Citizenship and Neutrality

Rashar

@ishin Sure you do. Every time Enorian makes a move.

*not bitter*

Moirean

LEADERS NEWS #399
Date: 8/16/2014 at 18:06
From: Slyphe, the Fabricator
To : Everyone
Subj: Meetings!

Hello leaders!

In the coming weeks we're planning on coordinating some meetings between city/guild leaders and the administration team. The purpose of these meetings will be to discuss the current status of your organization, and any pertinent goals or insight that may be necessary.

In order to keep this as streamlined as possible, we'd ask that you have answers to the following questions readily available or at least in the back of your mind:

a) What do you feel are your organization's biggest strengths and weaknesses?

b) What is your current progression system within the guild, and how long does it typically take a relatively new player to acquire class?

c) What are your current goals for your organization moving forward?

d) How can the administration assist you in carrying out these aforementioned goals?

Due to the rather spontaneous nature of our schedules (and yours) it will be rather difficult to formally schedule these meetings, and thus we will be essentially keeping an eye out to move forward when the most members of the administrative team are around for this discussion.

We look forward to chatting with you!

*thumbsup*


Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Khepary, in the year 427 MA.

Nola

Stuff like this, just reading all of it, is exhausting, and as much as I do care about the topics, and as many opinions I have that I would share - I start to ask myself what the damn point is to trying anymore, or caring.

Xarian

Something I see brought up is that tethering somehow balances combat, ostensibly by limiting the number of class combinations that will be faced. I disagree with this, in fact I think the opposite is true: when one side only has half the skills in the game available to them, they develop a very skewed understanding of what's balanced and what isn't. When both sides have access to a skillset, then broken/op skills aren't a problem for half the game, they're a problem for everyone, and they get fixed and addressed much more quickly.

Stathan

Over the years I've made jokes about a Switzerland for Aetolia. A neutral place for everyone to visit and be outside the general forced doctrine of either side. Yeah it's an amusing idea. I'd suggest guards that react to any form of attack, passive or otherwise, by flattening the "offender". It could be a nice place for testing the grey area theory that some people are keen on.

Moirean

Sup Delve

Stathan

I'm not talking about having to go to another plane of existence to do this. More like the Refugee camp with guards on crack.

Trager

Xarian said:

Something I see brought up is that tethering somehow balances combat, ostensibly by limiting the number of class combinations that will be faced. I disagree with this, in fact I think the opposite is true: when one side only has half the skills in the game available to them, they develop a very skewed understanding of what's balanced and what isn't. When both sides have access to a skillset, then broken/op skills aren't a problem for half the game, they're a problem for everyone, and they get fixed and addressed much more quickly.

And so emerged the Enorian Indorani Squad.

Ishin

Xarian said:

Something I see brought up is that tethering somehow balances combat, ostensibly by limiting the number of class combinations that will be faced. I disagree with this, in fact I think the opposite is true: when one side only has half the skills in the game available to them, they develop a very skewed understanding of what's balanced and what isn't. When both sides have access to a skillset, then broken/op skills aren't a problem for half the game, they're a problem for everyone, and they get fixed and addressed much more quickly.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. In the case that all skills are available to everyone, it's less 'THAT SHIT LIAISON ISHIN IS TRYING TO NERF LUMINARY SKILLS AGAIN', and more of a 'That Ishin, he's such a good liaison, addressing a clear balance issue with these skills.'

Yarel

@Xarian It is hard for me to even imagine anyone being able to make a good argument against what you said. Everyone remember when only Enorian and Duiran had monks? Spines and Loch were always saying how OP some of the skills were. We were basically told to shut up and stop being babies. Then multiclass came along, Loch and Spines got monks, and immediately the cries of 'ITS SO OP! NERF IT NOW' started from Enorian and Duiran, followed swiftly by nerfs to the class.

Alee

@Stathan‌



In all seriousness, I both like and hate the idea of a neutral organization. I like the idea of having that place.... the problem is the moment that vampire/necromancer/carnifex/insert "evil" class here joined then the spirit tethered orgs will just make it another taboo place.

Moirean

Exactly. You can't be neutral in the current setup, because indifferent sides you with the baddies.

Ilyon

Xarian said:

When both sides have access to a skillset, then broken/op skills aren't a problem for half the game, they're a problem for everyone, and they get fixed and addressed much more quickly.

Not sure how much I agree with the claim that "who whines the loudest" is the primary consideration for balancing. There's some amount to truth to it, as biased arguments sometimes receive more attention than they should, but I'd like to think that the process is better than implied here.

Ishin said:

'That Ishin, he's such a good liaison, addressing a clear balance issue with these skills.'

Thus far, my experience with neutral class changes indicates otherwise. The amount of opposition to such changes remains unchanged, the only difference is that the "party lines" aren't shadow/spirit, but "people who have the class vs people who don't".

Anyway. The main problem with homogenization of the two sides (which is what is requested here) is that there are three options how to do it, neither of them compelling. Basically you're dealing with the problem of fitting thematically opposed classes into the same city - vampires/luminaries, templars/indorani, shamans/teradrim, etc.

You could either make the classes bland enough to make them fit to both sides, or make the sides bland enough that having vampires fight along luminaries ceases being a problem, neither of which seems a good idea, as it essentially turns the game into a hack'n'slash. Or, you could create reskinned copies of all the classes on both sides. This option, while attractive on surface, would require decoupling guilds from classes, as the game cannot support twice as many guilds, and then finding some new identity for guilds. Which would probably take years, and once you do all that, the novelty will wear off after a few months anyway, leaving us where we are now.

Finally, I must say that I'm surprised that spirit-side players are showing support for removing tethers, as the main reason why tethers exist is to ensure that the spirit side remains competitive.

Toz

Could let things kind of develop organically. High clans, make ylem pylons like...an org thing not a city thing, so you could be rogue and actually able to use it anyway, etc. I always wanted to see a merc ylem group running around...

EDIT: As the last thought before my brain shuts down and makes me sleep, there's no lifer Spinesreach (shade of gray). I get it's impossible to have everything (or we'd have a city of city, to argue against Duiran), but maybe some...small thing that's not quite a city to balance out lifer side's alignment chart. Or find a way to lessen the edge against vamps, because right now we have, on the good/evil slider scale,
[Bloodloch---Spinesreach--|----------------Enorian]



Duiran

Phoenecia

Just to kind of echo what @Toz mentioned, my main beef with the way the cities are set up is that the range of options are actually kind of limited.

On the dark side, you have Bloodloch - the 'evil' city full of undead, and Spinesreach - the shady city that has a huge range of people within the good and evil scale. On the light side, you have Enorian - which subscribes to the whole Light is Not Good trope and would be willing to destroy entire towns to get rid of the undead, and then you have Duiran - the forestal org that mainly cares about the wilds and the Rhythm while everything else is secondary.

Because Enorian and Duiran have very different paradigms, it becomes really hard to find a place to fit in on the light side. Especially if you don't want to play an extremist or a wildling, and are looking for a place where Light and Good aren't mutually exclusive. Spinesreach works really well because it has a nice range, but there's no light side version of Spinesreach - no org that goes 'Whoa, hey, Enorian's kind of extreme. We want to save the world, just not like that'. Which is kind of depressing because when Light side players don't gel with Enorian or Duiran, they have nowhere to go. And when your options are a city full of extremists and a forestal org of wildlings, Spinesreach starts looking really attractive, but still sucks for you if you have a bunch of Spirit-tethered classes that you actually like using.

We don't really need a neutral city, as nice as the concept is. Toz's little diagram summed it up best. Bloodloch's at one end of the scale, and Enorian's at the other, with Spinesreach falling in the gray area on the Dark side. Duiran also falls into the gray area for the Light side, but it's theme is so specific that it doesn't really count.

Teani

I don't think Enorian -has- to be that extreme though. I believe it should be up to the guilds rather than the city when it comes to extreme stances, or even individuals. The city should have ALL aspects of life-preferenced people you can find and then make a melting pot of that, without anyone feeling they are not extreme enough to be part of the it.

Bloodloch keeps their stance of not accept the living (living-related) things.
Enorian would not accept the undead (undead-related) things in a similar way.
Duiran keeps to the nature and Rhythm.
While Spinesreach has its rumblers, half of which are Undead and half of which would prefer if those people took their things and moved off to Bloodloch's caves where they belong!

Moirean

Enorian used to be like that. I mean, I was a Herald there, and Moi has never cared at all about life/undeath or spirit/shadow, she just wants her orgs to do well. Somewhere along the way Enorian changed.

Alexina

Back when I was in Enorian (and I was a Herald too for a bit), it felt like the city was more about 'Good' than it was 'Life/Spirit'. This no longer seems to be the case (although I did read 'help enorian' some time ago and it didn't feel at all like a place for baby-eating Deities).

Aarbrok

I think that is the main focal point that has become skewed is that it went from a battle of Good and Evil to a battle of "Tether" which is somewhat an OOC concept being that HELP TETHER directs you to 8.2.2 CLASS INCOMPATIBILITY

Wherein the file itself says Currently, the cities of Bloodloch and Spinesreach are considered to beassociated with the Shadow realm, while Enorian and Duiran areassociated with the Spirit realm. Imposing that it is this -or- this.

City organizations are also considered tethered, and an individual may not join a city if he or she has classes which are tethered to the opposing realm. - With the previous statement saying -this-

-Then somewhat contradicting with this- It is possible to hold classes that are not aligned with your current tether. These classes will be inactive and unable to be switched to, though it is still possible for you to become apprenticed into an inactive class. Your tether will only ever change when joining a city.

EDIT: That being said, I know its deeper than just this or that and mechanically far further a goal to appease everyone, I am just naming some examples directly on how tether has been perceived by the sides potentially... (Personally, I think if you want to be neutral you can, just be prepared to debate/argue and potentially lose IC contacts who do not wish to understand your stance.

Valdus

Aarbrok said:

-Then somewhat contradicting with this- It is possible to hold classes that are not aligned with your current tether. These classes will be inactive and unable to be switched to, though it is still possible for you to become apprenticed into an inactive class. Your tether will only ever change when joining a city.

This is a fairly new addition that was put it to allow players to keep their untethered classes as inactive, rather than completely losing them when switching sides. The help file should be updated to explain that your tether will switch when you join an opposing city, rendering your opposite-tethered classes completely inactive.

Tethers are still all or nothing - you cannot be in a spirit-tethered city and use shadow-tethered classes. The addition of being able to render those classes inactive was done purely from an OOC standpoint, to allow players fluidity in org choices without sacrificing their entire previous lesson investment.

Aarbrok

Thank you for the clarification, I was confused because it read somewhat strangely.
(Not that I really plan on wanting other classes)

Haven

I might be getting the wrong impression from reading the thread so please forgive me if I am but... I dunno. I feel that the game is working as intended as far as the current schtick in Enorian goes. The current theme in the Beacon is the byproduct of the roleplay their influential players have. If some people wish for that to change then they have a few options. To name a couple: find a way to change the influential characters or replace the regime and set your own trend.

If there -is- an issue in Enorian, I'd say it's in the lack of initiative for their role. What I mean by this is, and I understand that Enorian is supposed to be the underdog in the Midnight Age, there isn't really an outlet for them to do anything meaningful beyond take abuse. While they do receive a bone from time to time (I'd say rarely) in an event, I think it's important that and would really like to see Enorian receive something unique that they can completely own and use as a prop to reinforce and be that role of "Beacon of Hope/Light" or whatever. The players could kind of do that before on their own with the war system when/if they won but with it's removal, they don't really have an outlet anymore that touches the world in some way to demonstrate their role's strength so to speak.

@Areka's fortified dock/seaport could be a good example if it was made to be like a series of quests or rituals that the players in the city could undertake to bring in refugees from slaver's bay or whatever. Or if there was a mechanic added to the Temple district for their players to undertake. Perhaps something ritual like. The connection to the game world doesn't have to be huge, could even be minimal but it ought to be something that Enorian can unquestionably own for the players to do themselves.

I dunno if that made sense but there ya have it. That's my morning ramble of the day!

Ishin

Could be kinda cool if Enorian had a mechanic where they could 'liberate' a location from Bloodloch's Empire, and turn the inhabitants from undead to living. And give one to Loch where they can turn the living village to undead. You could even give it, say, a 7 RL day cd, so that you can't run out and spam it, and make it so that a village that was just turned is immune to 'siege' again for that long as well.

I guess kinda like Ciem, where one city or the other would initiate on said village, the two entities would fight over it, and whoever won staked their claim.

Rashar

So basically, Bloodloch could mechanically take over the world. :P

Ishin

Unless Duiranorian gets off their asses and fights back, yep.

Rashar

So basically, Bloodloch could mechanically take over the world. :P

Ishin

Ishin said:

Unless Duiranorian gets off their asses and fights back, yep.

Not sure why I'm having to quote myself.

Alexina

I have a raging love for empire-building, particularly when it involves dynasties, feudalism, diplomacy, religion, economy and imperialism. At the moment, I play a lot of Europa Universalis IV, but Crusader Kings II definitely has a special place in my heart. If Aetolia ever produces features to emulate these aspects in a way that allows me as a player to influence the world, I will lurv this game forever.

Rashar

Nevermind, man. I guess my sarcasm sort of got missed, there.

Stathan

@Ishin he didn't double post he was saying that Bloodloch being the powerhouse it is could take over the world. But I'm convinced it would turn into more Spines vs Loch than Loch vs Eno.

@Rashar It's hard to see sarcasm in text when you can't hear inflection in voice.