Feedback Request - City Elves

[Kiyetal]

Don't post things that people can use to identify other peoples' characters or your own character, the reason for this is to keep the sense of mystery and drama with the game's story, and protect players from OOC peer pressure or coercion:

I think the best way to fix this it to return to if someone contacts you, you get their sdesc unless they have an ability that prevents such.

Even though this isn't really c-elf focused, I've wanted the way to work this way for a long time.

I rallied for this during the contact changes awhile back, I was a firm believer that simply making it so that without the use of psionicist abilities everyone should see what sdesc contacts them. I saw only pros to a change like that, speeding up roleplay and saving time for both parties, removing any potential ooc advantage from the parties involved. If scary killer #73 wants to see if you're online, they're also providing their target with the equivalent information.

[Riev]

If elves really are the second-most populous race in Zalanthas, then it's pretty likely they're also the second-most populous race in the cities. If, despite making up almost half the population of a city, they are consistently sidelined and excluded from public life, unable to seek work in most "reputable" institutions, then at some point they probably would have made their own, in order to stand a chance against the institutions that oppress them.

They would probably create an "elven quarter" as an unofficial enclave in the lower-class neighborhood of the respective cities (Commoners' Quarter/Warrens). There would be old elven tribes with outsized influence over this quarter. There'd be a gang that functions as an unofficial militia within the quarter and is only barely tolerated by the official city militia because they don't really like patrolling the neighborhood unless absolutely necessary, giving the area a separate crimcode, perhaps one that ignores certain minor crimes unless inflicted on elves of some repute. They would have merchants that elves seek out for high-quality goods, favoring them over the Great Merchant Houses in some cases. Not every elf would live in the "elven quarter" as there would still be many elven tribes that would see it as too self-confining, but they would find integration with the rest of society relatively difficult and would probably be relegated to their city's lawless areas, still visiting the elven quarter on occasion for business or meeting contacts, feeling uncomfortable about it all the while.

The alternative to that is that society loosens up and starts to integrate elves into more aspects of the standard institutions, but it would be a dramatic shift that would require either a significant event that puts pressure on those institutions to relax their attitude towards elves, or some level of retconning of the current attitudes.

There already is an elf-designated section of the Commoner's Quarter. It's the size of a desert elf campground, has a pretty interesting history, it has NPCs, and even vendors. It's also underutilized. It'd be great if people used it more, but they don't.  Just like the teahouse (which is only 2 rooms total including the locked back room) is interesting, has an interesting history, have npcs and vendors, and rarely gets any use.

How might one access this interesting history? If underutilized and possibly mostly unknown, how can you get more players to spend time there?

Also that area doesn't let you spam kill NPCs for combat skillz so is it even really useful?

[Armaddict]

I will differ from some of the playerbase, for sure, but I believe that's expected behavior when asking for broad-spectrum feedback.

I wrote this post awhile back: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,54201.msg1022100.html#msg1022100

It outlines some of the things I like and don't like about elves.  If you're looking to change city-elves, I'd try to double down on city-elven culture to make it actually present rather than perceived/thought-experimenty.  I'd give that culture strong enough fingers in reality to create actual boons to being a city-elf...but have it navigation-heavy as far as the balance between the two-culture problem of elves (which I think is one of the more fascinating parts of playing elves).

[Miradus]

One of the things I like best about city elves (rinther) is that a leader will emerge and put their own stamp on their crew. They have a main culture of a rinther elf criminal, and then a subculture that's unique to that crew.

I can play a rinther elf in one era and then come back a year later and play in another and have a completely different flavor.

Yet if I go play Soh now it's the same feel as it was in 2016 or whatever.

[Diesel]

I don't think that elves should be thieves inherently. I think we should retcon it and have it be a choice or even just a social construct within specific groups of elves, not something someone is born with and can't really choose. Most people don't roleplay muls, elves, breeds, HGs (slightly different) or with them properly anyway. They're polite and nice and joke and do everything else and I don't think it'll ever be fixed. I haven't seen anyone really go in on elves or breeds except maybe Templars, Nobles, and militia characters. Everyone else seems to want to treat them and breeds like anyone else. Socially anyway.

[Tuannon]

It isn't even a retcon, there ARE celfs in Nak who are not immediately pickpockets and swindlers, but they are low tier commoners who have a certain reputation and proclavity for being pickpockets and swindlers. I think keeping it kind of nebulous gives players more wiggle room to deal with Nakki celfs better.

[Dar]

One problem with Celves is that they are useless.

I don't mean weak, or harmless. They're not that. I mean useless for everything except the negative aspects.


Delves are useful to trade and deal with because they are a source of hides, pelts, poisons, and other resources from the territory that they covet.

Breeds are useful because they go out into the wilds and procure rare things on their lonesome that are useful in the cities.

Dwarves are useful because if shaped, picked, and synced with well, they are a backbone for whatever mechanism you use to advance your plots and ambitions.

HGs see above.


What are Celves useful for?  Their only strength is city strength. Which is either social, or destructive. If social is only intra-elven society, then it's reclusive and not prolific to the enjoyment of the game. And since they are lacking in elf only resources there is no point in intraspecies interaction.

If social power is across different species, then it encourages Celven to be accommodating and nice to humans. And since they are mostly useless and in fact damaging to deal with by humans, that means Celven's only thing to bring to the table is negative. As in, you gotta deal with celves if you don't want shit stolen from you, your car tires cut in the night. Which once again, pushes Celven to be consistently towards antagonism.

Which is fine. Antagonistic play is great. But it does reduce the choice of roles and personalities that you have for a Celf.


What I'd like to suggest is that Celves should be capable of something that's strictly celven and useful for others.

Maybe there is a resource that's difficult to get in the sewers? Something that's highly reliant on high agility that celves can get? Then again, sewers are wilderness area, so that too they are theoretically unsuited for.

Shalooonsh found a solution to this problem when Akai Sjir was made. He made them into Master Artisans and that tribe through truths and untruths made their goods favorable to purchase.

It would be better if we don't go that route for other Celven tribes.  Perhaps control over some specific fruit, or animal, or herbal component, or ... flash powder manufacturer arghem, Or whatever.

[betweenford]

An obvious solution for Allanak centric issues would be to load in a relatively inoffensive group of city elves who simply exist and survive, focusing less on pickpocketing and more interesting forms of "theft"; like the Zeif Akir rooftop elves.

From my current understanding of the tribe without docs, and pretty much just the way their NPCs and camp are built: They somewhat tolerate half-elves being amongst their blooded kin, have an insectine theme to what interests and entertains them according to shared Arabet/ZA discuss text, openly regard the Allanaki soldiers with measured disdain, run bugfights with skewed results to steal bet-money, have a fully built tattoo artist with like 20+ tattoos, run a bug-shop, run an elven tea-tent, and mostly try to stay outwardly within the bounds of the law while occasionally committing crimes that don't result in anyone getting caught.

However, basically any attempt to make the Zeif Akir playable has been met with opposition or disinterest from staff despite being effectively a partially coded clan with some amount of history behind it, despite clamoring from players for a southside Allanaki Elven clan.

To my understanding, alot of city elf groups rarely feel like a tribe that is set within the bounds of walls trying to survive and pull resources while minimizing risk to their tribe; they just feel like organizations within the city trying to pull quotas, kill people, and rob people while bringing in as much negative attention back to their tribe as possible.

[flurry]

I think I've only played one c-elf, and the reason for my lack of interest has been how limited they seem to be. Specifically, if you put any value on social role-play, it seems like you're going to have a tough time enjoying a c-elf role most of the time.

As others have suggested, giving c-elves and humans more reason to interact in ways that aren't antagonistic would help. That would likely require some c-elf opportunities that aren't criminal. The Akai Sjir are a good model for this.

One idea that came to mind is something like a coded tavern, in Allanak proper, operated by a c-elven tribe open to players.

[betweenford]

One idea that came to mind is something like a coded tavern, in Allanak proper, operated by a c-elven tribe open to players.

Like... the Zeif Akir tea-tent?

[Lotion]

One idea that came to mind is something like a coded tavern, in Allanak proper, operated by a c-elven tribe open to players.

Like... the Zeif Akir tea-tent?

you need climb to get there and even then i swear it's impossible to find

[betweenford]

One idea that came to mind is something like a coded tavern, in Allanak proper, operated by a c-elven tribe open to players.

Like... the Zeif Akir tea-tent?

you need climb to get there and even then i swear it's impossible to find

If you approach from Wall Road, and head into their bug-shop, there's a ladder and a hatch anyone can use to get into the tea-tent.

From the tea-tent, anyone can type "leave" to enter the camp proper. No climbing required.

However it's 10000000x more elven to climb in and risk cracking your neck to enter the camp every time, I don't make the rules.

[dumbstruck]

Nix the bit about all elves being theives.

That's written like human propaganda.

You want to make elves more playable, literally just take out the bit that all elves are thieves and then race locking them to thieves, warriors, and crafters (basically).

Unless an elf is breaking with one of the biggest throughlines in their documentation, they are actively working against you (to steal from you) the whole time you're around them.

Only an idiot (human) would want to hang around with someone knowing that the entire point of the interaction is to steal from you, get one over, etc, with every single elf, why in god's name would they not be rooted out and killed long before they had the chance to become so prolific?

It literally makes no sense.

[betweenford]

The thing about all elves being thieves is a heavy flanderization of elven documentation in Dark Sun. In Dark Sun, elves simply don't have morals when it comes to people outside of their tribe as a default and are willing to do anything to a person as convenient.

On the flipside, they conduct themselves with "honor" when it comes to their tribemates as well as those they've found to be trustworthy; which is where the Elven Tests of Trust derives from in Arm.

[flurry]

One idea that came to mind is something like a coded tavern, in Allanak proper, operated by a c-elven tribe open to players.

Like... the Zeif Akir tea-tent?

Good to know! More stuff like this would be great.

[ShaiHulud]

I won't offer personal experience, because it has been more than I can remember. But the suggestion before by Mansa and maybe others is my feeling that I'd like to add to. Have two tribes to join at creation, and then also unclanned. I think one rinthi-centric, the other nakki-commons based. Elf social easier, elf social more difficult. Define the two, and have each a tribe more prevalent in each area. But like all other tribes, there are pairings that connect them in alliances. Also, more city elf and desert elf interconnections. Relying on each other more for info/supplies/raiding/taking from those who can be exploited.

[Bogre]

I think the coded running should be a little more equitable between city elves and desert elves. City elves should probably have less stamina but over short distances they shouldn't have all of that eaten up by running outdoors. Something to keep them a little less crippled outside, which allows them to actually do stuff in clans / etc than just being the urban thieves who are always antagonist cause all they do is assassin, thief, or burglarize. More opportunities for roles / actions in game = more avenues for roleplay.

I think its a huge downside is that whichever PC city elf you see, you can just assume they're a criminal, and any desert elf PC you see, can be a potential trade partner / source of news / etc / if they don't raid your face. The feeling should be -similar-. Meeting a c-elf should be a potential trade partner / source of city gossip / way to get stuff done quietly / if they don't steal your coinpurse.

[Roon]

Aside from the inconsistent availability of c-elf tribes and the fact that most players don't enjoy playing a race that is universally despised, elves have one problem in particular: combat without high strength is terrible. This goes for any character, not just elves, but elves can't get high strength at all so they're all saddled with that problem. If we allow ourselves the use of conventional gaming terminology, city elves are by far the most underpowered race in this game. In a game with permadeath and FFA PvP, that's really unappealing. Enjoy those 97 hit points with an 'extremely good' endurance roll, boyo. The race is fucked code-wise.

The combat overhaul did technically make the imbalance smaller, but it didn't actually change the fact that combat feels like shit without high strength, and agility doesn't do enough to compensate. And where d-elves (aside from their much better stats) can use archery and have easier access to poisons, as well as sneak and hide as innate racial skills which lets you pick classes that don't give it, it's a lot more awkward for c-elves to make use of the things that can compensate for a lack of strength. You don't have access to raider and scout, plus using a bow in the city is just weird, and crossbows are garbage. And if you want to use poisons, you're almost completely dependent on people to bring you a steady supply. You try finding that as a c-elf. Sometimes there literally just isn't anybody who's willing to do that for you because your subspecies is universally hated and you have limited clout because your race is really, really underpowered.

If a c-elf wants to be a threat code-wise, they're pretty much pigeonholed into backstab, and the recent weapon rebalancing overhaul brought an enormous nerf to backstab because it got rid of the overpowered mainstays that everyone knew about and used. You don't just go and get an 'amazing' stabbing weapon. I'm not even sure any exist. The best I've seen - and what Salarr will bring you if you ask them for the best stabbing weapon they can make - is 'good' quality. Compared to the overpowered hawk-halfswords and whatnot from the past, that's something like a 30% reduction in the power of the backstab skill. And for a race that already struggled to be truly deadly before, it's a huge blow. You took away the one thing c-elves could do well. Backstab is junk now.

Elven agility also makes it way harder to raise combat skills, and while d-elves have the entire gameworld at their disposal to overcome this obstacle, c-elves generally don't. By and large, they're limited to shitty sparring with other low-skill elves, or grinding on rinth NPCs, which is totally worthless when you start with the kind of bonuses that elven agility gives, so you're almost stuck at your starting level. They can also join the Byn, but the life of a Byn elf is only marginally more enjoyable than a root canal, both because it sucks mechanically for you and because it's annoying to be such an obvious burden for all the other players in the clan. You just know they all wish you weren't there.

So what are c-elves good at? Stealth and theft. That's nice and all, but it's really quite limited what you can do with these as the primary coded foundation for a character. Ever since the introduction of the new classes, the huge influx of miscreants forced people to stop carrying anything worth stealing because it was guaranteed to be gone within 48 hours. Stealth is only useful if there's people around and a reason to remain unseen, and the steady decline in player numbers in the last half-dozen years is an indirect nerf to stealth. Who are you hiding from?

Aside from that, c-elves don't really have any advantages. Information? Nah, not really. Any advantage they may have to their perception skills is too small to make a real difference, and it doesn't come close to the disadvantage that being universally scorned presents you with when it comes to gathering information. Trading? Nope, no meaningful advantages there. I guess c-elves do get like journeyman haggle as a racial skill, but that's nothing.

While some players will occasionally give the c-elf role a whirl, they always run into the same problems. 1) You suck at combat and it's almost impossible to be deadly unless you have magic. 2) It's really quite hard to find roleplay when the lore mandates that almost everyone either avoid or oppose you. 3) You have almost no clans available to you. 4) The rinth, which is the go-to environment for city elves, has barely changed in twenty years and is a cardboard facade with no built-in gameplay besides the mindless slaughter of low-skill NPCs.

It can be interesting to try the role, and some like to attempt to overcome these obstacles and see how far they can make it, but the self-evident fact is that almost nobody cares for it and it's nearly unheard-of for a c-elf character to become prominent and long-lived enough to really matter in the grand scheme of things. It happens so rarely that it plays no part in the fabric of the game. You can go a whole year without any c-elf character doing anything of note or living long enough to reach any level of notoriety. That's because the race is saddled with huge disadvantages both in terms of the code and the game's lore.

I'm prepared to say that the c-elf race was a mistake all along. Elves should all have been tribal desert-runners. Even setting aside the age-old mystery of why city elves would refuse to ride out of pride in an ability that they don't have, it has just always been clear that there's not enough players who want to play the race to keep enough of an ecosystem going for them. And as the playerbase shrunk, this only got worse.

When seasons bring a timeskip, I suggest saying that city elves didn't stand the test of time, and the race now consists exclusively of desert tribes. That'll make them more enigmatic and interesting, and should also bolster the numbers of these tribes--because ever since the ancient heyday of Blackwing, there just haven't been enough elf players to suffice when the race is split into two demographics that have practically nothing to do with each other, and then further split into different clans that may be enemies, or at least total strangers. We'd need 100+ player peaks for that to make sense.

[betweenford]

It's kinda funny that you mention the combat overhaul because Halaster semi-recently found a spot in code where Strength was impacting hit-chance and some other stuff on a scale that could be analogous to the elven agility bonus for some races; and he decided not to remove it and insisted it didn't impact much despite my insistence that in some instances it was equivalent to the elven one and just completely invalidated the elven racial perks.

Removing inadvertent bonuses from stats that shouldn't have them would probably make elf play feel alot better.

edit: I do believe he plans on removing that inadvertent bonus eventually, but seemingly it's low priority. Probably because removing the bonus might kill HG players when they try to fight a rantarri or something at a level they previously could.

[Roon]

Yes, those who have looked at the various code-leaks (mea culpa!) know that strength was always infinitely superior to all other stats by such a margin that one must laugh at anyone who would think to suggest otherwise.

The big difference is that where agility helps you land hits more often, strength may do the same but also let you actually do meaningful damage with your hits. Let's lift the veil: skills don't really affect your damage. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, your damage is a product, almost exclusively, of the dice on your weapon and then your strength stat. It was always worthless for elves to have that tidy agility bonus. It just staunched their skill growth while other races caught up and had the strength to do damage that matters. Elves were always shit.

Now, there was a time when we had overpowered weapons. With these, an elf might simulate, say, 'extremely good' human strength, in the case of a certain Sun Runner club. That time is in the past. Now, all elves are subject to the same ill-advised weapon rebalancing that says you only get to be a threat in melee combat if you have high strength or a weapon that generally can't be obtained through any real venues of roleplay.

As such, elves suck. We can sit here and pretend that you can get ever so much done with your roleplay, and maybe you're just not good enough at the game if you rely on the coded faculties of your character, but we'd be listening to fools if we went down that route. Anyone who knows how this game works knows that outside of sponsored roles, it takes coded force-multipliers to get anything done. And elves - city elves in particular, but also elves in general - just haven't had that since the silly days of yore when they could run around with 2d4+3 Sun Runner clubs.

[Kavrick]

Pretty much all races except humans have been written into a corner were it's almost mandatory that you play said race as a stereotype. And even if you try to break from that stereotype, the world won't really enable it. I.E not even being able to attempt to join anything but the Byn or Kurac.

Generally the enforced racism has always been a pretty sour point for the game. It makes things incredibly monotonous with how interactions play out. "Ew breed" "ew elf" "annoying dwarf" is generally the extent I see of any racial dynamic without any nuance. This also means that if you play anything but a human, you're also pretty massively limited with what you can do rp-wise. In fact, I can't even count how many times people have told me not to play breeds or city elves and just play humans so I can actually be included in the game. It really sucks for the diversity of RP.

[Lotion]

the baked in setting racism is super wack and is one of the major reasons i choose not to tell people very much about this game, as it is not something I am proud of

[Kavrick]

the baked in setting racism is super wack and is one of the major reasons i choose not to tell people very much about this game, as it is not something I am proud of

After going back and actually reading up on a lot of Dark Sun lore, I actually cannot fathom why the racism has been dialed up so high and why a lot of nuance has been ripped out of different races.

Dwarves have probably been done the dirtiest out of all races in Armageddon. In Dark Sun. Dwarves have their own settlements, are extremely family-minded with a big point of creating 'clans' around their family where their wealth is always passed on to their children, creating long legacies. Dwarves are also supposed to have a decent foothold in the tablelands with several villages there but that's also been ripped out of the game. Dwarves have been degenerated into 'piss-drinking slave race with no culture' which is such a waste of an entire race considering the limited amount of races Armageddon has.

[betweenford]

the baked in setting racism is super wack and is one of the major reasons i choose not to tell people very much about this game, as it is not something I am proud of

After going back and actually reading up on a lot of Dark Sun lore, I actually cannot fathom why the racism has been dialed up so high and why a lot of nuance has been ripped out of different races.

Dwarves have probably been done the dirtiest out of all races in Armageddon. In Dark Sun. Dwarves have their own settlements, are extremely family-minded with a big point of creating 'clans' around their family where their wealth is always passed on to their children, creating long legacies. Dwarves are also supposed to have a decent foothold in the tablelands with several villages there but that's also been ripped out of the game. Dwarves have been degenerated into 'piss-drinking slave race with no culture' which is such a waste of an entire race considering the limited amount of races Armageddon has.

Their focuses are done pretty dirty too, in Arm.

They're also one of the most inclusive races on Athas, harboring no ill thoughts towards half-elves (who dont experience much racism in the first place).

At least while in Dark Sun, Elves reinforced their stereotype every so often; they were also absolute pictures of honor whenever they found themselves able to well and truly trust someone.

[Fredd]

Letting elves play in clans, IE: becoming Aides and such would probably make more people willing to play them.
 
An elf aide that trusts their noble could get up to a lot of interesting stuff IMHO.
Legit the enforced racism stops me from playing anything but humans, due to the roles I like to play.