In Defence of Full Guilds (and player input)

[triste]

Yes I have an active real life, Jihelu.

I rolled up a min age elf to be the LAST ALIVE. So much for my focus.

[sleepyhead]

Yes I have an active real life, Jihelu.

I rolled up a min age elf to be the LAST ALIVE. So much for my focus.

Wait so you knew main guilds were going to be nixed before it happened?

[Jihelu]

I know but you made it sound like 'I'd log in every month or so to play' not 'I made the character, and didn't touch it for two years'

[triste]

Sorry, I got busy and forgot some details. I think the change pissdd me off and I got less motivated to log in.

Similar to original topic, carry on with your discussion.

[Malken]

Or maybe you were playing with three different accounts and forgot about that one.

[Brokkr]

Just to clarify, since I was on Staff when this was happening.

We stored/changed full guild sorcerers.

We did not store full guild elementalists that were actively playing.

We did store full guild elementalists that were not actively playing, in an effort to reduce the necessity of backwards compatibility.

Also, as an aside, our skill system does not have versioning, with all the implied implications to current characters when skill tree changes are done.

[Wday]

Going to rant and somewhat on the topic here.
I have been part of Arma for a long time, easy over ten years now (yes I know still cant spell and write) And watched a lot of changes come into game. Splitting guilds seems alright to me in ways..BUT.. there is downsides. Back in the day if you was a mage you played or manifested into that role! You had to factor risks and yes curve actions to hide guild sniffing. This in some ways felt it fleshed out the characters more and gave a solid background play in the world. Yes there was spells such as Sleep and Summon that was really crappy to other players. But in the last few years I have watch Sleep and Summon spells be replaced with fact you can now make a Ranger type/mage type get super buff and every merchant in the known supports them and they are the first in warehouses and wealth! THAT MY FRIENDS is NOT on staff but us allowing it and playing into it! That there I feel is one big thing that has pushed me from playing ten hours a day lol! Secondly Arma has a rich history in it! Has a full culture of ways and thought actions that seem to be fading out. I myself as a mundane charater have used Arma homepage history to try and fling a personal fun plot and soon as you quote something from the what you would know from Homepage, you then get a staff pop in shut down all RP, kill the scene and return to them watching some ranger/supermage with combat skills get wealthy, GMH loved and protected and given the highest of rewards to they finally piss off the merchants then they are bad mages! Why isnt staff governor over that sort of RP? Why debate if full guild or subguild is played when it is us the players allowing it because staff only seem to favor a popular GBD acct player in culture view roles? Mages full guild or sub should be hated ICLY and unless they are playing very careful and very clever to hide themself of magick should be hunted!

[triste]

We did store full guild elementalists that were not actively playing, in an effort to reduce the necessity of backwards compatibility.

Thanks for posting this. I'll consider playing again. Nothing gets my goat like being accused of lying by the ignorant. I knew what happened and you all helped to clarify it.

[Dracul]

I say why not both. I'm down for both.

[Patuk]

why not both

Because a cool third of characters in the game is already magickal, the proportion is only higher among non-leaders, and the ratio would only skew more with full guilds existing alongside subguild mages.

[Kryos]

Because a cool third of characters in the game is already magickal, the proportion is only higher among non-leaders, and the ratio would only skew more with full guilds existing alongside subguild mages.

I don't think the key factors of this population distribution are limited to the context of full/non full mage/psi/sorc.  You'll have to kick several hives to get at it all.  The karma (regen) system , RNJesus having 100% power to make or break any character concept out of the gate, risk/reward mechanics + grind jank, how do I get plot? amongst others.  But in short:  the way the game is built and run comprehensively is more responsible here.

And Hal:

That stuff about the time full guilds were rolled out is a bit off.  No players I knew or talked to wanted it, no players I knew or talked to liked it. It was a horrible idea from on high, and everyone(I engaged with) who wasn't beholden to it knew as much. 

Same with the class change stuff, we all wanted it, but when it rolled out everyone(I engaged with) knew it was going to be miscreant + the mystery box prize winner class as 90% of the pop.  And after digging into it for a time and looking under the hood on the player end, everyone was right.  There are entire classes that are just wastes of spaces.  And some of the classes were so poorly designed they are self damaging in their execution. 

To keep it short:  the attitude that 'you can give input but you're crazy if you think we'll use it' has never done well, not in Arm, not in reality.  Yet this is the status quo?

[Malken]

I want to play a full magicker with a magick subguild.

[Suok]

I want to play a full magicker with a magick subguild.

Fireball²

[Patuk]

Because a cool third of characters in the game is already magickal, the proportion is only higher among non-leaders, and the ratio would only skew more with full guilds existing alongside subguild mages.

I don't think the key factors of this population distribution are limited to the context of full/non full mage/psi/sorc.  You'll have to kick several hives to get at it all.  The karma (regen) system , RNJesus having 100% power to make or break any character concept out of the gate, risk/reward mechanics + grind jank, how do I get plot? amongst others.  But in short:  the way the game is built and run comprehensively is more responsible here.

And Hal:

That stuff about the time full guilds were rolled out is a bit off.  No players I knew or talked to wanted it, no players I knew or talked to liked it. It was a horrible idea from on high, and everyone(I engaged with) who wasn't beholden to it knew as much. 

Same with the class change stuff, we all wanted it, but when it rolled out everyone(I engaged with) knew it was going to be miscreant + the mystery box prize winner class as 90% of the pop.  And after digging into it for a time and looking under the hood on the player end, everyone was right.  There are entire classes that are just wastes of spaces.  And some of the classes were so poorly designed they are self damaging in their execution. 

To keep it short:  the attitude that 'you can give input but you're crazy if you think we'll use it' has never done well, not in Arm, not in reality.  Yet this is the status quo?

Miscreant isn't the most played class. Or the second most played. It is third most, and a substantial amount of its PCs are going to be nobles and GMH types who like having good scan and listen. You are demonstrably wrong about said class for sure.

As for mages: sure. I don't know if we'd have more or fewer of them if we had full guilds back. If we had both full guilds and subclasses? We'd have more for sure, though. Duh. The marginal player will have more options and they will see more play.

[Halaster]

I want to play a full magicker with a magick subguild.

Fireball²

Nah.  Full guild whiran, subguild krathi_devastation.  RAWR

[X-D]

I would be WAY more entertained with Whiran/shadow stalker.

[Veselka]

Now we're talking.

[Hestia]

I'm all about full-on psi/sorc with skill bumps in SAP, master-craft jewelrymaking, and master lockpicking.  But that's just me.

[Halaster]

I would be WAY more entertained with Whiran/shadow stalker.

Long, long ago that's actually what Whirans were.  You see, once upon a time there were only four elements and thus elementalists.  Whira, Suk-Krath, Ruk, Vivadu.  All the elkros spells were part of the suk-krath element, so they got all the lightning spells too.  All the nilazi spells were part of vivadu, so they got all the undead stuff (wasn't much else nilazi back then).  And all the drov spells were part of whira.  So whirans could also do all the ethereal stuff (wasn't much else to drov back then).

When they were split up, a lot of the current nilazi spells were added to fill out that guild.

[Veselka]

Interesting.

Back to basics, I say.

[mansa]

https://web.archive.org/web/20010623060946/http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?guild_water_cleric

Call up servants of the dead for water clerics

[X-D]

Long, long ago that's actually what Whirans were.  You see, once upon a time there were only four elements and thus elementalists.  Whira, Suk-Krath, Ruk, Vivadu.  All the elkros spells were part of the suk-krath element, so they got all the lightning spells too.  All the nilazi spells were part of vivadu, so they got all the undead stuff (wasn't much else nilazi back then).  And all the drov spells were part of whira.  So whirans could also do all the ethereal stuff (wasn't much else to drov back then).

When they were split up, a lot of the current nilazi spells were added to fill out that guild.

LOL.

I am sure I have mentioned that on the GDB before. Although, a few of the elkros spells had belonged to rukkians as well.

And any time I talk about legacy mages, I mean exactly the first 4 since the other three are not legacy and were only put in to nerf the first 4 under the guise of "more variety" ..../me squints for a moment as he looks around.

[Harmless]

Though I have come to solidly believe that my opinion is not respected almost at all,  I am just gonna say that for years I have been a solid +1 to every notion in the OP. At least then we can help show how the community feels more if I keep my eye out for the 100th topic thread on a subject/coffin I have already hammered all my nails into years ago.

Bringing us back the variety and choice we had to make the characters we used to be able to has been a want of mine forever. The anemic subguild magickers and maybe sorcerors and psionicists (which I have never been myself but interacted with several times) are annoying to me and more boring for me to play than the full guilds more, more magically attuned or whatever you want to call it, and leave me feeling that among many things the game and its community is just trying to push me out.

Well anyway I have posted many times lately on reasons I rarely log in lately. It keeps coming back to how little of a role my characters tend to have,whether as victims of isolating IC stigma that doesn't foster interaction, or including in the ways that the OP outlines makes my characters nigh powerless to have any choice of action to take with their qualities.

And in the very end it always comes back to what I posted in my first sentence, that I don't feel like my opinion here is respected. Glad the OP put their post in that context as this is why the playerbase is getting increasingly divided up and fizzling apart, as restrictive decisions by staff inevitably cause a larger and larger portion of us to lose what we enjoyed in this game and drift away feeling as if they were not valued here.

[Jihelu]

I was reminded of something so I'll bitch about it here

"Many sorcerers never learn to harness the power of true sorcery, instead finding ways to use limited magicks to assist them and augment their mundane professions."

This is under the sorcerer page.
This is the dumb dumbiest thing I think we have in the game, the idea that someone who learned sorcery will use that power to augment their MUNDANE profession. 'I'll risk total fucking annihilation so I can raider better'. Sorcery is learned and the people who decide to learn it apparently all go "You know what...I won't learn anymore"

[Halcyon]

Because a cool third of characters in the game is already magickal, the proportion is only higher among non-leaders, and the ratio would only skew more with full guilds existing alongside subguild mages.

What ratio of magickal to mundane characters would you prefer?