In Defence of Full Guilds (and player input)

[Mellifera]

There are people at the margin who would pick a fully classed mage but won't play one with a subclass; if there's even seven of them, that's a cool ten percent of the playerbase shifted from the mundane to the magickal.

I don't personally believe that the number of magickal characters in the world would rise any significant amount if full-guilds were reintroduced. I think it's ridiculous to assume that even one person would go from permanently playing mundanes to permanently playing mages if full-guilds were reintroduced, and even if we're just talking about the frequency of magick characters being created across the entire player base, I think that when people want to make mages they'll still make mages, and whey they don't they still won't, the only difference will be that a handful of those characters that would otherwise be sub-guilds will be full-guilds instead, and affect the world differently as a result.

...and once again, Psions are hurt the most here. They aren't even magick.

Sometimes it feels like the reward that I can expect for working hard to contribute to the game is that I get to watch somebody play with their action figures with the expectation that I be impressed.

Ultimately, that's what we're all doing. We're playing with our text-based action figures and hoping the other people playing with theirs will be impressed, or be sad, or be angry, or whatever other emotion and response we want to evoke to create drama in our little game. Let's not pretend any of us are more dignified than the rest. We're here to have fun.

I think part of the problem lies in finding out "what is turning into an elemental equivalent to in mundane terms?". If I play a warrior, what is my "becoming an elemental"? Leadership roles? Nah. Mastering my weapon skills? Twink. Fighting a big creature? Probably better to be non-mundane anyway.

I strongly agree that all mundane characters need their own big end games. Some mundanes already have them. Mundane nobles and merchants can ascend to levels of colossal political power and influence, mundanes from criminal organisations can become the ultimate mafia bosses, tribal mundanes can become legendary chieftains, and so on. Those are all end-games that result in storage, but so is becoming an elemental. Those are all very clanned leader centric though and I do agree that other characters should be facilitated too. One step at a time, though, no one is becoming an elemental right now anyway.

[Veselka]

It's hard to say 'Psions are hurt bad here' when we aren't even really aware of what the class split options are. If anything, it makes Psions far more powerful, which is a problem in and of itself.

With turning Sorcerers into a sub-class, it has made them far more deadly and dangerous than they were before as Glass Cannons. Sure, they don't have All The Spells, but they have several that are mundane-ending, and that's enough when you're also really good with archery or combat in general. You literally just need 'That One Thing' to dominate any mundane that you encounter.

That being said -- They aren't infallible. They make mistakes, and don't have X Spell up all the time, or it requires Y component that the don't have etc. So they are fallible.

With Psions -- The skills are by nature difficult to detect. Used in tandem with a mundane class that provides stability and some independence (or interdependence) they will definitely be way less of the glass cannons that they were. It would remain to be seen (to me and likely everyone as it's so brand new) how that will change them...Or how that will make them more difficult to detect. Or what abilities they have that will enhance a mundane capabilities. There's several I can think of that are self-affecting rather than other-affecting, which makes the sort of 'Mind/Body Enhancement' Psion a pretty cool possibility.

Anyways, I don't really have a horse in this race. I did like/appreciate that Full Mage Guilds were glass cannons and not jacks of all trades. They seem way more ubiquitous now, especially as secret magi, than before the change. The discovery of Mage Amos in the Byn is a played out trope now, but hey. I don't know if bringing back full mages unchanged is the answer, maybe tweaking the full guilds or something. I'd rather more attention be paid to mundane classes/synergy than magick/psionicism overall.

[Mellifera]

It's hard to say 'Psions are hurt bad here' when we aren't even really aware of what the class split options are. If anything, it makes Psions far more powerful, which is a problem in and of itself.

With turning Sorcerers into a sub-class, it has made them far more deadly and dangerous than they were before as Glass Cannons. Sure, they don't have All The Spells, but they have several that are mundane-ending, and that's enough when you're also really good with archery or combat in general. You literally just need 'That One Thing' to dominate any mundane that you encounter.

That being said -- They aren't infallible. They make mistakes, and don't have X Spell up all the time, or it requires Y component that the don't have etc. So they are fallible.

With Psions -- The skills are by nature difficult to detect. Used in tandem with a mundane class that provides stability and some independence (or interdependence) they will definitely be way less of the glass cannons that they were. It would remain to be seen (to me and likely everyone as it's so brand new) how that will change them...Or how that will make them more difficult to detect. Or what abilities they have that will enhance a mundane capabilities. There's several I can think of that are self-affecting rather than other-affecting, which makes the sort of 'Mind/Body Enhancement' Psion a pretty cool possibility.

Anyways, I don't really have a horse in this race. I did like/appreciate that Full Mage Guilds were glass cannons and not jacks of all trades. They seem way more ubiquitous now, especially as secret magi, than before the change. The discovery of Mage Amos in the Byn is a played out trope now, but hey. I don't know if bringing back full mages unchanged is the answer, maybe tweaking the full guilds or something. I'd rather more attention be paid to mundane classes/synergy than magick/psionicism overall.

I've said before in the thread, but I agree. Sub-guild psions are way more powerful than full-guild psions, and sub-guild sorcerers and mages are probably better at killing people than they were as full-guilds. (A dwarven sorcerer with a sling is a terrifying thing to behold). When I say psions have been hurt the worst, I mean that I think the reasons presented for this sweeping effort to make all non-mundane aspects sub-guild only seems the least justified when applied to them.

Further up the thread:

That's a lot of assumption there! Usually, and especially so with Psis, what leads to world-shaking, memorably powerful characters is more story-based and clever application of their skillsets to plots, rather than straight up coded power. Just because they have been changed, doesn't mean they are in any way weak or not truly and utterly terrifying.

We will undoubtedly see some of our incredibly creative players successfully driving unforgettable plots with these classes still.

I realised I never replied to this. I agree in a sense, but what I've said is that I don't feel like this was particularly a reduction in raw coded power at all. It was a reduction in narrative power. A sub guild krathi or sorcerer with a combat main guild is just as good, if not better at killing people and not being killed as their full-guild counterparts were, and a sub guild psionicist with even a survival guild is ABSOLUTELY a better murderer than full-guild psionicists were.

Like you say, what made characters memorable and world-shaking was a clever application of their skillsets to plots, and now their relevant skillsets, the non-mundane ones, have been severely reduced. A single character can no longer have the all the skills to apply that make for a legendary figure like that.

In my opinion, psionicists are the biggest sufferers of this. What they are now is an order of magnitude better at killing people (they have more raw coded power) but such a drastic dissection of their abilities makes them feel so much less like psionicists. The flavour feels gone and now they're just normal characters with a handful of added abilities that they might sometimes throw around.

[wizturbo]

I'm bad at posting.

[wizturbo]

There's too much focus on PVP in this discussion.  I don't know about all of you, but in the thousands and thousands of hours I've played this game maybe a whopping 15 minutes of that time has been PVP combat.  PVP isn't what the game is all about.  The game is about getting to come up with characters that spark your imagination, and getting to play out their lives in a great magick-torn, harsh setting.

One of those core fantasies people want to center their character's around is magick focused.  They want to explore the otherworldly aspects of the setting, and have their character identify as a "mage", just like mundanes identify as warriors/thieves/assassins/merchants/etc.  Forcing a hybrid  option as the only way to engage in that doesn't satisfy the concept.  It would be the same as if we split up the skillsets of any mundane character class - it would really wreck the fantasy.  Playing an assassin concept that forced you to choose between a class that had the poisoning skill or backstab, but not both, wouldn't be very much fun.  The same is true for elementalists.

[Riev]

Playing an assassin concept that forced you to choose between a class that had the poisoning skill or backstab, but not both, wouldn't be very much fun.  The same is true for elementalists.

Assassin vs Burglar vs Pickpocket, anyone?

Was I the only one who enjoyed Pickpockets?

Consolidation helped some things, but I do wonder if we've seen the intended effects.

[X-D]

I agree with wizturbo.

I also find it interesting that almost all the spells that were either just fun or allowed a couple different types of mages to be less then lethal have been removed from play. (and were a couple years before the new classes and subs).

I also find it funny the number of people who think current method is more powerful then legacy mages.

I would put my last legacy Krathi, Ruk, Viv or Whiran against any combo you can think of today. (aside from sorcs of course).

Sorcerers are weaker as well by a wide margin, But since all the other mages are nerfed by way more, it balances there I guess.

[Armaddict]

There's too much focus on PVP in this discussion.  I don't know about all of you, but in the thousands and thousands of hours I've played this game maybe a whopping 15 minutes of that time has been PVP combat.  PVP isn't what the game is all about.

It isn't because PvP is the dominant form of play, it's because people are overwhelmingly worried about losing their characters to it.  It's about the safety thing, once you hit a point of feeling 'safe', it's generally other players who intrude on that safety you've built.  I agree with you, but that's why the conversation generally drifts in that direction I think, and also why people tend to think that there's some ravenously bloodthirsty portion of the playerbase; we talk a lot about pvp even though it's not that common because it is the x-factor that is unpredictable in our storytelling.  It's the random intrusion that makes us lose control of the way we want things to go in very sharp, sudden, and often heartbreaking ways.  So it's an important topic:  It's not a large part by time, but it is a large part by impact.


I'm not sure what's up with the psion discussion.  They were already pretty capable in mundane skills of their chosen main guild-as-subguild anyway.  At least enough to perform the work.

But the main reason I wanted to post was to essentially reiterate what someone said above;  roles requiring staff interaction is exactly what made the game great.  Not because of potential for player/character power, not because you got to do epic cool things, but because it built a very real relationship between a player and the game world, and it kept staff very deeply related with different characters and their place in the game.  Interactions were more relevant and tailored between staff and those players who hit 'that level', and the myriad of plots and happenings were far more varied and consistent.

I don't care that someone got more powerful than my character.  I care that their character is a presence in the world, impacting my character or characters almost passively because of the things they are motivated by, working on, and taking part in.  And I care that that isn't directly related to how well they know code, or how much they kill people around me, or any of that:  I like that people can reach a power level that puts them into almost coordinated world-building with staff, a sandbox where they build something towering over my little structures knowing it, too,  will fade away after the character dies.

[wizturbo]

I would put my last legacy Krathi, Ruk, Viv or Whiran against any combo you can think of today. (aside from sorcs of course).

I agree with you, and that's kind of my point... the new sorcs are still stronger than full elementalists, so why restrict them from a balance perspective?  Just make them special app like sorcs.

[Greve]

There's too much focus on PVP in this discussion.  I don't know about all of you, but in the thousands and thousands of hours I've played this game maybe a whopping 15 minutes of that time has been PVP combat.  PVP isn't what the game is all about.

It isn't because PvP is the dominant form of play, it's because people are overwhelmingly worried about losing their characters to it.  It's about the safety thing, once you hit a point of feeling 'safe', it's generally other players who intrude on that safety you've built.  I agree with you, but that's why the conversation generally drifts in that direction I think, and also why people tend to think that there's some ravenously bloodthirsty portion of the playerbase; we talk a lot about pvp even though it's not that common because it is the x-factor that is unpredictable in our storytelling.  It's the random intrusion that makes us lose control of the way we want things to go in very sharp, sudden, and often heartbreaking ways.  So it's an important topic:  It's not a large part by time, but it is a large part by impact.

While it's true that PvP isn't all the game is about, there's not much to discuss when it comes to the "PvE" side of magic. For the most part, the NPC world (unless animated by staff) is wholly indifferent to magic. PvP doesn't have to mean meeting on a dune to fight to the death, it can be any form of conflict between players, and that is integral to the role of a magicker. It's perfectly natural that the thing players discuss is the interaction of players versus other players. Nobody cares very much how magic works against wild animals and mindless 'rinth thugs.

There's remarkably little PvP in the game these days except when it comes to magic. There's an entire city-state whose only real way of interacting with magickers is through PvP. With raiders largely a thing of the past, and a general downplaying of violent criminal roleplay, most PvP revolves around magic. Doesn't mean there's a ton of it, but it is going to be the thing people talk about when they discuss magickers. It's like that discussion about stealth where somebody complained that we only talked about the PvP aspect of it--well, what else is there? It's not as if NPCs interact with stealthed characters in any real way. People mostly care about the way these things work relative to other players, i.e. PvP.