In Defence of Full Guilds (and player input)

[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.

What ratio of magickal to mundane characters would you prefer?

I'd appreciate a cool one to five as opposed to the one to two we have now.

[Jihelu]

There's never going to be a good answer for 'how many is enough'

Should we base it off 'realistic world expectation' and cap it at a specific number or just player interest?

On one hand I think it would be more neat if magic /was/ rare. That every 3 people I meet in the grasslands there's a good chance none of them are gicks running spells at any given time.

But on the other it becomes harder for people to play mages when they want to.

Honestly I'd be fine if there was a cap per X time or something to prevent people from playing mages. I don't think this is even the right move but I dunno, just rambling.

[Brokkr]

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"

"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."

It implies that they want to learn more, they just haven't.  Whether because of inherent potential or not finding the right opportunities is left open for interpretation.

[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"

"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."

It implies that they want to learn more, they just haven't.  Whether because of inherent potential or not finding the right opportunities is left open for interpretation.

So were the old sorcerers just cooler than the new ones? If I'm going to risk getting my head cut off I go big or go home.
From my understanding there isn't a way to become a full guild sorcerer so making a sorcerer with the plot 'Become real kid sorcerer' seems unlikely and fruitless.

[Veselka]

New-kid Sorcerers/Defilers are difficult enough to wrangle, but entirely within the scope of Mundane PCs to handle/kill, particularly in groups, and particularly with preparation.

Old-school Sorcerers required Staff-level intervention to combat, and even then, were difficult or impossible to wrangle without extreme measures. I imagine it took both Staff energy and time to address every year or two.

It becomes a Zero Sum Game when your Sorcerer PC gets so powerful, it requires Staff to animate the virtual world to respond to you, because you're too big for the sand box.

[Halaster]

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.

An interesting personal interpretation of it, but it's not true as to the motivation behind it.

[betweenford]

It implies that they want to learn more, they just haven't.  Whether because of inherent potential or not finding the right opportunities is left open for interpretation.

why wont you load in a spell book for my sorcerer then hes hungry for knowledge beyond the mundane and has the gp for it

[X-D]

Might not have been the motivation...but is was still the result.

With the current subs, What adds insult to injury is that not only are the spell numbers drastically reduced. But they still have spells that A: Never had much use other then place holders to branching a possibly useful spell. B: had a use that really does not exist anymore because of changes to the game/gameworld
C: Require another spell to be almost useful...but the sub does not get that other spell.
D: Just crappy useless spells that for some reason are even high tier because somebody seems to think otherwise.

[Halaster]

It implies that they want to learn more, they just haven't.  Whether because of inherent potential or not finding the right opportunities is left open for interpretation.

why wont you load in a spell book for my sorcerer then hes hungry for knowledge beyond the mundane and has the gp for it

Reading is illegal!

[Halaster]

Might not have been the motivation...but is was still the result.

With the current subs, What adds insult to injury is that not only are the spell numbers drastically reduced. But they still have spells that A: Never had much use other then place holders to branching a possibly useful spell. B: had a use that really does not exist anymore because of changes to the game/gameworld
C: Require another spell to be almost useful...but the sub does not get that other spell.
D: Just crappy useless spells that for some reason are even high tier because somebody seems to think otherwise.

I would love to entertain hearing what these are from you in a DM.  Tell me what spells need others to be useful but they don't have them, or other things that meet this scenario.  I'm not promising it will change, but I'd be willing to look into it.

[Hauwke]

It implies that they want to learn more, they just haven't.  Whether because of inherent potential or not finding the right opportunities is left open for interpretation.

why wont you load in a spell book for my sorcerer then hes hungry for knowledge beyond the mundane and has the gp for it

Reading is illegal!

If any non noble or GMH is going to learn to read, it makes sense for a Sorc to learn it, they are power hungry bastards after all. Perhaps even just as a spell.

[Jihelu]

I think we are shitposting but in Dark Sun sorcerers did have literacy, but even then I think most of them 'hid' their spellbooks in plainsight (Such as: Superstitious runes on their clothes, specific knots of cord on their belts, etc.)

I always thought it was neat and also strange it was like 'Yeah you can still read you're a wizard' then it went 'Anyway your spellbook doesn't even use words'. Though maybe this was a 4e/2e thing that clashed

[Harmless]

If being a mage wasn't so extremely isolating and boring I would be happy to have a much stricter limit in the game towards being able to be one.

as the game is designed now it feels like the particular cultural stigmas which make being a mage or a gemmed a completely dull hatefest [I understand this is your opinion, but this was a far step past what is acceptable.  Do not cross the line again, please and thank you.  -Shalooonsh.] are how the game discourages choosing to be a mage.

Making the RP experience shitty as a means to drive players more towards being mundane roles is a suicidal strategy for the game. I would much rather the shackles and the stigma be lessened in exchange for a once per year limit in chargenning a supernatural role or some other stricter limit to choosing the roles.

I asked staff already in a question request why they are actively pushing people away from being these roles through the lack of clan choices and lack of interaction and though I had some very thoughtful replies from staff I don't feel the way the game plays out is at all reflective of those replies. For a long time I had to hold back on saying anything more about this because the GDB thread closest to this topic was nigh lockable for a while and someone declared that topic in the thread as "dead" for whatever stupid reason. I don't think the topic is dead though at all and so I revived it now. Don't make intentionally terrible game experiences or RP experiences as a strategy to get the player composition you want. Just make character limits stricter and let the game and RP be fun again for all. A full guild return is just one example of how the game experience AND rp experience for me and others here would be enhanced and I would be fine with a very hard cap or limit on such roles in exchange.

One such way to limit it might be to alter karma regen. Instead of getting a point per month as is maybe karma regen will come back one point per character death (or storage).

If your character dies you get back one karma. If you roll a 0 or 1 karma mundane role then you lose no karma... when that character dies you will then have 2 karma. Then you might make an elementalist (with 2 karma) every other character.to get to a 3 karma role it will happen only once every 3 characters as a result.

We can keep also a 1 karma per month rule.So if you die back to back no gains. Roll a character, live at least 1 month, die, get one karma back.

[Mellifera]

If being a mage wasn't so extremely isolating and boring I would be happy to have a much stricter limit in the game towards being able to be one.

as the game is designed now it feels like the particular cultural stigmas which make being a mage or a gemmed a completely dull hatefest [I understand this is your opinion, but this was a far step past what is acceptable.  Make this parallel again and see what happens to your account.  -Shalooonsh.] are how the game discourages choosing to be a mage.

Making the RP experience shitty as a means to drive players more towards being mundane roles is a suicidal strategy for the game. I would much rather the shackles and the stigma be lessened in exchange for a once per year limit in chargenning a supernatural role or some other stricter limit to choosing the roles.

I asked staff already in a question request why they are actively pushing people away from being these roles through the lack of clan choices and lack of interaction and though I had some very thoughtful replies from staff I don't feel the way the game plays out is at all reflective of those replies. For a long time I had to hold back on saying anything more about this because the GDB thread closest to this topic was nigh lockable for a while and someone declared that topic in the thread as "dead" for whatever stupid reason. I don't think the topic is dead though at all and so I revived it now. Don't make intentionally terrible game experiences or RP experiences as a strategy to get the player composition you want. Just make character limits stricter and let the game and RP be fun again for all. A full guild return is just one example of how the game experience AND rp experience for me and others here would be enhanced and I would be fine with a very hard cap or limit on such roles in exchange.

One such way to limit it might be to alter karma regen. Instead of getting a point per month as is maybe karma regen will come back one point per character death (or storage).

If your character dies you get back one karma. If you roll a 0 or 1 karma mundane role then you lose no karma... when that character dies you will then have 2 karma. Then you might make an elementalist (with 2 karma) every other character.to get to a 3 karma role it will happen only once every 3 characters as a result.

We can keep also a 1 karma per month rule.So if you die back to back no gains. Roll a character, live at least 1 month, die, get one karma back.

I 100% agree that another option that could be explored for controlling the balance and staff demand on full-guilds is a cap, and I'd definitely be behind a cap on full-guild mages.

Unfortunately, though, there already is a cap on psionicists and sorcerers, and its a strict one at that. Perhaps there could be an even tighter cap on their full guild variants? I believe there's 3 sorcs and 3 psions allowed, plus the staff slot. Maybe there could be 2 slots for full-guild sorc or psion together, And they could be treated as heavily sponsored roles, like templars. That would add to the total number of any kind of sorcerer or psion around though, which may get overwhelming. It's an idea that would need to be worked on, but it's there.

[Veselka]

[I understand this is your opinion, but this was a far step past what is acceptable.  Make this parallel again and see what happens to your account.  -Shalooonsh.]

Tone, my man.

I don't think there's a need (or place) for Staff to idly threaten players in this kind of way.

[Greve]

Yeah, that's inexcusable and a total pisstake just days after Shabago posted this in his announcement:

- The staff team is aware to be mindful of tone on the GDB, Discord, or in-game. That our interactions with players should be respectful.

"Nice account. Would be a shame if something... happened to it."

That's simply not okay.

[th3kaiser]

I'm going to assume (hope) that he edited something out of that post which was in fact very offensive. My guess is they compared to a RL minority.

If what is currently there is all it was, then yeah that feels out of line. Hopefully someone on staff chimes in.

[Jihelu]

He compared them to a certain ethnic group that happened to be squared away in their own quarters and would occasionally get purged due to racial hatred. Whether it's 'ok' to attempt that comparison or not im glad that with our great transparency we are allowed to threaten peoples accounts with edits

[Gentleboy]

The person compared a fantasy game, gemmed to Jews during Nazi times.


As one of the few Jewish players on the forum, I agree with shalooonsh and found the comment disgusting and hurtful.

Let's keep fantasy in fantasy.

And I guess the topic on track

[Veselka]

We wouldn't know that because it was simply edited out and left with a moderated edit.

The whole post should have been moderated, and Staff could post 'Please do not post comparisons of Nazi Germany to fantasy aspects of our volunteer game going forward. Thanks.'

Instead, we are left with a confusing (if perhaps justified?) vitriol from Staff mid-post on someone's otherwise unmoderated post.

It isn't consistent. To be clear, I'm Jewish too actually, and would have had no idea that is what was moderated. Nazi Germany / Fascism is often brought into the conversation when it comes to forms of oppression, as it's something tangible that we can (at least generationally some people who play the game) understand. The level of oppression can otherwise be sort of, well, fantastical, as it doesn't make much sense. So I can see why people choose to use it as analogy. The thing is, it has no real comparison, because it is an intensely personal and deeply hurtful thing to use as a comparison particularly to fantastical game concepts, or fantastical racism, or fantastical segregation.

Anyways. Thanks for clarifying the context of the original comment.

[Shalooonsh]

My edit has been re-edited.

There are certain lines which are not excusable to cross, one of these is comparisons to the horrible events of WWII and the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of a genocidal maniac.  We have several (if not many) Jewish players, and when that line is crossed a message needs to be sent in no uncertain terms that it is not an excusable parallel.  That being said, my message was overly harsh. 

The end result is the same, and this is a learning moment for both myself and for the poster of the post I edited - We are a community and we need to keep in mind that there are certain things that we can post, parallels we can make, jokes we can make that will influence another player in an extremely negative fashion.  We have players which lost relatives to this horrible event.  There's a bajillion other parallels that can be made out of fiction that will not have the emotionally devastating impact of making a flippant comparison to a moment in history which still has severe echoes today.  I as a staff member have always been one of the more volatile members, one of the quicker to react, and this was a learning moment for myself as well - it would have been far better for myself to reach out to Shabago and discuss the method of edit and the message to put forward.  As Shabago was not at the moment available, I made a snap judgement, and while I stand by my need to have edited the message I did absolutely give too strong and vicious of a message in return.  I was wrong, and I admit that.

I did decide to leave the rest of the original post in place because I feel that, other than that one horrible mis-step, that there was some constructive information and a good point of view within it - this is why I did not completely strip the post out and leave it at that.

I am going to be better going forward, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

[Harmless]

It really wasn't my intention to make light of anyone's RL history or misfortunate things in human history where terrible acts were perpetrated on a regular basis against people for reasons they have no control over.

I apologize for that, because it obviously was bluntly worded and therefore led to an understandable reaction from Shaloonsh. Don't worry, I totally get why they talked to me that way about it. It was an unclassy comparison to make and I'll try to use others from now on. I will also try to avoid all matters regarding politics whenever possible. They don't help and it's ugly. I hope staff can see that this was just a human error in the mind of someone who holds a lot of frustrated energy lately. I really sometimes just don't give a fuck about what comes out of my mouth, because I have daily reasons to feel that way both in the game and out of it.

[Harmless]

Honestly, I just run my mouth via my hands on a keyboard sometimes, and I -will- probably make some other clumsy statement someday. Hopefully not on the same exact issue if I can have the discipline for it, but some other thing I'll cross over and say something dumb about.  Just you watch!

I hope my account doesn't have to suffer for me wanting to also discuss things on the GDB, because I do still want to play this game, and I do feel like there are ways it can improve again. And I'll watch my dumbassed mouth a little more (we'll see if I have the energy to).

[Jihelu]

I'm just glad we were able to talk about this.

[najdorf]

from an RP or having fun standpoint, I wouldn't judge anyone's view. Everyone have different tastes / likes.
From a balance perspective, (aside from top tier villains of the old), I believe everyone acknowledges that the current mages are significantly more powerful.
Previously dropping those blurs like kank flies was a good weekend activity. Nowadays, it FEELS like almost impossible, probably, given their main guild potentials.
I think if staff can share an avg. mage days played (excluding < 1 day) it would become clearly obvious. It would also show that the majority of player base enjoy current system more.