Estranged Veterans' Perspective

[Seeker]

Thank you, Shalooonsh. 

The above is a very different answer then, "No player advancement is possible in these roles.  If you insist on promotion, you will be granted it if you have earned it.  And then force stored."

I believe that was the essence of the last official public staff announcement on the matter.  This statement is much more encouraging.

[Veselka]

Shalooonsh — Thanks for the response.

It seems most of the time, Staff wishes to represent a much larger world than seems actually feasible. The power jump between Blue and Red Robe for instance sounds like the power that a Black Robe should wield. Instead of a Red Robe being able to cough and put a hole in an Argosy, couldn't their power be more limited? Instead of six units of soldiers at their command, why not two? Similarly for Byn Lieutenant— why six, and why not one or two units? This would much closer resemble the actual PC power structure already in place.

I respect Staff for attempting to represent a much larger world, but the simple solution (to me) would be better representing a smaller one, and allow PCs to have a greater part within it. This relieves the need for constant babysitting of power — reduce the overall power, increase the minimums and the maximums. Add more ranks above if need be, to provide more movement.

I personally think that with the closure of Tuluk in particular, why is the power structure in Allanak mostly exactly the same? We've crammed more people into a space. Which requires more options, not the same amount. It also strikes me as odd that Allanak is sacrosanct, while Tuluk is and was fair game to experiment and ultimately abandon.

[Lizzie]

Shalooonsh — Thanks for the response.

It seems most of the time, Staff wishes to represent a much larger world than seems actually feasible. The power jump between Blue and Red Robe for instance sounds like the power that a Black Robe should wield. Instead of a Red Robe being able to cough and put a hole in an Argosy, couldn't their power be more limited? Instead of six units of soldiers at their command, why not two? Similarly for Byn Lieutenant— why six, and why not one or two units? This would much closer resemble the actual PC power structure already in place.

I respect Staff for attempting to represent a much larger world, but the simple solution (to me) would be better representing a smaller one, and allow PCs to have a greater part within it. This relieves the need for constant babysitting of power — reduce the overall power, increase the minimums and the maximums. Add more ranks above if need be, to provide more movement.

I personally think that with the closure of Tuluk in particular, why is the power structure in Allanak mostly exactly the same? We've crammed more people into a space. Which requires more options, not the same amount. It also strikes me as odd that Allanak is sacrosanct, while Tuluk is and was fair game to experiment and ultimately abandon.

If I'm understanding Shaloooonsh right, he's saying that the options for playable roles within the templarate and nobility have already been expanded. So no, you can't play a Red Robe but your blue robe now has more options than it used to have, and can be promoted to higher levels of blue. I mean, you could slap a purple robe on that higher level and call it a day, but in the end it's just a color. The role itself has already been expanded, and promotions are already available. Same with nobles. This has already been made a thing, over the past couple of years. To do exactly what you are asking about.

As for "why not just two units?" It still involves PCs having command over entire units of NPCs, which would still require heavy staff oversight of a single PC.

As for Allanak vs. Tuluk - Allanak was the original. Tuluk was added later. It is the more expendable of the two and further, Allanak already better represents the theme of the game, than Tuluk did. In order for Tuluk to represent the theme of the game, it would have to be completely rebuilt and re-themed. Why do that, when we already have Allanak? So that's why Tuluk was the sacrifice, and Allanak was the mainstay.

That's my takeaway on the whys and wherefores. Don't know if my impressions are accurate or not, but they seem to make sense.

[Armaddict]

Yeah, my response would be that someone arbitrarily decided that Red Robes were far more powerful than they were represented as in game.

My other response would be that they don't need a babysitter, they just need a few staff members whose actual job as staffers was facilitating things in game that made sense or needed to be done for players to get things done.  Nothing super world-changing, but if it's not world-changing and still needs staff help, it's only gonna make cool things, really.

[RogueGunslinger]

Staff seem to put a lot of effort into devizing systems that make it so staff dont have to actively police player behavior. This is, I assume, in an attempt to leave them with more time to facillitate plots and make fun things happen for players. But maybe the limitations these systems bring simply end up shifting the workload over to the equally heavy problem of trying to please players who are already irritated because they feel limited by the sytemes in place.

[seidhr]

The number of Red Robes in the entire city is something like 15-20 of them.  They do stuff like command entire armies, oversee an entire quarter, etc.  They are about at the limit of what we can codedly represent from a power perspective.

Black robes are like... they snap their fingers and not only do you die, but three generations of your family does too. 

[Vex]

Doesn't having that much power, on the top end, make it impossible for Allanak to ever lose? How do staff, from a ST perspective, justify not always having a black, or a red, show up and finger-snap away, all challengers and problems?

[Heade]

Doesn't having that much power, on the top end, make it impossible for Allanak to ever lose? How do staff, from a ST perspective, justify not always having a black, or a red, show up and finger-snap away, all challengers and problems?

Because no matter how important you think your character's story is, it's small-time in the grand scheme of things, which is what those ridiculously overpowered NPCs are meant to represent. It's how staff has justified maintaining the status-quo IC for two decades without having players be able to largely impact the game world, thus causing a need for 10,000 room re-writes.

If staff was open to the idea of major power shifts in places like allanak, caused by players, I imagine that it would have happened sometime in the last 20 years.

[seidhr]

Tek and Muk Utep and their higher ups offset each other.  And they generally don't care enough about the unwashed masses to want to harm (or help) them.

[Heade]

Doesn't having that much power, on the top end, make it impossible for Allanak to ever lose?

Pretty much. And that's the point.

Ultimately, you can't kill Tek, not because it's impossible, or because it wouldn't be fun, or because you're not creative enough to come up with a plan that would work, but rather....

...because killing Tek in a huge game-world deeply rooted in his mythos would require such a massive re-write of rooms, items, characters, and so on that no one on staff has ever been interested in entertaining the notion of doing so. And so, to justify that, they made that power so absolute, so unassailable that the characters we play in this story are but ants in a sandbox to those in real power. Even the Nobles you get to RP with are just peon-level nobles, despite how they act. If you killed every active PC in the game, virtually, it'd be a drop in the bucket.

This is done to ensure that the decisions of players wouldn't generally have large enough impact on the world to require a massive amount of work, staff-side.

[seidhr]

Because no matter how important you think your character's story is, it's small-time in the grand scheme of things, which is what those ridiculously overpowered NPCs are meant to represent. It's how staff has justified maintaining the status-quo IC for two decades without having players be able to largely impact the game world, thus causing a need for 10,000 room re-writes.

If staff was open to the idea of major power shifts in places like allanak, caused by players, I imagine that it would have happened sometime in the last 20 years.

This isn't entirely inaccurate.  We don't have the resources or the game systems in place to support major changes to the world that respond rapidly to things that could result if we let Heade and Vex the red robes ride out with 500 soldiers and take over Luirs Outpost or whatever, on a weekend.  It'd be cool if we did, but even the big A-list flagship games like WoW or any of the other MMOs do a pretty poor job of this and they have hundreds of developers, cutting edge technology, and budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.  The last time I played WoW was in the Lich King expansion and there was that fort in the middle that was always "contested" and it'd shift to either Alliance or Horde, based on player actions, but that was all cookie cutter and just in either mode 1 (alliance) or mode 2 (horde).

There was no dynamism to it and if the alliance wanted to show up and take over a Horde outpost, or vice versa, that wasn't that area - as soon as they left all the NPCs would reset and things would go instantly back to normal, minus all the little skeleton objects left behind on the ground which gradually fade away after a few hours.  I'd like to point out that you can do this exact thing on Armageddon and the world responds exactly the same way.  Heh heh.

[sleepyhead]

I just feel like it doesn't have to be so top-heavy. Don't get me wrong. I love the oppressiveness of the city-states and the deification of the kings, but do we really need to make them too big to ever fail? I think we could take the power level of the higher-ups down a few notches and still maintain the same themes, while opening up more rebellious plots and schemes (among those who aren't literally insane with delusions of grandeur) and making higher echelons of power (not just horizontal 'promotions') more feasible for PCs to be able to realistically play.

What I'm trying to clumsily say is...is there a reason that black robes HAVE to be able to snap their fingers and kill your future descendents for generations, or level an entire city-state before breakfast? Isn't that overkill? I think we can enforce the idea of a totalitarian state run by terrifyingly powerful sorcerers without taking things to the highest possible extreme. It just kills plots before they have a chance to even start.

[Heade]

We don't have the resources or the game systems in place to support major changes to the world that respond rapidly to things that could result if we let (players be that powerful)

Yeah, this is basically what I said. And I described why. We're on the same page.

[sleepyhead]

Btw I understand that this would not fix the problem of PCs in high level positions needing to have many more underlings at their beck and call than they can realistically gather IG. I know that my suggestion wouldn't fix this, nor would it fix many other problems. But it might fix SOME things.

[Vex]

Tek and Muk Utep and their higher ups offset each other.  And they generally don't care enough about the unwashed masses to want to harm (or help) them.

At what stage of escalation, would they become involved? That is, say an Allanaki rebellion formed, and got busy. How far could players realistically expect, to soldier on, towards glorious revolution, before staff were forced to address them, with a black robed fly swatter?

I find, the hardest thing to conceptually grasp, is "where would you have to stop", or even, "how would you stop" in a way, that isn't essentially being annihilated, by a super NPC, in a tower somewhere.

Player clans, for example... how far, could players take a clan, until it hit the point, where it either had to be taken out of player hands, or had to be annihilated, because players hit the point, where their scope was greater, than could adequately be handled?

[seidhr]

I dunno, it's a good question.  For a rebellion we'd have to decide how many VNPCs were involved beyond the PCs that were running it and act accordingly.

Muk and Tek are superpowered NPCs that have existed for thousands of years and are rivals - or are they?  The thing is, you can't really be sure what sort of arrangement they have with each other, and any other entities out there in the world who are in that same bucket of scariness (black robes, tuluki upper templarate, wyverns, etc).

For player clans, it'd be hard for them ascend to the level of being a threat to a city-state - so the super-powerful probably don't care that much.  If they did, it would happen over a long period of time, and we'd have plenty of time to make whatever adjustments were necessary.  It's baked into the player clan docs that if it gets big enough, staff will make it officially a coded clan, but we only do that if we think it's a good fit for the game world, it seems like something we can support going forward, and so on.

[seidhr]

...
What I'm trying to clumsily say is...is there a reason that black robes HAVE to be able to snap their fingers and kill your future descendents for generations, or level an entire city-state before breakfast? Isn't that overkill? I think we can enforce the idea of a totalitarian state run by terrifyingly powerful sorcerers without taking things to the highest possible extreme. It just kills plots before they have a chance to even start.

You give PCs too much coded power and that kills plots though.  Look at Tuluk, 5 years ago.

[ShaLeah]

...
What I'm trying to clumsily say is...is there a reason that black robes HAVE to be able to snap their fingers and kill your future descendents for generations, or level an entire city-state before breakfast? Isn't that overkill? I think we can enforce the idea of a totalitarian state run by terrifyingly powerful sorcerers without taking things to the highest possible extreme. It just kills plots before they have a chance to even start.

You give PCs too much coded power and that kills plots though.  Look at Tuluk, 5 years ago.

Ugh. Don't make me agree with seidhr.

I like the idea of opening up the onec step up option for promotion.  Much morevof our world is virtual than not.  Active pcs are a very small piece of Ginka's pie.

Let's say we allow that one step up, outside of the VERY slim chance the player (already well versed on expectations and merits at this point) was just waiting for this promotion to fuck some shit up and had everyone duped, their job would be to oversee the leaders of that clan while having power over its little people too. It opens up rp opportunity for more competition, more betrayal, more social climbing, more bribes. Politically it gives more of a clear line too, who really matters, who you need to get to. In the case of templars, being above the other two would be awesome. One of those sergeants fucking with you? Call the lieutenant. It's hard enough to get that promotion anyway, it's a lot of triumphs before we can even make it.

I don't know that Allanak would result in a Tuluk. Too openly brutal. Maybe a promotion to red robe is a promotion into the ministry that doesn't exist. The first rule of [redacted] club is we do not talk about [redacted] club.

+1 for players earning promotions

[Veselka]

...
What I'm trying to clumsily say is...is there a reason that black robes HAVE to be able to snap their fingers and kill your future descendents for generations, or level an entire city-state before breakfast? Isn't that overkill? I think we can enforce the idea of a totalitarian state run by terrifyingly powerful sorcerers without taking things to the highest possible extreme. It just kills plots before they have a chance to even start.

You give PCs too much coded power and that kills plots though.  Look at Tuluk, 5 years ago.

What does this even mean? What aspect of Tuluk was too much coded power? Psionic? It's really nothing compared to full sorcery,

We (Staff includes) are rooted in the idea of too big to fail, fear of wild dynamics, and things like "there are 15-20 red robes" and "black robes snap and you die". These are all functions Staff stands behind and wills into being. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best or only way.

You do realize one of the initial hooks of Dark Sun is the death of Kalak of Tyr? It is never entirely solved, but it places the city in endless turmoil, infighting between nobles and Templars, commoner and slave rebellion, not to mention the Veiled Alliance.

Honestly, I see a marked reticence and trepidation to take risks from Staff. It just doesn't lend itself to the creative mindset. Sometimes you need to take risks. Walk back mistakes. Try again. Tek dies and shit is going sideways? A black robe takes on the mantle of immortal sorcerer king.

It's just endlessly odd that Staff is still so delicate of touching the power structure of Allanak or altering documentation. But fuck Tuluk.

[MeTekillot]

True, fuck Tuluk, but also? Real talk? Really real talk? Fuck Allanak. Fuck everybody. We need to mix shit up. We can keep the themes of the game without keeping every iota of the set piece in the same exact place it's been in for the last 30 RL years. Playing it safe doesn't seem to be working, so why don't we try something new?

[MeTekillot]

that players can affect without joining staff or app'ing for a sponsored role while providing players with the transparent expectation that many of the changes they want won't go in the way they want or if they do get what they want it's gonna take a while

[CodeMaster]

This is really interesting to watch.

Can anyone give me some details (or a pointer to reading) on the role of white robe templars?  Could any good come from opening them for play?  Could they/are they somehow placed beneath blue robes to give newbie templar players some vertical movement?

[CodeMaster]

You do realize one of the initial hooks of Dark Sun is the death of Kalak of Tyr? It is never entirely solved, but it places the city in endless turmoil, infighting between nobles and Templars, commoner and slave rebellion, not to mention the Veiled Alliance.

Honestly, I see a marked reticence and trepidation to take risks from Staff. It just doesn't lend itself to the creative mindset. Sometimes you need to take risks. Walk back mistakes. Try again. Tek dies and shit is going sideways? A black robe takes on the mantle of immortal sorcerer king.

One thing I really liked about the game before Arm:Reborn was announced and many story secrets were spilled is that what you describe was totally conceivable.  I speculated that this was the case (black robes were in control; Tektolnes was an imaginary figurehead; and the reason it took so long for Tektolnes to rescue the city from the siege is because the black robes had to get their shit together to create the illusion).

[evilcabbage]

except in the story tektolnes was very seriously in those stories, going "god, these blue robes whine so much, listen to him, 'oh please help me, please help me, we can't handle it' and the second it went from 'please help me to' 'are you even really there', tektolnes got incredibly pissed off at it, morphed into a dragon, and tail-lynched the blue robe while obliterating an entire army in seconds.

[Bebop]

I just feel like it doesn't have to be so top-heavy. Don't get me wrong. I love the oppressiveness of the city-states and the deification of the kings, but do we really need to make them too big to ever fail? I think we could take the power level of the higher-ups down a few notches and still maintain the same themes, while opening up more rebellious plots and schemes (among those who aren't literally insane with delusions of grandeur) and making higher echelons of power (not just horizontal 'promotions') more feasible for PCs to be able to realistically play.

What I'm trying to clumsily say is...is there a reason that black robes HAVE to be able to snap their fingers and kill your future descendents for generations, or level an entire city-state before breakfast? Isn't that overkill? I think we can enforce the idea of a totalitarian state run by terrifyingly powerful sorcerers without taking things to the highest possible extreme. It just kills plots before they have a chance to even start.

I agree.  And I'm glad things are being worked, that's reassuring.

What I don't understand is what was unsuccessful?  Liet.  Paryl of the Arm, Liet. Raul of the Byn (<3), Great Lord Samos, Senior Lady Ceylara ... what was unsuccessful about these characters?  They handled their IG power well, earned it and they are all noteworthy characters that added to the game.  Even more so, they gave the game trusted leaders that didn't require staff intervention of some dusty, animated NPC.

What I don't get is ... what needs fixing?  It's been proven that these kinds of roles work in game when earned and given to trustworthy players.  They give players long-term goals to work towards.  I absolutely do not understand shutting them down.  Even the term "junior noble" sounds lame, and it is.  The lack of power that title entails is brought up constantly IG when convenient.  Characters are constantly reminded of their lack of power despite taking steps IG that might increase their power and notoriety.

To me the current system, across all clans feels broken with the exception of GMH which working from Merchant, to Apprentice Agent, to Agent seems a decent system and power level.  Though - the dynamic of turning Luir's into a mini-city state because Tuluk closed is completely upside down.  Allanak would not stand for "mini-GMH" nobles having their own city between them and Tuluk.  Tuluk probably would give them the smack down too for that matter.

In the meantime, since this is being looked at, I would also ask what are players in leadership roles supposed to do to not stagnate?
Part of my PK thread was to infer that leaders should busy themselves with adding depth to the game.  They should not diminishing it or trying to assert power by simply PKing which often times I believe is due to boredom and the game not properly reflecting that acting an ass will get you shut down or doing well will get you promoted.  Because there is no real ladder to climb in most scenarios.

Combined with the fact that most IG leaders don't have much room for reward or ascendancy you then have the fact that now someone who is a master crafter... can't custom craft things unless they sent in an e-mail to specify that.  In a game there should be reward and less red tape to achieve that but in fact the opposite seems to have occurred and now there all of these OOC steps to jump through to be able to play, create and ascend.

Another thing that bothers me is that ascension really does come down to the staff, and I often wonder how the temperature of the game itself is actually being read because the success of a PC is really open to interpretation and I don't like that it's so objective.  Things being overly objective is a big part of why friction between staff and players happen - vary ideas of interpretation.

In short what I'm trying to say is --- I believe player, staff relations have improved (at least I feel on my end they have.)  But what I don't like is, it seems that staff are holding all of the power cards.  Full magickers are gone.  People can't ascend to the higher levels they once could.  And people that have maxed their crafting skills can't submit a custom craft without sending an arbitrary email in before their character is created for approval and ... possibly using karma?  I really couldn't tell you what the process is because I don't understand it full myself.  The fact that it's not intuitive is an issue.  Combine all of this with the fact that Tuluk has been shut down, there's a totally new social dynamic, and you can't escape Allanak if you want to keep playing a city-based, politicking character?  Things will stagnate rapidly because there isn't a newness and sense of reward. 

I also believe this is part of the reason the social system IG is so deeply out of whack.  There are no real promotions so people just treat PCs that have been around a long time like they're worth more socially than they are and no one has titles to reflect where they stand in regards to their clan/Houses.  And in general, I think especially since Allanak is the only open city-state the nuances of class should be FAR more emphasized than they are currently being RP'd in game.

Things seem much more convoluted and it should be going the opposite direction so that players feel more independent to create, drive plots, and lead clans.

I have to ask the question.  If you can't get promoted, if you can't make custom crafts, if you can't battle between two-city states, if you can't be a powerful magicker... honestly, once you get past surface level here, what is their left for PCs to do other than have flashpan, surface level conflicts, PK, skill grind and time sink?

Being brutally honest, after five months back I find myself ---

To what ends am I playing?  What can I actually achieve with my character?
Is there a point to adding to game history if it won't be around in a few years?

I used to play to become Lieutenant.  Or a Red Robe or... whatever the Faithful promotion was, I forget but I saw that IG too.  Eunoli was it?  Felysia too maybe?  Elithan?  With Sweet Roll she was a pickpocket but once I maxed out my cooking I got to make a custom craft of ... you guessed it.  Sweet Rolls.  A simple achievement but one that brought fun and a sense of reward to bust out my sekret sweet roll recipe and teach it to others.  It was fun for them too, to learn something new.  No e-mail before the character was every created to ask if I could custom craft with her one maxed crafting skill required.  There were still rules.  One master craft a week or a month?  And you had to write everything up yourself so we're talking some simple data entry into the game every few weeks.  Even if there were 10 master crafters IG you're talking one or two pages of text per character a month.  In my example of Sweet Roll, she had one crafting skill I didn't even know I could max at the time.  I would have never thought to send an e-mail before character creation. 

There were little rewards I enjoyed striving for.  I was always having fun and looking forward to the next cool thing I could do.  The next craft I could make.  The next promotion I could get.  And when I died I could switch it up and see what was going on on the other side of the world.  Or fiddle with a magicker and switch it up.  And each magicker had totally different skills so it would take forever to get a feel for all of the roles. 

Now the skills are mostly interchangable between the available classes just at different levels of availability.  Magickers are mostly gone and again the process of getting one is so confusing and convoluted that after my return I still don't understand it. 

The sense of discovery and pursuit is dwindling and that's very clearly because this is a game without a real sense of reward which is what games are generally all about.  Competition, and that sense of accomplishment - fun and entertainment.  I feel there needs to really be more intent around that for players.  Right now the game seems to me, to be more about petty squabbles and less about depth of story, player driven plots and a sense of discovery and reward.

To clarify  --- that is not to say the game should be easier.  It's so say that if you live long enough to max out a craft, if you've been around awhile and thriving in a leadership role, if you're trusted enough to not abuse power - it should be given to you IG.  It doesn't have to be easy to come by, but it SHOULD be available to come by without arbitrary exchange of emails before character creation etc or just not available at all.

Custom crafting is too much work - let's take it away.  We're not sure how to handle promotions in game so we're taking them away until we figure it out.  Magickers are too powerful so we've mostly taken them away.  Mhm, we have less players so ... Tuluk, we're taking it away.  Taking everything away little by little is not a great solution in my eyes.  I'm not saying it to be mean, I'm sure that wasn't the intent but to my eyes after being gone for five years it certainly looks like a lot has been removed and I'm not sure what is really replacing it or what characters are kind of meant to do in an overarching way individually or collectively. A lot has been taken away that was a draw to the game and retained players and it seems it's just expected everyone is supposed to be cool with that. 

A lot of people are saying little to no guidance has been given in the interim of these things being withheld from players.  Tuluk is currently a huge elephant in the room with no one knowing really how to RP it or treat it and many pining for it but we're being told that probably won't be looked at for a RL half year or more.  I would say the same for PC leaders that don't have the option for real coded promotions.  Or people that enjoyed full magickers and so on.  What is the stand in?  What is the expectation?  And beyond that what do players expect from staff so the game retains a sense of fun and reward?  That is really the heart of what I'm getting to.