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Let's talk about Rogue Support, Or if you prefer: Cities have too much mechanical power over players
Hello everyone! With the game at its All Time High when it comes to in-character tensions and org drama, and an apparent attempt by the upstairs folk to shift us from a binary conflict model to something more nuanced, I think it's time to talk about something that's been a problem for years, but has gone unaddressed, and that is the dismal situation people who don't have cities face when it comes to playing the game. There's so many QOL things tied to cities at the moment that I can't even count them all. Most of them take them for granted. Here's just a few, however:
This probably raises some responses:
Why not join [insert other city here].
This is a good question, because it gets to the heart of the problem I have, and have always had, with this system, and that's that a massive number of mechanics are leveraging people to forgo roleplay. There's a whole host of people I think that would choose to go cityless, or might be forced to go cityless, because it fits their roleplay more than joining a city does. And while losing the benefits associated with a city (serving in a military, having social support, losing out on city credit sales and stuff like that) make a hell of a lot of sense, I'm not sure having to say goodbye to all these other mechanics that ostensibly have nothing to do with roleplay or being a part of a social group makes any sense. A city is a pretty big identifier for a character's roleplay, and they're all very unique. Someone who fits well in, say, Spinesreach, isn't going to really fit in well in Bloodloch necessarily, or vice versa.
Why not sidehop?
This is a worse version of the above question. The answer to roleplay problems shouldn't have to be "change your entire character." Not to mention this effectively multiplies the cost and loss problem.
Cities have had a ton of roleplay leverage funneled into them over the years in the form of massive mechanical advantages--advantages that pretty much no other org in the game has. I think it's amazing that the administration upstairs is trying to inject a lot of nuance, complexity, and new forms of conflict into the game lately, since it's basically what everyone's been asking for. I think, however, if they're going to want people to start pressing envelopes, taking risks, and pushing challenging and complicated roleplay, they're going to have to take a look at the fundamental structure of the game's city bonuses. As it sits, every city in the game has a massive gun to the head of every player. This has created problems for lots of folk, but I think it's probably going to reach new levels of stifling if it's not addressed. Otherwise, everyone's gonna just put their hands up, sigh, and walk away from the table for fear of seeing a ton of their mechanics that they enjoy every day get flushed down the toilet.
And if I hear anybody go "but muh consequences," let me just stop you right there: some mechanical consequences make some sense, and there's ways to mitigate and recoup loss in a lot of those examples. But if your primary consequence for roleplay is to see hundreds or thousands of dollars' worth of credits become instantly worthless? That ain't an appropriate mode of conflict. It'd be like if you were playing D&D and, on top of your character dying, someone went outside and smashed your car window or something. Roleplay consequences for roleplay make a lot of sense--mecahnical consequences on this scale, to me, sure as hell don't.
Edit: and this is all to ignore that because cities have so much leverage and have guaranteed citizenship for all their benefits, they really have no real incentive to change their cultures at all. Combined with the envoy system, characters don't have any real leverage without massively inconveniencing themselves. This is a problem that has arisen before, (see: BL overlord drama), and I see it repeatedly coming up unless these issues are addressed.
- Ylem mist gold!
- Ylem orbs!
- Ylem amulets!
- Learning lessons 60 at a time!
- The GRACE command that gets you an extra celerity point when you're blessed.
- No withdraw fee from banks.
This probably raises some responses:
Why not join [insert other city here].
This is a good question, because it gets to the heart of the problem I have, and have always had, with this system, and that's that a massive number of mechanics are leveraging people to forgo roleplay. There's a whole host of people I think that would choose to go cityless, or might be forced to go cityless, because it fits their roleplay more than joining a city does. And while losing the benefits associated with a city (serving in a military, having social support, losing out on city credit sales and stuff like that) make a hell of a lot of sense, I'm not sure having to say goodbye to all these other mechanics that ostensibly have nothing to do with roleplay or being a part of a social group makes any sense. A city is a pretty big identifier for a character's roleplay, and they're all very unique. Someone who fits well in, say, Spinesreach, isn't going to really fit in well in Bloodloch necessarily, or vice versa.
Why not sidehop?
This is a worse version of the above question. The answer to roleplay problems shouldn't have to be "change your entire character." Not to mention this effectively multiplies the cost and loss problem.
Cities have had a ton of roleplay leverage funneled into them over the years in the form of massive mechanical advantages--advantages that pretty much no other org in the game has. I think it's amazing that the administration upstairs is trying to inject a lot of nuance, complexity, and new forms of conflict into the game lately, since it's basically what everyone's been asking for. I think, however, if they're going to want people to start pressing envelopes, taking risks, and pushing challenging and complicated roleplay, they're going to have to take a look at the fundamental structure of the game's city bonuses. As it sits, every city in the game has a massive gun to the head of every player. This has created problems for lots of folk, but I think it's probably going to reach new levels of stifling if it's not addressed. Otherwise, everyone's gonna just put their hands up, sigh, and walk away from the table for fear of seeing a ton of their mechanics that they enjoy every day get flushed down the toilet.
And if I hear anybody go "but muh consequences," let me just stop you right there: some mechanical consequences make some sense, and there's ways to mitigate and recoup loss in a lot of those examples. But if your primary consequence for roleplay is to see hundreds or thousands of dollars' worth of credits become instantly worthless? That ain't an appropriate mode of conflict. It'd be like if you were playing D&D and, on top of your character dying, someone went outside and smashed your car window or something. Roleplay consequences for roleplay make a lot of sense--mecahnical consequences on this scale, to me, sure as hell don't.
Edit: and this is all to ignore that because cities have so much leverage and have guaranteed citizenship for all their benefits, they really have no real incentive to change their cultures at all. Combined with the envoy system, characters don't have any real leverage without massively inconveniencing themselves. This is a problem that has arisen before, (see: BL overlord drama), and I see it repeatedly coming up unless these issues are addressed.
11
Comments
Hell, we have entire classes whose lore derives itself from existing -beyond- civilization (The hermitness of Monk-lore, Wayfarers, just to name a few). And further, we have this giant world and the mechanical ability to buy and build homes and shelters and even entire -areas-, complete with interactive NPCs, in them, and still, the chain linking one to a city is very physical.
I, for one, just wanted to comment to give this more of a bump beyond just clicking Agree. I'd love to see this come about with the new waves of political and religious complexity we're seeing in the game so far.
I feel it's important to point out that mechanical consequences beyond death (and its associated exp. loss) don't really exist, and guilds don't actually have mechanical consequences at all these days - and that's a good thing! As long as you reach GR2 - and you should, provided the guild is following the guidelines for requirements - you have class and the guild can't take it away from you, even if they outguild you. The fact that cities are the polar opposite of this is unhealthy for the game and feeds particularly toxic mindsets that we've seen flourish across the game's lifespan, wherein players will make decisions based not on RP, but on how badly they can ruin another's play experience by pushing to see them removed from the city organization.
I can easily say that the power imbalance between players and city organizations needs to shift somewhat dramatically or support for rogues needs to be reconsidered, especially if, as already said, nuance and new paradigms of play are going to be reintroduced to the game as a whole.
In a game that encourages (demands?) RP, I have never understood why the mechanical cost attached to changing classes was so high. I think this really just makes people think about how much of their RL $$$ investment (or however many countless hours they spent grinding the gold for credits IG) they'd be flushing down the toilet in pursuit of the aforementioned RP.
Rogues seem to be fairly few and far between, but this is absolutely a problem. I suppose you could say that since Rogues aren't loyal to any city, that it should essentially be no risk, no reward. I disagree. With the introduction of Lexadhra, I think this gives rogues a unique opportunity to shine where previously they may have been stuck on the sidelines.
Tell me how I'm doing!
And if framing this as "rogue support" is too abrasive, it easily could be thought of as "take the city's pistol off my temple" or "cities have too much power over my mechanics and player value."
edit: a lil extra silly since some of the things here are ylem reserves, which I'm pretty sure are just ylem that's glued to your character, I'm not even sure what a city has to do with that.