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Post by desertman on Nov 28, 2016 9:18:56 GMT -5
The closure of the hunting divisions for the merchant Houses is interesting.
I like it. Playing a House hunter was always a practice in willful blindness and stupidity. You had to pretend your character wasn't smart enough to realize they were getting screwed on pay BIG TIME for what they were bringing in regularly.
Eventually the playerbase got smart enough/veteran enough that most people didn't want to play that role anymore. Basically, people just got too smart to go for that silly bullshit system.
I'm glad to see that go since apparently making it interesting and fun in terms of a role was too much work. (I would have instead changed it to make that role interesting and fun so people would want to be part of it, but, what do I know? It's easier to just take things out of the game than make them interesting/fun. See Tuluk for details.)
Either way, if it wasn't going to be changed I'm glad it was closed.
In reality nothing closed that people were really enjoying anyhow. People stopped really wanting to play in that role a long time ago, so they really just closed something nobody had any interest in anymore anyways.
No loss.
As for the comments regarding, "We wanted to increase competition/make the Houses hire outside to get their raw materials.", that's a laughably bad excuse for not just admitting you failed to make the hunter role in a House interesting enough for people to want to play in it regularly.
Houses were ALREADY regularly hiring out gathering raw materials to independents. I have an entire list of dozens upon dozens of those jobs I took as Koman Locke alone, and EVERY SINGLE TIME I was told it was because, "I just can't find any good hunters who will join my House.".
This wasn't done to create competition/force Houses to outsource hunting jobs. They were already being forced to do that and that has been the landscape for a very long time.
This was done because it was a dead uninspiring role and it was easier to close it than fix it.
I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out the truth through the veil of bullshit that was slung up to try and make this look nicer/prettier than it is.
Good change though, even if the reason given for it wasn't truthful.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 9:25:17 GMT -5
The closure of the hunting divisions for the merchant Houses is interesting. I like it. Playing a House hunter was always a practice in willful blindness and stupidity. You had to pretend your character wasn't smart enough to realize they were getting screwed on pay BIG TIME for what they were bringing in regularly. Eventually the playerbase got smart enough/veteran enough that most people didn't want to play that role anymore. Basically, people just got too smart to go for that silly bullshit system. snipped Good change though, even if the reason given for it wasn't truthful. I am inclined to agree with one caveat. It seems to me that staff has a bias to wanting pcs in clans. This restricts half-elves, dwarves and half-giants to about half as many clan options. |
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Post by desertman on Nov 28, 2016 12:26:23 GMT -5
The closure of the hunting divisions for the merchant Houses is interesting. I like it. Playing a House hunter was always a practice in willful blindness and stupidity. You had to pretend your character wasn't smart enough to realize they were getting screwed on pay BIG TIME for what they were bringing in regularly. Eventually the playerbase got smart enough/veteran enough that most people didn't want to play that role anymore. Basically, people just got too smart to go for that silly bullshit system. snipped Good change though, even if the reason given for it wasn't truthful. I am inclined to agree with one caveat. It seems to me that staff has a bias to wanting pcs in clans. This restricts half-elves, dwarves and half-giants to about half as many clan options. It only takes away options none of them were interested in being part of anyways. If they were interested in it these Houses would be overflowing with half-giant, dwarven, and half-elf hunters....and they never are/were, otherwise Houses wouldn't have been constantly outsourcing their hunting work to independents for the last few RL years regularly. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 13:06:47 GMT -5
Being a leader is hard. It's much easier to be a joiner. The game needs more opportunities for joiners that offer joiners more plot hooks. The coded perks game organizations offer are nice but they lose out every time to "Zog the destroyer of worlds" and all the joiners in his/her band in their struggles against their adversaries. Why do coded perks lose out to instant adventure opportunities? I don't know.... but players seem to go out of their way for adventures and exciting opportunities each time they are offered.
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098 
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Post by punished ppurg on Nov 28, 2016 20:47:40 GMT -5
The Kuraci Fist are still open, right? So it's just Salarr and Kadius who get the glass ceiling dropped on them down to the foundation.
Maybe the Agent branch can pick up the slack and focus more towards plot interference. Who's to say?
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Post by lyse on Dec 3, 2016 15:59:21 GMT -5
So what's the player count looking like these days? Are they really hemmorraging players or are they still sitting around 30?
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Post by Amos's Boots on Dec 3, 2016 18:10:57 GMT -5
So what's the player count looking like these days? Are they really hemmorraging players or are they still sitting around 30? Last I checked, before I got banned, The highest peak uptime I saw in weeks was at 35. roughly ~20 players are regular and ~3 or 4 show up around off-peak times while the rest are the die-hard regulars. Like I said to latrine on discord, their population growth is at something like -82% between the last and current year atm. Between when they closed Tuluk and now, they've lost about 40 players and gained 10 (if that) newbies. |
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punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
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Post by punished ppurg on Dec 3, 2016 19:03:31 GMT -5
Don't worry guys, I'm sure it's the Easter holiday keeping everyone busy. That explains the small dip in active players.
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Post by desertman on Dec 4, 2016 4:49:16 GMT -5
Eh, nevermind. I don't want the staff retaliation I would get on an IC level for that. Edited.
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Post by lyse on Dec 4, 2016 8:34:27 GMT -5
Being a leader is hard. It's much easier to be a joiner. The game needs more opportunities for joiners that offer joiners more plot hooks. The coded perks game organizations offer are nice but they lose out every time to "Zog the destroyer of worlds" and all the joiners in his/her band in their struggles against their adversaries. Why do coded perks lose out to instant adventure opportunities? I don't know.... but players seem to go out of their way for adventures and exciting opportunities each time they are offered. I think you hit the nail on the head without knowing it. The game is an adventure game at it's heart, thats just what it is. Most people that play engage in what I call "passenger" rp, that is "Haha, you funny! Do more funny! or weird or stronk!" or whatever the character quirk of the moment is. They don't really want to lead anything, they just want go out and do something and something happens. Why is that? I don't think its out of laziness, but out of aging playerbase-ism. People just don't have time to devote to playing ridiculous hours like they did back in college. Family, kids, shit happening seriously cut into Arm time. The game just never accounted for that or adjusted. Which is why you see a lot of log on, nothing's going on? Log out. Because..shit to do. Nothing really to grab you. I enjoy clan play, yet I don't enjoy playing in clans. The scope is often ridiculously narrow, clan docs outdated, some are really restrictive, can't add traditions and the list goes on and on. So while having free food and water is great and should be a boon, because you don't have to worry about that annoying thirst and hunger code, everything else is an absolute roadblock. What's the clan's metastory? Oh, we hunt shit because.....well that really doesn't matter. What's the immediate story? Oh, we don't have one...well that doesn't matter either. Hello passenger roleplayer..you're on a ride to nowhere. *logout* The game became about, what you're wearing and crafting shit and mudsex instead of all of that being secondary. Behold! My jewel encrusted codpiece! Nobody gives a shit. That's the appeal of "Zog Destroyer of Worlds" and indie clans. There's a goal, something you can all pull together and...try to accomplish. In a clan...what are you trying to accomplish? Free food and water will always lose out to instant adventure. You'd think after 20 years clans would be rich environments to play in...nope. |
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Post by desertman on Dec 4, 2016 11:26:56 GMT -5
We absolutely lost something when we opened up Mastercrafting to sub-classes.
Now nobody could give a flying fuck about "Your new item.".
Why? Because "mastercrafts" are a dime a dozen.
They aren't interesting or fun the way they once were when only Merchants could mastercraft.
Then they were somewhat rare, interesting, and a fun goal to achieve on some level.
I suspected that would happen and voiced such when they opened up mastercrafting to sub-classes. Turns out, I was right.
Mastercrafting should have stayed the domain of Merchants only. It made playing a Merchant more interesting and more fun and made getting mastercrafts made/making mastercrafts more of an achievement and more rewarding.
Now it's something you do fairly regularly, and as such, it has been watered down into a "nothing achievement".
I wonder which staffer had that grand idea. I could see it was going to turn to shit the second it was announced.
I'm fine with Extended Sub-Guilds getting the ability to "master" their crafting skills. They would be able to craft other people's mastercrafts and their regular crafting would fail a lot less. That's plenty enough payoff for a sub-class crafting skill. That's plenty.
Mastercrafting (creating new items) should be THE DOMAIN OF MERCHANT'S ONLY.
It makes playing a merchant more rewarding, it makes knowing a mastercrafter merchant more rewarding, it makes getting items mastercrafted more rewarding, it makes owning a item more rewarding. It makes everything about the entire process more rewarding. The only thing it takes away is the ability for MastercraftNumber67 to make yet another new quiver for himself that nobody gives a shit about but him.
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Post by sin2live on Dec 4, 2016 12:32:47 GMT -5
I hadn't thought of that. I just thought the Ext. Subguilds were cool, but you have a point.
Why play a squishy merchant when I can play a badass warrior with one of the master crafting
subs and be able to mastercraft my epic bonesword of doom anyway, without the drawbacks of..
well, being a squishy merchant.
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rotten
staff puppet account
Somewhere at the foot of the Shield Wall
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Post by rotten on Dec 5, 2016 22:16:14 GMT -5
I honestly don't see anything gained by your fancy new item being superbly wonderful just because it is unique.
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Post by sin2live on Dec 6, 2016 9:53:33 GMT -5
Well, It's also got 'Doom' right there in the name though. That's why.
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Post by lyse on Dec 8, 2016 18:28:35 GMT -5
Go Taven, Go!
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