Ankyrean Anguish - Aetolia-based RAGE

Tralendar

(Rank 4) Religion - Monuments.

Monuments that belong to a God upon your city's advisory will grant the

following bonuses to citizens in the area:

 - Endurance regeneration

 - Willpower regeneration

 - Non-hostile shrine powers for the God the monument belongs to become area

wide.

Enemies to your city who are in an area that has a monument to a God upon your

city's advisory suffer the following negative effects:

 - Reduced endurance regeneration

 - Reduced willpower regeneration

 - Decreased movement

 - Small chance that creatures and denizens in the room will turn aggressive

upon them.

Whoever thought these negatives would be a good idea didn't think that through all the way.  The movement penalty is like trying to walk with like grove hinder on and the other stuff sucks too, especially for any monuments in a bashing area.  It's the only ability in all the research trees that has a penalty to everyone enemied to your city passively, everything else is either a bonus to city members or at least requires you to engage your opponent (though pretty sure warlock is the only one of these).  The bonuses for this are already pretty nice, so can the maluses go away?  They're just awful to deal with and no way to avoid them.  Not to mention there's an imbalance in the number of gods on advisories in darkies/lifers with 4/6.  Nothing but rage inducing.

Daskalos

You get another power, GRACE, in another tree that restores you back to normal movement. As for the gods thing, you also have the largest order (Iosyne) and that's because a lot of our players don't quit when people go inactive. Auresae and Damariel aren't played at the moment. Bloodloch has a far larger population than Enorian or Duiran.

Eleanor

I would like to add my small whine to that bigger one- I'm getting the effect and it's apparently due to being enemied to Enorian, which I got... for having necromancy. Never did anything to Eno, never had any intention of it, blanket enemying, and wups now I'm paying for it. Sigh.

Tralendar

Doesn't seem like that to me.  The slowdown is much more than what grace covers, but those powers shouldn't be giving passive negatives to enemies of the city regardless.  The benefits are really, really nice while the negatives just blow.

BL is about the same size in terms of active players as all the other cities right now.  Stating otherwise is a falsity.  At one point BL had enough active people to be like 2 of the other cities, but that is no longer the case.  Largest order has nothing to do with it regardless, each order can have 3 monuments, no extras are given for having a bigger order.  I have no idea why population matters at all with this situation anyways, as it is completely irrelevant.  I'm not sure what you're trying to imply about darkies jumping orders all the time cause lifers do the same and you're talking to someone that was in an inactive order for like 200 IC years, so your comment is lost on me.

Daskalos

Yea, our people get the same thing for the Bloodloch enemying.

Ezalor

Yeah I'm about ready to declare Holy War on Slyphe just so I can get rid of that monument at NoT. It is awful.

Missari

This is obviously the admins telling us to all get along and unenemy everyone to everything, because enemying is mean and hurtful to your playing experience.

Saybre

Rage at Enorian. I'm so done with it.

Eleanor

Missari said:

This is obviously the admins telling us to all get along and unenemy everyone to everything, because enemying is mean and hurtful to your playing experience.

Hey, I'd be down with that. Leave enemying for people who are actually dangerous.

Ezrax

Eleanor said:

I would like to add my small whine to that bigger one- I'm getting the effect and it's apparently due to being enemied to Enorian, which I got... for having necromancy. Never did anything to Eno, never had any intention of it, blanket enemying, and wups now I'm paying for it. Sigh.

cabalists shouldnt have necromancy anyway were basically the good guys when you think about it

Daskalos

@tralendar - My point was you said imbalance on divine advisories. If you look at total lifer\undead gods though:

Auresae \ Damariel \ Dhar \ Haern \  Omei \ Slyphe

Chakrasul \ Iosyne \ Severn \ Maghak \ Niuri \ Ivoln

It looks pretty even. We have the same amount of gods on each side, the difference is even the dead ones on our side have enough players in them still to show up on advisories, and we generally don't have a single order in one org, as opposed to Bloodloch and Spinesreach where some orders on your side are solely listed in one city.

Moirean

Active population actually means very little in regards to Divine Advisory, as I'm pretty certain it's ANY member of the order who counts, not just active ones.

I personally like how our cities are different instead of both BL and Spines having all of the same divine. I think it reflects unique flavor and outlooks of each dark city.

Lin

---[ OOC ANNOUNCEMENT ]-----------------------------( 2013/07/19 22:10:39 )---
Due to some technical difficulties, we are rescheduling the ustream for Sunday
12pm PST.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WEEEEEEAK

I wanted to see @Razmael look awkward!

Razmael

Shoo. It's your fault for bailing on us!

Lin

I had to make sure I could pay rent

Haern

Razmael said:

Shoo. It's your fault for bailing on us!

One a scale of 1 to 10, how kawaii is Razmael

Arbre

Tired of people who don't care enough to notice they're ruining the gaming experience of others.  You're not responsible for my fun, but if you're making a -bunch- of people miserable, maybe you ought to reconsider your actions.

Belgarion

Doppleganger = (cataclysm - all those silly restrictions like having 4 of us, and being outside) + yankage

Why is this Unicorn still walking around in broad daylight? Seriously people, there's nothing like it in the world, and the closest comparison is either that ^^, or monks, which both sides also have, and they need at least 2 people and a mindlock to pull it off.

Ezrax

Yeah. Cata is pretty lame.

It's the one true team combat skill in the game (in that it involves a team to do it) and it's the worst thing ever to use in a team compared to other things. If you have the chops to get four mages with trans crystalism in the same room together to work in a concerted manner, it better be a unicornsing good ability.

Edit: It didn't edit my cuss!

Rivas

Being told "Here, write this essay/report/book to advance in the guild".

...yes it's a text game whatever shut up. I did enough writing in school, and now enough writing at work. No way that's fun for me, especially for something that's probably already been done on the same subject a hundred times before.


Perpetual GR1, here I come!!

Missari

I thought we did away with that bullshit years ago? People need to remember that this is a game, and that line doesn't just apply when PK is involved.

Moirean

Some people enjoy writing stuff. Essays/books can serve a few purposes, imho. First, they can just be fun to write. Some people just enjoy writing. Second, they can be part of a RP arc - eg, doing research to write a book. Third, and most often, writing can be assigned by a guild to demonstrate knowledge. It's an easy option, as you can just toss that at people to do and sit back and wait. For some people, the writing assignment can be a good and engaging activity, but for most there are preferable choices. I think most guilds these days recognize that and tend to offer writing as an option along with other things, eg write a book OR lead a combat class OR host an arena event, etc. Write an essay OR recite the information orally. Most guilds give these options to let people do things in a variety of ways, while still easily assessing that members are learning what they should. 

If guilds aren't giving options, they really should do that these days, IMHO - especially with novices, direct engagement is a good way to get people tugged into (and sometimes even introduced to) roleplay. As an org leader, if my guild/city has a flaw/oversight like this, I would hope that someone would let me know and suggest ways to improve the experience for others.

Minarael

I personally love writing options as advancement opportunities. Guilds -should- be offering thematic options that cater to different play styles for advancement. Social folks can engage socially, writing nerds can write, combat folks can fight, hunters can lead hunts/make guides/gather essence, whatever. 

My rage - Being a jerkface and using flimsy RP excuses to justify poor behavior. 

Hadoryu

Actually, I never liked writing requirements, even as an option. There is no way you're going to want to keep the result of something like that 99% of the time - you're certainly not asking them to write something to the standard of quality that's actually useful to put in your library, nor are you asking them to write it because you have an actual need for such a text. So it's ultimately a 'here's a pickaxe, go break some rocks' kind of requirement. Which is to say, it's not something that actually TESTS your novice if they're ready to be promoted, it's busywork.

That's not to say writing things isn't ALL of those good things (social, creative etc), but it's only actually useful when it's either self motivated (oh, they don't have this kind of text and I can write it well) or a post-novicehood merit assignment (in which case you can up the standard and set the topic to where the actual product would be worth keeping).

Tza

I actually liked the Syssin writing mission, where you had to write a 'book' about your character. A template existed detailing what they wanted, so it was more a "fill in your stuff" assignment and it helped define my newbie char. Still... it took me a while to get around to it because I'm a lazy sock when it comes to writing assignments.

Other than that I have always loathed writing essays or anything else for games. It always takes me a long while to write and no one really reads it. Plus, I usually really want to do other things when logging onto a game (something as brain numbing as bashing for example).

Lin

Tza said:

I actually liked the Syssin writing mission, where you had to write a 'book' about your character. A template existed detailing what they wanted, so it was more a "fill in your stuff" assignment and it helped define my newbie char. Still... it took me a while to get around to it because I'm a lazy sock when it comes to writing assignments.

That one was kinda fun, people would fill them out with barely anything inside and I'd get good and angry at them.

Angwe

Rivas said:

Being told "Here, write this essay/report/book to advance in the guild".

...yes it's a text game whatever shut up. I did enough writing in school, and now enough writing at work. No way that's fun for me, especially for something that's probably already been done on the same subject a hundred times before.


Perpetual GR1, here I come!!

Ogod, it's not me, is it? I come up with those tasks off the top of my head. If it's lame, just request a different one either ICly or OOCly.

Solaria

Rivas said:

Being told "Here, write this essay/report/book to advance in the guild".

...yes it's a text game whatever shut up. I did enough writing in school, and now enough writing at work. No way that's fun for me, especially for something that's probably already been done on the same subject a hundred times before.


Perpetual GR1, here I come!!

Writing, I can deal with, but I say that explorer requirements suck worse. I hate explorer requirements. So hard. I remember when I used to be strict on them years ago..and damn. They prove nothing, other than you use your mapper to wander about a bunch of areas trying not to get killed. For the people who find it harder to get around, or who don't like just wandering for hours on end to get the rank to move up, it's tedious and unneeded. But, suppose you could say that about writing assignments, too. At least those can go faster usually.

Ezrax

I literally quit Lusternia because they wanted me to write a book in my Guild. You can't advance without it.

Minarael

Explorer requirements are tremendously irritating, particularly for a new player. They serve absolutely no purpose. 

Writing assignments should not be required at all on a novice level, they should be one of an option of tasks post-novicehood, and you absolutely -can- expect quality writing out of it. Further, people do read quality stuff put in by other players. 

As an org leader, I have had quite a number of really interesting additions to our org's lore emerge out of optional writing tasks and also gotten interesting ideas and useful stuff out of it (hunting area guides and the like). I've also rejected writing submissions that were just -bad-, and helped clean up submissions that were borderline but could be improved with a little help. 

As a person who generally does writing tasks, I find them enjoyable and an interesting way to get into the head of my character, the lore of my org, and they don't take me too long. Hunting is far more tedious and irritating to me than writing ever will be. That's sort of the point of providing a lot of different avenues of advancement. Provide people ways to serve that organization and advance their character in a way that is hopefully enjoyable to the player and contributes to the growth of the character. Writing is the best way that -I- do that, your mileage may vary.