|
|
Post by BitterFlashback on Mar 23, 2016 1:59:03 GMT -5
Well, since this has mostly been a discussion about the trees, I may as well just talk about the forest. I have nothing to add to the detailed discussion of how this is going to break the game skills-wise so I will focus on the roleplaying and metagame damage. There does seem to be a misconception I should address first. From what I read full elementalists, elks, drovs, and Nilazi aren't being removed from the game. You're just not allowed to ever make one again. That's why there's no event or RPT or anything else. Your dick's being chopped off and added to Nyr's bag; there will be plenty of VNPCs and NPCs whose equipment will remain attached.
What (in all of the fuck) did staff hope to accomplish through this? From a game design standpoint, I mean, not a conspiratorial one. I have been thinking about that question quite a lot. It completely obliterates playing a mage role as @anaiah pointed out but there is no way the staff failed to grasp that. Given the closing of Tuluk and activity in the Tablelands, this strikes me as an attempt to make playing a magicker more accessible. It's no longer a role where you have to learn and adjust your expectations. Now it's playing a character with bonuses n00bs don't have. Any sense of special culture or unique play are gone. It's a step in the direction of an MMO that uses a Text User Interface for a generation of new players who have been underestimated. If the cultural destruction seems a stretch, consider the guilds that got cut. An elkrosi is basically a collection of destructive spells and the ability to spar forever. (That was hyperbole; shut the fuck up.) Even if you subdivide that it's still pretty clearly a choice for minmaxing a combat character. Unless I've misremembered how some of their spells work, having a drovian sub would be absolutely gamebreaking against stealth characters. That had to go. Then you have Nilazi, the boogeymen for elementalists. Except now that cocksure Krathi hasn't been neutered by Forbid Elements because he's also a high-level ranger. That's okay though, because why the hell would you want to be a universally hated anti-elementalist when you could use Nilaz as a utility role? Portable Hole, Travel Gate, and Portal on any character who wanted them would be more gamebreaking than pretty much anything mentioned for direct combat use. The unstated cost of this change is the variety of roleplaying in Arm has been drastically lessened. Again. First it was the sorcerers: the universally hated true wielders of magic who had no choice but to live in secret, attaining great power and deciding how to use it and what risks to take. Now it's the elementalists: the mage-outcasts who could grow enough in power to maybe curbstomp a few people, but at great personal risk because of the limited utility. It's also the Nilazi: the universally-hated haters who live a life of necromancy-fueled, ever escalating madness. What's left for your character's base flavor? Guys who kill people with frontal combat skills, guys who kill people outdoors with stealth and range, guys who kill people in-city with stealth and range, people who steal shit, people who spamcraft, and inexplicably weak 8 karma tavern-sitters with a couple really dangerous telepathic powers that they can only use in person. Oh, and now all of them can maybe get magic buffs instead of mages being a thing. I'm not going to pretend the play from one elementalist to another was staggeringly unique (except Nilaz, motherfucker), but at least the different limited skillsets forced people to adjust their character design to fit their element. Now the only question of element will be, "What will best maximize my character from what I've got available?"LOL @ Lizzie whining that this ruins her mage characters because she literally cannot fathom playing a mage character who is not defined by their guild. Yeah, I went from doubting this change to completely supporting it. Come on, now, it's statistically inevitable one of those idiots would accidentally stumble onto a valid argument, if only from the volume of their posts. |
|
OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257 
|
Post by OT on Mar 23, 2016 2:08:44 GMT -5
Total fuckover to mundanes It's the worst part, to me. I mean, there's basically no way they can still give some advantage to mundanes. If they redesign the mundane guilds, it simply affects magickers likewise. If warrior is the best at swords, warrior with whatever magick subguild that best complements the use of swords will be the best possible warrior. There's really nothing they can do to avoid a situation where mundanes are simply inferior characters in every possible way. Changing magick to subguilds that are compatible with the mundane main guilds has guaranteed this. Most elementalists had only a handful of useful spells. About half a dozen were powerful, the rest was just arbitrary magick for the sake of magick, such as the ability to summon a mount or create water. The spells that really defined any given elementalist guild could largely be counted on one hand, and tended to fall into one or two categories. Krathi for their nukes and their item enchantment, rukkians for their defensive or offensive buffs, whirans for invisibility and flying, vivaduans for defensive buffs and healing spells. Splitting the magickers up into categorized divisions doesn't reduce each one's power THAT much. A bit, yeah; you likely can't get both demonfire and rangz with a krathi anymore, and you can't get both the offensive and defensive buffs on a rukkian. But the addition of a full mundane skillset to any of these categories can easily create a character that's way stronger than the original elementalist guilds, and simultaneously equipped to do everything that you previously had to depend on mundanes for. It'll be so unhealthy for the game. The warrior guild is defensively better than a pre-change rukkian with defensive buffs was, so a warrior with just the offensive rukkian buffs is now a devastating monster of unstoppable power -- defensively no less sound than a full rukkian before, and offensively stronger than any mundane character has ever been in the history of the game. A vivaduan was balanced before because their offensive powers were quite limited, so it was okay for them to have invulnerability and sanctuary and whatnot; but grafted onto the ranger skillset, such a character is just broken beyond belief. An assassin with whatever krathi subguild lets you enchant items... I mean, even with the most conservative and cautious predictions of which spells these subguilds will get (surely the ones I've mentioned will exist), such characters are going to literally be more powerful than anything mundane that has ever existed before, and will just overshadow the mundane game completely because they infringe on it so fully by having all the same skills. The reason it used to be okay that a krathi could burn you to a crisp with ease, or a vivaduan could be nigh-unkillable, was because they didn't also get to have master parry, backstab, sneak and hide, archery, shield use, weapon skills, and whatever else will COMPLETELY redefine such a character. The things they'd have to change in order to make this not happen would be so radical and require such a fundamental reimagining of the entire concept of the guild system that I don't see it happening. They'd basically have to swap mainguilds and subguilds around entirely so that mainguilds now resemble the extended subguilds of old, so that you're now going to be an outdoorsman/vivaduan or whatever, whereas mundanes get to be outdoorsman with the warrior subguild. And we just know that's not happening. And since it's not, magickers are automatically going to just be mundanes with a huge layer of extra power on top. The degree to which this fucks over actual mundane characters is just mindboggling. What's the point of playing a mundane character at all, now, besides the ability to play in clans -- something that has been losing its appeal for years? People already weren't doing it enough, with the Byn being just about the only clan with enough manpower to feel like it even fulfilled its purpose. The militia currently has something like four characters in it, Kadius and Salarr about the same, there are no Borsail Wyverns or Tor Scorpions or Oash Elites. The ability to be in clans doesn't even come close to compensating for the staggering gulf of power created by this change. Besides, people have always been able to play secret mages in clans, or in tribes that allow it. And God forbid they ever do start a Gemmed Sabers or Magick Expansion Division. Then mundane characters will have truly and definitively lost all value and purpose, if they haven't already largely done so. Aside from the Byn, people already weren't playing mundanes in clans to any meaningful extent, because it's boring and limiting and you can't raise your skills in any clan besides the Byn. And now that the best of every job is going to be a magicker, what's going to compel anyone to invest the insane amount of time that it takes to become a highly skilled warrior, ranger or assassin if it's not even possible to be the best? Why put in 30+ days of playtime to train a powerful warrior if some other guy's warrior/krathi is always going to be vastly superior to yours because he can enchant his own shit to give himself all AI stats? Fucking ridiculous, shortsighted and ignorant, the decisionmaking of people who don't understand the game and have never played such characters to experience these things. Anyone who has ever had to go through the absolutely stupendous process of branching an advanced weapon skill should retch at the thought of the massive gulf of inequality between that warrior and one that also gets to cast strength, fury and godspeed on himself. |
|
jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
|
Post by jkarr on Mar 23, 2016 2:31:18 GMT -5
Stop fantasizing about ass-pounding. sounds like there was a rumble in his bumble |
|
|
|
Post by sergeantraul on Mar 23, 2016 3:25:54 GMT -5
There's no way magick characters are going to usurp mundanes. Hatred and fear of magick doesn't go away (fear might become actually a thing, now). Limitations of being gemmed doesn't go away. All this changes is that magick is actually going to be present in the game. That's good. Magick is supposed to be part of the game.
I can't believe I see people here complaining about these predicted changes: magickers will actually be powerful and scary, and more people will try to play magickers in positions that are powerful and scary, instead of gemmed or iso roles. I don't see how these are bad changes. Magickal roles have been broken in Armageddon since I started playing. This might actually address that.
Mundane extended subguilds should be non-karma, and the destruction of full-powered mage guilds (especially sorcerer & nilazi) may have been mistakes. But this idea of magicker subguilds in general is great. You guys sound like Republicans criticizing something Obama has proposed because Obama proposed it and of course you have to oppose everything he proposes.
|
|
OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
|
Post by OT on Mar 23, 2016 4:16:28 GMT -5
Why is there "no way" that'll happen? Not only can you legally be a magicker in both Allanak and most tribes, thus covering the two primary areas of play, but the few clans where you definitely can't get away with being a magicker (such as the militia) have so few players in them anyway that there's hardly anything to usurp. For the game as a whole, magickers are now objectively superior to mundanes in the eyes of the code, and the hatred and fear has always been extremely overrated. It has also just become so much easier to be a rogue magicker because you'll pass perfectly for any mundane guild.
Who currently hates and fears the gemmed to such an extent that they can't become powerful? They're just designed to mostly be unclanned, same as so many mundane players are. When you meet one in any situation that matters, i.e. not at the bar, what does it matter that they're socially disadvantaged? Anybody you meet in the wild, in the rinth, in the Tablelands, in Red Storm, can be a mage. How do they not have the capacity to power out mundanes in most aspects of the game?
Previously, they didn't because mages were quite limited in what they could do. They might have a lot of firepower or were hard to kill or could fly, but by and large, they couldn't fight or craft or commit crimes in a general sense. Mundane characters did those things. You might have been able to get a couple of the elementalist guilds to become hard-hitting brutes, or you could pick an extended subguild that gave you some crafting or some measure of roguish abilities, but certainly mundanes were important because these things were the purpose of mundane characters, and what they were best at.
That's now definitively and undeniably no longer the case.
They were already powerful and scary, but that power and scariness was tempered by the fact that they were also vulnerable in certain ways, had a hard time applying that power to the safer parts of the game (how was a krathi gonna murder some city merchant, for instance?), and the gemmed role specifically is ill-conceived because it's just boring and badly designed. The latter hasn't changed, and magickers were by no means in need of becoming MORE POWERFUL.
It feels a bit like you won't even acknowledge that it's possible for anything to be a bad thing. Like everything is automatically good and it isn't possible to disagree. If you're not even open to the idea of criticism, you might just be in the wrong place. If after this thread you still don't see how these changes can be problematic, it's because you don't want to or because you're not experienced enough with the code to see how some of this stuff is wildly gamebreaking.
It also seems that you haven't really quite considered the ramifications of a game where magickers are now the best at every possible thing, as opposed to just vaguely the most dangerous people, as they should be and already were. Surely you must be able to conceive of some problems that would result from such a change. I would hope that anyone can at least agree that it's a perilous possibility. Otherwise they're just wearing blinkers.
I definitely agree wholeheartedly that extended subguilds should be non-karma, although that makes it a bit awkward to have such a massive difference in value between them. The current 0-karma subguilds are completely worthless compared to the extended ones. Who would ever take any of them? Staff could redesign them, but I suspect they're done redesigning mundane subguilds for now after both adding the extended ones and overhauling the basic ones.
Magicker subguilds are not inherently bad as an isolated idea. Magicker subguilds that are fully compatible with all mundane mainguilds, with no drawbacks other than the lack of a mundane subguild (which is a TINY sacrifice), is what's very perilous. I've pointed out some of the horrendously gamebreaking things that will result from this, barring completely unrealistically massive re-inventions of the game's entire way of handling skills. As long as it remains true that magick subguilds can be paired with mundane mainguilds without any direct penalties, which they've already verified, there's unprecedented change to the in-game power balance on the horizon, with a massive de-evaluation of mundane characters and new possibilities for characters that are literally more powerful than anything has ever been before in the history of Armageddon.
If you can't even see how this could possibly be problematic, I'd say your opinion isn't based on anything rational and you just came here to disagree for the sake of being contrary. Yours is a completely uncritical view.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2016 6:19:38 GMT -5
There's no way magick characters are going to usurp mundanes. Hatred and fear of magick doesn't go away (fear might become actually a thing, now). Limitations of being gemmed doesn't go away. All this changes is that magick is actually going to be present in the game. That's good. Magick is supposed to be part of the game.
I can't believe I see people here complaining about these predicted changes: magickers will actually be powerful and scary, and more people will try to play magickers in positions that are powerful and scary, instead of gemmed or iso roles. I don't see how these are bad changes. Magickal roles have been broken in Armageddon since I started playing. This might actually address that.
Mundane extended subguilds should be non-karma, and the destruction of full-powered mage guilds (especially sorcerer & nilazi) may have been mistakes. But this idea of magicker subguilds in general is great. You guys sound like Republicans criticizing something Obama has proposed because Obama proposed it and of course you have to oppose everything he proposes. Yeah, I'm all for seeing magick subguilds added. It's the removal of full magickers as a guild choice and the subsequent disappearance of almost half the types of elementalists and about half the nonsponsored guilds from the game that I find... worrisome, and upsetting. |
|
jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 386
|
Post by jesantu on Mar 23, 2016 6:39:32 GMT -5
So far neither here nor on the gdb has anyone responded to newtwink's point that a magick subguild warrior is now more powerful than a regular warrior, or a magick subguild assassin being more powerful than a regular assassin etc. And not just a little bit more powerful either, with 2 ruk spells alone an assassin could be a virtual god. I just want someone to either counter this point with a reasonable argument that explains the balance we've overlooked or openly admit that subguild magickers trump non magickers of the same guild (massively so).
Maybe this was intentional but I think it was an oversight.
The best counterargument I can come up with is that it's still a work in progress but if that's the explanation it's a silly one. Figure out what your vision is and THEN implement it. Otherwise if you say this is just phase one of an ongoing process, what it really looks like is you're making shit up as you go along. Removing full blown elementalists is removing part of the very foundation of the game. Implementing change is good but baby steps are preferable to sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
|
|
|
|
Post by Procrastination on Mar 23, 2016 8:10:37 GMT -5
Ssssssh. Let me take my teleport-y floaty- whiran assassin and be untraceable and disappear. Sometimes the best lesson is to have someone kick some teeth in. :]
I kid the people. I really don't know what spells you get for being 'touched' by whira, but she's always been a flirty woman, so I'm curious if nothing. I doubt they're going to give any of the teleport stuff for 3 karma, but I'd guess they're going to let you float, or something else, which would be wasted in this case.
|
|
|
|
Post by jcarter on Mar 23, 2016 9:14:40 GMT -5
Yeah its a huge cop out to permanently remove all mage guilds in a day with no player input then hide behind its a work in progress
|
|
punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
|
Post by punished ppurg on Mar 23, 2016 9:43:11 GMT -5
You can't comment on this because you have a reactionary opinion. Sorry.
|
|
punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
|
Post by punished ppurg on Mar 23, 2016 11:15:13 GMT -5
Kryos better chill out or else Nergal is going to destroy him.
|
|
ccp
staff puppet account
Posts: 32
|
Post by ccp on Mar 23, 2016 11:30:33 GMT -5
The "we now interrupt your regularly scheduled roleplaying .."thread where every staffer posted an image meme of popcorn was like a kick in the nuts on top of the massive gut punch this reduction in game features represents. Nyrgal is gleeful.
|
|
|
|
Post by magickermarco on Mar 23, 2016 11:32:59 GMT -5
I'd like to see a new type of warrior, taken the Tuluk Templar melee skills (since it's not being used) and call it a witch hunter, formally thrown together for the Arm of the Dragon OR add yet another subguild in called witch hunter where they get these skills too.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2016 13:02:31 GMT -5
Pretty sure tuluk templars get advanced weapons. that'd be one broken subguild
|
|
OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
|
Post by OT on Mar 23, 2016 14:36:12 GMT -5
So far neither here nor on the gdb has anyone responded to newtwink's point that a magick subguild warrior is now more powerful than a regular warrior, or a magick subguild assassin being more powerful than a regular assassin etc. And not just a little bit more powerful either, with 2 ruk spells alone an assassin could be a virtual god. I just want someone to either counter this point with a reasonable argument that explains the balance we've overlooked or openly admit that subguild magickers trump non magickers of the same guild (massively so). Maybe this was intentional but I think it was an oversight. The best counterargument I can come up with is that it's still a work in progress but if that's the explanation it's a silly one. Figure out what your vision is and THEN implement it. Otherwise if you say this is just phase one of an ongoing process, what it really looks like is you're making shit up as you go along. Removing full blown elementalists is removing part of the very foundation of the game. Implementing change is good but baby steps are preferable to sawing off the branch you're sitting on. People just seem to have no sense of nuance. One points out that these changes look like they'll make magickers completely, outrageously, gamebreakingly powerful and everyone just like, "as they should be! Magickers are meant to be powerful!!!11½" As if it wasn't possible for anything to be too powerful because it says somewhere in the documentation that magickers are powerful. I guess more power is always better, so if it gets to the point where mages can snap their fingers and kill every PC in a 100 room radius, that's great because magickers should be hated and feared. There's no sense of balance, no critical thought, nobody appears to even be able to conceive of the possibility that something can be so powerful that it's a bad thing. Nobody seems willing to acknowledge the perils of, say, human and elven fighters with AI+++ strength. It's like nobody can even picture in their heads what that'll be like. Just to stick with that example, the only way to previously get that was by a) having mul karma or b) being invited by staff to play a ghoul. Half-giants are too penalized in other areas and have to conform to such severe roleplaying regulations that they don't really come into that equation. Muls and ghouls are so difficult to get access to that it really wasn't a problem. Before this change, the only way to play a warrior or assassin with massively inflated strength, and not have to roleplay being retarded, was a mul or a ghoul. Now anybody with 2 karma (and thus anybody at all, with a spec app) can do it. And apparently, nobody can even conceive of how that's a gigantic upset to the game's balance. (If anyone says "Armageddon isn't about balance," I'll punch them.) |
|
LOL @ Lizzie whining that this ruins her mage characters because she literally cannot fathom playing a mage character who is not defined by their guild.
