Bringing Back Full Elementalists

[Lizzie]

Another possibility, instead of bringing back full elementalists: introduce a "pick two" as a main class ... plus a sub-class beneath or equal to your current karma level...

So if I understand you right, how is the proposal is different from how it is now?

How it is now: you pick a mundane class and one magickal subclass.

Your proposal: pick two magickal subclasses and one mundane subclass. 

(Just trying to grok the proposal.)

Right now, the elemental classes are split into four distinct subclasses. Three separate spell lists, plus one "touched" whatever the heck that means.

We've been told full class elemental classes will not be restored, period.
We've also been told that the staff is keeping an open mind to the possibility of future tweakage.

My idea for tweakage is - instead of only being able to pick a main class + "1/4 mage" subclass (since you can only pick one of four possible subclasses for any single element), I suggest you can "pick two" of any single element's subclasses, plus a non-magick subclass. And the "pick two" would be in lieu of a normal main class. So...

If you choose "pick two" then you cannot also pick a main guild. The pick two IS your main guild. Your subguild would have to be mundane.

[Lizzie]

How many subguild magickers have you played, Jihelu? Have they lived long enough to test your feelings out?

I don't need to be mugged to feel that being mugged is not something I'm interested in. I don't need to get a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine to know that I feel being a Vet is too much blood and needles and dead animals. I don't need to play a half-giant to feel that half-giant roleplay is really difficult, because you're actually a smart person, who has to pretend convincingly to be stupid, and it's really hard to think like a stupid person when you're smart. Just like I don't need to be a genius to know that I couldn't possibly ever roleplay a genius, because - if I could convincingly play a genius, it'd mean I was a genius. And - I'm not.

I can go on, but hopefully you get the point. You don't need to have experience in something to form an opinion on it. I've never been President of the USA, but I can still have the opinion that the current one is an orange-faced POS.

[Synthesis]

It's not 1/4 mage, it's about 1/3 mage...maybe a little more.

If you feel like a certain subguild is too underpowered to be useful or playable, that's a playtesting issue that can be resolved without changing the overall system.

If you haven't played them at all...*shrug*  Your opinion is not as valuable as the opinion of people who have, quite frankly.

The one I've played...situationally...more badass than any mundane warrior, to include HGs and muls.  Situationally...more badass than an entire unit of PC Bynners.  Not invincible by any means...the spell tree is still a little squirrelly, but it was fucking rad.  A+ would play again.

[Lizzie]

It's not 1/4 mage, it's about 1/3 mage...maybe a little more.

If you feel like a certain subguild is too underpowered to be useful or playable, that's a playtesting issue that can be resolved without changing the overall system.

If you haven't played them at all...*shrug*  Your opinion is not as valuable as the opinion of people who have, quite frankly.

Disagree. There are many people who have rejected the mage subguilds and chosen not to play them. The fact that they choose not to play them at all, has significance and meaning.  There are players who have stopped playing completely because of it. Claiming that their opinion has less value is insulting. Their opinion resulted in a lowering of the playerbase. I don't know of anyone who has STARTED playing Armageddon, as a direct result of the split of mage subguilds. But I do know of people who STOPPED playing it because of that. It's say that's significantly MORE valueable than someone who played a few of them.

[Synthesis]

I started playing again because of the mage subguilds. 

Anyway, stop crying about it and play one already.  If you haven't, you're just making shit up.

[wizturbo]

I think you've inadvertently hit the nail on the head about why full elementalists were removed.  "Role" != skill tree.

Sorry but this just isn't true.  Many roles are defined by skill trees.  It's pretty much the core of RPG class based game design.

A noble derives their role from social and economic advantages that are not captured in skill trees.  You could make this argument for that role, but even that is tenuous at best.   If you gave all Fale nobles master level backstab and poison skill, I promise you that within 1 RL year House Fale would be known as the 'Assassin' House, and rightfully so.   

Heck, you guys just finished releasing a brand new Gladiator guild specifically because the role required a different skill tree to fit appropriately into the game.  Templars just got new skill trees as well for exactly the same reason.

No matter how you slice it, breaking up the full elementalists into parts fundamentally changed the roles of magickers in the game.  Personalities, backgrounds, philosophies...all of those things could carry over, but the role you expect your character to play in the world is different now.  I would argue things are different in a negative way.   According to the poll on this thread it seems like 52% of the surveyed population seems to agree at some level. 

52% want them back...  This isn't a small sub segment of the player base, it's the majority.  The minority (31%) doesn't want them back, and that's the position the staff have taken on this issue.  It should be no surprise that this is a divisive topic, and will continue to be for however long that 52% is around to remember the old ways.

[boog]

The majority of people don't actually vote in these threads. And it's only a 3% difference if you put the "don't cares," with the, "no" population.

You guys are giving yourselves a bigger voice than what's actually representative. Plenty of people who play don't actively post on the GDB. Maybe I should go that route and just stick to the OOC threads instead, because the fact that people get so sour about changes being made is really disheartening.

"I'm quitting because I can't play this, but I have all these other options available!" sounds like something a grumpy old woman would say to a retail associate when they stop carrying their favorite brand of milk. It's just a little silly and a little exasperating, but a lot worrying when something like this is enough to make people think they're in the majority and (anecdotal/assumed) others, like them, are gonna leave because of it.

[Riev]

Does anyone else remember when disagreeing on a contentious point wasn't a fucking war on the other side? I don't think people who want full mages are wrong but nor are the ones who want then to stay gone.

I think the discussion has moved on, unfortunately, to a sizeable portion of the player base feeling like their opinions and time invested are being frivolously tossed aside. Note I said feel, not is.

[Harmless]

The majority of people don't actually vote in these threads.

Boog, this statement that "the majority don't vote" on these threads is challenged by our # of unique logins (around 200, no? See Nergal's other post on the topic). Therefore we're at 40% of unique logins with our 80 votes currently, and we're approaching a majority of people therefore voting on these threads. Just pointing out some numbers here. Assuming people don't vote on multiple alts.

[boog]

Trumpboog says voter fraud is very real.

Anyway, I get that people are upset. But 3 topics going about it at once is a little much.

I don't think it's gonna return, no matter how much people complain about it. I just think it's time to hate cycle onto something else. I want to disagree with people about something other than magick on a bi-monthly rotation.

[wizturbo]

There's no need to treat this as anything more than it is, a debate about a 20+ year old text based game.  It's the nerd equivalent of arguing which sportsball team is going to win the gold plated drinking vessel this season.

[Bushranger]

... I want to disagree with people about something other than magick on a bi-monthly rotation.

Me too.

...  It's the nerd equivalent of arguing which sportsball team is going to win the gold plated drinking vessel this season.

House  Tor's Blood Ball team: The Tor Mentors!

[Twilight]

It's not 1/4 mage, it's about 1/3 mage...maybe a little more.

If you feel like a certain subguild is too underpowered to be useful or playable, that's a playtesting issue that can be resolved without changing the overall system.

If you haven't played them at all...*shrug*  Your opinion is not as valuable as the opinion of people who have, quite frankly.

Disagree. There are many people who have rejected the mage subguilds and chosen not to play them. The fact that they choose not to play them at all, has significance and meaning.  There are players who have stopped playing completely because of it. Claiming that their opinion has less value is insulting. Their opinion resulted in a lowering of the playerbase. I don't know of anyone who has STARTED playing Armageddon, as a direct result of the split of mage subguilds. But I do know of people who STOPPED playing it because of that. It's say that's significantly MORE valueable than someone who played a few of them.

This isn't voting for the President, where an individual's opinion has just as much weight as someone else (in their state, at least).  This is arguing against a stance from a position of no power, and in such a situation an informed opinion is quite frankly going to be given more weight than an uninformed opinion.  The concept of neuroplasticity indicates that if you try them, with an open mind towards a new experience, you might actually change your opinion.  At least it would be more informed.

Reading through the threads, I'm amazed at the options folks have tried to throw out.  After staff have rolled out their vision and how the new mundane classes would work.  Without fitting elementalists into that framework.  For example:

Create a Competency called magick user.  Give them different skills based on their home advantage (City, Wilderness, General).  These could have as many, or as few, skills as the staff think a magick user would need to be a real person or whatever it is.  Have one subclass for each element, that only these three classes can pick.  Maybe it looks like full guild elementalist, maybe it looks like something in between a full guild and a subguild magick user.  The spells are still in the subguild, so Nergal's comment is also true.

[Jihelu]

Warrior/subguild magickers are rad as fuck, yo.

But you gotta put in that grind work, son.

I think most combos are pretty fun to do, but I think they are a bit more limiting than a full spell list, of course.

Burglar/pickpocket + destruction krathis, delicious.

[Bahliker]

Twilight, I love that idea. It's a great example of the current state, which is just fine, being a stepping stone. I especially like the removal of aspects (our midichlorian moment) so some other idea for generating some variety within the elements can take root instead.

[Jihelu]

If staff just released a post one day saying "We are changing magick to be like Dark Sun" I'd be completely fine with it.

[Akaramu]

"I'm quitting because I can't play this, but I have all these other options available!" sounds like something a grumpy old woman would say to a retail associate when they stop carrying their favorite brand of milk. It's just a little silly and a little exasperating,

I've always played more mundanes than mages (something like a "2:1 ratio) because I didn't want to be one of those people. This change is affecting Allanak, and the setting as a whole, in ways I don't like. It's becoming a low magick environment with more hidden mages (because wearing a gem is now painful on an OOC level, it wasn't that way before). People aren't afraid of magick anymore. They know they can pick on those fat, unpopular kids and get away with it.

I love you to bits, boogles, but you can't judge others if you haven't had the same experience they had. And wanting to have fun in a game we play is perfectly legit. Wanting to enjoy the SETTING of the game we play in is perfectly legit.

Everyone who always thought magick was dumb and wanted it gone is of course going to be happy with this shift in the setting. Others want the old Armageddon MUD back. Or they'll just find themselves another game to play.

[Jihelu]

When I first started playing this game I was into the fact that this was it's own setting.

Now, I'm more or less into it from the perspective of "this game is like Dark Sun sometimes and I like dark sun".
*Also the game is fun to play and shit too, atleast sometimes. Combat wise and outdoor wise I have a hell of a time, it's why I want the ability to quit wilderness as a damn warrior*

I didn't play this game *insert X amount of time* ago so I can't say how much magick things used to be back then, but seeing as you used to be able to play as thri-keen and halfings, and there were apparently no karma locks on classes, I imagine things used to be very magickal.

I'm conflicted on how much magickal wonderland* I'd like to see the game have. Which I feel like is semi-greedy but at the same time, I play the game to have fun so of course I'd have an ideal vision of sorts. Not that my vision is right.

I feel like one of the reasons the game isn't like I want is because as opposed to games like DnD, you aren't the hero. This isn't bad what so ever and I don't ever expect staff to send me a message saying "Time to play a super hero", but I'm simply acknowledging why I might not like some aspects of the game as compared to DnD, where my character is one out of a million and able of saving the world. I do still like the game in some parts, though.

The DnD in me wants full guilds back. I'm used to classes just having "This is the magick class" and it resembles Dark Sun having clerics and what not, though seeing as I didn't play the horrid 4e release or 2e for that matter I can't contest to how the systems really went, it's what I'm accustomed to and would like.

The gritty realism rp in me would like to see more options for people, even if it isn't a full guild. The ability to learn magick outside of "I am a corruption Vivaduan, I can't learn healing" (Not that you can't or you can, I've no clue, but seeing as Vivaduan healing is common knowledge and the name of the corruption subclass is corruption, I'm assuming from an ooc perspective that you can't learn heal) would be something that enforces that.

But at that point I guess it becomes less a game.
I'm pretty sure half of what I posted is semi relevant, I hope.

As for the gem being painful on an ooc level...I'd like to agree and disagree.
Outside of making about three friends and everyone else shitting on me ic, which is a-okay, it doesn't build for a lot. Playing anything outside of Oash is....difficult. Doable, but difficult. Your social interactions are basically strictly mages, and if you don't like another mage or something and refuse to interact with them...well there goes half your interactions.

If you play Ranger or some other combat class you can enjoy being a god of combat with no one to talk to, maybe you become some crazy good assassin that people never hire because social stigma. If you play a merchant, god help you. Npc's are your new bff, as well as the 10k in the bank.

Is this bad? I mean, I don't suppose so. You know what you are getting into as a gemmed. Is it worse than how I described? Probably for some, probably not for others. My last gemmed was my most favorite character and I don't think I'll get the experience again.

"People aren't afraid of magick anymore. They know they can pick on those fat, unpopular kids and get away with it."

The minute they give mages some vague way of cursing people, the minute this shit stops. Even if it just gives echoes or something.

I've had people straight threaten me before. And I can't do shit about it, and they know it. Less I start plotting their death because of some simple ic threats, there's nothing you can do. Lawl backstabing/fire balling people over simple threats is worse then openly insulting the scary abominations of the city that can, usually, obliterate you.

This post is getting too long, so I'll stop till something else peeks my interest, so probably next post lul.





*Hell hole

[Molten Heart]

It's true what Jihelu is saying about a lack of disadvantages from elementalist associations. It seems the main disincentive for dealing with magicks is the shaming and the social stigma, and while this is realistic it's only because there are other real risks that aren't accurately being represented in the game (maybe in the virtual world these things are happening, but they aren't being represented in the world where the the PCs play.)

It'd be good if there were more risks that were driven by the code. I'm not saying that someone should have their aparment building burn down becasue their roomate is a krathi, but maybe someone who's sleeping with a rukian might get some strange stone warts (not all the ladies love a stone mage). And this is a poor example, because it's very difficult to code this kind of thing. But what if there were coded consequnces for elementalist associations? They couldn't be too obvious, they'd have to be subtle enough to not instantly reveal secret magickers, maybe implemented with other random things that can happen to players that have no connection to magickers (or maybe happen so often that it'd be common and no one could trace things back conclusively to any one person, people would only know it was because of some magicker).

So I'm saying that while it's really us the players who are primarily responsible for portraying these sutble nuances about magick, it's easy to forget. Having nuanced reminders coming from the game/code would keep us from forgetting that magick isn't just some binary thing where you do X and Z happens, that magick is binary and more naunced and analog.

[Synthesis]

"I'm quitting because I can't play this, but I have all these other options available!" sounds like something a grumpy old woman would say to a retail associate when they stop carrying their favorite brand of milk. It's just a little silly and a little exasperating,

I've always played more mundanes than mages (something like a "2:1 ratio) because I didn't want to be one of those people. This change is affecting Allanak, and the setting as a whole, in ways I don't like. It's becoming a low magick environment with more hidden mages (because wearing a gem is now painful on an OOC level, it wasn't that way before). People aren't afraid of magick anymore. They know they can pick on those fat, unpopular kids and get away with it.

I love you to bits, boogles, but you can't judge others if you haven't had the same experience they had. And wanting to have fun in a game we play is perfectly legit. Wanting to enjoy the SETTING of the game we play in is perfectly legit.

Everyone who always thought magick was dumb and wanted it gone is of course going to be happy with this shift in the setting. Others want the old Armageddon MUD back. Or they'll just find themselves another game to play.

Being gemmed is not "painful on an OOC level," assuming I even know what you mean by that.  I always had plenty of things to do and people to interact with, even being unclanned.  I wasn't chummy-chum BFFs with anybody...but the only "isolation" I felt was as a result of playing off-peak.

And yes, people are afraid of magick still, and they should be.  This idea that people are just out and about abusing gemmers willy-nilly is 100% false in my experience.  Sure, a few folks tried to kill me...but you know...it was a learning experience for them.

[Akaramu]

Being gemmed is not "painful on an OOC level," assuming I even know what you mean by that.  I always had plenty of things to do and people to interact with, even being unclanned.  I wasn't chummy-chum BFFs with anybody...but the only "isolation" I felt was as a result of playing off-peak.

And yes, people are afraid of magick still, and they should be.  This idea that people are just out and about abusing gemmers willy-nilly is 100% false in my experience.  Sure, a few folks tried to kill me...but you know...it was a learning experience for them.

We'll just have to agree to disagree there. If you are who I think you are, then maybe you haven't seen it or heard about it because you spend most of your time in the wilderness and aren't really part of the community. And you survived because you know the code inside out; most people don't.

There's even an IC rumor, available on rumor boards, about picking on gemmed. Go check it out.

This isn't even the reason why being gemmed is a bigger handicap than ever, to the point where it now makes much more sense to play a hidden mage. And is much more fun to boot. I've gone into the reasons why it makes much more sense to reject the gem at length before. There's no point doing it again.

[seidhr]

*wondering if he missed a memo where treating gemmed like scum and trying to murder them isn't acceptable behavior*

[Akaramu]

*wondering if he missed a memo where treating gemmed like scum and trying to murder them isn't acceptable behavior*

Really, seidhr? That wasn't my point. At all.

My point was that staff stripped them of most of their power (the exact thing that used to compensate them for all of the disadvantages they live with) and they're more much more defenseless than they used to be. And people know it. Which is... kind of OOC knowledge.

[seidhr]

If anything, gemmed are more dangerous than they used to be.  They can fight now, in addition to melt your face - even at baseline 0 hours played skill levels.

That some players have decided to play to the game's theme and treat gemmed like dirt (honestly this has always happened, I'm not sure how you didn't notice in the past) should be applauded, if anything.

[sleepyhead]

Are gemmed really supposed to be treated like dirt? I thought they were supposed to be treated like monsters and abominations. That's a little different. Breeds are dirt, elves are scum, and magickers are horrors. All are treated badly by ordinary Allanaki humans, but in different ways.