The idea of sorcerers only being able to learn one path of sorcery runs completely contrary to the established documentation on how sorcery is learned. Sorcery is most often learned in an effort increase one's own personal power, and in so doing, they make themselves have a secret that puts them at odds with the entire known world. If characters knew ICly that they would only ever be able to learn one path of sorcery, they would be unlikely to ever set down the path of learning it to begin with. The payoff simply isn't worth the cost in terms of ultimate destiny.
This issue can be resolved in a number of ways. We suggest that PC sorcerers remain a subclass to avoid guild sniffing, but gain a codified way to learn spells from other paths.
One suggestion was to allow 1 PC holder of each sorcery path in the game at any given time. This would help limit aggregate PC sorcerer power in game to be no greater than a single sorcerer with all four paths. This would mean that there could be any combination of 1 to 4 PC sorcerers in game at any given time(two that each have one path, plus one that has two, or four that each have one path, or one that has 4 paths, etc.). This would create a situation where if a sorcerer wanted to pursue further knowledge, they'd have to seek out and eliminate rival sorcerers to steal their knowledge. It would create innate plots for players of these PCs, drive conflict, and very potentially cause these conflicts to become noticed by the mundane PC world as they unfold. Plots can naturally spawn from this sort of dynamic without staff having to intervene. If a single sorcerer manages the monumental task of accumulating all four sorcerer paths, then that could allow staff to work with the player to create a world-level plot for the game. When that player character is no longer in game, the 4 paths would become available for other player applications again.
As for elementalists, we wouldn't suggest any change to the existing subclasses, leaving all of those options available, but we would like to see the option for full elementalists added back to the game as a subclass to avoid guild sniffing. We suggest that the full elementalist spell tree for each element be reintroduced to the game as a 3 karma special app only subclass option. This would also prevent people from being able to easily guild sniff individual aspects.
I like that idea for sorcerers, making it a matter of "natural selection" via roleplay and in-character plots. However, I would allow for some overlap. My suggestion to improve on your idea:
Allow for FIVE paths to run simultaneously - but only among a maximum of 4 characters. That way, if one sorcerer already has all 4 paths and there aren't any new ones allowed, then he wins, game over. He has no one to teach, and no one has a chance to steal his secrets. There needs to always be a possibility of at least 2 sorcerers in the game, regardless of how much or little power they've accrued between them. And so - that bit of overlap I think would improve.
As for elementalist - I think we should allow the full classes back, as full classes. With the caveat that they WILL be guild-sniffed. Just assume it, and roleplay knowing that your character will either a) need to play iso if he wants to fully persue his affinity with his element at minimal risk of being discovered or b) take the gem.
Sorcerers seem popular and powerful enough.
These PCs should be working more closely with staff to make stuff happen that isn't limited to just code.
Quote from: Dresan on July 14, 2020, 08:16:13 AM
Sorcerers seem popular and powerful enough.
These PCs should be working more closely with staff to make stuff happen that isn't limited to just code.
I agree with this.
i'd be interested in a system where there were tiers of advancement for a class like sorcerer. milestones that could be reached to increase power or access to spells/reaches and shit like that. i mean i am only guessing at how templars work, but it would be how i imagine templars work.
nessalin briefly discussed options for something like "origin stories" for sorcs and maybe an advancement system could be tied to that. some bizarro snake demon taught you magick and now you have to fulfill certain tasks before they'll reveal further secrets. i think this would allow for options for greater power while still giving staff the power of oversight.
with what feels like a more laissez faire approach to player development these days, having full guild sorc would make it relatively simple to just go sit in a bush for 100d played and emerge as a god.
sorc rivalry sounds awesome if on relatively even footing. i'm pretty sure that in a scenario where you have a full sorc vs 3 mini sorcs.. the full sorc is going to blow them the fuck out every single time.
also... maybe a little off topic but definitely related. i think giving all schools more access to a basic suite of spells would be fantastic and promote sorc interaction that isn't defined by maxxing out or dying. having vision/hiding spells by default would be awesome. maybe op?
Quote from: Dresan on July 14, 2020, 08:16:13 AM
Sorcerers seem popular and powerful enough.
These PCs should be working more closely with staff to make stuff happen that isn't limited to just code.
I'd like to switch this around and say staff should be working more closely with pcs. or maybe that it should be *MORE collaborative.
*edited to add that I think it can be hard to push magick plot when a ton of magick shit is heavily obfuscated and left to imagination. like maybe there should be a better means to address what can/cannot be done or what does/does not make sense. otherwise in magick roles I think I would be left to just wonder or give ideas, wait a week, get shot down or not, and then repeat.
I would be in favor of more formalized policies like this if it meant more players got to experience sorcery. One of the sorcerers die and we're below the cap? Have some random mundane manifest as a sorcerer even if they don't have the karma. At least years ago, staff would randomly have some mundanes manifest as sorcerers and it was definitely interesting and spread the roles/privileges/fun around.
Sorcery does not come about as manifestation. It is not natural, like Elementalism. Sorcerers are taught, or learn their magick through other means.
Thanks, because I am still confused to this day as to why one of my characters suddenly got sorcery years ago. Only things that seemed to justify getting the ability was being high wisdom and the leader of the tribe at the time. I wished up to ask if it was a bug and was told it wasn't but also wasn't given guidance on roleplaying it. But I realized it was weird and aberrant and you confirmed that.
But it was still quite interesting for a new player to suddenly be granted abilities, I love anything that foils the concentration of power the game suffers from.
So my argument stands despite the criticism. Like someone mentioned earlier with the snake demon thing, do that but in a more distributed way so everyone can experience the role/privilege/fun. Not super committed to this idea, just always obligated to speak up for maximal fairness/fun.
If you haven't played a sorcerer recently, you likely have no idea what they are like.
And while theorycrafting can be fun, watching how things progress in game, and especially waking up and reading a report about the night before of serious awesomeness, leads me to believe sorcerers are about right, currently, and don't need further changes right now.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 12:30:10 PM
If you haven't played a sorcerer recently, you likely have no idea what they are like.
And while theorycrafting can be fun, watching how things progress in game, and especially waking up and reading a report about the night before of serious awesomeness, leads me to believe sorcerers are about right, currently, and don't need further changes right now.
Thanks Brokkr! I'd played one "relatively" recently - which is to say, post-main-guild-elimination. Haven't played since the most recent batch of tweaks though (which I know has been only within the past RL 6 months).
From my observation things changed, so I don't know the situation now. But when I played a merchant/sorcerer. I found myself "too" powerful. Like if I wanted to lame out, I could have 'anyone' killed. Out in the wilderness, or inside the city. It would call for some meh gameplay, but it was easily feasable. Hopefully they adjusted that path
The issue with sorcerer's is that they are no longer gods. They are no longer unkillable beyond a gankfest of 8 PCs.
And since their power is more limited, they are more reliant on other PCs. Whether magick, or mundane. Which ... Encouraged power ranger groups. On one hand, people are having fun playing together. On another hand, it encourages enclave building that begins to rival PC numbers to the entirety of Nak.
And that's ... A logical progression of events. Whether that's a good thing, or bad.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 01:05:13 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 12:30:10 PM
If you haven't played a sorcerer recently, you likely have no idea what they are like.
And while theorycrafting can be fun, watching how things progress in game, and especially waking up and reading a report about the night before of serious awesomeness, leads me to believe sorcerers are about right, currently, and don't need further changes right now.
Thanks Brokkr! I'd played one "relatively" recently - which is to say, post-main-guild-elimination. Haven't played since the most recent batch of tweaks though (which I know has been only within the past RL 6 months).
Hey, at least you didn't play one right out of the gate after the change! It has taken a few different tweaks to get them to the right place.
Quote from: Dar on July 14, 2020, 04:33:40 PM
From my observation things changed, so I don't know the situation now. But when I played a merchant/sorcerer. I found myself "too" powerful. Like if I wanted to lame out, I could have 'anyone' killed. Out in the wilderness, or inside the city. It would call for some meh gameplay, but it was easily feasable. Hopefully they adjusted that path
The issue with sorcerer's is that they are no longer gods. They are no longer unkillable beyond a gankfest of 8 PCs.
And since their power is more limited, they are more reliant on other PCs. Whether magick, or mundane. Which ... Encouraged power ranger groups. On one hand, people are having fun playing together. On another hand, it encourages enclave building that begins to rival PC numbers to the entirety of Nak.
And that's ... A logical progression of events. Whether that's a good thing, or bad.
One goal is to keep them from being unkillable gods. That won't be coming back if we can avoid it.
On the other hand, we see a lot of snowflake play from people sorcerer's interact with. If 99% of the population should be running screaming in fear from a sorcerer or attacking them or plotting their demise, and only 1% maybe accepting them....there may be a world perception problem when 99% are accepting them. We get arguments a lot of "but power.." "my pc is after the magic secrets..." "logically my character would..." as justifications. Which look a lot like player reasoning bleeding into their character, who should be culturally conditioned in nearly all cases to regard sorcerers as bad, terrifying, evil people that are going to result in bad things to anyone halfway sane. We understand the desire to hang out with the cool kids and see what mischief you can get into, of course, but those player desires sort of lead to a non-optimal outcome at odds with the game world at times, as you've mentioned. It can be "logical" but that doesn't mean it is good play or reflects at all well on the players that do it.
The issue there though is that with limited power, sorcerers 'require' companions. If before they were a power onto themselves and they could reinforce the need of 99% of populace being scared of them, or planning their demise. This is no longer the case. Now sorcerers "neeeeeeed" other people. Nor are they now able to safely antagonize entire geographical regions, as they are no longer self sufficient powerhouses with a "gtfo" spell. And the fear of them is muted as well as their powers now is akin to hedge witches who learned some scraps and tricks, instead of all powerful beings that rule city States.
Thing is, many who play sorcerers have played leaders before. They know how to entrall people with charm and awesomeness. And since they need people, they 'will' find ways to attract people to their cause. Although, often just "having" a cause is enough. Then as the group grows, the gravitas of numbers only becomes more alluring.
That is nothing new, but since at its root stems a sorcerer, the issue of them in definite need of companions to "survive" is an issue that was brought on by lower power.
I don't have solutions here. Just observations. Higher near godlike power - if a player is responsible, he/she themselves can reinforce the fear that sorcerers oughta entice. Without dooming their character.
Lower hedge witch (just a bit more powerful/interesting then an elementalist) power and the sorcerer's are no longer one man power that can afford to be a villain to most of the known world by themselves.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 06:18:34 PM
Quote from: Dar on July 14, 2020, 04:33:40 PM
The issue with sorcerer's is that they are no longer gods. They are no longer unkillable beyond a gankfest of 8 PCs.
And since their power is more limited, they are more reliant on other PCs.
those player desires sort of lead to a non-optimal outcome at odds with the game world at times, as you've mentioned. It can be "logical" but that doesn't mean it is good play or reflects at all well on the players that do it.
I think that this would be resolved by implementing the system I suggested in my original post. It would be very difficult for a single player to acquire all of the paths of sorcery, so it would be exceedingly rare, but the method required to make it happen will set them at odds with each other and reduce the "power ranger" groups a bit. And in the rare instance that a player does acquire all 4 paths, they would know up front that they will be expected to work with staff to create a world plot that has the ultimate conclusion of ending that PC, whether it be through PC death, or accomplishment of a goal that would basically require PC storage. But in the latter case, it's possible that this PC could be converted into an NPC in the game world somewhere. In this way, the player can feel accomplished that they left their mark on the gameworld while still preventing unkillable god characters from running around the game world for an undefined amount of time.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 06:18:34 PM
One goal is to keep them from being unkillable gods. That won't be coming back if we can avoid it.
We've already sort of gone with our own ideas, this last set of tweaks.
Unless you make it an absolute rule that people who play characters should avoid Sorcerers, then people are going to naturally gravitate towards them. Especially now. Tweaked or not, Sorcerers that players can apply for are a shadow of what they used to be, and thus, require people around them for relative safety.
Not only that, the change made to them actually doesn't make any sense, within the lore of the world. Sorcery is learned. You're essentially telling players, who apply for Sorcerers, that their Sorcerer chose not to learn any of the other paths. You've taken agency away from the players by doing that.
@Brokkr
Geenrally speaking, I agree with your assessment in how sorcerers should be treated and benefit from it for the equally snowflake reason that I rather avoid isolated and potentially bored PCs with overpowered skill sets which can kill or harrass my often mundane characters without much effort.
However, it still seems rather harsh given that are sometimes 20 people playing the game and 1 or 2 of them are probably sorcerers.
While sorcerers are clearly powerful, they do not currently feel as mysterious or rare as in the past. They are just one less source of interaction for my PC. Often the interaction I do hear about seem rather petty. Thus, I don't fault people who seek to play with these PC because it will hopefully prevents these PC from coming to seek interaction from me.
I really feel that at some point level 3 karma special app roles may need to be treated like sponsored roles with more specific direction and goals from staff. Probably with the option to play a mundane character on the side so that PCs aren't just roaming around trying to find someone to play with.
Quote from: Saellyn on July 14, 2020, 07:51:09 PM
Tweaked or not, Sorcerers that players can apply for are a shadow of what they used to be, and thus, require people around them for relative safety.
Quote from: Dresan on July 14, 2020, 08:04:46 PM
potentially bored PCs with overpowered skill sets which can kill or harrass my often mundane characters without much effort.
However, it still seems rather harsh given that are sometimes 20 people playing the game and 1 or 2 of them are probably sorcerers.
While sorcerers are clearly powerful
Getting mixed signals. Different experiences, or different expectations, hard to tell.
Quote from: Saellyn on July 14, 2020, 07:51:09 PM
Not only that, the change made to them actually doesn't make any sense, within the lore of the world. Sorcery is learned. You're essentially telling players, who apply for Sorcerers, that their Sorcerer chose not to learn any of the other paths. You've taken agency away from the players by doing that.
We took power away, certainly. Even the old help docs on Sorcerers, from before the change, hinted at a range of sorcerers, from those who learn a spell or two, to those who devote their lives to magick, to more powerful beings such as Dragons. All that has been done is that the line that demarks what you can play and what you cannot play has been changed. You could never progress to a Dragon, before, either. IC'ly what you call main guild sorcerers still exist. You just can't play them. You can play a variant of sorcerer that existed, but you couldn't play before, a person not quite as well versed so as to become a "main guild" sorcerer.
They seem powerful enough to me.
Yes perhaps not as powerful as they used to be but from what I've heard they don't have trouble killing people if they put their minds to it.
Just a difference in opinion on what is enough coded power is so not worth arguing.
More concerning is that people who chose to interact with these PCs are considered snowflakes. Do we need more PC in the game that mundane players just need to just avoid?
Right. Those docs hinted at a range. But all of those were choices. Those Sorcerers chose to only learn a spell or two. Others chose to learn entire paths. The limitation set on players to specific paths implies that the player character has, without input from the player, chosen not to pursue anything beyond that. That's all I'm saying. If that isn't the case, and there's something more to it than that, I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.
Quote from: Dresan on July 14, 2020, 08:52:22 PM
More concerning is that people who chose to interact with these PCs are considered snowflakes. Do we need more PC in the game that mundane players just need to just avoid?
Ok, snowflake wasn't really the right word to use. Its like, if 1 out of 10 characters aligned themselves with a sorc they meet, it would be that rare, interesting tack to take. If 9 out of 10 characters align themselves with a sorc they meet, it is maybe a unique experience for the character/player doing it, but it becomes on the whole contrary to the world. I understand that the player doesn't have the context to know if what they are doing is 1 out of 10 or if it is 9 out of 10. But staff does see that, and it is easy for us to fall into "Ugh another one". We understand the desire to engage in a unique opportunity. It just isn't a unique opportunity.
Because it is closer to 9 out of 10 than it is 1 out of 10.
Quote from: Saellyn on July 14, 2020, 09:43:37 PM
Right. Those docs hinted at a range. But all of those were choices. Those Sorcerers chose to only learn a spell or two. Others chose to learn entire paths. The limitation set on players to specific paths implies that the player character has, without input from the player, chosen not to pursue anything beyond that. That's all I'm saying. If that isn't the case, and there's something more to it than that, I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.
Ah, I see. I think we view it differently. Please let me know if I am wrong.
You view it as, if Zuzub learns enough, they have the potential to learn all of sorcery, because it is something that is learned.
I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they
still are limited by their inherent potential. Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons. A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.
The system hasn't changed, just the potential of the characters you are allowed to play.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 09:50:00 PM
I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they still are limited by their inherent potential. Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons. A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.
Yeah, this system was never indicated or alluded to in the documentation of arm for the majority of it's existence. It seemed pretty clear that it was primarily about learning, rather than potential.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but if what you're suggesting was the intended system and/or fluff around the documentation, those who put together that documentation failed sensationally.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 09:44:29 PM
Quote from: Dresan on July 14, 2020, 08:52:22 PM
More concerning is that people who chose to interact with these PCs are considered snowflakes. Do we need more PC in the game that mundane players just need to just avoid?
Ok, snowflake wasn't really the right word to use. Its like, if 1 out of 10 characters aligned themselves with a sorc they meet, it would be that rare, interesting tack to take. If 9 out of 10 characters align themselves with a sorc they meet, it is maybe a unique experience for the character/player doing it, but it becomes on the whole contrary to the world. I understand that the player doesn't have the context to know if what they are doing is 1 out of 10 or if it is 9 out of 10. But staff does see that, and it is easy for us to fall into "Ugh another one". We understand the desire to engage in a unique opportunity. It just isn't a unique opportunity.
Because it is closer to 9 out of 10 than it is 1 out of 10.
You are right. I cannot argue with this and agree. The number of times my character have been threatened with defilers from notable characters is really getting a bit nutty.
Though from my point of view, my character can't take a stroll through the rinth without seeing at least one karma 3 PCs he needs to avoid. :(
I don't think capping these characters will work well, but instead making the areas where mundanes are suppose to live less appealing for the higher level karma roles to operate openly.
If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.
Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.
So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already. Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead. Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.
If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves.
For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.
Quote from: LauraMars on July 14, 2020, 10:39:57 PM
If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.
Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.
So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already. Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead. Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.
If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves.
For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.
All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.
Quote from: LauraMars on July 14, 2020, 10:39:57 PM
If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.
Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.
So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already. Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead. Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.
If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves.
For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.
Cosigned.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one.
good
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her?
I don't know that would be pretty crazy if you did that. you probably wouldn't want to try. or only make friends with other mages because you're a filthy mage who kills normal people
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead?
It's almost like magic is risky or something and the whole gameworld is stigmatized against mages for some reason
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
It would be mostly unplayable.
Not seeing the downside.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.
"Not wanting to play a magicker because it's too dangerous" just confirms that most people who play magickers play it for the coded power. i.e. They're twinks.
I like the idea of weird side effects and/or different types of failures of casting spells.
I envision something like a "wound" code, that would be temporary/inconvenient to the players involved. Temporary could be 10 minutes / 10 hours, and could have a variety of coded effects, like a -5% roll on all crafting skills, or the inability to hold something in your off hand, or something that makes you lose stamina while standing.
..Or something that changes your accent so it's "raspy". Or makes all your clothes dyed red.
There's a lot of cool things that might be possible.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on July 14, 2020, 10:57:27 PM
Quote from: Lizzie on July 14, 2020, 10:43:52 PM
All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.
"Not wanting to play a magicker because it's too dangerous" just confirms that most people who play magickers play it for the coded power. i.e. They're twinks.
If backstab came with the risk of crit-stabbing yourself and dying to the crit, would you play someone whose primary skill is backstab? If bludgeoning came with a risk of knocking yourself out over the head every time it was your turn in the combat code to make a hit against your opponent, would you ever use a club?
If archery came with a risk of shooting yourself and dying to the arrow, would you ever use a bow?
If physician came with a risk of the bandage insta-killing the patient, would you ever want to use the bandage skill?
If tanning ever came with a risk of you falling into the tanning vat (theoretically there would be a virtual tanning vat) and dying to the noxious mixture in it, would you ever tan a hide?
No? Then why on earth would you expect anyone to ever WANT to play any other kind of guild/subguild where the failure for doing something constructive (such as healing) results in death? That makes no sense.
Magicks ARE dangerous already. They already come with risks. The existence of risk and danger is already in the documents. If people are choosing not to roleplay the recognition and respect/fear of those risks and danger, then submit a player complaint.
Backstab requires you to go after mobs who you might not kill and who might kill you instead.
Archery requires you to leave the walls (or at least invest in mateirals).
Raising bandage is hella dangerous.
Tanning requires you to get hides somehow. Also you can't kill people with a well-oiled scrap of leather so not really applicable.
I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.
Magick is dangerous to others. It isn't dangerous to the users. So the users are twinks.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on July 14, 2020, 11:13:18 PM
I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.
blow up mana regeneration and force elementalists to use gather. i'd never play one again.
QuoteWe took power away, certainly. Even the old help docs on Sorcerers, from before the change, hinted at a range of sorcerers, from those who learn a spell or two, to those who devote their lives to magick, to more powerful beings such as Dragons. All that has been done is that the line that demarks what you can play and what you cannot play has been changed. You could never progress to a Dragon, before, either. IC'ly what you call main guild sorcerers still exist. You just can't play them. You can play a variant of sorcerer that existed, but you couldn't play before, a person not quite as well versed so as to become a "main guild" sorcerer.
I'm fine with this generally. But I do wish there was a path for players to progress the role a bit more, even if that leads to an end of play or even retirement.
Something like a blue robe advancing to a red robe.
QuoteIts like, if 1 out of 10 characters aligned themselves with a sorc they meet, it would be that rare, interesting tack to take. If 9 out of 10 characters align themselves with a sorc they meet, it is maybe a unique experience for the character/player doing it, but it becomes on the whole contrary to the world. I understand that the player doesn't have the context to know if what they are doing is 1 out of 10 or if it is 9 out of 10. But staff does see that, and it is easy for us to fall into "Ugh another one". We understand the desire to engage in a unique opportunity. It just isn't a unique opportunity.
I've had this experience. As a general rule, almost nobody has reacted to my sorcerer with pants wetting terror. A small minority tried to faceroll them, but most would support them if they were friendly enough and occupied a similar anti-allanak alignment.
A lot of characters did roleplay discomfort around my character. Even while they were just sitting around a table and palling around.
I don't think the game needs more characters that people need to avoid.
I do believe that Redstorm, Luirs and Rinth need magickal defenses boosted in the same way allanak has if not even more. Each can have their unique reasons why those defenses work. (ex.silt sea)
Staff should then smack certain sponsored roles into action against known rogue magickers or other level 3 karma special apps.
Regardless this would emphasis the need for magick-related PCs to work harder to remain hidden or to just take a gem.
Quote from: tapas on July 15, 2020, 01:22:03 AM
QuoteWe took power away, certainly. Even the old help docs on Sorcerers, from before the change, hinted at a range of sorcerers, from those who learn a spell or two, to those who devote their lives to magick, to more powerful beings such as Dragons. All that has been done is that the line that demarks what you can play and what you cannot play has been changed. You could never progress to a Dragon, before, either. IC'ly what you call main guild sorcerers still exist. You just can't play them. You can play a variant of sorcerer that existed, but you couldn't play before, a person not quite as well versed so as to become a "main guild" sorcerer.
I'm fine with this generally. But I do wish there was a path for players to progress the role a bit more, even if that leads to an end of play or even retirement.
Something like a blue robe advancing to a red robe.
If your character has a goal and is using magick to obtain it, I don't see where this is the case. If your actual goal is power/knowledge/some sort of achievement/customization that revolves around your magick, you might be disappointed. Just like raising up fighting skills, stealth skills or crafting skills vs what you use them to do, we've seen more satisfying results when magick is a means than an end.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 09:50:00 PM
Quote from: Saellyn on July 14, 2020, 09:43:37 PM
Right. Those docs hinted at a range. But all of those were choices. Those Sorcerers chose to only learn a spell or two. Others chose to learn entire paths. The limitation set on players to specific paths implies that the player character has, without input from the player, chosen not to pursue anything beyond that. That's all I'm saying. If that isn't the case, and there's something more to it than that, I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.
Ah, I see. I think we view it differently. Please let me know if I am wrong.
You view it as, if Zuzub learns enough, they have the potential to learn all of sorcery, because it is something that is learned.
I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they still are limited by their inherent potential. Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons. A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.
The system hasn't changed, just the potential of the characters you are allowed to play.
For some reason, the concept of two variables or "dual systems of learning" resonates. I have no idea what OG sorcerers were like (evidently massively powerful), but playing at the "intersection" of learning + inherent potential makes a lot more sense than how I've heard the current system described before.
And I suppose my follow-up would have to be - on what scale were OG sorcerers disruptive? Local/regional/global? I'm assuming global from the various posts.
I think one of the reasons that people do align themselves with sorcerers as how powerful they are.
Your boss turned out to be a sorc, and has shown he's perfectly capable of murder if he has to, in the past. Do you run off and risk getting killed so you can't spill the beans, or do you just deal with it and thank the gods that he's on your side?
What if you're outside, the gates are closed and that sorc catches your rogue with their pants down? Attacking that guy would be suicide, and you won't get anywhere if you run away screaming. A lot of the time, it's a 'tiger in my house' situation. There's something very dangerous living near you. It's too strong to be killed, or at least too strong to be killed without a massive risk to yourself. Self-preservation dictates that you keep the tiger reasonable happy and well-fed so it doesn't eat your face instead.
Pretty heavy focus on sorcerers, elementalists though, are usually a lower karma thing.
It is stated nowhere in the docs that, in order to branch a spell earlier than a RL month or so, you need to keep casting the spell it branches from past its highest strength level (which in the docs is referred to as mon.) I did it the hard way for years, until someone was kind enough to tell me otherwise, based mostly, I think, on the fact that I, as a water witch, and me and a rukkian and a krathi were out on the sands, and the rukkian ingested cleaning fluid by accident. She began vomiting and the krathi asked me to heal her poison and I said I didn't know how. I simply kept healing her instead, this was back during classic full witches. For some reason the two of them just stood there and let me do that instead of going into the city to try to buy cures. I simply left after a while back into the city, because people poisoning a witch on purpose, especially the uninvolved-with-things mess that was that rukkian, was kind of weird.
Classic full witches were great. You had every spell in the elemental tree, save a few truly powerful spells that were kept by House Oash, reserved only for trusted human witches. Classic witches had one weakness; they started out being able to be killed by a typical merchant of the same age and stats. You would have had to have an old man merchant (an early Artisan) in order to be on equal fighting footing with a classic witch. Kind of strange, but a problem in most games nonetheless. In games and movies where magic is depicted as powerful enough not to need melee help, the magic itself is touted as a bad thing at all. Warcraft and Snow White and the Huntsman come to mind. This is an incredibly stupid attempt by old-time europeans to take the onus off of christianity and place it on our older religion, a form of wicca, which is based so heavily on magic, the seasons and farming, that it strongly suggests a deep-seated fear of powerful magic that white people shouldn't really have in their intellectual library. The real answer? Anti-feminism. Anyone who knows much about the religion that became Wicca in the seventies knows that it is a totally female-based religion, in which the horned god isn't even honored if the triple goddess of the moon isn't present, or at least some female deity honored in greater status than him by the coven. (I love studying religion. I'm also offering an answer to the age-old question of why good, awesome magic-users of -powerful- magic in games are even feared. Its one of those ridiculous hold-overs we know we should have gotten rid of. Yep. A woman online was feminist, yay. Don't mind me if I'm this upset about our game dying. I don't care about much besides my friends. And I've made a lot of friends here.)
I guess, after 9 years of playing this game off and on I admit I don't understand one of its main tenants. Fearing and hating sorcery sounds amazing, but I continually have difficulty not wanting to side myself with the magick users I meet (including the two outed sorcerers I met over that time), probably because a large amount is fairly benign. I think this is because, in large part, I really hope to glimpse the more fantastical elements of the game and these continue to remain elusive.
I have played magick users and find from the other side, if you are trying to enlist others in some sort of interesting magickal plot the fear and distrust flares up just enough for them to not be interested. In a game where things are accomplished by players (plural) this tends to kill it. This is anecdotal however.
I think that may be the issue of an incorrect amount of fear. In a game where we've seen just about everything and there's very little that's distinct between inix shell and kryl shell it becomes important to go out searching for the wild stuff. Sorcery appears like a bridge to the interesting things in the game. But this is a veiled non-start as the entire world will be against you and people (generally) are only comfortable playing someone tolerant of magicks and not a person absolutely along for the ride.
The solution, in my opinion, would be other shit to keep people busy. I would kill to have my character involved in some sort of dungeon crawl that didn't require me to be in the byn or tailing a templar, with worthwhile rewards. A sewer run does not equal a dungeon crawl... it would be easier to be afraid of magick if it was slightly more common and slightly more threatening (mummies, NPC rogue magick users, etc.). Don't forget the D&D roots.
Quote from: Cind on July 15, 2020, 05:02:22 AM
our older religion, a form of wicca, which is based so heavily on magic, the seasons and farming, that it strongly suggests a deep-seated fear of powerful magic that white people shouldn't really have in their intellectual library.
Because a lot of people playing the game don't know this I'll clarify something. Farming... is hard. You might spend a billion calories as men of fighting age attempting to farm poor land to get anything to grow, in a place as cold as europe where the sun shines half the year and not every year is a good year for crops. Hence the term 'good harvest.' A phrase of desperation in ancient to semi-modern europe. You know what fixed it? Modern fishing. And they are damn grateful for it, I imagine, but have probably forgotten that solutions they never knew could exist outside of farming. Women's magic was -honored- back then, they needed it to survive like hell.
Other regions of our world are not like this. Hell, there are rivers like the Nile and lakes like Lake Victoria in africa, which I know for a fact hated white colonialism, which screwed them over and put them back where they were in the seventies. That's probably part of the reason why they're doing so bad. The other part is lack of arable farming land, which is only large-scale in Uganda and South Africa (although Niger grows wild lettuce in large amounts, i.e. doesn't need to take care of it) so people who have genetic reasons to study africa can probably tell you that they don't think farming is such a big deal, except maybe in America. And it was all that was keeping people in Europe alive for a very, very long time. Britain is so bad about it that they can't grow anything there but wheat, the least reliable cold crop in the damn world. The romans even tried to grow vegetables there. Because the romans do all sorts of crazy shit they don't need to, they're roman. They couldn't make Britain a part of the roman empire for years. They tried to grow vegetables there instead. I wonder if it even worked.
That's not really, the reason, though, that white people stayed dead-ass last technologically for most of human history, a fact everyone born on earth probably knows, with how prevalent we've been in the last five hundred years. They got the religious fever that the romans left behind for them. The middle ages, the dark ages, our height on our own, became the Italian Renaissance, which became the British Renaissance, which led to Shakespeare directly. Europe was awed by their single smart brother, the romans. They wanted in on that religious shit, and for many years our only paintings were depictions of christianity. Rome brought us christianity. And for the last two or three years for the first time in history, Rome's coffers are in deficit. They are receiving fewer donations than it costs to maintain the Vatican. The world is burning, apparently, if such a thing is happening. I might post a few things about Korea later too, since these were such white posts they're burning my eyes. Being a halfblood of any kind is the coolest damn thing in the world. And it was. And someone decided to ruin that too. Because a long time ago, we were much closer to a normal game. And everyone loves playing a genuine half-elf. All they do is get shit outdoors to bring in the gates and act confused as fuck. And a couple years after I started playing, their lives had to automatically suck too. Don't mind the derail. All I wanted at first was to explain a very odd coincidence with regards to how white people probably actually feel about female magic at all. Those hard-ass christians in the bible belt who are hard-asses at all are oddly afraid of a magic religion that is mostly ritual and not much power. You know what, I'm going to stop. All I wanted to fucking talk about was clarifiying how white people feel about farming: No, don't joke, we need farming to survive! Guys, we don't. If someone is even talking about saving the farmlands in the game, there's a white player behind the screen. Or maybe Mayan or Aztec. Someone whose ancestors depended on farming land-locked crops to survive, and I kind of just named all three.
Could you please keep this on topic, Cind? This isn't the farming thread, this is the Sorcery thread. Unless you're attributing farming in the Vrun Driath to Sorcery?
That's a thought. Brokkr. How much of that wheat is actually wheat, and not Sorcerously Modified Organic Wheat-like Product?
Trying to get staff to do anything that isn't coded is like pulling teeth. ESPECIALLY if it's magic.
Quote from: AdamBlue on July 15, 2020, 06:53:38 AM
Trying to get staff to do anything that isn't coded is like pulling teeth. ESPECIALLY if it's magic.
my experience has been that if i approach staff with an attitude that's respectful of their time and energy i can expect to get the same in return. seems like pretty standard social interaction.
Quote from: Khorm on July 14, 2020, 11:32:29 PM
Quote from: BadSkeelz on July 14, 2020, 11:13:18 PM
I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.
blow up mana regeneration and force elementalists to use gather. i'd never play one again.
I played an elementalist who eventually was forced to use gather. It was hard-mode for sure but it was awesome. Would do it again. But ONLY if the guilds were full guilds. Otherwise it just isn't worth the expense.
What are you doing, Cind? The fear of magick in Zalanthas was due to defiling draining life from the land and living beings. It had zero to do with real life reasons for anything magick related.
I would very much prefer if you start a thread titled "Reasons for magick hate IRL" in an non arm related forum.
I think she's referring to other medias, which Arm does have its roots in.
Quote from: Heade on July 14, 2020, 10:00:01 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on July 14, 2020, 09:50:00 PM
I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they still are limited by their inherent potential. Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons. A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.
Yeah, this system was never indicated or alluded to in the documentation of arm for the majority of it's existence. It seemed pretty clear that it was primarily about learning, rather than potential.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but if what you're suggesting was the intended system and/or fluff around the documentation, those who put together that documentation failed sensationally.
I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.
Quote from: mansa on July 14, 2020, 11:02:57 PM
I like the idea of weird side effects and/or different types of failures of casting spells.
I think people are starting to mix the IC superstitions about magick with their OOC expectations about how the code works. Magick isn't supposed to be unreliable or chaotic. Those various things are IC superstitions born from things that magick can (non-codedly) do in the gameworld, but not generally by accident.
I think it would be better to add more variations to spells into the game, some less useful than others, rather than making these things some sort of critical failure result. We should bear in mind that things like summoning a flock of toads or something would be a result of magick tied to a specific element, and thus wouldn't make sense as a "failure" result when invoking a completely different element.
Quote from: Heade on July 15, 2020, 06:23:58 PM
I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.
There were obviously tiers of power in the original documentation. If you attribute that solely to how hard they tried to learn stuff, and I attribute it to that + inherent potential, that is simply a difference of opinion, not something wrong/right. The idea could be rooted in RL (I will never be as good with theoretical physics as Hawking, I simply lack the potential), D&D (you needed Intelligence to a certain level in order to cast circle levels of spells) or even Arm (stats are considered at their maximum potential and differ, different classes have different maximums in skill levels or even main class sorcerer vs subclass sorcerer vs people who special app'd to have one or two sorcerer spells + gather).
The more I hear about people wanting more coded power for sorcerers the more I think sorcerers shouldn't be special apps but rather sponsored roles.
With staff reviewing the players goals and plots they intend to bring to the game before providing support in the same way they do templars.
Quote from: Dresan on July 15, 2020, 07:28:16 PM
The more I hear about people wanting more coded power for sorcerers the more I think sorcerers shouldn't be special apps but rather sponsored roles.
With staff reviewing the players goals and plots they intend to bring to the game before providing support in the same way they do templars.
This sounds completely reasonable to me given the impact they can have. Saying this as someone who has loved every sorcerer I have met IG.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 15, 2020, 06:54:32 PM
Quote from: Heade on July 15, 2020, 06:23:58 PM
I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.
There were obviously tiers of power in the original documentation. If you attribute that solely to how hard they tried to learn stuff, and I attribute it to that + inherent potential, that is simply a difference of opinion, not something wrong/right. The idea could be rooted in RL (I will never be as good with theoretical physics as Hawking, I simply lack the potential), D&D (you needed Intelligence to a certain level in order to cast circle levels of spells) or even Arm (stats are considered at their maximum potential and differ, different classes have different maximums in skill levels or even main class sorcerer vs subclass sorcerer vs people who special app'd to have one or two sorcerer spells + gather).
Yes, I understand the idea of potential, but in the cases that you've cited, we had the coded game equivalent to the limiting factor in those cases: Intelligence.
Since the Wisdom stat represents the RL equivalent of intelligence, and in the cases that you've cited, that is the limiting factor, those prior tiers of power, in my opinion, were assumed to have a correlation with the limiting elements of intelligence and ambition. With lower intelligence, in arm, it takes longer to learn things. A lack of ambition can further limit those things. But when a character possesses both the intelligence and ambition to learn more, it seems strange and jarring to artificially limit them in the way that staff have currently chosen to do so. It feels gamey. If absolutely incredible intelligence isn't smart enough to learn a second or third path of sorcery, I find that a bit silly.
I understand that this sentiment isn't universal these days, but I'm here for RP first. Since Armageddon first became an RPI, I don't believe that it has ever been the job of the RP to mold itself around the code. Instead, I think it is the job of the code to facilitate the RP according to the documentation of the gameworld. In keeping with that line of thinking, I think that more options have almost universally been better for the RP environment than less options regardless of balance, feelings, or political correctness. I feel like this idea that code(and rules) are primarily there to facilitate RP, which is an idea fostered and enforced by past staff, has been losing traction under more modern staff.
I don't mean any of this in a disrespectful way. Staff of old also didn't seem to interact with the playerbase nearly as much, or be as open with staff positions as our current staff does. There has definitely been a give and take in that regard, so I'm not trying to be specifically critical of staffers. But you can absolutely adore someone, and still disagree with some of their ideas. That is, in essence, the situation here.
I think that the current staff is great, but I disagree with what appears to be their collective opinion on some things, such as this.
Quote from: Dresan on July 15, 2020, 07:28:16 PM
The more I hear about people wanting more coded power for sorcerers the more I think sorcerers shouldn't be special apps but rather sponsored roles.
With staff reviewing the players goals and plots they intend to bring to the game before providing support in the same way they do templars.
I'd be fine with that, if sorcerers were returned to full-guild. I'd also be fine with all full-guild elementalists be special app only, if they were returned.
I'd just be giddy and enthusiastic as hell if they were returned. I don't think the fantasy of the return of full-guild mages of any kind is reachable but more of a "if wishes were fishes" kind of thing.
Quote from: Lizzie on July 15, 2020, 07:51:03 PM
I'd also be fine with all full-guild elementalists be special app only, if they were returned.
I would be okay with special apps for full rukkians, Vivaduans, karthis and whirans. With the condition that they are gemmers because the game doesn't need anymore isolated roles and they have to pick a regular sub-guild.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 15, 2020, 06:54:32 PM
Quote from: Heade on July 15, 2020, 06:23:58 PM
I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.
There were obviously tiers of power in the original documentation. If you attribute that solely to how hard they tried to learn stuff, and I attribute it to that + inherent potential, that is simply a difference of opinion, not something wrong/right. The idea could be rooted in RL (I will never be as good with theoretical physics as Hawking, I simply lack the potential), D&D (you needed Intelligence to a certain level in order to cast circle levels of spells) or even Arm (stats are considered at their maximum potential and differ, different classes have different maximums in skill levels or even main class sorcerer vs subclass sorcerer vs people who special app'd to have one or two sorcerer spells + gather).
Is this an actual thing? Being able to special app just a couple Sorcerer spells + gather? How would that work? Would staff work with the player to determine what spells they get, or do they pick a path the spells come from, or does staff randomly assign two spells or x spells?
Quote from: Saellyn on July 16, 2020, 09:23:32 AM
Quote from: Brokkr on July 15, 2020, 06:54:32 PM
Quote from: Heade on July 15, 2020, 06:23:58 PM
I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.
There were obviously tiers of power in the original documentation. If you attribute that solely to how hard they tried to learn stuff, and I attribute it to that + inherent potential, that is simply a difference of opinion, not something wrong/right. The idea could be rooted in RL (I will never be as good with theoretical physics as Hawking, I simply lack the potential), D&D (you needed Intelligence to a certain level in order to cast circle levels of spells) or even Arm (stats are considered at their maximum potential and differ, different classes have different maximums in skill levels or even main class sorcerer vs subclass sorcerer vs people who special app'd to have one or two sorcerer spells + gather).
Is this an actual thing? Being able to special app just a couple Sorcerer spells + gather? How would that work? Would staff work with the player to determine what spells they get, or do they pick a path the spells come from, or does staff randomly assign two spells or x spells?
Special applications are for anything that isn't normal.
i.e.
"Hey Staff, for my next character, I'd like them to be taught two spells by their father who was a sorcerer, who also taught them how to gather from the land. I'd like to get fireball and fly. But no other spells. kthx'
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
It's important to remember that sorcerers (and elementalists) were never great.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
My question is what do you intend to do with this coded power that doesn't involve harassing and murdering the rest of the playerbase?
Quote from: Dresan on July 16, 2020, 10:52:52 AM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
My question is what do you intend to do with this coded power that doesn't involve harassing and murdering the rest of the playerbase?
Isn't that what sorcerers are meant to do, though? You know, to enforce the fear of magick and create danger and whatnot?
No. Harassing and murdering the player-base doesn't require that much coded power.
I am sincerely curious to what the purpose of having all this coded power is? Just to be able to kill or harass anyone that stumbles upon your remote cave?
Quote from: Dresan on July 16, 2020, 10:52:52 AM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
My question is what do you intend to do with this coded power that doesn't involve harassing and murdering the rest of the playerbase?
You could ask the same of any player with a noble role... I don't see your point. My Vivaduan could try to bring oceans of clean water to the Known after the visit the plane of water. My rukkian could cover the land with statues of himself. If you think that after your PC becomes a red robe or elemental that all they can do is execute other players then you lack imagination.
Quote from: Dresan on July 16, 2020, 11:08:09 AM
No. Harassing and murdering the player-base doesn't require that much coded power.
I am sincerely curious to what the purpose of having all this coded power is? Just to be able to kill or harass anyone that stumbles upon your remote cave?
This sounds like a belief resulting directly from the glass ceiling itself. In a world with limitless magick the only "project" that's codedly feasible is killing other players using the limited tools that are implied by limited knowledge of unlimited magick.
For more information I suggest looking at a D&D forum regarding what goals a wizard can have and overlook the ones that involve PVP or killing an entire species or something.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 11:10:04 AM
You could ask the same of any player with a noble role... I don't see your point. My Vivaduan could try to bring oceans of clean water to the Known after the visit the plane of water. My rukkian could cover the land with statues of himself. If you think that after your PC becomes a red robe or elemental that all they can do is execute other players then you lack imagination.
This is what i was looking for...you don't need coded power to achieve this, you need staff support.
Even if you have all the spells in the game it won't help you achieve much other then being harder to kill and having the ability to be much more annoying to the rest of the playerbase.
If the reason you wanted all this coded power was to be harder to kill and be able to harass and murder the player-base without consequence then yes coded power will help you achieve this goal. If you instead wanted your magicker to turn zalanthas into waterworld then you don't need anymore coded power, you just need to be in strong cahoots with a staff member. :P
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
I think your long term goal could be literally anything. I don't think it means that you're going to meet that goal just because you want to. I feel like if every character were able to meet their goals the game would be pretty flat and uninteresting.
I'm not super enthusiastic about the ceiling myself, but brokkr at least made a point that I hadn't thought about and that I can appreciate - have magick be a means to an end instead of being just the end.
Ah. I see. Those two are inextricably combined in my mind. There's simply no way it would be appropriate for a touched Krathi to summon a volcano, nor one of the third-elementals we currently have, likely nor a full krathi. An elemental on the other hand could feasibly do some really wild world plots. Like a Red robe could.
Quote from: Khorm on July 16, 2020, 12:14:09 PM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
I think your long term goal could be literally anything. I don't think it means that you're going to meet that goal just because you want to. I feel like if every character were able to meet their goals the game would be pretty flat and uninteresting.
I'm not super enthusiastic about the ceiling myself, but brokkr at least made a point that I hadn't thought about and that I can appreciate - have magick be a means to an end instead of being just the end.
I agree somewhat, but why is "I wanna be the best kisser" a better goal than "I wanna learn all magicks". A good DM will try and make the world respond and accommodate your goals. A dwarf who wants to kiss will likely fond people to kiss and a dwarf who wants to learn magick, and seeks it out will accomplish that goal unless killed in the process. Same as when they try to kiss Lord Evenar Kasix. That's kind of the point of a MUD over WoW. The "real world responses". If my character could learn more magick in the world then why can't they?
Lol all this talk of potential sounds a lot like phrenology. Not that I'm trying to add to any of the bait discussions.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
Should the *character* know that it's even possible, or was ever possible, to learn every spell? Should the *character* know that it's possible, or was ever possible, to become an elemental? Would they even know what that means?
Quote from: Lizzie on July 16, 2020, 12:58:53 PM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on July 16, 2020, 10:34:10 AM
I'm confused what a long term goal for a sorcerer could be with the current glass ceilings in place. Like if you make a dwarf sorcerer should it be frowned upon to have their focus be to learn every spell? That simply seems like a natural progression to me.
And elementalists? Same question. Should a dwarf focus shy away from stuff like becoming an elemental, or visiting the plane of Drov, or becoming the most powerful Krathi? It appears to me these high magick plots are frowned upon in the most current game. Should they even be something worth pursuing if they will get likely no staff support, despite it being feasible within the world of play?
Should the *character* know that it's even possible, or was ever possible, to learn every spell? Should the *character* know that it's possible, or was ever possible, to become an elemental? Would they even know what that means?
Sorcery isn't innate. It's learned. If there are sorcerer kings then you KNOW that there is more to be gained.
Elementalists have a connection with their element. They can literally summon creatures of their element to their aid. They get knowledge about their element from their element. If you are playing a PC who chooses to misunderstand that there are creatures beyond themselves then that is your right, just like you can play a character who can barely speak or a mutant shunned by society. I doubt any of those are the norm, however.
i didn't really pay much/any attention to the original discussion around the shrinking of classes and potential. brokkr may have already articulated the reasoning and I missed it.
having said that I think that narrowing the scope of the game probably accomplishes at least a couple goals from a DM standpoint.
it takes less energy to maintain - mudders are an aging demographic and people are probably a lot less likely to put in an unhealthy amount of hours to make insane shit for the unique logins/week.
favoritism - you get to cull the idea that staff are picking pets to run around like quick/gin/whatever to do amazing shit while everyone else is grebber 1-200. everyone is on a level playing field. (I know people still get dope shit to play around with but it feels less extreme these days)
it seems to me that steps are being taken to make the game more manageable and therefore more sustainable from the administrative side.
I could be way the fuck off base, but these things don't really change the fundamental feel of the game to me.
I want to see these sorcs work together. Nak versus four sorcs.
What is interesting to me on Dresan's "harass and kill" Is that...that is EXACTLY what the playerbase does to them. I mean sure, that is backed by docs and all, but I have seen people play...or try to play, totally benign sorcs who have an objective to help like all the good peoples of the world...and so, they had to try and gain more power to protect themselves from the weak minded plebs who could not see the big picture.
Keep in mind, the docs do not say that a sorc or other mages is in fact EVIL...but instead the world at large "sees" them as evil. You have the freedom to play your sorc or mage as you see fit but people not playing sorcs or mages don't..because ORANGE MAN...I mean...MAGIC BAD.
Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy running away from or plotting to kill every sorc my PC knows about...but the game docs make it so that anybody playing any of them HAVE to be on a quest for power.
Now over the years the game has swung back and forth between UBER magick and UBER mundane...over and over again...Brokkr has impressed me in that for the first time ever in the game, he has managed to make ALL classes and ALL subs equally lame.
In the Immortal words of Syndrome.... "With everyone super, no one will be"
Quote from: X-D on July 18, 2020, 03:25:06 AM
Brokkr has impressed me in that for the first time ever in the game, he has managed to make ALL classes and ALL subs equally lame.
In the Immortal words of Syndrome.... "With everyone super, no one will be"
Just curious but what do you feel makes all the classes/subclasses lame, that they are strong in their own way?
It's not so bad.
Instead of Nak templars vs Tuluk templars. It's city templars vs wilderness templars. And wilderness templars are much more powerful codedly then most templars and a lot less limited and constrained.
I do not think they are strong in own way, my experience so far with 4 main classes is...they suck....3 subclasses...balls.
Let us look at...for instance, something Brokkr said in the past, and this paraphrase as I am not going to look it up. "We want to make it so people have to work together and make the base classes better...some legacy classes don't have for instance scan, so they cannot go after the PCs they should be able to go after." So, here we have at least 4 classes who have traded skinning (or other skills) For a totally worthless scan skill. Oh you want to fight, that is fine, we made this totally badass fighter...can he do anything else...nope...you HAVE to take a support sub or...you are screwed....depend on others...don't make me laugh. Oh, Stalker, yeah, he is great in sneak and hide and can even craft some things...viable...sure, long as you plan on running away.
Stalker, scout, miscreant and infiltrator are, I am sure the most taken classes..they are abysmal in pvp and barely viable in pve...and what is really funny is, they are the 4 classes almost viable with no need to involve others. Brokkr would have been more truthful if he would have said, "if you want to make a powerful PC you will have to make painful choices and depend on others for survival."
Is the Infiltrator/Scout/Soldier line actually that incredibly weak? High advanced weapon skills is nothing to scoff at, especially when a lot of people who pick Enforcer/Raider/Fighter won't cap out and it will still be enough to kill pretty much anyone else.
I think staff did mention they wanted the classes to be split so not a single class was good at everything.
However this worked better with some classes then others.
For example, in my eyes infiltrator is a class that is good at nothing because the nature of the skills are so often hit or miss, either its master or its useless. Scout is slightly better off in this regard mostly because their skills aren't all pk related. Stalker/miscreant are so popular because stealth is strong. Heck, I used to pick slipknife with my rangers simply because of the master sneak/hide. I have zero interest in it now without it.
Staff already stated stealth is not in a good state so I expect to see some changes someday, whether it will help or utterly ruin some classes/game is a discussion for when those changes happen.
Quote from: Lotion on July 19, 2020, 09:20:44 AM
Is the Infiltrator/Scout/Soldier line actually that incredibly weak? High advanced weapon skills is nothing to scoff at, especially when a lot of people who pick Enforcer/Raider/Fighter won't cap out and it will still be enough to kill pretty much anyone else.
That's kind of the thing: "high advanced" weapons don't count for much if you're stuck at journeyman forever unless you're extremely fortunate to have constant access to a sparring partner who is a) a long-lived warrior, b) matches your playtimes, and c) willing to spar with you regularly, i.e. numerous times every RL day for probably a good two months straight. Without that at your disposal, you're unlikely to ever reach advanced at all. If you're in a sparring clan, your unarmed training days will see your offense outpace your weapon skills until you can no longer raise them. If you're trying to go it alone in the wilderness, there's just nothing you can realistically fight that'll dodge you past the midway point.
The light-combat classes master so few things that it's really hard to justify playing them. Of the few skills they do master, their heavy counterpart masters all the same ones with an even higher cap. It's hard to feel excited about scout when raider is available. A lot of the skills that the light-combat classes get at advanced are skills that are of very little value below master, such as stealth, scan and poisoning. And since extended subguilds no longer consume karma, you can just roll enforcer/slipknife every time and start with backstab which goes higher than an infiltrator's. Neither class has good enough stealth to make serious use of it, so the infitrator having better stealth counts for very little.
What does soldier get that fighter doesn't? Some very shrugworthy weaponcrafting skills. Slightly higher watch, when half the basic subguilds give advanced watch. Slightly higher forage and cooking? That's what you get in exchange for lowering the caps of almost all your combat skills from master to advanced? Parry alone is so important that giving up a level in that skill completely redefines your character's potential. Soldiers don't even get ride, which is frankly rude. Are you gonna roll up an infiltrator to play an assassin who fails to hide 20% of the time, can't rely on sneak and gets spotted by everyone with master scan even when you do succeed? And you don't even get the highest cap on backstab?
None of the light-combat classes are the best at anything. There isn't one single skill between the three of them that they get higher than anyone else. They excel at nothing and take a big hit to a ton of their character-defining skills in exchange for wishy-washy stuff that you could get with any given subclass. At no point since the new classes were introduced have I ever had a character concept in mind where it made any sense whatsoever to pick infiltrator, scout or soldier. The classes above and below them are just objectively superior. If having advanced sneak/hide, scan and stuff like that was of more use, maybe it would be different. But these skills are very close to worthless at that level.
Like it or not, Armageddon definitely has a metagame. You're not forced to follow it, but if you don't, you simply have to accept that your character isn't as codedly effective as other people's characters. Your scout might be perfectly adequate at hunting small and medium animals, but are you gonna try a dujat with your advanced parry? Are you gonna pay a thousand 'sid for a peraine gland and gamble it against your advanced poisoning skill? Are you gonna stealth your way into a dangerous area with your advanced sneak and hide? Are you excited about your master archery when every raider with 10+ days played is even better at it? And what exactly
can your scout do that other classes couldn't?
When Brokkr revealed that the light-combat classes are not in fact the best at backstab and archery but rather behind the heavies, I was shocked. I had taken it for granted that infiltrators were the best backstabbers and scouts the best archers because that's the only way it makes sense to have classes whose skillsets are so impoverished. I actually thought it was pretty clever design that if you wanted to be
the best at these two notoriously deadly skills, you didn't get to be awesome at anything else. It was a sensible sacrifice. But nope, enforcers and raiders are better, and they master every other combat skill on top.
Quote from: Greve on July 19, 2020, 11:28:33 AM
Like it or not, Armageddon definitely has a metagame. You're not forced to follow it, but if you don't, you simply have to accept that your character isn't as codedly effective as other people's characters.
I agree with everything Greve said.
I just want to add that the problem with Armageddon's meta is not just in regards to how powerful your PC is coded or just about winning the game but rather that the opportunities for fun things you can be doing in the game begin to diminish once you begin to move away from the metas.
The most extreme example i can give is playing city elves. Where even the most basic things any of the other races can do is a challenge for you. Additionally, c-elves are completely out of place and ineffective in most of the clans they can join. Additionally staff will not be rewarding you or going out of their way to make the game more fun just you just because you playing celves. If you don't like it you can basically store and roll something else.
Since we are responsible for creating and finding our own plots it unfortunately makes the meta even more important especially when you do not have ample time to commit to the game. At the end we all have busy lives after all and can always find better things to invest our time on.
and despite all of this, people still play and enjoy these classes/races. not everyone gives a shit that raider is mathematically better than scout, or that humans are easier to play than elves.
i'm a bit of a twink when i play the game, but at a certain point it boils down to what i want to play and aesthetic. i can appreciate that some people want to play the apex chad but i think the people that are able to milk the most out of the meta are probably in the minority and are going to exploit the strongest options regardless of balance.
to bring it back into the realm of magick I think a similar approach is that if I roll a sorcerer or whatever it's because I want to play that role within the world of armageddon, not because I expect to be able to punch holes in steel plates.
i don't know if i'm making a point that's worth a shit or not, but i think a balance between individual PC power and world cohesion is critically important.
Quote from: Khorm on July 19, 2020, 01:04:07 PM
and despite all of this, people still play and enjoy these classes/races. not everyone gives a shit that raider is mathematically better than scout, or that humans are easier to play than elves.
There are people who RP being blind and mute beggars/mutants on the street. If that is your thing by all means feel free and enjoy.
Equally, you can't blame the people who have rolled humans, dwarves or half-elves and joined the byn who are riding out of the gate about to have fun with a staff supported adventurer. :-\
Again I just chose the most extreme example, most things are in that bad of a state.
I still play...for the time being...I do NOT enjoy these classes..I play despite of them not for them. And if I do not find a combination I actually enjoy..I will stop playing...which is in the high probability. The only thing that has kept me even this long is the rest of the players...for the most part ya rock.
Quote from: X-D on July 19, 2020, 01:41:53 PM
I still play...for the time being...I do NOT enjoy these classes..I play despite of them not for them. And if I do not find a combination I actually enjoy..I will stop playing...which is in the high probability. The only thing that has kept me even this long is the rest of the players...for the most part ya rock.
Do you mean the classes as a whole or the light-combat ones? Because overall, there's several classes that are significantly better than their old counterparts. The heavies are way better than warrior was and miscreant is a huge upgrade over both the pickpocket and the burglar. There's nothing quite as versatile as the old ranger, but that guild was really too good anyway, and instead we have raider and stalker who are better than rangers were at combat and non-combat skills respectively, so I think that's an acceptable tradeoff. The thing I really miss is something that can compare to the assassin, but staff seems adamant to separate high-level stealth and true deadliness for mundanes. Maybe that's for the best if no changes to stealth are planned.
On the whole, the new classes aren't that bad, it's just the light-combat category that falls short. Well, and the light-merch ones too, but those are clearly flavor classes meant for players who don't care about coded potential, so that's fine. Most of all I think there are just too many classes, because there aren't
that many skills in the game and a lot of them only really work within a fairly narrow scope, so it feels like there was enough to get half a dozen solid classes and then the rest fall victim to the fact that they all have to be different enough to justify existing. It clearly wasn't possible to make them both sufficiently different from the rest and good enough to be balanced. Some players don't care about balance, but that doesn't make those classes balanced.
In hindsight I think I liked the old guilds better, mainly because all of them were clearly focused around a distinctive playstyle and got the full skillset to excel at it. There's a number of good classes amongst the new ones, though. Oddly, there's also a few classes now that are pretty bad at the very job that the class is named for. But apparently we're not supposed to associate the scout class with the act of scouting or the soldier class with the soldier profession, because reasons.
One big downside I've noticed, however, is when you join the Byn or something and you can clearly see that many of the PCs are scouts, soldiers and stalkers who just don't cut it for sparring. Compared to the days when almost everyone in the combat clans were warriors and rangers, sparring has taken a huge hit with the new classes. You end up spending so much time sparring against people whose skills and skillgain coefficients are just not good enough in the long term to yield continued improvement for others. The result is that everyone's progress is bottlenecked by access to the handful of players who picked raider, fighter or enforcer.
I think similar to re-roll undo, I really wish there was class/sub-class undo. I would make the class/sub-class undo within 24 hours played. It resets your skills to the new class combination, and you start over again.
I often pick the wrong combination, because it takes within that 24 hours played to understand what a role might require of you, what you will be doing with the PC, and what potentials you want to either maximize or focus on.
I really wish this was doable. I haven't played nearly any/all of the class and sub-class combinations, and find I make the wrong choice almost every time for the role the PC will be inhabiting. I play despite that, but yeah...It'd be nice.
Quote from: Greve on July 19, 2020, 11:28:33 AM
Quote from: Lotion on July 19, 2020, 09:20:44 AM
Is the Infiltrator/Scout/Soldier line actually that incredibly weak? High advanced weapon skills is nothing to scoff at, especially when a lot of people who pick Enforcer/Raider/Fighter won't cap out and it will still be enough to kill pretty much anyone else.
but are you gonna try a dujat with your advanced parry?
Not sure if you have time frame stipulations here, but I have done so with a stalker, mounted and solo. I haven't played scout, but if it is better at combat than a stalker, then this shouldn't be an issue. I know this might be a little nit picky for the point you were trying to make, so I'm putting this out there just in case a reader wishes to accomplish such a goal with at minimum stalker potential in combat, and not as an argument against what you were trying to accomplish in your post.
Edited to add: Human Stalker.
You can totally take a stalker and kick ass. Frankly, I am embarassed for X-D, he always bragged about being incredible at raising combat skills. Just turns out it was the guilds, not the skills.
It is true that light combat is objectively 'less good' than the other groups, but you can definately also bring it to a ridiculous level. All you people do is complain and whine instead of putting a little time in.
Is a fighter of the same days played as a stalker almost always going to win? Yup. The fighter will hands down smash the stalker, but that is by design. The stalker shouldn't be engaging the class designed for straight up combat like that.
Big lol to this newfound debate.
A merchant could kill someone, if they trained their offence and defence high enough. Also, a merchant could kill someone based off their wit and/or resources.
A stalker should never be able to handle a heavy, even light combat in a straight up fight. That said they have an ARSENAL of tools and weapons to get shit done in the wilderness, just like a miscreant does in the city.
You're only handicapped by your lack of vision, intelligence or skill. And you don't need playability to bring a character to life. It just ensures your characters success.
That said, light combats are definitely trash. Heavies got all the love, they made a PP/burg/assassin for the wilderness and city, a few flavor crafters for those who care to, and then gaslighted a tier of "light combatants" that are crappier than everyone and everything else, effort included minus smarts.
Quote from: Doublepalli on July 19, 2020, 06:28:13 PM
That said, light combats are definitely trash. Heavies got all the love, they made a PP/burg/assassin for the wilderness and city, a few flavor crafters for those who care to, and then gaslighted a tier of "light combatants" that are crappier than everyone and everything else, effort included minus smarts.
I don't think this sort of flaming is appropriate. Staff volunteers to do their jobs, take time away from their real lives, and work very hard. This sort of attitude, attacking their intelligence doesn't encourage them to do all of these things for us for free.
Sometimes, it takes a bit of trial and error when you're basically rebuilding an entire system from the ground up. While I agree that I don't think the light combat classes are quite up to par, I don't think attacking the intelligence of the architects of that system is deserved. I think we have some very intelligent people on staff, even if I don't always agree with them.
So....it takes months and months and months of similar posts to get them to "read" them? Mm. You lost me
QuoteDo you mean the classes as a whole or the light-combat ones? Because overall, there's several classes that are significantly better than their old counterparts. The heavies are way better than warrior was and miscreant is a huge upgrade over both the pickpocket and the burglar.
I mean as a whole. And other then miscreant, which essentially is pp and burgler put together and so is a better class...I do not agree that say fighter is better then warrior...raider and enforcer certainly are not.
As to being able to "kick ass" With a stalker...Heh, no. Did I PK with my stalker, yes...was it more likely that I was going to have some sort of running battle across half the known if the other player even had a bit of a clue and still they would get away...yes. Is it a "strong" Class in some ways...I suppose, but that does not make it a good class or one that I enjoy. Hell, Stalker would be the closest to enjoyment I have had on a new class, anemic...very...semi-versatile...yes....good...Nah.
Also, sorta on topic. I have tried 3 magick subs...one of them I would put in the horrible category...mostly because it has spells that sucked with the legacy class...at least one of those spells should have been removed from the game more then 20 years ago since it was put in when Halflings, gith and mantis were still playable and even then only had marginal use. Another sub I would rate as...Meh...not horrible but still not worth ever using. And another that I would say is OK...but you are likely to have more fun just playing a mundane.
One of my biggest problems with the new mage subs is that, You have a very reduced number of spells...and so, every one of those spells should be at least somewhat useful on something or they are a waste. With legacy mages that did not matter as much. You have 22 spells and 4 are worthless well, you still have 18 spells...not to mention there was better synergy. But if you get the same worthless spells AND lose any synergy with the rest it turns into sure my list has 12 spells on it but 4 are the same old useless ones 1 is a new worthless one and another plus a skill I would have needed with the legacy class I don't with this one because it does not even have the spells that would require it. Yeah, 5 maybe useful spells is what you are trading who knows what more useful skills and the hatred of the world.
Just a question to staff if they care to answer:
Are these discussions useful to you guys? I know we've seen you state that magick and the classes are in a state that, for the time being, is acceptable and unlikely to change. Is this feedback helpful, as it appears like griping and arguing over what is the best way to handle something that's already been essentially decided on doesn't seem useful, especially if there is not intent on you guy's part to make these sorts of changes within a year or two of this thread.
This is a weird question and not meant to be offensive, but are threads like these primarily just the "opium of the people" here? Where everyone dumps their opinion and it's not helpful and nothing changes (in a manner informed by this thread)? Because that's how it appears to me and I'd be completely fine just being told how it is so long as I know that's just how it's gonna be. Like the community doesn't get a say in the direction of triple A games they just get to decide if they like it or not and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what they thought about the DLC or whatever.
How far are we in the hash marks of gripes about current magickers threads? 4? 6? How about gripes about content that's been changed/removed? 10? 20? I'd prefer to hear a hardline answer stating we can stop making these discussions and retreading well trodden ground.
Quote from: X-D on July 20, 2020, 03:28:36 AM
I mean as a whole. And other then miscreant, which essentially is pp and burgler put together and so is a better class...I do not agree that say fighter is better then warrior...raider and enforcer certainly are not.
I don't understand how you can say that. The heavies get basically everything warriors got plus some other stuff on top. The only exception is the branched weapon skills that have been discontinued, but if we're being honest, these were nearly unusable. Almost nobody ever got a chance to raise those to a level where they were worth using over the weapon skill they branched from. With the changes made to skillgains in recent years that have invalidated things like gortok dens and encumbered sparring, almost nobody would be able to branch them at all anymore.
Enforcer gets master backstab and sap. Not just master but the highest cap of all, above infiltrator. They get climb for free, which is really nice. They get several ranged skills at master, warriors didn't get any. They get low advanced stealth skills which, while not exactly great, do have some niche uses such as sneaking past guards or hiding from soldiers in city streets. As far as I can tell, the only thing they don't get that warriors got is journeyman forage and bandage, which... let's be real, who cares. And of course razors/pikes/etc.
Raider gets the highest ranged combat skills in the game, higher than scout and much higher than warriors did. They get climb, advanced ride for free, advanced direction sense, low advanced stealth which really helps in hunting autoflee animals, they get advanced scan which may be useless for spotting players but will help you in hunting animals that hide. It's a wilderness warrior that doesn't cost you a subclass like the old warrior did. Playing a wilderness warrior nearly required that you take outdoorsman or hunter or something so you could climb out of pits and get through a sandstorm.
And I think fighter is the worst of the three heavies precisely because it's very close to the old warrior. Hack and riposte just aren't that good, but they still get the full warrior package as well as master ranged skills. I don't see what this class gets that brings you to rate it higher than enforcer and raider, but the fact remains that aside from the branched weapon skills, it's just a better warrior. It's pretty much exactly a copy of the warrior but with master ranged skills.
And in place of the special weapon skills, which really weren't anywhere near as significant as people tend to believe due to the prohibitive difficulty of raising them even to journeyman, the heavy-combat classes get a higher cap on their weapon skills than warriors did. The special weapon skills had a higher cap than the basic ones for warriors, and Brokkr has revealed that the heavies now cap their weapon skills at that level, higher than warriors did. While this is unlikely to matter for most characters, it's still a thing.
So unless you care more about the branched weapon skills than most players ever had a reason to do, the heavy-combat classes are objectively superior to warriors in all other ways.
I do miss the old elementalist and sorcerer main guilds, for sure. The subclasses would have been a fine addition to the game but are a poor replacement. Magick just doesn't seem noteworthy anymore because its wielders are 90% raider (or whatever) and 10% mage. The spells are a sidenote to characters that depend primarily on their mundane skills, and the spell selections aren't deep enough to live the life of a mage. You just get one or two neat tricks and a few largely useless flavor spells.
The spells with the biggest impact now are the ones that buff your stats and combat skills. I miss the days when you'd meet mages. It was just more interesting to worry about possibly having to fight an elkrosian than to worry about fighting an enforcer who can cast Strength. Magick has become a dull affair that doesn't have enough of a presence on the playing field. If we'd kept the old spellcaster guilds, I'd have been perfectly happy with the subclass ones, but it's not a swap I'm satisfied with.
The only difference between Warrior and Fighter, fundamentally, is Warrior got skinning and Fighter did not. Fighter, other than that, is superior to Warrior in just about every way.
Hack and riposte are exceptionally good if you know how to use them, as are most skills that are combat related. It's in the application.
Fighter also gains off and def significatly faster than old warrior did.
Quote from: LauraMars on July 14, 2020, 10:39:57 PM
If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.
...
For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.
This is a dynamic worth exploring (rather than rehashing mundane guild balance, guys, c'mon).
Laura, you said "for bonus points;" but to me that caveat (casters are immune to each other's side effects) is what makes the whole thing viable. Or--for bonus bonus points--perhaps the most opposed elements (suk-krath vs drov, whira vs. ruk, whatever) are susceptible to each other's ailments.
Here's a version that is fairly easy to code:
- Add another coded disease.
- Give non-magick PCs a small chance of catching it whenever they're in the same room as a magicker.
- Symptoms could be coded however you want...lame, freaky, mildly annoying, debilitating.
- Any magicker is immune, except nobody's immune to nilazis and defilers.
Bonus points:
- Reduce the chance of catching it in crime-coded areas inside Allanak. (Yes, I am specifically trying to support gemmers in bars while punishing the mundanes who want to jump their bones. :-*)
- Anyone wearing a metal ring is immune.
- Moderately contagious before symptoms begin (thanks for the idea, Covid!).
- Removable by Vivaduan spell.
I love the idea of magick having some kind of an effect on those nearby. But wearing anything metal makes you immune and cures it.
Touching the dragon statue would cure you from the magical ailments. Tribes that have mages have either learned to live with the curse, have all been mutated a bit due to it in ways unknown to others, or have a metal relic that they periodically touch.
Quote from: Dar on July 20, 2020, 05:42:54 PM
I love the idea of magick having some kind of an effect on those nearby. But wearing anything metal makes you immune and cures it.
Touching the dragon statue would cure you from the magical ailments. Tribes that have mages have either learned to live with the curse, have all been mutated a bit due to it in ways unknown to others, or have a metal relic that they periodically touch.
Interesting idea. The way in which high born types that tend to possess metals are
already protected and immune to things like this is incredibly frustrating, but of course, in keeping with the setting and the theme. Part of what is poignant about plagues is how it can take the lives of the rich just as it can take the lives of the poor. But thinking about how to make this further unique and tied to the setting is great, certainly I would welcome
superstitions about metals curing things if nothing else.
It almost seems fitting that Hthe Highborn would come with innate protections from the nefarious curses that the lower down witches posses.
It's almost like they knew about it and those that matter get protected.
Maybe app in an Oash and make this your project ;)
That being said, I believe that magickers already have a distinct social disadvantage. No need to add a coded one too. I've semi recently been in a position that showed that yes, codedly, they are powerful. No, that doesn't matter in a gameworld which, in most locations, treat you like a pariah. Power or no.
I personally like the fact that most the superstition about magick is based upon paranoia. How else are you going to keep the magickers in check but to spread rumors and fear?
Fear, after all, is a powerful tool in Allanak.
That being said, like I said above, I'd be all for someone making a magick hating PC and this their pet project. Crazy Oashi? Stern Templar? Who knows, maybe a Nilazi who just wants to cure the world of magick. Fear of the unknown can be a fun plot device :D
I'd rather not have forced coded ill effects - sometimes as a magicker it is hard enough to find RP, and that would hurt not only cuddling-a-secret-magicker-lover RP, but also people RPing appropriately but including the magicker in it because people appreciate that the magicker has a player behind it who is playing a game for RP, even if that RP is fear and loathing.
What I'd like is the addition of curse spells for magickers. Higher than cantrip, lower than true spells. Ideally I'd prefer a selection given out to all with some variation based on element (with some element-less), but a randomiser could work.
Things like having the person's mouth fill with the Zalanthan version of toads. Version of the drunk code, muteism, blindness, echos of XYZ (similar to the spice timer), hearing snatches of music, deafness, inability to Way, zero control over the Way so you keep connecting to random minds, seeing shadows, hearing dripping water a la chinese water torture, getting a splinter you can't find, getting cramp, getting crotch rot, getting krath's touch, feeling itchy, thinking your boots are shrinking, thinking your hands are shrinking, accidental language problems like coprolalia or the language code replacing the occasional word with 'um' or 'er' like you can't remember words, the sudden gossip knowledge that one of your friend's aunt's cousin-in-law's whore's got cursed by a magicker, tummy rumbles, stomach ache, tooth ache, back ache, feeling more humidity, feeling less humidity, static charges, dizziness, smelling belshun fruit wherever you go, feeling like everyone is staring, feeling like you're being ignored, piloerection of hair (not for dwarves), blah blah blah, the list goes on!
Basically give magickers the ability to drop one curse per X time, for mana cost, to give flesh to the paranoia that magickers are full of curses. Obviously it can all be explained away by spice, drinking, dehydration, hunger, lack of sleep, general disease of the gen pop, and so on, but there can be a niggling doubt. I'd also say it wouldn't be 'cast', just a silent skill (toggle like scan?), and only people in the room can get tagged with bad effects...to avoid some griefer going nuts across the Known with it. On second thoughts...I'd like it to be a silent toggled skill with a slow mana drain...when you run out of mana, it toggles off and you have to wait for your mana to return to normal (add a small delay to avoid people keeping it on most of the time.
Also, a delay before effects start, so you can't sniff out the unmanifested.
Least, that is how I'd approach that...add some mystery!
The gicks probably have spells that can be considered curses already.
This disease thing seems unneeded because a lot of that is superstition anyways.
Maybe people should actually police themselves so we don't have to make up coded reasons to avoid mage characters. If you are a player whose characters routinely are okay with mages, stop doing it. Play someone who actually fears them. Stop saying we need more powerful mages in order to justify fearing them. By the sounds of things, that's not likely to happen anyway.
If more people were playing by documentation regarding mage characters, we would not be having that particular discussion.
It would also help if it didn't feel like every other character is a potential secret mage, but since you can't stop people from playing what they enjoy, that's probably a moot point.
Just stop playing like mages are nothing to fear and start playing by the documentation without demanding they become more powerful to justify doing so.
Quote from: Alesan on July 20, 2020, 09:00:42 PM
Maybe people should actually police themselves so we don't have to make up coded reasons to avoid mage characters. If you are a player whose characters routinely are okay with mages, stop doing it. Play someone who actually fears them. Stop saying we need more powerful mages in order to justify fearing them. By the sounds of things, that's not likely to happen anyway.
If more people were playing by documentation regarding mage characters, we would not be having that particular discussion.
It would also help if it didn't feel like every other character is a potential secret mage, but since you can't stop people from playing what they enjoy, that's probably a moot point.
Just stop playing like mages are nothing to fear and start playing by the documentation without demanding they become more powerful to justify doing so.
This, all of it.
And because I believe in carrots more than sticks:
Kudos those mages who
do inspire dread, I know some of you have!
Kudos the mundanes who accurately portray dread of magick, I know I do!
I'd also say Kudos to mundanes who inspire dread, and others who respond appropriately. ;D
Quote from: NinjaFruitSalad on July 21, 2020, 01:15:45 AM
I'd also say Kudos to mundanes who inspire dread, and others who respond appropriately. ;D
Hahah, yes, off topic, but certainly kudos them too.
Quote from: Lotion on July 20, 2020, 08:50:56 PM
The gicks probably have spells that can be considered curses already.
This disease thing seems unneeded because a lot of that is superstition anyways.
One problem with this is that mages cannot cast spells inside cities without coded repercussions. So even if they do have curse-like spells, the attempt to cast them will get them killed immediately.
I think the suggestion was a way to force an echo on someone, via a spell-like ability that costs mana, that doesn't immediately trigger "kill them now" crime-code.
Quote from: Riev on July 22, 2020, 09:21:28 AM
Quote from: Lotion on July 20, 2020, 08:50:56 PM
The gicks probably have spells that can be considered curses already.
This disease thing seems unneeded because a lot of that is superstition anyways.
One problem with this is that mages cannot cast spells inside cities without coded repercussions. So even if they do have curse-like spells, the attempt to cast them will get them killed immediately.
I think the suggestion was a way to force an echo on someone, via a spell-like ability that costs mana, that doesn't immediately trigger "kill them now" crime-code.
Thank you, it was.
Basically the idea was a magicker toggles 'curse' on (like scan, listen), and goes and sits in the Gaj at the bar. The curse costs, say, 1mana per minute and that 1mana is drained for an hour (similar to spice addiction code). Everyone in the bar gets a 1% chance per minute to get tagged as 'cursed', and when cursed a 30-180 minute timer starts. When the timer is up, they get flagged as 'cursed' under stat affects, and they start receiving echos from a randomised curse (as per list).
No casting required, but there is a penalty to the magicker to prevent insane griefing, and a timer element to avoid people being able to instantly guild-sniff magickers. You could remove the timer if a gem was present, I just don't want to hurt unmanifested magickers using it, and having people slowly realise that something just ain't kosher with Talia as they always get queezy or things break a lot more after spending time with her. So suspicions but no proof.
Useful for unmanifested looking for a story other than 'templar A assumes you are a rogue and kills you' by opening it up to other mundanes. Useful for rogues. And doubly useful for gemmed mages to subtly seed revulsion and paranoia about them.
Happy to let touching metal be a way to cure it. Using a Vivaduan (do you want to risk curing a curse with potentially getting another?), and other magickers (rogue, gemmed, sorc) being immune.
I wouldn't give the toggle to sorcs. I see it more as a problem with being part of an element, not learning stuff.
A nice little insidious way for (especially city-dwelling and gemmer) magickers to live up to the paranoia.
Obviously nothing should be easily point-at-able. It could just be poor luck, exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, fleas or sleeping around...and the curses shouldn't last that long. 2 rl hours seems plenty. Enough to encourage people to treat known magickers with a bit more disgust without making things unplayable.
Or at least...that is how I would do it. You are still relying on people RPing appropriately, but like spice and drinking, it can help keep that disgust Vs utility of having magickers around a bit more balanced.
Quote from: X-D on July 20, 2020, 03:28:36 AM
I do not agree that say fighter is better then warrior...
Interested to hear why this is. Like the OP topic of magick classes, a lot depends on one's opinion of what they want in a class. Or opinion on what types of play one is interested in. If you are only interested in combat potential and never playing a noble aide, some of the classes will look non-optimal, to be sure. But if the goal was to be a good aide, rather than combat, that list might get flipped. For the heavy combat classes (especially Raider), for instance, lots of folks wanted skinning added to the skillset, but the idea was that they wouldn't have "economic" skills that would allow them to make a living hunting, vs something like a scout.
To be clear, here is a summary of the changes between warrior and fighter (it is more than just advanced weapons and skinning):
Fighter does not have the following 7 skills Warrior has: 5 Advanced weapon skills, skinning, fletchery
Fighter has the following 7 skills that Warrior does not have: Listen, Threaten, Alcohol tolerance, pain tolerance, armor repair, hack, riposte
Fighter has 18 shared skills that it starts at a higher level at, 4 that it starts at the same level at, and 2 at a lower level than Warrior.
Fighter has 12 shared skills that it caps at a higher level at, and 12 that it caps at the same level at, compared to Warrior.
Fighter has one hidden ability that it is slightly worse at than Warrior.
Fighter learns offense, defense and weapon skills more quickly than Warrior.
Fighter starts with higher offense and defense than Warrior.
Stats are hard to quantify, as Fighter does not get the exact same stat bumps as Warrior, but if measured by net stat gain is better.
Fix riposte to work on more than just the direct enemy, making Fighter an absolute terror to engage even in a group scenario (but will drain their stamina so much more).
Give a reason for a Fighter to explore the piercing or bludgeoning lines, since they have hack and riposte. Why would they ever want to work on the other weapon skills, other than "for defense"?
Other than those two points, I sort of enjoy fighter for a PvE vs Humanoid perspective.
I can't wait to roll up some touched when I get a karma and emote about splashing water on people and telling them that they are cursed to show that all this coded cursing nonsense is a waste of time. I'll whisper to myself while rubbing my gem and staring at them and it doesn't matter if they are cursed because they will believe that they are.
Quote from: Lotion on July 22, 2020, 05:46:56 PM
I can't wait to roll up some touched when I get a karma and emote about splashing water on people and telling them that they are cursed to show that all this coded cursing nonsense is a waste of time.
Your guy is going to be Templar'd so very quickly if you go around doing that.
Quote from: Brokkr on July 22, 2020, 01:58:58 PM
Quote from: X-D on July 20, 2020, 03:28:36 AM
I do not agree that say fighter is better then warrior...
Interested to hear why this is.
Loss of the branched weapons and the skinning skill. Also, starting with a higher base O with a faster rise rate is a detriment to a "hardcore" player.
That said, I like the fighter class. Its just not a powerful choice in the new meta.
Well Brokkr...and others. I have not exactly said that anything is actually "bad" I have said, I do not like them. For instance..Stalker, anemic in any type of combat, specially PVP...BUT, exceptional at survival. Still, I do not like the class and to many the reason will seem odd...they simply have too many skills and are not good enough at most of them.
Of the magick subs (I have tried)....2 of the 3 suck, the third is...meh OK...of the other two, splitting off subs using spells that either should have been out of the game ages ago or using spells that are only really maybe slightly useful when combined with other spells that the legacy mages get but the subs do not was a mistake.
As to the entire fighter verses warrior....
Fighter does not have the following 7 skills Warrior has: 5 Advanced weapon skills, skinning, fletchery....The weapon skills, I give you that one, but the lack of usefulness there is the fault of staff anyway so...yeah...Skinning...HIGHLY useful and worth trading Listen, threaten, armor repair, hack, riposte for alone. Fletchery is also worth trading all of them.
Fighter has the following 7 skills that Warrior does not have: Listen, Threaten, Alcohol tolerance, pain tolerance, armor repair, hack, riposte...Listen at worthless level and only very small areas of usefulness to begin with...and Um, your a fighter not a spy...threaten VERY limited usefulness...Tolerance...who cares...pain tol, that's fine, armor repair...flavor skill at best...Hack/riposte essentially exist just for this class(Or the "new" classes) and did not exist for the legacy class so moot.
Fighter has 18 shared skills that it starts at a higher level at, 4 that it starts at the same level at, and 2 at a lower level than Warrior. These differences are not enough to matter.
Fighter has 12 shared skills that it caps at a higher level at, and 12 that it caps at the same level at, compared to Warrior. Same as line before. 5% difference in something that almost nobody gets to on the lower level?
Fighter has one hidden ability that it is slightly worse at than Warrior.
Fighter learns offense, defense and weapon skills more quickly than Warrior. This is actually a BAD thing.
Fighter starts with higher offense and defense than Warrior. This is also a BAD thing. Both of these mean that it is even harder for a fighter to get to even warrior level skills...so...Um, yeah.
Stats are hard to quantify, as Fighter does not get the exact same stat bumps as Warrior, but if measured by net stat gain is better. Give you that one...though I do not think it is big enough to matter much.
The short of it is, Does fighter have higher possible maxes...Yes...though much harder to get there so...Meh. Might as well not be the case.
They do lose support skills that actually matter, forcing people to either choose a support sub or make sure they are clanned...this in fact lowers possible power DRASTICALLY compared to a warrior. And these lost support skills are filled with fluff skills that are essentially worthless or can easily be done without anyway in order to make the skill tree look pretty. The same applies to the other two heavy combat classes. So, In terms of absolute power and versatility the warrior WAY over shadows fighter. Not to mention, one of the VERY strong skills that warrior got to master that nobody does now is Subdue...yet another thing tradable for many of these fighter fluff skills.
Ayep stalker is a feeble combatant even on the best of days, also had fighters that could wreck their own byn captain but crumple against the first gith they passed?
As for the elements (not willing to look back through the masses of this thread) Is the "pick two magick subguilds thing ever going to happen? Cause that might just make them great again.
I am all for more aesthetic only 'marks' of magick that last days or weeks, like that sweet sweet smell of spice lingering on the skin.
I am all for cantrips that do not result in crimcode that magickers could use to spook or fool others into thinking they have either been enhanced or cursed.
I think the full mage guild's should be subclasses. It would make sense on most levels.
Will it make them very strong and dangerous? Yes, they are supposed to be.
Yeah no. Have you ever tried to kill an elf miscreant/whiran tempest? It's brutal.
We don't need to give them more power. A player that knows their guild and their sub-mage-class will dominate in whatever avenue they wish. Same goes for a full guild + a sorceror branch.
I'm all for a full guild sorceror returning. The variants just don't make sense.
A full guild mundane + a full guild mage? No thanks. We don't need that.
Quote from: X-D on July 23, 2020, 12:45:18 AM
Fighter learns offense, defense and weapon skills more quickly than Warrior. This is actually a BAD thing.
Fighter starts with higher offense and defense than Warrior. This is also a BAD thing. Both of these mean that it is even harder for a fighter to get to even warrior level skills...so...Um, yeah.
I'm assuming you mean harder to raise weapon skills. No, actually it doesn't. It should be marginally easier to raise weapon skills, and the plateau should be slightly higher.
Quote from: X-D on July 23, 2020, 12:45:18 AM
They do lose support skills that actually matter, forcing people to either choose a support sub or make sure they are clanned...this in fact lowers possible power DRASTICALLY compared to a warrior. And these lost support skills are filled with fluff skills that are essentially worthless or can easily be done without anyway in order to make the skill tree look pretty.
I mean, no disagreement. But understand that was intentional. And if a Fighter is typically more clan based, that is where the usefulness of listen comes in, meant less as spy and more anti-boredom. It was part of creating trade-offs where if those are important to you, you probably want to be a scout, or you need a subclass.
Quote from: X-D on July 23, 2020, 12:45:18 AM
The same applies to the other two heavy combat classes. So, In terms of absolute power and versatility the warrior WAY over shadows fighter.
In terms of versatility, I wouldn't say "WAY" but yes, it did. In terms of absolute power, that assessment seems to ignore everything I posted. Or is based on some incorrect assumptions about offense/defense/weapon gain.
Quote from: X-D on July 23, 2020, 12:45:18 AM
Not to mention, one of the VERY strong skills that warrior got to master that nobody does now is Subdue...yet another thing tradable for many of these fighter fluff skills.
Warrior did not get subdue to master. Fighter has
exactly the same starting and max subdue skill levels that warrior did. Master subdue was only possible for certain templars.
QuoteI'm assuming you mean harder to raise weapon skills. No, actually it doesn't. It should be marginally easier to raise weapon skills, and the plateau should be slightly higher
I have not yet seen that to be the case...my last legacy warrior was never even remotely threatened by any of the new heavy classes in spar or otherwise. But I am willing to chalk that up to people being new to them.
QuoteI mean, no disagreement. But understand that was intentional. And if a Fighter is typically more clan based, that is where the usefulness of listen comes in, meant less as spy and more anti-boredom. It was part of creating trade-offs where if those are important to you, you probably want to be a scout, or you need a subclass.
Oh, I know it ALL was intentional. My issue is I cannot decide if the stated reasons behind them are blowing smoke or legit if misguided...I tend to lean towards smoke...hard to say. I tend to think you have managed to bamboozle the players with large shiny new skill lists while making every class and subclass inherently weaker....Back to the Syndrome quote again.
QuoteIn terms of versatility, I wouldn't say "WAY" but yes, it did. In terms of absolute power, that assessment seems to ignore everything I posted. Or is based on some incorrect assumptions about offense/defense/weapon gain.
Talking of this would mean us coming to an agreement on what we define as power...I am willing to table it as I believe it is unlikely we would ever agree.
And...Listen? Come now, who would trade crap max listen for skinning? And to help on boredom...Meh, I would trade listen for fletchery if that was the case...something to do AND can make drinking money or ammo to take potshots at things...not worth killing them because I cannot skin them. See this is a point I simply do not believe you on. You state you did it to make them want to depend on clans or other PCs more...I believe it is to cause most people to spend that subclass on support rather then power. And on the other side, should they choose "power" Then they will take a support main.
Anyway, I do not like them, I prefer the stand-alone best at what I do balance method. The only new class that I think fits this is miscreant since it FINALLY is a real thief instead of the horrid anemic pick pocket, burgler of the past. Do we have a class as good as assassin at BEING assassin...No, in fact the assassin/protector FAR outshines any current combo. How about ranger...No, in fact a legacy ranger with no sub at all is better then any current class combo. AND...all of them were powerhouses IN the place they were SUPPOSED to be. Warriors were the jack of all trades...could at least survive pretty much doing anything anywhere and were the only class who could walk happily into overwhelming combat odds and walk over a pile of bodies on the way out. Ranger, I am the GOD of the wilderness...nobody has that now...not ANY combo. Hell, even merchant was better...I CAN MAKE ANYTHING.....MOOHAHAHAHAHAHA...And have a bazillion coins and everybody loves me...political power!!!!
This has...for the most part been lost and I for one am willing to say that it is a LOSS.
I played a HG warrior for an entire year, the new classes were dropping toward the end of the lifespan of that PC.
It was EXTREMELY obvious which characters were heavy combat by the end. They gained such a stupid amount of combat skill, perhaps not weapon skill but still, that they can and would routinely be better by a large margin. It was very, very noticable that warrior just is not as good at straight forward combat as a raider or fighter is.
#bringbackrealmagicks?
I might come out of retirement for THAT one!
I'm not really active anymore, but I will say that the efforts to "balance" the game are doing more harm than good. The balance in this game came from stigma of magick, karma system, time investment and more than anything the permadeath nature of the game. It's ok to have classes that are potentially really good at many things, or potentially superpowers when it comes to sorcery or high karma full elementalists. That potential made them fun in the rare cases they were able to survive long enough to achieve their full strength.
Don't get me wrong, I like some of the new options. It just feels like one step, two steps back, when options I already loved are eliminated.
My two cents on this... run an experiment. Add a couple legacy options back into the game, see if players return or retention improves. Choose one or two full guild elementalist options and evaluate the impact after a few months. If it was positive, consider opening up more. If it wasn't positive, rotate them out again. Could consider the same for the old school mundane classes too, add a karma restriction if there was a power problem with them (Rangers come to mind).
Also not really playing and I don't disagree. That's partly how I used to describe classes in the game to people, the lack of coded balance was a draw for me and them, not a bad thing. I always thought we did a social balance kinda thing. No idea when we shifted mindsets on this but balancing everything just bums me out and is absolutely one of the reasons my playtime has tapered off.
Quote from: th3kaiser on August 05, 2020, 09:19:13 AM
Also not really playing and I don't disagree. That's partly how I used to describe classes in the game to people, the lack of coded balance was a draw for me and them, not a bad thing. I always thought we did a social balance kinda thing. No idea when we shifted mindsets on this but balancing everything just bums me out and is absolutely one of the reasons my playtime has tapered off.
I came back after a break, so that's where my opinion comes from.
There are a few new classes that feel pointless, codedly. Especially since we have a class and a subclass. If I want a fighty type that crafts I could make a ranger/warrior+ a crafting subguild or in modern terms, A Fighter or Raider + the exact same subguilds. The old Guilds weren't unbalanced, they each excelled at what they did, and each had a niche. So they felt unique. Why would I take something like Adventurer when I could just take a Raider+Weaponsmith. Also, where is this person Aventuring with only Journyman weapon skills?
And mentioning Balance. People slept on the strength of the old Pickpocket class, complaining it didn't have hide. There's a reason it didn't have hide, and that was because it had Master Steal. I used to LOVE the Burglar class. Jack of all trades, master of getting killed in apartments. With master hide, and advanced steal, I could steal your weapons from you while you sat at the bar. If I failed, you wouldn't know it was me, as I would only get a partial failure, why? Because being hidden makes certain things, like Backstab and steal, easier. Why am I mentioning this? Because Miscreant has both, Master Hide, and Master Steal.
Soldier.... Should be renamed Archer since that's it's only Master level fighting skill, and other classes should be dropped down to advanced Archery/Crosbow max. That would give the "Soldier" it's own unique feel. And I would actually play that in the Militia.
No ranger. Ranger bad.
To be honest the magick subs are spook enough and don't need any more power.
Ranger doesn't seem bad compared to the absolute abomination that is the miscreant. I haven't really played much since the new classes came out but just reading that skill list is enough for me to know it's the most broken class in the game. All the advantages of pickpocket, burglar, and most of assassin all in one package for zero karma? And the old ranger is the problem? Lol. I guess we replaced drovian spies with undetectable ninjas instead.
Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2020, 03:23:11 AM
Ranger doesn't seem bad compared to the absolute abomination that is the miscreant. I haven't really played much since the new classes came out but just reading that skill list is enough for me to know it's the most broken class in the game. All the advantages of pickpocket, burglar, and most of assassin all in one package for zero karma? And the old ranger is the problem? Lol. I guess we replaced drovian spies with undetectable ninjas instead.
Nah, Drovian Ninja's.
But Miscreant is stupidly strong. Old burglar and pickpocket had J.man weapon skills. Burglar was limited to Advanced steal, and Pickpocket didn't have hide.
Miscreant gets it ALL, and then Advanced weapon skills? Congrats, you made Urban Rangers.
Quote from: Fredd on August 11, 2020, 12:27:31 PM
and Pickpocket didn't have hide.
Did pickpockets actually not have hide? How did that even work?
On topic: Yes, Miscreants are very strong.
Quote from: KittenLicks on August 11, 2020, 02:49:29 PM
Quote from: Fredd on August 11, 2020, 12:27:31 PM
and Pickpocket didn't have hide.
Did pickpockets actually not have hide? How did that even work?
On topic: Yes, Miscreants are very strong.
It worked by having Master Steal and Master Sleight of Hand. They could go through your pack while bullshitting with you at the bar.
Edit: I was wrong, they branched hide. I went back and double-checked some old stuff I had.
However The main thing that balanced Pickpocket and Burglar was that if you found them stealing from you, you could kick their asses. Now they got advanced weapon skills. You better be a real badass.
Pickpocket also couldn't hide as well as burglars could if I recall. Basically took the max capabilities of burglar, pickpocket and most of assassin and tossed them into one class to create the super city class that far exceeded what rangers could be in the wilds. I think I'd rather have the super wilds class, because at least those PCs need to contend with more threats to train.
Quote from: wizturbo on August 11, 2020, 05:03:51 PM
Pickpocket also couldn't hide as well as burglars could if I recall. Basically took the max capabilities of burglar, pickpocket and most of assassin and tossed them into one class to create the super city class that far exceeded what rangers could be in the wilds. I think I'd rather have the super wilds class, because at least those PCs need to contend with more threats to train.
that is correct, Pickpocket only had Advanced hide, where Burglar had Master
No, pickpockets got master hide.