One of the problems with elementalist characters

let me clarify my post since people will take it out of context. By lasting impact I mean something along the lines of new clans, a city or settlement founded/formed, or changed anything about the game besides submitting some mastercraft items.

From what I've heard, the Players are already gone and so is the templar who sponsored them.

EDIT: Did the Players change anything in the world? Was one line of room description altered? One item? I don't believe so. Dust in the wind.

Well, a few players besides LoD have had a lasting impact, but definitely nowhere near enough for a genre of games where the ability to have a lasting impact should be a defining characteristic of the game. I'm pretty sure just about all the other RPIs have allowed players to open shops, start clans and other things like that. Armageddon has always been perplexingly rigid, and it always felt to me as if staff refused to acknowledge that a player's ideas could be good enough to warrant a permanent influence on the game. It always had that air of jealousy and mistrust from staff, which is incredibly unhealthy for such a game.

This really has nothing to do with elementalists, though. They at least have (or had? Wouldn't surprise me if it got Nyr'd) the opportunity to become half-elementals and other fairly extraordinary shit. For the vast majority of players, the ceiling is basically something like Byn sergeant or senior merchant, which is really fuck-all when you think about it. Elementalists tend to die because they actually have the capacity to do unusual things and thus put themselves in danger whereas most other roles are so bereft of substance that you can live forever simply by virtue of the fact that nothing ever happens to you and you don't have the freedom or ability to attempt anything really noteworthy.

By the way, "changing room descs" is a pretty poor metric for impact. I'd wager that has actually been accomplished a number of times, just never in any way that matters. When I think of it, I'm actually a little startled to realize that in the decade that I played Armageddon, literally no player has ever been able to do anything that genuinely changed the gameplay, as in the way you actually play the game. No new types of roles (think stuff like Tuluki liberation rebels) have come about as a result of player actions, no world-altering events have sprung from player initiative. The closest thing would be the SLK as they somewhat influenced the nature of the Tablelands, but even that was very modest and didn't last in the end.

Staff aren't much better in that regard, granted. The game itself, the gameplay, the types of characters available to you and the areas you can play in have, in my ten years of playing, only changed in one way: removal. A number of roles have been culled (stuff like gith, halflings, gladiators) and a few areas have been shut down (e.g. Under-Tuluk, Red Storm East) but the game is played in precisely the same way as it was when I started back in 2005. I genuinely don't think any major, lasting game-altering event has occurred since the occupation/liberation of Tuluk and Luir's. Ever since then, events have been temporary, e.g. the Copper War, or inconsequential, e.g. the volcano, deluge and black moon bullshit.

Armageddon has not progressed as a game in ten years.

I'm not talking about the gameplay. I'm talking about doing something. Whether that something is contributing to the world by building a shelter for homeless kids in naks commoners quarter, or burning down one of those wooden huts in friels rest. Those two things could easily happen but never will.

The Players weren't formed or led by magickers as I understand it. They were the product of a templar's efforts to vex the "pad-swingers" of the North. And their only legacy was more bitching about magickers being overpowered. They were really just an extension of non-Oashi gemmed being templars' tools.

My point was that it's especially hard for elementalists to leave a mark on the world. Can anyone name one? It don't believe it's 100% impossible for mundanes as Delerak says, but I do agree it's close to it.

And I agree that Arm has not progressed as a game for ten years. There would still be some satisfaction in a simple change to a room's description though. Like carving a rune of Ruk in a pocket of a canyon, for example. Something people could witness ever after and wonder about. Something to show that character ever even existed.

I had one that was all elementalists for a while, around Nil (the whiran) but was told that I shouldn't be doing that, so I started recruiting mundanes as well. And then they emailed the other elementalist leading the group and told us both to stop recruiting. It was RL YEARS before that other player came back to the game.