Why do you keep adding magickal stuff?

[Inks]

Why do you keep adding magickal stuff to the game?

Isn't it imbalanced?

Isn't it a long plot which is unfightable for mundanes?

don't like the unlightable dark was added.


- questions moderated by MDFX

[dumbstruck]

most people enjoy the content, there's a handful of people who are very vocally opposed.

- moderated by MDFX

[Inks]

Magick is cool, but way too much magick is very uncool.

- moderated by mdfx

[Roon]

*original post snip*

What it comes down to, I suspect, is that it's a lot easier to come up with some magickial fugazi plot crap that's got all sorts of evil spirits and demons and whatnot, and then it's a foregone conclusion that mundane efforts can't defeat it. It's literally Satan, translated into Zalanthan terms. Then you don't have to account for the possibility that Amos can beat it. You can just say that he simply can't.

It takes a hell of a lot more to come up with an interesting, long-lived plot where mundane characters do have some agency but cannot just solve it immediately through brute force. It's the bane of Dungeon Masters in the D&D community. How do you balance the characters' need for agency with the plot's need for lasting more than 36 hours?
 
I think there's a lot more room for mundane warfare in Zalanthas; but if, for whatever reason, this is not something the administration wishes to provide, the only way to have plots that affect the world is by inventing a cavalcade of hitherto-unknown sorcerers and demons and whatnot who just suddenly represent the so-called worldwide plot.

The unfortunate reality of this is that Private Amos has no realistic way of interacting with any of it, while Thundering Sky of the Desert Death-Runners is in prime position to be involved, as is Sponsored Spencer the Psionic Poindexter. Regrettably, they make up two percent of the playerbase.

[Inks]

Really well written post Roon. I appreciate it.  Really well said.

[whengravityfails]

*quote snip by moderator*

This is exactly it. Whether I am playing a magicker or not I absolutely enjoy seeing more and new changes made to the magick aspect of the game.

- edited by mdfx

[Inks]

I like magick and magickers, I just wish there was more forethought into some of the stuff added.

New stuff is cool but certain spell additions to drovians and nilazis do not seem well thought out.

[Inks]

Again, a genuine question.

My main problem is with certain spell additions to drovians and nilazis. That stuff is broken.

Would love more weird, interesting and thematic spells and less get out of jail free nearly invincible spells being added.

- edited by mdfx as previous posts edited.

[MarshallDFX]

I've locked this topic because I need to figure out how to moderate it and how much I can salvage.

[MarshallDFX]

Right.  I'm sorry if people think I've been Orwellian in these post edits and removals. Because it had gone off the rails so quickly I was considering to just nuke the whole thread but wanted to salvage something.  The thread was launched in quite a negative, attacking way, and it quickly became a personal debate.

Please don't do this, and keep posts respectful and constructive. 

Thread unlocked.

[GreenTransient]

I would say that magic is cool.  What isn't cool is thinking that in a world populated with people, that all the assholes have magic.  And for some reason, no culture, anywhere has developed any kind of tool, implement, tactic, anything for mundanes to even try to deal with gicks.

Throw in that taint is fucking everywhere, and you've added what.  A cure bush?  I'm pretty sure I saw "look guys new poison!" but no "look guys, new cure" which is just, I realize, standard.  Do you know how insane it is, to look at a magic system, and just be like this makes zero sense.  Hey after a week of darkness, how are people alive?  I couldn't forage on the ground in the daytime with torches.  How did hunters find food for everyone?  When magic, is used in a way that completely breaks immersion.  That, is just, bad writing.  If you have a bad guy in a story, and they are only alive because you make it impossible to kill them.  That's bad writing.  You can't just, cover it up with magic and be like oh it's magic that's why. 

It would be crazy, if so much stupid magic had gone on in game that the players absolutely know they can't do anything about, because it's a "plot".  It's railroading, with magic which really takes all the magic out of it.



Also, correct me if I'm wrong.  There seems to have been a lot of work put into magic, then.  More work to undo that work.  Then work to tweak that work, them more work to undo that work and we are.  More or less, where we started but with fancy hats now?  Not to mention all the work is exclusively for the karma jockies.  FFS, give no karma players.  Some kind, of fucking options, against magic.  It's completely, unbelievable that they are just allowed to run rampant.  I know Allanak has witch killers, but they are witches, and allanak is awful so you don't see many of them.

Or I guess, we could keep putting 15 people in a room, giving them all the support they need while they stand at open gates and just wait for something to come in while staff is sorc shitting on their doorstep.  And hope that we don't get discouraged by how absolutely useless and unnecessary players seem to be in the grand scheme of story.


"But it's magic."

[CirclelessBard]

I think it is worth remembering that staff don't set out to create events that are exclusionary to the players. From what it looks like to me, they had a goal in mind (opening up full-guild Water and Shadow elementalists) and crafted an event around that. Adding darkness and rain, showing that these elements are powerful and to be feared, is a pretty good introduction IMO, especially considering the scarcity of water.

The darkness was obviously an inconvenience to a world that scrapes by, and I imagine a lot of people in the Known had to rely on their own personal food stores and the charity of others to get through it.

What I think also gets missed in these types of conversations sometimes is that while mundane characters do get left out of supermagical events until the very last moment, magickal characters are generally left out of most other types of events, unless they are a Gemmed dragged along by an Allanaki templar or something similar. Although obviously the players of magickal characters can't say either way, I do hope they were involved in the run-up to the HRPT somehow and they weren't as surprised as everyone else was.

It's also worth keeping in mind that for many staff this was their first HRPT, and storyrunning can really only be learned by doing and by looking at past examples. I am sure staff are in the midst of a debrief where they're considering what went right and what went wrong so they can do even better next time, especially if this is going to be the start of a trend where all full-guild elementalists come back through these types of events.

[tiny rainbow]

I liked it and hope it comes back, I think big events like these tend to be over way too quickly that it removes a lot of the impact that it would otherwise have, a lot of the atmosphere is lost when it's "that thing that happened a few days ago". I would've liked to see it last a RL month or more, and have all that process of people panicking both IC and OOC, and having to take measures to survive, plots, it'd be great. Lets make it dark again!

edit: The game is advertised as a struggle to survive but since scrab and everything was made easier with the new guilds having buffed combat skills right out of creation, it's not like that and both food and water are easy to come by, I think what was exciting is this created the kind of very dramatic tense situation that we really hope to see in a game called Armageddon but don't get to see much in practice. I think seriously we should turn it back on for a good while yet <3

[GreenTransient]

I liked it and hope it comes back, I think big events like these tend to be over way too quickly that it removes a lot of the impact that it would otherwise have, a lot of the atmosphere is lost when it's "that thing that happened a few days ago". I would've liked to see it last a RL month or more, and have all that process of people panicking both IC and OOC, and having to take measures to survive, plots, it'd be great. Lets make it dark again!

And people surviving, in that darkness for over a RL month, roughly 2 Zalanthan months, doesn't make you go.  Well, how is /anyone/ still alive? (bad writing)  Bad writing, for the point of "oh my how neat magic is" is still bad writing.  Many people like black licorice, I think they are insane.

[tiny rainbow]

I think situations that are a challenge and that not everyone is expected to survive is fun to play out in a game It's interesting to see who does the right things, who makes mistakes, etc. A lot of RL organisations have contingency plans for these kind of situations and it's totally possible, it's fun!

[Tailong]

Why do you keep adding magickal stuff to the game?

Isn't it imbalanced?

Isn't it a long plot which is unfightable for mundanes?

don't like the unlightable dark was added.


- questions moderated by MDFX

I can't agree more actually.

Dragging out a plot that has produced zero information on said plot is demoralizing.  Then getting more classes opened with zero supervision or approval? I just hope what admins we have left check their rosters and keep their numbers limited.


For the record this current plot has been going on for 6 RL months, and nothing has happened that has good substance.

[GreenTransient]

I think situations that are a challenge and that not everyone is expected to survive is fun to play out in a game It's interesting to see who does the right things, who makes mistakes, etc. A lot of RL organisations have contingency plans for these kind of situations and it's totally possible, it's fun!

Black licorice.  You just, don't understand how that would be death for, all non-magic life.  Two-thirds of a year without light...yay.  Let's RP a mass extinction event. 

[tiny rainbow]

Why not?

[Usiku]

With every plot there will be a certain amount of information that is only available to those involved in certain ways. So you may find that your PC doesn't have all the answers (but they could aim to seek them).

A lot has happened in the background of the current plot, driven by PCs who understand at least their involvement or some measure of why things are happening. Which is to say, there is information available for those who can figure out how to get it, if they are interested.

It's also worth noting that what was experienced was the intersection of two plots, one entirely and wholly mundane and the other more magickal in nature. The latter resulted in the changes to drovian/vivudian classes, making the full classes the standard and the subclasses the rare spec app. Lore wise this represents the opposite of what happened prior when things were switched the other way, so if you were around for that you might be able to hazard a guess as to what is IC'ly happening in the world. From an OOC perspective, hopefully you can appreciate what this means for magick (with subclass mages mostly considered overpowered, too prevalent and very easy to hide and survive). So while the plot may have appeared high magick for a brief period, the outcome is a step in the other direction.

[FlyingFerret911]

Toxicness in this community is getting out of hand.

This is the new norm:

Something exciting and world changing happens ingame
not even a day later a thread is created with someone complaining about how much they didn't like it and unfair it was as if their experiences is the sum total of everyones. (I loved the event)


Primarily this seems like another complain about magick thread.

It seems like people are not aware they are playing a mud whose entire setting and mythos  revolves around a
land ruined by magick, has sorcerer kings, and strong mages who are feared and generally reviled.

The homepage of the mud already describes the setting?
This is a game you choose to play, and can read all the information regarding the setting on its initial website  before you even make a character. It emphasizes that magick features, is strong, and a terrifying force in the world

[Trevalyan]

For the record this current plot has been going on for 6 RL months, and nothing has happened that has good substance.

It's kind of frustrating when our actions don't have an impact on the broader world. Honestly, I thought the reason for the Grey Forest being completely sealed off was the recent player-driven (REDACTED).

I'm probably wrong, and it's certainly not the OOC explanation, but it's nice to dream.

[GreenTransient]

The amount of work put into tweaking, undoing, redoing, retweaking, untwinking magic.  While never doing anything, at all, ever, (that I'm aware of) to improve the QoL of nonmundanes specifically in regards to their dealing with the pvptwink's that gick on the reg.

To those who keep pointing out there's magic in the game. 

  Would Sorcerer kings allow an outpost to pop up next door that's really well known for just being filled with gicks that are killing their people and do nothing?  No, they probably wouldn't but story, sorry system changes that staff want dictates what will happen, which generates the story.

  In a world where everyone wants gicks dead, what are the chances there are no anti-gick clans?  Why hasn't someone imprisoned nilazi and started pumping out anti-magic items?  Why hasn't, anything popped up besides "oh yeah I guess, that one poison.  Sometimes.  If you can see them."

  In addition: how are the ratio's of gick vs mundane?  What numbers would be healthy?  Is it an accurate representation?  Seems really magic heavy from my point of view, could be wrong. 

  In a world where magic is everything, and it's everywhere.  And beats everything.  And is used to ram story down throats because we aren't allowed any kind of resources to handle them, I at least want a rational reason that seems based in the fictional world.  Why bother logging in, for a story that I know will either steamroll me if I try to stop it or be disgustingly in my favor?  Example: Forcing Templars and other characters into what would seem to be a 'suicide run' death that would later have to be publicly apologized for all in the name of story.  Writing a story, for a book is arguably less complicated than factoring in other humans.  Granted.  Writing a dynamic story, is absolutely challenging and I've only known a few people that seemed truly born to it.

I would describe the feeling of experiencing some recent magic in Arm, from my point of view, as watching a movie in a theatre where the owner could at any point chose to kill me, or give me a boon.  And sometimes shit breaks into the theatre that either I kill, or it kills me.  But no matter what, the movie ends the way the writer wrote it, and maybe the director accidentally or intentionally kills you.

More "if/then", and less "and" in my magic please.

[Dracul]

As someone who logged in but had a character on the fringes of the hrpt I highly enjoyed it.

And yeah, the world is ruled by sorcerer kings. It's full of magick.

[GreenTransient]

As someone who logged in but had a character on the fringes of the hrpt I highly enjoyed it.

And yeah, the world is ruled by sorcerer kings. It's full of magick.

I never said I didn't enjoy it.  I just am realizing that logging in for the HRPT's is just rolling the dice on death, for no gain.  The story is already written, I just don't know if I'm on the losing side or the winning.  If I'm on the losing side, maybe my PC dies.  If I'm on the winning side, maybe I get a title.  Which, isn't enough to make me want to invest time in future HRPT's, when the benefits don't outweigh the gains and the outcome seems predetermined.

[bartenderer]

These posts are funny considering the two major cities are dominated by super sorcerer kings - seeeeeemed like Magick was a major theme coming into this.

[mansa]

This thread has been heavily moderated over the past day.

The reasons have been:
Too much detail about Magick talk
Insults
Rude Comments about other Posters.
Insults - Calling others Assholes.
Sarcastic responses insulting other people's intelligence.


The General Discussion Board is not a debate.  You can't "win" conversations with logic and passion.  The discussion board is where we discuss topics as a community, and the community is varied in opinion, thought, and feelings.  We are anonymous players typing into computer devices about our passion of a particular roleplaying game.

People are allowed to dislike the HRPT.   People are allowed to hate magickers.   People are allowed to say that the HRPT was fun.   People are allowed to hate every half-giant character in the game, and think they should be removed from the game.  People are allowed to think the game should be desert elves and city play is stupid.   People are allowed to be wrong - it's not up to you to correct them on their opinions.

[Brokkr]

HRPT's are all different.

Sometimes it is the result of actions that have already happened.  Where there was player agency, and now there isn't, because we are showing the result of player agency.

Sometimes there is player agency during a HRPT.  Sometimes that player agency is shared amongst the collective actions of a fairly large number of players.  Sometimes that player agency is limited to just one person, so it may only be a limited number of people that understand there was player agency, and to the rest it looks like a pre-determined outcome.

Sometimes we tack stuff on, that we want to get accomplished.  Like realizing the Grey Forest is sort of messed up, mapping wise, and there is still all this leftover stuff from the flood, and other issues so...lets use this as a reason to close it and fix some stuff.

And yeah, sometimes its just a lightshow and no one could have changed it.  Like a volcano exploding.

[Nacria]

The hrrrprrrtrrr was fine. If anything events where players can get their heroic fantasy fix should be more common.

I don't care that much about the writing. We don't need to have a plot thats more complicated or bigger than "big bad attacks the city" for an entire community of roleplayers to make their own stories around it. Again. I want to see more of the above and I don't want any wedeling about "writing" to prevent that from happening.

As far as magic goes? In my short time playing It does seem like magick just gets way too much attention, time and cookies from the gamerunners. Not to mention if I want to be cool and do cool things it feels like I'll be competing with characters with huge magickal boons which I'm supposed to be deathly afraid of.

[GreenTransient]

So, per Brokkr looks like the system is functioning as intended.  Well as is intended, has me of the opinion that killing players PC's off, for a predetermined story, is pretty fucked.  If almost every pc on an HRPT that has ever died, realized that the outcome was already decided.  The only thing left, was if they lived or died maybe they'd be a little miffed about wasting their time being a sacrificial time sink on the altar of staff prerogative.  Focus on your own story I guess?  I know I won't bother adjusting my schedule again.  Especially as a zero karma player, with zero agency against staff's #1 story stick, magick.

[Halaster]

I think it might be a good idea to clear up some misconceptions for the new players who it seems, to me, might be getting the wrong impression.

From about 1995 until 2016 full guild elementalists were the norm.  They were generally accepted as being, more or less, glass cannons.  If you caught them when not on their guard, they were easy to take down.  They had a lot of power, but had a lot of weaknesses.

There was a period in the game (from about 07 to mid 2010's) where the people in charge at the time were planning to close the game down in favor of a new one (Arm 2.0).  During that time the game became increasingly high fantasy and over the top with magickal plots and people.  However, Arm 2.0 was cancelled and so the staff wanted to calm the game back down and there was a lot of 'nerfing' going on.

The conclusion was eventually reached that full guild elementalists were too powerful and were "plot ruiners" (right or wrong isn't important - it's what was made at the time).  So, they were split into subguilds and each element divided along their 'aspects' to make 2-4 subguilds per element.  EDIT:  when this happened, there was no real in-game storyline as to why magick became nerfed, which was a sore point with many players.

At the time the elementalists were divided into subguilds, we had a different set of full guilds:  Warrior, Ranger, Assassin, Merchant, Burglar, Pick-Pocket.  The subguilds were designed with those in mind.  A couple of years later, those full guilds retired and the current set were added:  Raider, Fighter, Enforcer, Laborer, Scout, Miscreant, and so on.  After a while it became apparent that the magickal subguilds combined with these new, better full guilds, were a bit OP.  Adding a magickal subguild to a heavy combat (raider, enforcer, fighter) or light combat (scout, soldier, infiltrator) basically erased all the negatives that came with magick in terms of physical weaknesses in combat.

More recently we redid all the mundane subguilds, giving them a rather significant boost.  So when you hear people state that "mundanes get nothing, magick gets all the attention" they are simply incorrect - perhaps misinformed, perhaps using some loose definition of facts to make an argument, perhaps just forgetful.

So to sum up, the magickal subguilds were introduced with a different set of full guilds in mind, and as time has shown us, they are rather OP for the current new full guilds.  This leads to them being much more commonplace than we'd like because, besides from the In-Character cultural aspects, there's no downside and they eliminate magick's weaknesses.

That brings us to the decision to make full guilds (for drov and vivadu) the default again.  But we understand a lot people do like the subguilds, thus they're still around as special apps.

[Fredd]

I think it might be a good idea to clear up some misconceptions for the new players who it seems, to me, might be getting the wrong impression.

From about 1995 until 2016 full guild elementalists were the norm.  They were generally accepted as being, more or less, glass cannons.  If you caught them when not on their guard, they were easy to take down.  They had a lot of power, but had a lot of weaknesses.

There was a period in the game (from about 07 to mid 2010's) where the people in charge at the time were planning to close the game down in favor of a new one (Arm 2.0).  During that time the game became increasingly high fantasy and over the top with magickal plots and people.  However, Arm 2.0 was cancelled and so the staff wanted to calm the game back down and there was a lot of 'nerfing' going on.

The conclusion was eventually reached that full guild elementalists were too powerful and were "plot ruiners" (right or wrong isn't important - it's what was made at the time).  So, they were split into subguilds and each element divided along their 'aspects' to make 2-4 subguilds per element.

At the time the elementalists were divided into subguilds, we had a different set of full guilds:  Warrior, Ranger, Assassin, Merchant, Burglar, Pick-Pocket.  The subguilds were designed with those in mind.  A couple of years later, those full guilds retired and the current set were added:  Raider, Fighter, Enforcer, Laborer, Scout, Miscreant, and so on.  After a while it became apparent that the magickal subguilds combined with these new, better full guilds, were a bit OP.  Adding a magickal subguild to a heavy combat (raider, enforcer, fighter) or light combat (scout, soldier, infiltrator) basically erased all the negatives that came with magick in terms of physical weaknesses in combat.

More recently we redid all the mundane subguilds, giving them a rather significant boost.  So when you hear people state that "mundanes get nothing, magick gets all the attention" they are simply incorrect - perhaps misinformed, perhaps using some loose definition of facts to make an argument, perhaps just forgetful.

So to sum up, the magickal subguilds were introduced with a different set of full guilds in mind, and as time has shown us, they are rather OP for the current new full guilds.  This leads to them being much more commonplace than we'd like because, besides from the In-Character cultural aspects, there's no downside and they eliminate magick's weaknesses.

That brings us to the decision to make full guilds (for drov and vivadu) the default again.  But we understand a lot people do like the subguilds, thus they're still around as special apps.

Great bit of history here.

My answer is : we've been asking for this for years. It looks like staff are trying to have fun with bringing some stuff back, fixing some flaws and updating areas of the game that could use love.

It's really nice to see IC happenings reinforce code changes. Makes it fun. Makes it involved.