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Announce post #3242: Oneiromancers!
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10/24/2021 at 6:27
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Oneiromancers!
Having successfully conquered the Astral Realm on behalf of Omei, the Imago, the Chromatic Court now holds sway over many of the Fae Nobles inhabiting that weird, eldritch world. Through careful negotiation (some methods less diplomatic than others...), the Oneiromancer class is now available!
With the skills of Oneiromancy, Hyalincuru, and Contracts, this class blends the wielding of fate, dream, and memory with the ancient art of paper folding, all while commanding an entourage of Astral entities to fulfill bargains struck with the nobles of Astral Chaos.
Oneiromancer is a mirror of the Indorani class, and the skills translate in the following ways:
Oneiromancy - Necromancy
Hyalincuru - Tarot
Contracts - Domination
HELP ONEIROMANCERS and HELP ONEIROMANCER RP will surely be of interest, as well as the helps available for each of the three skills, and the learning messages.
As with Earthcaller and Luminary, we've made a significant effort to differentiate Oneiromancer from its native class of Indorani. The theming, lore, and flavour all strike a very distinct tone and the newly built Astral Realm is a real treat!
To properly align with Indorani, Oneiromancers are not associated with a guild. The class can instead be picked up directly from Beau Greva the the Flickering Moth within the Seer's Wood at v62953.
As is the case for Indorani, this incurs a cost of 40 credits and can be done via LEARN ONEIROMANCER FROM BEAU.
Artifacts for Oneiromancer are also ready for your enjoyment:
- a pinch of argent stardust (hunt_oneiromancer1-3); for hunting
- a strand of scarlet string (contract_bind); mirror of dominate_collar
- a Sinistral's Amulet (fate_regen); mirror of essence_regen
- a chromatic sphere of the Oneiromancer (fate_boon); mirror of essence_boon
- a pair of scintillating shears (inevitable); mirror of gravehands
- an infinite paper sheaf (powersheaf); mirror of powerdeck
Again, while we have worked hard to test and polish every ability, please report bugs, typos, or anything behaving strangely right away.
Lastly, I have to give credit to the team for their hard work bringing this class together, and to our mortal builders for their help in creating the Astral Realm. In particular, Ra'ah (in game Raah) deserves enormous credit - Oneiromancer has been her labour of love for a long time and she is personally responsible for masterminding the vast majority of the design, ideas, and writing work that has been put into this class.
Enjoy!
Penned by my hand on Gosday, the 12th of Midsummer, in the year 498 MA.
Ictinus, the Architect
Everyone
Oneiromancers!
Having successfully conquered the Astral Realm on behalf of Omei, the Imago, the Chromatic Court now holds sway over many of the Fae Nobles inhabiting that weird, eldritch world. Through careful negotiation (some methods less diplomatic than others...), the Oneiromancer class is now available!
With the skills of Oneiromancy, Hyalincuru, and Contracts, this class blends the wielding of fate, dream, and memory with the ancient art of paper folding, all while commanding an entourage of Astral entities to fulfill bargains struck with the nobles of Astral Chaos.
Oneiromancer is a mirror of the Indorani class, and the skills translate in the following ways:
Oneiromancy - Necromancy
Hyalincuru - Tarot
Contracts - Domination
HELP ONEIROMANCERS and HELP ONEIROMANCER RP will surely be of interest, as well as the helps available for each of the three skills, and the learning messages.
As with Earthcaller and Luminary, we've made a significant effort to differentiate Oneiromancer from its native class of Indorani. The theming, lore, and flavour all strike a very distinct tone and the newly built Astral Realm is a real treat!
To properly align with Indorani, Oneiromancers are not associated with a guild. The class can instead be picked up directly from Beau Greva the the Flickering Moth within the Seer's Wood at v62953.
As is the case for Indorani, this incurs a cost of 40 credits and can be done via LEARN ONEIROMANCER FROM BEAU.
Artifacts for Oneiromancer are also ready for your enjoyment:
- a pinch of argent stardust (hunt_oneiromancer1-3); for hunting
- a strand of scarlet string (contract_bind); mirror of dominate_collar
- a Sinistral's Amulet (fate_regen); mirror of essence_regen
- a chromatic sphere of the Oneiromancer (fate_boon); mirror of essence_boon
- a pair of scintillating shears (inevitable); mirror of gravehands
- an infinite paper sheaf (powersheaf); mirror of powerdeck
Again, while we have worked hard to test and polish every ability, please report bugs, typos, or anything behaving strangely right away.
Lastly, I have to give credit to the team for their hard work bringing this class together, and to our mortal builders for their help in creating the Astral Realm. In particular, Ra'ah (in game Raah) deserves enormous credit - Oneiromancer has been her labour of love for a long time and she is personally responsible for masterminding the vast majority of the design, ideas, and writing work that has been put into this class.
Enjoy!
Penned by my hand on Gosday, the 12th of Midsummer, in the year 498 MA.
4
Comments
The event was about Omei.
The class is heavily tied to Omei.
Nobody was invited to see it, let alone knew anything was happening IG despite being very excited after anticipating the event except for people in her Order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to Omeis OH despite the whole tether being excited for it.
The class is cool thematically, but does not fit my characters RP. If it did though, I would have felt some kind of way about picking it up at all since it very much feels like an exclusive class by Omei, for Omeiians.
Tell me how I'm doing!
Later, the event moved to Enorian. Anybody who engaged with the event got something out of it. There was a lot going on, and plenty of Chaos lore dumped. Much like Duiran, Enorian was given ample time to participate. Some did! Enorian's CL is especially qualified for this part. Enorian is way larger than 'the order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to the OH'.
Later, the Templars interacted with - and trained, and RPed with, and befriended - one of the NPCs who would later turn out to be one of the Contracts NPCs. The Templar guild is way larger than 'the order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to the OH'.
The Astral Plane lore has been defined over the course of several months. The names of almost every Chaos Lord - and their stories - were shared on a city's newsboard. A city's newboard is way more public than 'the order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to the OH'.
To claim that the event was 'just the order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to Omei's OH' shows either a willingness to argue in bad faith or an incuriosity about the events that have been right under your nose for multiple months.
To say anyone more than 'The order, 2 CLS, and Rhine' were at the climax of the event and ultimate release of the class is also Disingenuous.
Ictinus acknowledged it as a problem, so what sort of strawman argument are you trying to make to justify that the climax to a major event was ultimately gatekept, but you got to participate so screw everyone else?
Once again, literally nobody in Duiran knew. Nobody said anything. Just stop.
If we're gonna dredge up the mural event, I have my own gripes with that. The whole event was basically spun as 'Okay, we have windows to Chaos opening up but only Omei's order can interact with them'. Which immediately put a bad taste in my mouth because it was essentially Omei's order are the guiding hands behind this event, despite the entire city of Enorian being affected. Not all Enorianites are Omeiian. Furthermore, the few IC interactions I had with various people of Omei's order basically devolved into essentially 'chill bro, ur not an oneiromancer so u wouldn't understand the complexities behind this' in lieu of any sort of reasonable explanation.
The constant 'x is way larger than 'the order, 2 CLs, and 1 person married to the OH' seems like some real over-justification that this event wasn't gatekept by those involved. I'd heard about this event going on since I was in the middle of my shift at work around the Howling, and was surprised to hear (OOCly only) that it was still going on after I got home around 10:30 p.m. PST. I've been online for (at the time of this post), 3 hours and 34 min and I've not heard a god damn peep about any of this ICly, despite being a Herald. In fact, Isia hit me up in DM's on discord asking me about whether or not I saw a global message, but that was the extent of what I'd heard from her or anyone else involved - aside from Caitria. Granted, Cait was off-plane during most of this so she didn't tell me about any of what had happened until the event had concluded, but... seriously? Come on, guys. This is the type of gatekeeping that really alienates the tethers. This same type of behavior was displayed during the Warden event, and it was only brought to everyone else's attention once it became clear that the mobs y'all had to fight were beefier than the few of you (Sentinels) could handle.
I've been looking forward to Spirit Indorani since mirrors were even hinted at, and I'm not gonna sugar-coat it when I say I am 100% devastated that the Spirit Indo class is tied to Omei because my character couldn't give a single, solitary, unicorn (yes I typed the word unicorn) about Omei and has been actively trying to replace the Templar Patron with a God that's more fitting to the guild as a whole rather than 'o sup, this god is more active than the rest and may give us shiny things'.
No hate on any of the work that's gone into Oneiromancers or Diantha or anything like that, it's great that y'all pumped out a series of new classes so quick but the level of simping going on here is absolutely mind-blowing.
Tell me how I'm doing!
Tell me how I'm doing!
I'm putting these CTELLS here too, because these span back several hours before the event began, and several after it ended. There is 0 announcement to anyone. Yet Sekeres, who logged on several hours after the event initially started, somehow divined knowledge that something was happening. It is very clear she was informed via tells, Order related chat, or got a good ole' discord ping. This further adds to the perception that it was intentionally gatekept. As evidenced above, there are 0 Duiran posts about it. 2 posts were made in Enorian, 1 by Iesid, 1 by an NPC back in april. Not only did this information not get relayed to Duiran in any way that was determined to be meaningful, clearly the people of Enorian thought it was just random and unrelated Omei stuff as well, otherwise it's extremely likely that more than Isia and Jhura would have been present.
I'm also just going to reiterate how thoroughly ridiculous it is to assume that people could know that a gatekept event that happened nearly 7 RL months ago, under a totally different producer who was known for half baked projects, was going to lead up to an event that happened today, KNOWING it was the release of a mirror class. Unless of course, someone got fed information by someone they know that is divulging information they should not.
The problem that I see here is it feels like this was a class release for an order more than for a tether. Particularly because I was ejected after discovering the event.
It might just be me, but for some reason I can’t get sailor moon out of my head when thinking about Oni mancers.
Edit: TBH now i'm super angry because I'm clearly being gaslit.
...Right?
Way to make sure that the new producer and his team really feel motivated to put in the hard work for the next mirror class, you children.
- Revenant: was launched in a somewhat-small guild with questionable activity, and class access was an immediate problem for people (coupled with the guild intentionally not giving it out).
- Earthcaller: Mainly an IC-thing, but this event was tied to wider world events. This made the event feel really epic, but it made access to the early stages of the event high-stakes, since it was something that was not only impacting all undead characters (tangibly), but also arguably the fate of the world. This was course-corrected later, thankfully, by both the IC actions of the Teradrim (huge shoutout to @Macavity) and the overall design of the gamified parts of the event.
- Oneiromancers: apparently the crux of the event was limited to a very small, intimate group.
Some of these issues are issues I have with what I've been calling Org-Centric Event Design, which is frankly outside the scope of this post to start addressing. But the rest is pretty easy to articulate: mirror-classes have probably the largest anticipation attatched to them that I've ever seen in my time playing Aetolia. Player interest, stakes, and hype are tremendously high for these classes, and I think a lot of people see them as a tether-wide gift/boon, so that absolutely has to be something that's taken into account when trying to anticipate player response to events surrounding them, as well as class access.My opinion is that the events should be as inclusive as makes sense given the lore of the class, and philosophy toward class access, at least early on, should be like all my best first dates: promiscuous and easy.
I don't have a particular horse in the "This is very Omei-centric" analysis, as I'm not a spirit player. I will say that centering a class around a god, or heavily on a god's themes, is a very risky maneuver and can sometimes cause problems with org identity and org health. I think the Teradrim has spent pretty much most of its existence as a guild trying to claw its way out from under Ivoln's thumb regarding their guild identity, as sometimes the guild can become ride-or-die on how good/active an Ivo player is. They're obviously always going to be highly affiliated because that's just how that flavor works, but it's something to keep in mind.
My surface analysis is that the flavor of the class actually seems pretty cool, and honestly? I'm not 100% sure I'm entirely swallowing that the RP of new classes should be inclusive to all people's characters. Obviously it shouldn't be so narrow so that it only resonates with, like, 10% of the tether or something, but there's a ton of classes I haven't gotten because they don't fit Tet's RP (including both Indorani and Earthcaller). If you're really just going for the PVP aspect...idk, depending on the class in question, I'd say you either gotta live with that dissonance, or try and find a way to justify it. Gonna repeat, though, that I'm not on spirit tether and have not seen the flavor of this class, and if it's really that narrow and restrictive RP-wise, it should be cracked open a bit.
Nobody's calling for heads on pikes here, so if you don't have anything productive to contribute to this conversation, take a seat.
Feedback is good, sure. You gave mostly feedback, Tetchta. Illidan and Sryaen basically accused the Garden of "simping" and even possibly leaking information to players. Not sure how that's constructive at all.
My main account? For the record, you just don't know me because I refuse to immerse myself in that awful Discord community. A reminder that you're one of the vocal minority.
I think it honestly, intentional or not, likely did lessen some of the hype for some people about the class. Over time though, I'm sure things will cool down and people will probably just get it anyways.
I can understand Omeiian(spelling???) characters/players getting defensive about this stuff, but some of the stuff I've been witnessing 2nd hand definitely feels out of line/tone deaf, in general. From veterans. If you can't see why anyone would be even slightly bothered by how these events played out, or how access to the Astral plane is limited/gated (or potentially just an oversight?), then you are *super* out of touch.
On a different note!
I finally explored part of the Astral Plane. Unlike the Chaos Plane, it seems the Astral Plane does not count towards the explorer rankings. Might be a good thing, since it's so easy to be thrown out from taking one small step in the wrong direction and meeting those colorful many mobs in there. It's a cool place, though! Even though they are frustrating, I have enjoyed trying to get past the many to see as much as possible just because I want to!
My questions are:
1. Will the Chaos Plane also be removed from Explorer rankings in order to even this discrepancy out?
2. The access point to the Astral Plane is well within what has been deemed Omeian territory, whereas the entrance to the Chaos Plane is outside Chakrasul's temple, in a mountain location without direct affiliation. Does this mean that anyone who might get in trouble with Omei might no longer have access to the Astral Plane or even be able to reach the person handing out the class?
3. Will Pools consider giving aide to those non-Omeians who want to make use of these skills to figure out appropriate RP avenues, or is that completely up to them to figure out how to get around potential years of distancing themselves to a deity that has shown themselves a bit unreliable and crazy? Even though Oneiromancers don't have a guild of their own, keeping it too tied up with a Divine feels like it gives those with Omeian ties an edge over those who hold allegiance to other Divine. Perhaps specific color focuses could be connected to other aspects, like Slyphe for blue, Haern for green, Damariel for yellow, Dhar for purple? If you want to involve deities at all, that is.
so while yes mechanically you go pick up the class from beau in the seer's wood, this very much seems to be a case where you can play it out as your character awakening to a new oneiromantic talent and using it regardless of the relevant god's position and views. it's always going to have the astral chaos flavor (which imo makes sense as it's the indorani mirror) but how you choose to interact with that seems more or less up to your RP; the protection of dreams, memories, colors - all potential motivators. or maybe your character just views it as a useful tool to do their business. or they use it in spite of (or to spite) its connection to a god they don't like. idk, i'm not your character.
also yes it would be nice if areas that seem intended to be relatively exclusive (either through mechanical means like getting kicked out by the manies or a lore stance handed down by a god) didn't count for explorers ranking