluk, then I created a PC in Allanak just to see, and during my CST peaktime weeknights, I would often only see the same 2-3 PCs in the tavern sitting there, always going, dammit, I should have stayed in Tuluk, it seems like this Gimf chick is throwing RPTs every week or so, don't tell me that now that I've switched back to Allanak all the players went back to Tuluk?

So if you think it's just a problem in Tuluk, let me tell you that you'll be disappointed if you switch location thinking it's any better on the other side of the playground.

I do throw a mean RPT

And my point wasn't that I'm thinking of switching to Allanak. That would mean storing my current character, which I'm just not going to do.

Nor was my point that I think that Allanak's not suffering, because clearly it is.

Point was...mundane RP is suffering. That is all.

And despite what some people think, tavern-sitting is a good thing. It's just as valid an activity as people being "off in their clan halls, doing work, or on missions, or doing business privately." Taverns are where the majority of first-time introductions happen, taverns are where commoners often interact with nobles and templars, taverns are where people can go for entertainment, taverns are where news is exchanged...it's silly to dismiss tavern-sitting like it's not important to the game, because it is.

[Dresan]

I hate to say this but it feels that people aren't playing magickers to actually RP a magickal character. If people actually just wanted to RP magickal beings then most of them would not care about any of the coded benifits like 'teeth' or fast skill advancement.

No since they would then be content to start from the begining. A person figuring out they are a mage, RPing the social aspects of it. Hiding from their peers, maybe not even bothering to train their powers or doing it at a painstaking rate. If someone wants to find a cave and train for 40-60 days before coming out..well good for them. However after the first or second mage i'm sure they'd probably want to play a more social warrior or ranger.

However what we currently have here is people wanting to play a class that can actually do things. Mages can do things easier then any warrior, ranger or assassin and they can do it quickly. On top of that a mage can come down from their cloud and RP like a merchant for a bit or a noble's aide.  For all mundanes though takes 20 days of long painstaking often repetitive training, just to get DECENT...just to begin looking like your chosen class. It takes another 20 days to get good but still possible to die quickly at doing what your chosen class is designed to do. Thats a big investment in my life in hopes of achieving just one those incredibly fun scenes a skilled character can do.

Its sad but true, i honestly can't blame people for opting for a magicker that can do and see interesting stuff without a huge investment in one's life.

However if this is the case, why not give Karma players the option of playing more skilled mundanes? I say option, this means they should still be able to play a newbie mundane character if they want. I still think the skill learning rate should be toned down a bit more for mages but would they game honestly suffer from a newbie having more skilled mundanes to play with? Usually they are the ones that drive or are the gears in plots.

1 Karma- +20% on all starting skills on mundanes
2 karma- +35%
3 karma- +40 %, +15 on branched skills.

Etc etc, you get the point. Maybe that way we can tell newbie character to find a master assassin with a straight face. I remember i was told this would drive a bigger wedge between newbies and vet players. However with most vet players (and not so vet it seems) wanting to  play magickers isn't that a bigger wedge then say someone with high karma and staff trust making a skilled assassin and then mentoring a newbie or two?

[Gimfalisette]

Just another thought that occurred to me regarding the current difficulty/lack of purely mundane interaction in the game:

Who's around in the taverns to interact with the complete newbs? Are we losing potential players because the normal tavern scene has dropped off so significantly? If a newb goes linkdead in an empty tavern, does anyone hear Ginka cry?

[BuNutzCola]

Brilliant idea, I would definately take a remotely decent mundane class to begin with far more often than I would a magicker.

[Angela Christine]

As a player of a mundane PC, I'll chime in on this. I branched a few very useful non-magicker combat skills in a very short period of time. Less than 2 days play-time in fact.

Me too.  With a ranger I routinely branch Charge in under 2 days.

Er, actually, that's often the only skill I branch.  I ride around doing stuff, but none of the stuff I do ever makes anything branch.  I suck at skills.  As a merchant I might get one or two craft skills to branch, before I go out of my mind.

I  think the only time I branched a spell was as a water elementalist.  That time I had a spell branch from making water.    If you grow up in a desert and then gain the ability to make free water, you really have to think of good reasons to not do it at every opportunity, because otherwise you could quite legitimately spend every waking moment making water or preparing to make water.  Even if you can't sell it easily, hey, it's free water.  Grow some houseplants or something.

With most other spells, I have trouble coming up with a good reason to cast spells.   I'm all, "Hey, I can make something float, or glow, or do some other basically useless activity that will get me into trouble if anyone sees it, what fun."  I never know how to go about it.  Wake up, cast a couple spells and then . . . sit down and wait for the mana to regenerate so I can cast again?  It is hard for me to figure out a reason to do that.  I know that useful spells may be lurking behind some of the apparently useless spells, but since I haven't seen the skill and spells lists people insist exist, I have no idea which useless spells I should be spamming to get at the good stuff.  Even the useful spells are really only useful a couple times a day, casting them continuously to force a branch doesn't appear to make sense.  

Sure, I could avoid the problem by not casting spells, but if you don't cast spells then you are just a Merchant with no craft or trade skills.  You know you've hit rock bottom when you find yourself thinking, "Man, if I wasn't an elementalist, I could be fletching arrows right now!"

[Cegar]

Hyperbole in this thread is getting out of hand.

It really, really isn't that bad. The only reason that there are so many magickers at the moment is because the world is about to freaking end. Things are not running at the status quo. Sure, there were always a lot of magickers during status quo, but we can begin to address than in 2.arm when we know what the new karma system will be, what the class system will be, and what the world will be. K?

[Foolash]

Right.  But another point that several people in this thread made is that, against the grain of the documentation, it now saturates the game.  The magickers playing now, not all of them (all it takes is a couple bad apples...), make no effort to conceal the mystery of magick.  I know for a fact that one fellow I rp around is a new player and he was mentioning xx magicker casting xx like it was nobody's business.  This is a serious problem.  Part of the wonder I had with my first few days of arm is that I had no knowledge of magick.  Little displays of it would literally leave me feeling red-ass nekked and abused.  Armageddon's characteristically wonderful -depth- is in jeopardy here.  No longer am I suprised by the tricks the game can toss at me. No, I do not think it gets fixed now.  Deadline is what thee months? two?  No one will want to sac their gicker so people can be happy to get a half-decent mundane by the time the game ends.  As an issue that carries over to the new version where there will be no karma restriction for the first few months I truly hope this sort of thing does not carry over.  Either that, or it would become a magick saturated world (blech!).  Personally I'd like to know going in.  Dig?

[Cegar]

Ridicule your friends who turn out to be magickers. Kill them. Get Templars to kill them. Out them to everyone else. DO IT.

[spawnloser]

I didn't make that character to become powerful, I did it to see if it was possible.

Of course it is possible.  Does that mean you should do it?  No.  It's possible so that you can cast a few spells and then STOP CASTING AND DO OTHER STUFF without feeling like you're a pussy that will never be able to survive on his/her own.

[spawnloser]

Don't attack Hymwen because she's been forced to these extremes.

Who forced her?

[spawnloser]

I can name three magicker types that can sustain themselves (in terms of nourishment) right out of the box.

You're wrong.  I'll avoid giving the actual number of magicker classes that can provide nutrition with their starting spells, though.

Another two more, I can name for avoiding danger again right out of the box.

Avoiding danger straight away?  No magicker can just avoid all danger without branching.