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Post by samosforpresident on Nov 14, 2019 11:31:00 GMT -5
Are we seeing an increase in magicks, stalkers, enforcers....what does it seem like to you currently in the game.
Personally, I've noticed so many rogue gicks lately and not much interest towards city roles. Any input from y'all?
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Nov 14, 2019 12:02:27 GMT -5
I've noticed a huge uptick in city elves lately, no doubt leveraging their agility into practical invisibility vs scan as enforcers/infiltrators/miscreants.
It feels like a majority of players are rolling with a stealth class of some sort because of course they are.
Can't really speak to magickers, but it's been a minute since I've taken a character outside of Allanak.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2019 14:11:53 GMT -5
I've noticed a huge uptick in city elves lately, no doubt leveraging their agility into practical invisibility vs scan as enforcers/infiltrators/miscreants. It feels like a majority of players are rolling with a stealth class of some sort because of course they are. Can't really speak to magickers, but it's been a minute since I've taken a character outside of Allanak. There is an active, successful celf clan in the game right now. I'm not surprised players are leaping on the opportunity. |
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Nov 14, 2019 14:44:52 GMT -5
Huh... That somehow managed to go over my head after all this time. Badass.  |
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Post by sirra on Nov 17, 2019 1:14:13 GMT -5
About the time I quit playing, it seemed like everyone was abusing the new subguild system to become a tank mage.
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vex
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Post by vex on Nov 17, 2019 13:59:46 GMT -5
How is that 'abusing' the new subguild system?
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jkarr
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Post by jkarr on Nov 17, 2019 14:17:36 GMT -5
How is that 'abusing' the new subguild system? right it was the old system that was abused when warriors ignored rp to make friends with mages to get dem rangz and buffs but the new system is designed to let warriors buff themselves up and if it wasnt designed to let combat chars do just that then the middle man that used to exist wouldnt have been cut out |
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vex
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Post by vex on Nov 17, 2019 14:33:29 GMT -5
That isn't people 'abusing' the system, its you being dissatisfied with the system as it was designed. Throwing words like 'abuse' around too casually, leads to people dismissing legitimate claims of abuse, imo.
Edited to clarify: 'you' being used generally, not YOU specifically. English, is a bother.
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jkarr
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Post by jkarr on Nov 17, 2019 14:36:44 GMT -5
That isn't people 'abusing' the system yeah it was because in that old system mundanes werent supposed to befriend mages much less be even comfortable with magic outside of super rare circumstances so when u had mundane combat chars ignoring that part of rp to get buffs from mages then that is abuse of the system its you being dissatisfied with the system as it was designed. hey moron try rereading the fucking post before deciding who is dissatisfied with what u idiot |
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vex
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Post by vex on Nov 17, 2019 14:45:03 GMT -5
CTRL+F5.
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Nov 17, 2019 18:53:35 GMT -5
That isn't people 'abusing' the system yeah it was because in that old system mundanes werent supposed to befriend mages much less be even comfortable with magic outside of super rare circumstances so when u had mundane combat chars ignoring that part of rp to get buffs from mages then that is abuse of the system its you being dissatisfied with the system as it was designed. hey moron try rereading the fucking post before deciding who is dissatisfied with what u idiot Not befriending mages has nothing to do with a "system" and everything to do with the narrative that the game wants to tell. Docs can say people fear magic but ultimtely it is up to you as a player to decide how you're going to roleplay around magic or be involved with it as a mundane. It isn't bad to roleplay being comfortable around magic just like it isnt bad to roleplay fearing it and running at the first sight. Both are possibilities, regardless of what the documentation states the PCs are not the "average". |
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jkarr
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Post by jkarr on Nov 17, 2019 19:18:42 GMT -5
Not befriending mages has nothing to do with a "system" yeah it does because the code system before prevnted combat classes from accessing magick buffs w/o chars making a series of rp exceptions to realistic behavior that required a lot of explanation to not be considered abuse or ignoring the docs abt mundane relationships to magick the system now cuts out the rp middleman that limited most cases of combat chars also being magick buffed but since its designed to let that happen then sirra cant call it abuse the same way maybe he could when the system wasnt designed for combat chars to access those buffs w/o having a strong and realistic excuse to be making friends with mages or even just using items that most pcs wouldnt be positioned to know how to or even consider seriously using w/o shitting their pants in fear It isn't bad to roleplay being comfortable around magic just like it isnt bad to roleplay fearing it and running at the first sight. the first which should be using sparingly is the exception to the second which is the rule Both are possibilities, regardless of what the documentation states the PCs are not the "average". there are a lot of things that pcs are exceptions to but fear and mistrust of magick and limited if any understanding of how it works is not one of those things absent working with oash directly or the templarate and being let in on those plus u have to find a lot of excuses and reasons to justify why every single one of ur mundane no-magick background chars that isnt doing either of those two things befriends mages and becomes the document snowflake |
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Nov 18, 2019 9:03:55 GMT -5
At the risk of arguing semantics, I agree that "abuse" isn't the right word to use to describe the current state of the class system and how players have adapted to using that system to its full potential. The system was effectively designed to enable using it in the way it's being used today.
When we had the old guild system, whenever arguments about the balance of magick vs. mundanity came up, a common refrain heard from staff was that "the game is not supposed to be balanced". Elementalists, sorcerers, and psionicists have the power that they have and are meant to be more powerful than the average Zalanthan, by orders of magnitude. This is why the debate often settled around the observation that there were "too many" of those powerful roles in the game.
As usual, staff tried to apply an over-correction, as they tend to do whenever something is wrong with the game's balance.
- Rathustra led an effort to turn the sorcerer guild into subguilds; this led to the breakdown of sorcerer powers by the four paths, effectively splitting the original sorcerer spell tree into quarters, and further led to the design decision to split off elementalists and psionicists on similar grounds (taking skill trees and splitting them apart). The intent was to ensure that no elementalist/sorcerer/psionicist had the full range of powers they once could, but simply made it easier to play under the radar as a rogue. You could take the skills of a ranger and survive out in the wastes, the skills of a merchant and survive as a city aide, etc. and no one could "guild sniff" you anymore. But you also became much more self-sufficient at hiding in other ways, and there was an increase in solo play.
- Nergal started the class system overhaul shortly before his departure and Brokkr finished it. They used arbitrary distinctions already existent in the code (city and wilderness) and decided to break the guilds up along those lines. Nergal wanted to boost starting skill levels and learning rates to better enable casual play, and after he claimed insanity and noped out of the game, Brokkr decided on 10-20 point increases on average across the board. Brokkr also disregarded balance between the various mundane guilds and decided to enable some guilds more than others with certain skills, stacking up powerful skills on some guilds (e.g. Enforcer) while giving other guilds almost nothing at all besides their one focus (e.g. Artisan).
As all over-corrections do, this over-correction created a new problem. Imbalance was not only along magic/non-magic grounds (as previously intended), but on non-magic/non-magic grounds (like the difference between old Pickpocket vs. other guilds, but much more exacerbated). The end result is what you have now. Want a backstabber who can turn invisible? You can do that. Want a wood merchant who can travel on her own from south to north and back in 10 minutes? You can do that. Want a ranger who uses Nilazi power to hunt other rogue mages? You can do that, too. All of these things seem like options, but they all also repel interaction with the people used to magic being what it used to be, where people were afraid of magic as a rule because they read the documentation and cared to hold to it. To be clear, this isn't a new phenomenon. Even in the old days, there was an occasional asshat ranger who would ask Rukkians for buffs before heading out, as if they were playing WoW. But now it's more ubiquitous.
I would comment further on how to actually build a class/skill system for a roleplay-focused MUD, but Armageddon isn't roleplay-focused anymore, just a hack-and-slash that pretends to be an RPI.
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Post by lechuck on Nov 18, 2019 11:07:29 GMT -5
"Abuse" doesn't have to be the gaming culture definition of "exploiting a bug or unintended feature" or whatever people think Sirra meant. I think he meant more along the lines of drug abuse: unhealthy, negative use. I think it's fair to call it that when someone takes a magicker subclass and barely roleplays the fact, using it solely to get a coded advantage on a character that's otherwise played totally as a mundane. There has been TONS of that on Arm since they switched magick to subclasses instead of guilds. It's not quite against the rules, but it's certainly against the spirit of the game. Being a magicker is supposed to be a huge part of one's character, but since you can now be a full-fledged mundane at the same time, it's advantageous to just let it be undiscoverable until the day it lets you go all Super Saiyan and win. The net result is that magick has just about stopped existing to the naked eye, effectively removing it as an aspect of the game.
While there were definitely issues with the old class system where magickers were usually all wizard and little else, one thing it did was ensure that magick remained relevant. It was more than just a statistic of how many PCs per capita have hidden superpowers that you have no idea about until the day they kill you with it, it was a whole venue of roleplay. Now you can play five consecutive characters and never come across magick in any way, shape or form. It's one of the many ways that the game has become increasingly impoverished and steered in a direction of "login, spar, craft, fuck, logout." It's yet another item crossed off the list of things that a typical character will have reason to roleplay about. Even as someone who hardly ever played mages and was only ever on the receiving end of their barbs, I miss the days when it was something that actually mattered to my characters and could be encountered often enough to where that defining feature of the setting felt real.
Sorcerers played as actual sorcerers are pretty much just not a thing anymore because it isn't really viable to be universally kill-on-sight when you have access to only one school of magick. Elementalists are now mostly a way to buff your warrior's strength or use demonfire as an alternative to backstab. It's kinda like if they closed all tribe clans and ruled that tribal backgrounds are purely virtual and player-invented. Pretty soon, all tribal roleplay would be gone and being a tribal character wouldn't matter beyond the accent. That's basically what has happened to magick. You'll still see the occasional gemmed, mainly because staff forces you to play gemmed if you've spec-apped your first magicker, but they can hardly be called enriching to the game. For the most part, magick may as well not exist in Zalanthas anymore.
If anything, I think the modern magick meta of Arm encourages guild-sniffing because it's simply the only way you'll ever find out if someone's a magicker. It has become harder than it was, but discovering a magicker in any other way has become borderline impossible compared to the days when spying on one for long enough would eventually reveal their nature. And for all that the old magickers were powerful, they were powerful in their own niche and had weaknesses and disadvantages to balance it out. Now it's just "my human assassin has mul strength when it suits me." There's no counterplay, magick is just +5 to whatever you're already good at. The code used to kind of enforce the social gulf between magick and mundane because the two did not coexist well codedly. Now it's all about coded synergy and combat power.
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Post by mehtastic on Nov 18, 2019 13:36:22 GMT -5
I actually agree that guild-sniffing is easier now, although I would say the intent of staff was to make guild-sniffing harder. It's easier because characters who are not mages will have the skills of their class plus mundane skills of a subclass that complements the guild's class, and characters who are secret mages won't have that flexibility (they will only have class skills). For example, if an Artisan can fight, or brew, or knows multiple languages, they're probably not a magicker. But if they can't do any of those things, then they probably are one.
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