Spirit/Shadow PK divide

Areka

Both sides are guilty of doing the same thing and seem content to just point the finger and complain about the other without really addressing their own history and need of housekeeping. Dredging up the same conversation does nothing productive as neither side seems really willing to go "You know what, yeah, we were shits for a while, what can we do to try to make things more interesting while remaining balanced because the zerg isn't fun" and hold to it - because as much as one party or the other might try to keep a balance on things for a time, as soon as they're met with unrestrained zerg, that effort goes out like a candle.

Moirean

All this being said, yes, BL does have higher innate numbers. This is just back to my old rant about innate populations. I understand that it's good for newbie retention to slot people directly into city/guild combinations, and we need fewer guilds to encourage larger orgs, but the implementation is too staggered and doesn't seem to be accounting for the fact that even with only 3 guilds, BL will still have the newbies who are funneled in via nightstalker.

BL currently has 4 guilds AND every single newbie who wants to roll a vampire (one of the big draws of the game), as the Abhorash changes have pulled every house back to BL. Their members get guild credits AND house credits, they get mentor credits AND sire credits (forgot this got changed, thanks Drai), and their bigger membership means that they have bigger credit pools before you even take into account this double dipping.

I don't think this is a huge issue with the spirit-shadow disparity, as if someone wants to play evil they are going to play evil. It's not taking someone away from being a potential lifer. It does, however, have a huge effect in skewing the darkie membership split, and then the credit bonuses only help reinforce things. With Atabahi deleted, it's even more pronounced. Spines really needs to get Carnis to balance out the nightstalkers, or we need to get 2 houses. Until that happens, BL will always get more members out of the gate.

Jensen

Mechanically, yes it would be nice to have 2 houses in Spinesreach. RP wise? I don't see why they'd come to Spinesreach unless something player driven unfolds and changes the way houses work again. Spinesreach isn't really a shadow city anyway, we're pretty neutral. Just part of being' neutral means you don't care if some citizens are morally good or evil.

Draiman

Imo, people have been bitching and whining about vampire houses since I started playing this game and "oh I wish the admin would do this or that and wah" and I get that it might be a problem for the population thing, but the admin have finally answered 10 years worth of incessant crying from players to help fix the Imperium/Dominion, so I say we don't touch vampire houses just yet and let them do their thing (unless they're done atm).

Moirean

No, I definitely agree that vampire houses FIT well in BL. That's a good spot for them. It just means that the population is REALLY stacked. Carnifex, on the other hand, aren't the RARRR GRRRR sadistic monster knights anymore and have turned more into a twisted take on GoT's Night's Watch, and they kinda fit quite well into Spines, so shifting them there would have just made a lot of sense for balance.

I gave up trying to push that, however, as I was told quite firmly it wasn't happening, bit the bullet and built a BL guildhall instead (if this is what they want, might as well have some creative input with it, I figured). I just think without that shift, the balance between Spines and BL is always going to be skewed from the get-go.

Jensen

I agree with you. I have a hunch though, with the way the game has been becoming more event heavy, that players will shift of their own accord. Not because of imbalances, unfairness, or chances for opportunity, but because these events more clearly define each city and duiran. Players will find that the outcome of an event doesn't match their play style and will shift to a place more suited. I have no data to really prove this, it just seems sorta evident from any new Spireans we get.

Rashar

@moirean I'm not sure if you were just using my post as a starting point or arguing something I said. I don't actually disagree with any of your points, nor do I blame you. But nor can I blame light side leaders for doing the same.

RP is all well and good, and it's just -great- to hear people who don't log on a lot or PK flap about how we should do this or that, or Duiran is almost as bad as whoever. But if we ever actually -pushed- the conflicts to a boiling point, they would be the first ones getting frustrated at dying or being unable to leave the city, the first ones to haven hop and pretend AFK, or the first ones to bitch and blame leadership for picking fights. I experienced it on a much smaller scale with Sly Order a couple of times, and I can imagine it'd just be more prevalent with a larger Org.

Conflict ultimately leads to violence when you're talking about orgs, and then all those hard core rpers are like oh god pvp you guys are so boring this is lame. Or whatever, I'm exaggerating slightly and stereotyping but mostly in good nature. Much love to urrbody.


Edit: To clarify, since somebody yelled at me. I was referring, in the case of Order stuff, to previous conflicts and far, far more pointing it towards the ones that didn't log on who came around to bitch about things. Everybody rocked during the last war, and those of you who log on every day are amazing.

Moirean

Just was using your post as a starting point. I agree that it's frustrating because, yeah, a lot of times the people arguing/demanding things the loudest aren't the ones in the trenches. Hearing "We should do things x way" when we do things y way for specific reasons is a common headache I get in leadership.

Erzsebet

Houses shifting away from 'loch would require admin approval, too. The only one that was ever a Spirean House got hella pressure from Abhorash and 'loch to merge into a Bloodlochian house, apparently. And I know Abh straight up told the house-leaders that we were required to be Bloodlochian. So I doubt it'll ever happen, even if some of us do keep treaties with 'reach and allow our members to be part of whichever.

Rage: I can't find my shiny thing. :< I don't know if it's not resetting to my whirlwind properly or if I just have bad timing in looking for it or what, but I can't find it and it's making me sadface.

Rashar

It's just kind of.. I don't know. I feel like some people are wearing rose colored glasses sometimes, heh. These things are just fact. It is what it is. I bitch because we do things every day that go against what RP and IC says we we should, for the sake of it being a game. But it's a mild irritation, because at the end of the day, I get it. Leaders have to do that same thing -for- their citizens/guilds/orders/whatever. Fact is there are a lot of times way more non coms than coms, and they're valuable people too.

Except @ingram. Man, what a troll.

Jensen

It would be interesting to see more divide amongst life and shadow so that we could all adequately portray the faucets of either side. Haven is a prime example of a life divide faucet. A shadow faucet I'd like to see is the proper divide between undead and vampire. We unfortunately do not have the player base to be that open ended and dynamic. I think it would require a playerbase of 200-500 which I don't see us having any time soon.

Erzsebet

A lot of vamps play that divide somewhat, and many of us used to. I know when Kiralla took over Voltaire initially, they didn't allow only-undead in unless they were aspiring to become vampires. For a long time that was the norm, and when I did start letting them in they were treated as servants. Somewhere along the road they basically stopped treating them that way because there are few people that really want to play the underclass in a sense that they can't move past it--treating newblets like servants is fine 'cause they do some tasks and RP some and they can go on to treating new newblets like servants. Undead's only method to 'moving past' that treatment was to go vamp, which was much more difficult/cost-inducing than it is now, given they didn't have multi-class, even if it did otherwise fit with their RP. So they left. And in order influence the population stability and keep what undead we had remaining, we changed the way they were treated. Which was not the norm for a while, but eventually the other houses mostly followed suit. Bloodloch...I think shifted to an equalish stance there during Desian's reign, 'cause all of our major combatants mostly except like, Kadvar, were undead but not vamp. They were the dominant visible faction, though the inverse is pretty much true now.

Demarcus

I have no idea what we're talking about, but the way I look at it...

Bloodloch = Vampires (OP AS HELL), and those sand people (OP AS HELL)

Spinesreach = Those snakey people (Sneaky, but weaksauce...), then I think Indorani/Cabalist/and some other class that no one plays because they all suck.

That-Nasty-Fruit-City = Foresty people. I have no idea on their power levels.

Enorian = Lumifaires/Daru/Templar, and we're like ehhhh, we can do stuff but whenever we do it always ends up getting nerfed because creativity and being successful in a 8v15 is apparently unacceptable. Alas.

The hilarity of it? I *know* that I'm waaaaaaaaaay off! Perception is everything though!

Oh, and Ezalor freaking eats everyone. That one is absolute fact.

Edit: Oh snap son, I forgot the Carnifex. Aren't they like 75% of Spinesreach with the other 24% Syssin and 1% everythingelse? They're pretty bawse even though they are "broken" and need to be reworked. Which they do, but they're still pretty awesome.

Jensen

@Demarcus‌ I was going to start replying to each point till i hit the second to last one :P

Angwe

DISCLAMER: THE BELOW IS MY OPINION AND MAY BE OUT OF DATE OR FLAT OUT WRONG

Tiers
God Tier

Indorani
Teradrim
Shaman
Templar
*Bloodborn

*I considered moving Bloodborn down to the high tier in light of recent changes.
All things considered, however, it is still a very strong class.
High Tier

Praenomen
Syssin
Sentinel

Middle Tier

Luminary
Sciomancer
Carnifex

Low Tier

Shapeshifter
Ascendril
Monk
Zealot

Bottom Tier

Cabalist
Nightstalker

Moirean

Hmm, off-topic post. This should be moved to echo canyon, I think.

Angwe

Was in response to @Demarcus' post.

Moirean

Ezalor

Shaman, Syssin, Templar, Teradrim
Bloodborn
Indorani, Luminary, Sentinel
Monk
Daru, Praenomen
Lycanthrope
Ascendril, Cabalist, Carnifex, Sciomancer

My personal 1v1 tier groupings in a general sense, disregarding hard counters like Syssin vs any lock class or Lycan vs anything not Templar/Shaman/Bloodborn. Although I'm not very familiar with what Ascendril/Sciomancer can do so take that one with a grain of salt. This is all assuming an equal level of artifact investment too, if it's an artied BB vs an unartied person BB rises way to the top for example.

Serrice

Ascendril can spike for TERRIFYING levels of damage with two holocaust globes, modest artifact investment, and some tricksy timing.

Jensen

Damonicus

Just ask @Xavin...

Ingram

Rashar said:

It's just kind of.. I don't know. I feel like some people are wearing rose colored glasses sometimes, heh. These things are just fact. It is what it is. I bitch because we do things every day that go against what RP and IC says we we should, for the sake of it being a game. But it's a mild irritation, because at the end of the day, I get it. Leaders have to do that same thing -for- their citizens/guilds/orders/whatever. Fact is there are a lot of times way more non coms than coms, and they're valuable people too.

Except @ingram. Man, what a troll.

Eaaaaasy now, friendo.

Irruel

Jensen said:

Haven is a prime example of a life divide faucet.

I totally agree!
That guy doesn't just leak propaganda, it pours out every time his mouth opens.

Seir

I want to say that Bloodloch's population has nothing to do with people wanting to play evil characters because none of the "evil" organizations across IRE have this problem. The problem is that you have the biggest hook concept of the game exclusive to one side, a hook concept that is widely recognized through pop culture, and it's an in-depth subrace with a lot of lore dedicated to it and a lot of unique mechanics with Houses and the Imperium. The only other easily recognizable subrace? Available to both sides.

New player mentality: you mean I can be a vampire AND a lycanthrope on the same side!?

Yeah, you get the idea. While I realize it's too late now and the idea would be massively unpopular, would be to just scrap the new spirit class because it's been ages since we've heard anything about it. Remove Lycan from the neutral pool and just give it to spirit. It's the only other class with detailed lore now, a specialized subrace, and easily recognizable from pop culture. Done. Two hook concepts easily recognized by new players and each side has one. Each side now has an even number of classes as well.

Rashar

Clearly, Angel needs to be available for play.

Setne

Slow down there Twilight.

Rashar

Are there angels in that movie? I've only seen 2 of them.

Seir

I thought you were using a Buffy reference and he was using Twilight.

Rashar

Oh no, I meant like. Angels. Real angels. I wasn't really serious, but I can't think of anything else besides vampires that would attract people. Werewolves, maybe. But like you said, they're on both sides and plus they kind of suck.