Sanctions that Impact Mechanics are Bad and Should Be Deleted

Tetchta

The title pretty much summarizes it succinctly, I think, but for those who don't know, guild sanction is a thing where a guild says "yes, I like you! You're good people and get to have special halos around your head even though you're not technically guilded." They come with some benefits, and they're kinda...wildly disparate across the board. Some are a bit RP-heavy, such as the Syssin benefits and the Domina/Dominus titles for the Dominion, and others are completely mechanical and impact PVP. I personally don't love this, and I don't think someone's standing with a guild should impact their ability to PVP with a class. I don't have a comprehensive list of guild sanctions, but here's just a few of the consequences of not being sanctioned:

• Carnifex: reduction in how many souls you can have
  
• Revenant: symbiosis does 10% less damage to mobiles, chirography takes longer to charge.
  
• Dominion: use 10% more blood per skill
  
• Warden: Less Renown available
  
• Ascendril: increased eq and mana cost on Simultaneity.
  

I know there's more than these out there, but this is just meant to be an example. Some are relatively minor, and others seem like a pretty significant mechanical boost. It seems wrong to me that players should have the ability to gate the efficiency of another player's class like this. RP skills being sanction-specific I totally get, and that rules. It shows that you have a special relationship and get some prestige out of that. Mechanical benefits, especially ones as significant as you see in quite a few guilds, though, just doesn't seem like a good idea to me, and I think it'd be good to consider taking a look at moving Guild Sanction into a Purely RP role, and the current sanction bonuses should either be given to everybody, or just wholecloth taken out of the game so everyone's on the same page.

Rhyot

Sanction is something -USUALLY- just given to people who take up that class associated with that guild. If you haven't caused any issues with that guild, then there's no reason to not be sanctioned. For example, I'm not sanctioned to the Dominion, but I am sanctioned to the Teradrim. 

While I have no beef with the Dominion, there's no RP reason for Rhyot to be sanctioned to the Dominion (of which will not be discussed on forums) despite there being minimal (read: no) PVP consequences (10% blood use increase IS NOT a hindrance in PVP and I will beg you to argue otherwise), but there is a RP reason for him to be sanctioned to Teradrim. 


PVP effect or not, so long as you aren't stirring up trouble or being a nuisance to those specific guilds that use sanctions, there's no reason why you shouldn't get sanctioned. If you ARE causing trouble to the guild or those within the guild or are just not liked by the leadership because of your IC actions, then it's almost as if your actions have consequences. 

Tetchta

Right, I don't disagree (overall) with what you're saying wrt why people are or aren't sanctioned and there being consequences for roleplay. I just think those consequence should be entirely roleplay/roleplay skill related.

Edit: and I honestly can't speak for Prae specifically but several sanctions 100% have pvp consequences lol

Bulrok

Rhyot you better pray I'm unmad before I got off work 

Eliadon

Overall, I agree that anything that can materially impact combat should be given as the default rather than needing sanction.

I disagree about skills like Simultaneity though - channels are not defenses and cannot be stripped, you use it once per time alive. That being slightly more efficient doesn't really change anything, but is a cute flavor thing

Tetchta

Yeah, I was just pulling examples I wasn't familiar with from the help file; I think that also illustrates how, like, kinda wildly all over the map sanction bonuses are. Some make quite a difference in viability and combat stamina/sustinability, and others are just like "Hey, you're a special snowflake according to us so you get this lil' dabble of special pixie dust on your class" and give you just that lil' extra bit of smugness you deserve for being sanctioned. I just think all of them should be the latter, and none the former.

Just as a quick example: given how additive percentages work in Aet, the 10% blood penalty is the difference between blood_thin(1) and blood_thin(2), also 2&3, essentially making it something that entirely cancels out between 300-600cr of artifacts. The Carnifex soul penalty (I don't actually know what the difference is; is it 10k vs 12k souls?) roughly equates to a 20% decrease in your offensive longevity. That said, Souls go a lot further, but using a similar example: mark of the ravager costs 250 credits and halves the number of souls you use with your skills, effectively doubling the number of souls you have. By contrast, this non-sancitoned penalty results in a 50cr value loss from an artifact. Not as bad, but also...that kinda sucks. Revenant\warden sanction makes an entire round difference on vorpal. I don't think there's an artifact/credit calculation to be made there, but I think most of us know how pivotal a single round can be in Aetolian PVP. Nevermind, @Mjoll did the credit calculation below.

I think it'd overall be healthier and better for the game if sanctions were more about playing to the respective themes and roleplay of guilds and less of the mechanically punative nature above.

Ardent

Delete Sanction mechanic. Problem solved.

Tetchta

Personally I'd rather keep them and hedge them into an RP-related role, but that's, yeah, another option and I wouldn't pitch a fit over it.

Mjoll

The particularly egregious ones that stick out in my mind (without logging in and looking at what they all are again) are Templar/Revanent equalling out to 1600 credits in stat runes, and 10% increased blood use for Praenomen.

Ardent

Sciomancer sanction does nothing by the way. There's nothing the class offers for sanction at all.

Mjoll

Ardent said:

Sciomancer sanction does nothing by the way. There's nothing the class offers for sanction at all.

STILL?!

edit: Actually I'm not that surprised.

Ardent

There is nothing the class can offer to people without adjusting another primary skill off the class unless you want to gate something else.

Tetchta

Sciomancer sanction should let you have a lil angry shadeling pet that mostly does nothing except maybe kill vermin for you.

Edit: I think that you're also hitting at the heart of the problem with the Mechanical Sanctions, Ard. Most of the ones that people mention as being egregious essentially gate some part of the class off from you, whether it's slower vorpal or dying from reaching 0% blood in a long fight. Under that model, they'd have to kneecap the class for non-sanctioned folk like they have in several other cases. Scio's have so much flavor though that it seems like it'd be easy to come up with RP-related stuff for them.

Toz

- Scio sanction gives periodic blackout as shadow overwhelms your vision.

It does feel like the heritage system where you had this cool RP...but then some were also amazing and then Tsol'aa could hide or something?

Xavin

I would just as soon have nothing for the Ascendril sanction. Simultaniety is literally only done when deffing up and, to my knowledge, nothing strips channels anymore. So the tiny boost to speed there is just ????

Rhyot

Bulrok said:

Rhyot you better pray I'm unmad before I got off work 

@Bulrok

Or what?? You gonna PK me for an OOC opinion?? :P

You gonna call Michael McDoesntexist to stop me??


Just because I have a differing opinion than you and others, does not make the opinion invalid. You being angry about my opinion doesn't change that either.

I stand firm in my post about IC actions having IC consequences in terms of sanctions, regardless of Sanction or not. If you want sanction, be chill with the orgs that have them. If you don't want sanction, cause trouble with the orgs.


To put it in the same perspective.... The gods bless the cities fairly often. Rhyot does not receive these blessings from most of these gods because his very dismissive and disrespectful viewpoint against them. Blessings have a very real advantage in PVP. Should my character continue to get blessed by the gods despite his antagonistic viewpoints against them? No!! Good heavens no!!

And trust me, Godblessings are a hell of a lot more detrimental in PVP than a bloody sanction is. Accept your consequences for lack of sanction or figure out why you're not sanctioned and fix it. Either way, it's great RP.

Bulrok

Gloves are coming off kid.

Iazamat

@Rhyot: Sanction is rarely, if ever, RPed (in my experience, since I know that will need said) and can, will, and has been denied for incredibly silly and even non-RP reasons. Your experience with blessings is not analogous to the concerns and feedback being presented here, no matter how much you try to force that square peg through the round hole. I would be more inclined to agree with you if sanction was changed, as is being requested, to be entirely RP and encourage and even incentivize people basing it entirely on RP and not if that person annoyed you with an issue or whatever (and using it as a means of retaliation by withholding actual bonuses). As is, you're literally arguing against everyone's benefit (again).

Tetchta

Blessings and guild sanction are a super bad comparison for a ton of reasons. Some of which Iazamat mentioned above, but also, all blessings are identical (and frequently RP'd anyway). If you peeve off one god you can just go to another for an identical blessing. There's no way someone can, say, get a Carnifex sanction benefit from the Teradrim. It'd be more apt to compare Order Items to sanction (even though it's not quite good either) because they are unique to the god. But Order Items are entirely RP items by design, soooooooooooooooo. Yeah. More RP stuff.

Ehtias

Anime kid gloves please.

Honestly sanctions should all either have a combat benefit or none of them should have combat benefits. I'd rather it was a RP benefit instead of combat.

Ardent

Flavor on a sanction is one thing. Allows or RP branching out and such around sanction. Mechanics being affected up to the cost of artifacts is way too far at this point. Gated by RP or not.

I don't care either way about sanction requiring a good standing with the organization. Primarily because I have no classes outside of guild based classes where it would matter.

Sryaen

I would like to see Sanction move away entirely from mechanical aspects that can give PVE or PVP buffs. Regardless of what the reason might be - having IC issues with leadership/not in good standing with guild/etc - keeping a mechanical buff behind the whim of players is probably not the best design, especially when the alternative is to drop a sizeable amount of credits on weapon runes or comparable arties.

Instead, I think it would be cool instead to have flavor-type stuff that add to the RP of the class. Syssin-sanctioned signing comes to mind, in that it doesn't affect PVE or PVP whatsoever but it a cool flavor thing in that they have their own method of communication, even when out in public and among others who may have the Syssin class.

I'm having a bit of a brain fart at the moment in terms of other ideas for other classes/guilds, but I'll mull it over while I make dinner and maybe revisit this thread in about an hour or so.

Bulrok

Rhyot said:

(read: no) PVP consequences (10% blood use increase IS NOT a hindrance in PVP and I will beg you to argue otherwise);

I snipped all the other BS because that is opinion and it's fine for you to have your opinion.


THIS QUOTED PART HOWEVER IS NOT OPINION. And I can't believe you'd ever claim yourself to be a PKer in the slightest while saying anything like this. I don't even know how to make this more obvious than it already is when I say that this is so blatantly dumb and not true at all. Maybe if you stick to the most technical definition of the word 'hindrance' and you're just trolling - that's the only way I can see this as you not just being dumb, but it's still dumb., because if you want to do that we can just go all the way down 'Dumb' Lane and take a right on 'You Don't Need A Class To PK Either Technically' blvd and then hitch a left at 'I'm Using Bad Analogies To Explain This To You Because Normal Words Have Proven Time and Time Again To Fall On Your Deaf Ears' Street.


Blood is such an important resource to Prae, or did you forget that you FUCKING DIE when you run out of it? It fuels every mentis attack and it is NOT easily restored short of shelling out credits. It's at least 200 credits worth to get the same effect as non sanctioned, which admittedly isn't as bad as Templar/Revenant, but unlike Templar/Revenant, this has no break point where it's no longer worth stacking the two. Like - why do I have to explain how amazing that sanction bonus is? Why do I have to explain that that is a pretty good advantage in PK that sanctioned members have over non-sanctioned members? I know you haven't PK'd outside of your super complex and super good and super technical lawid(crescent for you lifer noobs)/dsk wilave(haemo empowerment) in a while, but god damn man.


Also your blessing v. sanction argument is laughably dumb as well. I mean you're right. One thing sucks so everything that sucks less is fine. Yeah that makes *complete* sense. That logic is air tight.


I had a long day and I wanted to type more but you've ran me out of energy over the last few years. You do you boo.