Change implemented for sorcerers

[Nyr]

(...) so they could pick from one of these new extended subguilds/get a main guild set up, accompanied with any equivalent skill boosts to reflect the time they'd spent playing the role.  (...)

I dislike jarring retcons like that as well. Don't see why this was necessary. I'll just assume it was.

We did think it was necessary to alter the playable sorcerer guild options.  The retcon itself was not necessary, but we were also not prepared to leave the guild (as-is) played by PCs, so the options would have been discussion with staff on potential alternatives at that point (up to and including storage).

As Nathvaan pointed out, this will probably be tweaked and adjusted over time as well, from several angles.

[Ender]

What would you recommend for the future?

Create an engaging and IC story for those who will be affected by the change that will either lead to their PCs logically easing into whatever transition is deemed necessary or writing their stories to whatever conclusion there may be (death/storage).

That way you create fun for the player to ease what will inevitably feel like a punishment.

[Molten Heart]

I think the new changes will open up many new interesting (not to mention very cool) opportunities for players, but with the limiting of the sorcerer guild is also removing a very cool role-play avenue for those that may have not had the opportunity to play one.  I know staff aren't required to explain or justify the reasons they do things but it'd be easier to understand and get behind (at least for me) if some kind of reasoning or explanation were given.

It's been stated that the sorcerer guild hasn't been removed, but is only unavailable to players.  Do and will full on sorcerers still exist in the game world, only being unavailable as a player character?  Is there the possibility of sorcerers being possible for characters through a special application?

Historically, is this a retroactive change?  ICly, should players consider this to be how it's always been or is there some in game change (either seen or unseen) that might explain this, or is it just a mystery?

[BadSkeelz]

boooo

magick


boooo

[manonfire]

What would you recommend for the future?

Create an engaging and IC story for those who will be affected by the change that will either lead to their PCs logically easing into whatever transition is deemed necessary or writing their stories to whatever conclusion there may be (death/storage).

That way you create fun for the player to ease what will inevitably feel like a punishment.

What is this, a roleplaying game?

[Twilight]

I would see it as, some people learn enough about magick to become full-on sorcerers of old.  PCs are not in that population, and only learn enough magick to become what they could become now.  My reading of the docs would be that most people who know sorcery don't know a whole lot of spells anyways.  Alternatively, if you read the helpfiles on the different paths, perhaps this is simply some shift returning things to how they were before at some point?

I do think that a sorcerer of one subguild should be able to teach their spells, one by one, individually, to a sorcerer of another subguild.  So you might get long lived, connected sorcerers that have more spells that just their subguild's, but doubtful that they would get anywhere near where main sorc guild got.

I liked the idea of the sorc subguilds (btw, I believe they stated at the time they would be karma 5, but now all references seem to be gone) as a complement to what we already had.  Sad to see the main sorc guild go, partly because it was the only one that could really fully benefit from the changes that Halaster made ~10 years ago.  But we've seen other things that are possible to do in the magick realm dissappear from regular play, and overall the lessening of power of magickers in general for awhile now, so its not really a surprise and I would guess there is a vision staff side that is getting carried out. Those like myself with a preference of magick play over politics sigh a little sigh and move on.

It is kind of hard to make any comments on the new subguilds, due to lack of information on what will be in them.  Will they follow the old sorcerer magick paths exactly?  Who knows.  Surely there would be tweaks to allow all of them to get something like component crafting.  And some things, like detect magick (normally I wouldn't name a spell, but, uh, here  http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Path%20Of%20Knowledge ) would seem important enough everyone should get it.  I don't know, a lot will depend on how the subguilds were implemented, which none of us know yet.  I hope they are awesome.  I hope they still enable a lot of the work Halaster did.  I hope sorcs still get much more powerful than (low level) templars.

[CodeMaster]

I can see Delirium's point about the retcon being jarring - it is admittedly jarring and must have felt like a kick in the gut for sorc players.

At the same time, Sorcerers as they were had the ability to be nigh unkillable once maxxed - they were far and away the most powerful class in the game, and the arsenal they had at their disposal made staying alive and/or killing anyone else ridiculously easy.  Making a change like this and then waiting for the "last of the sorcerers" to die out or store may have taken multiple real life years.

You should see Tektolnes' throne room, he tore all of his paintings off the walls and tried to light his throne on fire (but can't do that any more, fortunately).  I tried to reason with him but he wasn't having any of it, rolling a ranger now.

Serious though, if anything has the "right" to be fickle in this game, I would think magick does.  It has this myriad of bizarre and completely arbitrary ethereal connections to the land (in the form of "components"), and its use - at least in the case of sorcery - is in direct contravention with life itself.

That certain powers would suddenly drift out of reach of a budding (non-king) sorceror almost makes a certain kind of IC sense to me.

[Old Kank]

This is cool as shit.  I think this might be the best change in Arm since karma went in.

[Beethoven]

I'm not a huge fan of the change right now. Sorcerers are supposed to be the most terrifying cats out there. It's not balanced, it's not fair--they literally laid waste to the world. I've never played a sorcerer, but I love feeling that little jump in my chest when someone drops the word 'ashlayer.'

It seems to me (and I could be mistaken here) that with this change, the most powerful aspect of sorcerers is going to be the dual-guild thing they have going on. It's certainly nothing to scoff at, but that being the main draw doesn't really fit well into the way I view sorcerers (granted, the way I view them is probably wrong!)

I see sorcerers as formerly ordinary people who choose to pursue a forbidden, esoteric path, and often become consumed with lust for power and knowledge as they delve deeper and deeper into the magickal arts. As they become more and more obsessed, I would predict that they would lose interest in silly sword-swinging or crafting two hundred arrow shafts. That's one reason why I could never see a "true" sorcerer as being something akin to battlemages/spellswords who only use magick to amplify their mundane skills, and I'm afraid that's where this is leading.

I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that now--generally speaking--a fully-branched Whiran is going to be more powerful, albeit less versatile, than a beefy sorcerer. And that just doesn't seem right.

However, I'm fully willing to accept that maybe I'm just holding on to the past. There are good things about this change, to be sure.

[Old Kank]

Sorcerers are supposed to be the most terrifying cats out there.

If you're not terrified, you don't understand how badly a combination class is going to rape murder you and all your friends.

[Beethoven]

I do understand that it's going to be a powerful combo. But it's powerful for a wholly different reason--a reason that doesn't seem to square with the way I view sorcerers. And I can't imagine it'll ever be as powerful or terrifying as someone who can branch pretty much every spell in the game.

But I'll stop being a coot and accept that this is the way it is.

[Nyr]

I think the new changes will open up many new interesting (not to mention very cool) opportunities for players, but with the limiting of the sorcerer guild is also removing a very cool role-play avenue for those that may have not had the opportunity to play one.  I know staff aren't required to explain or justify the reasons they do things but it'd be easier to understand and get behind (at least for me) if some kind of reasoning or explanation were given.

Mentioned above a few times in the thread by staff hitting on different aspects, but if you want some more details on reasoning and explanation other than what has been mentioned so far, you can ask more pointed questions.

It's been stated that the sorcerer guild hasn't been removed, but is only unavailable to players.  Do and will full on sorcerers still exist in the game world, only being unavailable as a player character?

It has been stated that the sorcerer guild hasn't been removed.  Sorcerers are still sorcerers.  Playable sorcerers are different now.

Is there the possibility of sorcerers being possible for characters through a special application?

This is a change only enacted today.  This and other possibilities would have to be determined in the future.

Historically, is this a retroactive change?  ICly, should players consider this to be how it's always been or is there some in game change (either seen or unseen) that might explain this, or is it just a mystery?

This was not an IC change.  This is a change to what players can play.  As time goes on it will likely be tweaked.

[Nyr]

What would you recommend for the future?

Create an engaging and IC story for those who will be affected by the change that will either lead to their PCs logically easing into whatever transition is deemed necessary or writing their stories to whatever conclusion there may be (death/storage).

That way you create fun for the player to ease what will inevitably feel like a punishment.

I don't think this would have been out of the question if requested/discussed with staff, but I could be wrong.

[Armaddict]

...what 'problem' did this solve again?

[Naruto]

With this new change I have two questions:

1- There are some certain common spells in the spell list of almost any of the elementalist subguilds. Will there be common spells and skills in these sorceror sub-guilds too?

2- With this change, will the pop-limit of the new-generation half-sorcerors you approve increase?

[Reiloth]

...what 'problem' did this solve again?

Likely that Sorcerers reached way-too-powerful heights that required Staff intervention right and left. High-magick/High-psionics plots have always been iffy within the power-grid of Zalanthas. The Glass Ceiling, that MoF mentioned, is questionable when you can cast pretty much every spell out there. What might be cool for a PC probably isn't cool for the scope of the game, sometimes.

Sorcs and Psions both (though mostly Sorcs) were the 'Red Robe' of magick. At least, you could get them to a point where they are ridiculously over-powered. I'm all for imbalance of guilds -- It's nice to have something super scary out there. This to me is more scary than a Storm Lord or whatever -- It could be billy bob down the street, the ultra powered Byn warrior, who can also torch your ass with fireballs, or make your dead mother come back from the grave to mock you.

[Reiloth]

This makes me curious of another thing...

If people could dual-class.

Main Guild: Warrior
Sub-Guild: Burglar

Take that, imbalanced guilds.

[Jingo]

I don't actually know what the current power gradient for these sorcerers are yet. It seems implied though that the overall breadth of spells is reduced to one fourth.

Obviously we can't ask which or how many spells they'll end up with. But I would like to ask staff if the can elaborate on what their decision making process was/is for determining power limits and spell availability for the reimplementation of sorcerers.

[Old Kank]

I think what I'm most excited about is that this dissolves the sorcerer as a fundamental character concept, and it opens the door to mundane-turned-sorcerer concepts, which are far, far more interesting.  If you have the karma, or the special app juice, I don't see any viable reason to play a true mundane anymore.

In the future, I would like to think that the sorcerer CLASS will become extremely popular and common, but that most of those sorcerers will live and die and be played entirely as mundane characters.  Imagine it: your Byn unit has two warriors, a ranger, an assassin, and some thiefly-type that's probably a burglar.  And they're ALL latent sorcerers.  Your Tuluki warrior serves the Legion for ten years, works his way up in the ranks before being tempted by true power.  No magick double life.  No apartment casting.  No working as an aide.  No cave-dwelling, or destroyed wagon-squatting.  No sneaking out of the gates at night.  Just a bunch of normal characters that have the capacity to develop into scary ass sorcerers.

This should be fun.

[Case]

I think what I'm most excited about is that this dissolves the sorcerer as a fundamental character concept, and it opens the door to mundane-turned-sorcerer concepts, which are far, far more interesting.  If you have the karma, or the special app juice, I don't see any viable reason to play a true mundane anymore.

In the future, I would like to think that the sorcerer CLASS will become extremely popular and common, but that most of those sorcerers will live and die and be played entirely as mundane characters.  Imagine it: your Byn unit has two warriors, a ranger, an assassin, and some thiefly-type that's probably a burglar.  And they're ALL latent sorcerers.  Your Tuluki warrior serves the Legion for ten years, works his way up in the ranks before being tempted by true power.  No magick double life.  No apartment casting.  No working as an aide.  No cave-dwelling, or destroyed wagon-squatting.  No sneaking out of the gates at night.  Just a bunch of normal characters that have the capacity to develop into scary ass sorcerers.

This should be fun.

please god no

[Orin]

Nyr does this mean that Highlord Tektolnes will be nerf'd as well?

Will we see slave uprisings due to OOC knowledge?

"Tek isn't as badass as he used to be, now he's just a merchant with movement magick LUL"

[Norcal]

I don't know how I feel about this.  I think sorcerers were too powerful, but at the same time, it seems like they are being reduced to turbo-charged versions (and maybe not even that) of other magic guilds. I suppose it depends on the mix of spells they get in their chosen "path".  Hopefully they will not be limited to one element of magic.  I  reckon it was necessary, but I hope the baby has not been thrown out with the bath water.
What really interests me is that this may be a precursor for changes to the other magic guilds. Is it the plan to eventually make all types of magic a sub-guild?  This would be -very- cool as long as they were able to keep the full range of spells for their given element.

[Armaddict]

Likely that Sorcerers reached way-too-powerful heights that required Staff intervention right and left.

I'd agree, if that made -any- sense whatsoever given the in game events of several years.  Sorcery is all encompassing.  Hence why it's dangerous.  It can be learned, not through attunement with a plane, but through study and ambition and knowledge.  I fail to see why there'd be some invisible 'wall' between this path and that path.  Not only that...

How many sorcerers have reached the level that you're talking about recently enough to be used as justification for this particular thing?  As far as I know...two.  Tek and Muk.  Once staff intervention is 'required for the PC to be able to do anything', that's where broad, sweeping changes are being made that require adjustment on a code/building level.  In the past, when staff intervention was needed for Tek and Muk, we called those 'plots'.

How much more often will a -limited- sorcerer require intervention than a true one?  'Why can I summon demonfire from another plane but I can't make a cup of water?'  The broad array of spells available to sorcerers is what, logically speaking, -prevented- the need for staff intervention, not required more.  When you're talking about power level requiring staff intervention, that's going well beyond the idea that a certain class is powerful.  That's involving a lot of other shit.

This seems more like someone's pet project that they think is cool, but, fundamentally, goes against the idea of -how things work-.  BETTER CHANGE IT ANYWAY BECAUSE THEY THINK IT'S COOL.

[Reiloth]

I think what I'm most excited about is that this dissolves the sorcerer as a fundamental character concept, and it opens the door to mundane-turned-sorcerer concepts, which are far, far more interesting.  If you have the karma, or the special app juice, I don't see any viable reason to play a true mundane anymore.

In the future, I would like to think that the sorcerer CLASS will become extremely popular and common, but that most of those sorcerers will live and die and be played entirely as mundane characters.  Imagine it: your Byn unit has two warriors, a ranger, an assassin, and some thiefly-type that's probably a burglar.  And they're ALL latent sorcerers.  Your Tuluki warrior serves the Legion for ten years, works his way up in the ranks before being tempted by true power.  No magick double life.  No apartment casting.  No working as an aide.  No cave-dwelling, or destroyed wagon-squatting.  No sneaking out of the gates at night.  Just a bunch of normal characters that have the capacity to develop into scary ass sorcerers.

This should be fun.

please god no

Care to elaborate? This sounds exactly like what it should be. As Tyler Durden says, you are not your job. Your Guild shouldn't define your play. It can guide it, sure, but as Old Kank mentioned, it seems Sorcerers are bound to be the 'Doom and Gloom Villain attacking your city from afar, 2015." They pop up, they die, and then inevitably pop up again.

[BadSkeelz]

I think what I'm most excited about is that this dissolves the sorcerer as a fundamental character concept, and it opens the door to mundane-turned-sorcerer concepts, which are far, far more interesting.  If you have the karma, or the special app juice, I don't see any viable reason to play a true mundane anymore.

In the future, I would like to think that the sorcerer CLASS will become extremely popular and common, but that most of those sorcerers will live and die and be played entirely as mundane characters.  Imagine it: your Byn unit has two warriors, a ranger, an assassin, and some thiefly-type that's probably a burglar.  And they're ALL latent sorcerers.  Your Tuluki warrior serves the Legion for ten years, works his way up in the ranks before being tempted by true power.  No magick double life.  No apartment casting.  No working as an aide.  No cave-dwelling, or destroyed wagon-squatting.  No sneaking out of the gates at night.  Just a bunch of normal characters that have the capacity to develop into scary ass sorcerers.

This should be fun.

The black-bearded half giant tells you, with a smirk,
      "You're a 'gicker, 'Arry."

If Sorcerer class begins to become popular and widespread I fullheartedly endorse all guild sniffing, trolling, and anti-fun measures available to the rest of the player base. Fuck magick, fuck you.