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Re: City and Guilds - Goals and Consequences
Here's one reason, @Runas.
Ryot, me leaving the Carnifex at this time was the best way to ensure a peaceful IC outcome. As Toz said, any Commander who attempted to change the loyalties would have been viewed as a traitor and someone Xenia would have attempted to run off. This isn't Alathesia's fault and the last thing I want is to snuff out something over bitter feelings. However for me, it would have felt forced and less immersive if the change had come around and Xenia had just been like, 'Ok, I accept this'. Instead I chose to have her leave before it came to light in game.There are many others, most of which are good, legitimate reasons.
Arbre
0
Re: City and Guilds - Goals and Consequences
In my mind, we're going to move from City of Undeath to the City of something.
This will still fall in line with BL roleplay AND allow for the living to be in Bloodloch. But again, IC communication is going to have to happen to turn the city to the right to make this happen.
Edit: In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed in those who play in the Carnifex. You guys have a code that says guild first, city second. Great! But when push comes to shove, you're spitting on that roleplay/lore just so you can stay in Spinesreach. Seems a little contradictory to me. I get having personal reasons for not wanting to join Bloodloch. Sure, we're not exactly the most livened city (no pun intended), but at least give it a chance, yes? This is not an attack to players, just something I hope you guys spend a little more time thinking about before you ultimately go, "Fuck this shit I'm out." and drop your ENTIRE roleplay just to stay Spirean. BL has just as much to offer as Spinesreach does and we can work something out.
This will still fall in line with BL roleplay AND allow for the living to be in Bloodloch. But again, IC communication is going to have to happen to turn the city to the right to make this happen.
Edit: In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed in those who play in the Carnifex. You guys have a code that says guild first, city second. Great! But when push comes to shove, you're spitting on that roleplay/lore just so you can stay in Spinesreach. Seems a little contradictory to me. I get having personal reasons for not wanting to join Bloodloch. Sure, we're not exactly the most livened city (no pun intended), but at least give it a chance, yes? This is not an attack to players, just something I hope you guys spend a little more time thinking about before you ultimately go, "Fuck this shit I'm out." and drop your ENTIRE roleplay just to stay Spirean. BL has just as much to offer as Spinesreach does and we can work something out.
Rhyot
7
Re: City and Guilds - Goals and Consequences
Yawn.
- Carnifex hounds were brutally beaten until the revamp, when they actually took that away from us. It had the same explanation then as it does now - beat them/turn them into meat if they're worthless. If they work, then why risk damaging the goods?
- Re vs Dhar: that's an awful conflict axis. We tried that, we gave it a few tries in fact, and between another PC getting slapped down by the entire pantheon for trying to hurt a god (forget who, but all the gods apparently take offense to trying to kill a single god), a dropped plotline or six, etc. going after Dhar was stupid and pointless as a guild direction. We tried getting special rezz setups etc. (why does Dhar even allow Spireans to rezz, by your logic?) and were told no, so we just sort of ignored it like the rest of the stuff that wasn't working because trying to kick a square peg into a round hole is a waste of everyone's time.
- The statement we 'sold our rich lore for membership' is pretty laughable, given the only lore that exists for Carnifex was player-written and worked on, not something given to us. What is Deathlore? Nobody knows, we just made it up. All that ritual-y stuff done about Deathlore? Who knows if that's even canon. We used to sit on ICS and bullshit about what it might mean/how it might work, and eventually we figured out what sounded 'close enough' based on what we can do with our skills (can stop weapons with a shield of souls, so they can move physical objects, etc.) We never cared about membership, we cared about being a good guild, and because we were a good guild (and tended to be on the smaller side for the first half of release), we were extremely active.
- 'Ignore being mean to novices' is pretty...I actually am going to just drop the list here.
I have no idea what weird reality you play in as Volka, I have no idea if you ever come out of your haven. I know I'm not the most active lately, but between throttling a protege while dangling them over a balcony, a long and celebrated history of kicking the piss out of people in formation for screwing up, watching @Xenia give people all sorts of shit in various forms of abuse for stepping out of line, and the rest? I call BS on that entire frankly offensive rant. There was, at one point, a push to have a more 'inclusive' Specialist RP that traded certain perks for the ability to join the Keep outside the usual hierarchy, but it was originally supposed to be offered to only people who were especially useful, and as a means to bolster what we lacked in a few areas - with @Xenia taking over, I'm also 99% sure we scrapped the system.
This rant indicates an extreme misunderstanding of the history, the way things went at the start, and what lead us to this path. If, as it seems they do, the admin want their evil knight guild back and in BL? Fine. But to say we 'walked away in favor of membership' when in reality we were left to fend for ourselves and make things up that worked (esp. in regard to the fun others had - our slaughter trips got a lot of forum complaints so we softened the edge) highlights some pretty massive ignorance of the subject at hand.
You aren't a full member, you don't show up to stuff that I have ever seen, and you're here spitting on the last 6 RL years worth of play that went into something while apparently having no idea what you're talking about.
EDIT: In fact, Roan got deleted/killed in retaliation for some event Chakrasul did against Dhar's temple. Just, boop dead/gone forever. Which left us without a tutor for roughly two weeks. And then we tried to do an event to fight back, it got forgotten about, picked up at the last second and resolved with a 'you fucked up fight this super powerful npc goodbye'. Top tier conflict axis imo.
- Carnifex hounds were brutally beaten until the revamp, when they actually took that away from us. It had the same explanation then as it does now - beat them/turn them into meat if they're worthless. If they work, then why risk damaging the goods?
- Re vs Dhar: that's an awful conflict axis. We tried that, we gave it a few tries in fact, and between another PC getting slapped down by the entire pantheon for trying to hurt a god (forget who, but all the gods apparently take offense to trying to kill a single god), a dropped plotline or six, etc. going after Dhar was stupid and pointless as a guild direction. We tried getting special rezz setups etc. (why does Dhar even allow Spireans to rezz, by your logic?) and were told no, so we just sort of ignored it like the rest of the stuff that wasn't working because trying to kick a square peg into a round hole is a waste of everyone's time.
- The statement we 'sold our rich lore for membership' is pretty laughable, given the only lore that exists for Carnifex was player-written and worked on, not something given to us. What is Deathlore? Nobody knows, we just made it up. All that ritual-y stuff done about Deathlore? Who knows if that's even canon. We used to sit on ICS and bullshit about what it might mean/how it might work, and eventually we figured out what sounded 'close enough' based on what we can do with our skills (can stop weapons with a shield of souls, so they can move physical objects, etc.) We never cared about membership, we cared about being a good guild, and because we were a good guild (and tended to be on the smaller side for the first half of release), we were extremely active.
- 'Ignore being mean to novices' is pretty...I actually am going to just drop the list here.
I have no idea what weird reality you play in as Volka, I have no idea if you ever come out of your haven. I know I'm not the most active lately, but between throttling a protege while dangling them over a balcony, a long and celebrated history of kicking the piss out of people in formation for screwing up, watching @Xenia give people all sorts of shit in various forms of abuse for stepping out of line, and the rest? I call BS on that entire frankly offensive rant. There was, at one point, a push to have a more 'inclusive' Specialist RP that traded certain perks for the ability to join the Keep outside the usual hierarchy, but it was originally supposed to be offered to only people who were especially useful, and as a means to bolster what we lacked in a few areas - with @Xenia taking over, I'm also 99% sure we scrapped the system.
This rant indicates an extreme misunderstanding of the history, the way things went at the start, and what lead us to this path. If, as it seems they do, the admin want their evil knight guild back and in BL? Fine. But to say we 'walked away in favor of membership' when in reality we were left to fend for ourselves and make things up that worked (esp. in regard to the fun others had - our slaughter trips got a lot of forum complaints so we softened the edge) highlights some pretty massive ignorance of the subject at hand.
You aren't a full member, you don't show up to stuff that I have ever seen, and you're here spitting on the last 6 RL years worth of play that went into something while apparently having no idea what you're talking about.
EDIT: In fact, Roan got deleted/killed in retaliation for some event Chakrasul did against Dhar's temple. Just, boop dead/gone forever. Which left us without a tutor for roughly two weeks. And then we tried to do an event to fight back, it got forgotten about, picked up at the last second and resolved with a 'you fucked up fight this super powerful npc goodbye'. Top tier conflict axis imo.
Toz
2
A hypothetical gold/credit change for discussion.
So this came up on Discord earlier and I'm curious to see what people think. I do want to stress that it's hypothetical only, and I'm aware that there are plenty of issues with IRE's credit policy (ie. all credits should be paid for with real money) that would prevent it ever happening, but I think it's a solid idea worth consideration anyway. Compare and contrast EVE Online's plex and whatever that one admin-controlled commodity is. Here goes:
Add a vendor to a neutral IC location like Esterport that will sell a certain number of bound credits per RL week (maybe a hundred) per character, for a large sum of gold (something like 15-20k per at least initially due to the amount of gold in the game).
The (hopeful) results of this:
- The market now has a hard admin-controlled cap on what a credit is individually worth in gold, but allows leeway for reselling/playing the market based on the percieved value of the convenience of the credits being unbound. If people just need credits, they don't have to worry about people inflating prices to insane heights. If the admin want to mess with gold, they can do it directly via modifying the price of bound credits.
- There is now a direct and immediately useful gold sink for people hoarding it with nothing to spend it on. This might even end up causing people to spend money on more credits to supplement what they can get IC as only needing to spend twenty bucks to get that 250cr artie you want would be more appealing than having to drop fifty. Microtransactions!
- There is now a viable route to learning skills and getting some low end artifacts without having to spend real money on a game that is advertised as 'pay for perks' rather than 'pay to do anything but basic tasks'. This is a lot more important now that the credit market has completely died. I'm aware that cities still do credit sales sometimes but that's pretty situational and from what I've heard not very common these days (also not available if you don't have a guild or city, ree neutrals).
Problems with this:
- Credits are available for something other than real money. Shouldn't be an issue IMO because of the other benefits and precedents, but I appreciate that the existing policy doesn't really allow it.
- Gold sources will need to be rebalanced, particularly fishing. As it is currently fishing is crazy profitable and would become a direct upgrade over bashing in regards to gold output if an IC method of purchasing it became available.
- More artifacts and lessons in circulation might impact combat unpredictably? Not a PKer so I have no idea there.
I'm sure there are both issues and benefits that I'm missing so please post if you have thoughts. I really think that the potential boosts to both the gold and credit economies would be significant, especially since lowering the access barrier to artifact, talent and skill purchases would encourage people to drop money into the game to supplement their IC resources (see: every game that has cosmetic items bought with ingame currency).
Add a vendor to a neutral IC location like Esterport that will sell a certain number of bound credits per RL week (maybe a hundred) per character, for a large sum of gold (something like 15-20k per at least initially due to the amount of gold in the game).
The (hopeful) results of this:
- The market now has a hard admin-controlled cap on what a credit is individually worth in gold, but allows leeway for reselling/playing the market based on the percieved value of the convenience of the credits being unbound. If people just need credits, they don't have to worry about people inflating prices to insane heights. If the admin want to mess with gold, they can do it directly via modifying the price of bound credits.
- There is now a direct and immediately useful gold sink for people hoarding it with nothing to spend it on. This might even end up causing people to spend money on more credits to supplement what they can get IC as only needing to spend twenty bucks to get that 250cr artie you want would be more appealing than having to drop fifty. Microtransactions!
- There is now a viable route to learning skills and getting some low end artifacts without having to spend real money on a game that is advertised as 'pay for perks' rather than 'pay to do anything but basic tasks'. This is a lot more important now that the credit market has completely died. I'm aware that cities still do credit sales sometimes but that's pretty situational and from what I've heard not very common these days (also not available if you don't have a guild or city, ree neutrals).
Problems with this:
- Credits are available for something other than real money. Shouldn't be an issue IMO because of the other benefits and precedents, but I appreciate that the existing policy doesn't really allow it.
- Gold sources will need to be rebalanced, particularly fishing. As it is currently fishing is crazy profitable and would become a direct upgrade over bashing in regards to gold output if an IC method of purchasing it became available.
- More artifacts and lessons in circulation might impact combat unpredictably? Not a PKer so I have no idea there.
I'm sure there are both issues and benefits that I'm missing so please post if you have thoughts. I really think that the potential boosts to both the gold and credit economies would be significant, especially since lowering the access barrier to artifact, talent and skill purchases would encourage people to drop money into the game to supplement their IC resources (see: every game that has cosmetic items bought with ingame currency).
Mihaketi
6
Re: A hypothetical gold/credit change for discussion.
I get where you're coming with the compare/contrast to EVE Online's plex system, since I was able to utilize it myself. However, here's the issue with the hypothetical situation.
1) If you start offering up 100 credits per RL week at a value of say, 30k gold, then it becomes useful for a little while. Sure, it's a great way to remove the MILLIONS of gold from the game in the first year (let's be real here, some players have 10M+ gold stockpiled). After that year's up, gold will become difficult to obtain UNLESS you buy with real money because EVERYONE is going to be going around snatching up yo questlines, stealing up yo fishing holes, and clearing all yo bashing areas. Where only those who are online during the low hours will see the highest pay out.
2) With artifacts at the prices they are, this would be a great investment for all us rich Scrooge McDuck players but once we have all the artifice we want and all the classes we want. Then what? Credits lose their weight as a haggle tool because EVERYONE has them. "But I used to pay 20 credits and could get a few chocolates." "Doesn't matter now, I have all the credits I want, I want straight gold now and it'll cost you 45,000 gold for these chocolates." Once again, this makes the gold market detrimental.
3) Why in the world would I even BUY credits at this point if I can just bash up 30k/week and buy 100 credits? Who in their right mind even WOULD buy credits? I'll just bash more and more to get to the point I need and just buy the 100 credits and save up. And if I know I would do it, I know for sure everyone else would too. This is the exact reason why they got rid of gold conversion to cryptic chests. Because people, myself included, were turning gold income into -direct- credit returns. There was no reason to when you could bash for 2 hours and buy a cryptic chest for a return value of 50+ credits.
In the end, even this hypothetical situation would do nothing but damage the game on a business scale. Even if you reworked the gold model, it would still damage the game on a business scale. Love the idea, really do.... but the game couldn't support it.
1) If you start offering up 100 credits per RL week at a value of say, 30k gold, then it becomes useful for a little while. Sure, it's a great way to remove the MILLIONS of gold from the game in the first year (let's be real here, some players have 10M+ gold stockpiled). After that year's up, gold will become difficult to obtain UNLESS you buy with real money because EVERYONE is going to be going around snatching up yo questlines, stealing up yo fishing holes, and clearing all yo bashing areas. Where only those who are online during the low hours will see the highest pay out.
2) With artifacts at the prices they are, this would be a great investment for all us rich Scrooge McDuck players but once we have all the artifice we want and all the classes we want. Then what? Credits lose their weight as a haggle tool because EVERYONE has them. "But I used to pay 20 credits and could get a few chocolates." "Doesn't matter now, I have all the credits I want, I want straight gold now and it'll cost you 45,000 gold for these chocolates." Once again, this makes the gold market detrimental.
3) Why in the world would I even BUY credits at this point if I can just bash up 30k/week and buy 100 credits? Who in their right mind even WOULD buy credits? I'll just bash more and more to get to the point I need and just buy the 100 credits and save up. And if I know I would do it, I know for sure everyone else would too. This is the exact reason why they got rid of gold conversion to cryptic chests. Because people, myself included, were turning gold income into -direct- credit returns. There was no reason to when you could bash for 2 hours and buy a cryptic chest for a return value of 50+ credits.
In the end, even this hypothetical situation would do nothing but damage the game on a business scale. Even if you reworked the gold model, it would still damage the game on a business scale. Love the idea, really do.... but the game couldn't support it.
Rhyot
0
Re: A hypothetical gold/credit change for discussion.
This kind of thing will never happen because they want to encourage people to spend money on credits so that their staff can continued to be paid.
What they don't want is for everybody to be able to crank the handle on the Infinite Gold Generator and generate credits instead.
What they don't want is for everybody to be able to crank the handle on the Infinite Gold Generator and generate credits instead.
Vaskar
1
Re: City and Guilds - Goals and Consequences
I think one issue here is that while strong, meaningful role play is awesome and encouraged, at the end of the day you are sort of restricted by the 'reality', whether that be mechanics or just the general administrative vision for the game.
What I mean by that is we had one of the most charismatic players to play the game carve a niche for the Carnifex (with a level of dedication, time and effort we should never expect from any one player and considerable help from T biggie) and she made some really cool things happen for both the guild and Spinesreach...
But let's be honest. That person was also very very capable of ignoring realities that occurred outside of her intentions and using blunt force personality to Make It So. And so the whole time we've been ignoring - or at least sort of glossing over - the fact that thematically the Carnifex are really one of the most aggressively vile and 'evil' entities/organizations in the world. Let's ignore the Mike Vick animal abuse, no matter how you want to sugar coat it, and just remember that these people steal souls. They're essentially at war with life and maybe literally (I've been gone a bit) at war with Dhar.
Even most vampires are really only corrupted by their nature. Beyond that - feeding on people? That's survival at this point, realistically. Let's be real. There are a lot of fluffy leeches in Aetolia.
I feel bad for y'all, because you did some really neat things with that guild. But there's just no argument to be made for the Carnifex being Spirean. Or, as was mentioned to me yesterday, to really even be living.
I'll say the same thing I've said to others who threatened or did quit over similar circumstances (Daru disbandment) - in the end, 'my rp just won't let me' is a poor excuse. We make ooc decisions all the time and then formulate them into IC actions. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and make something happen.
It's of interest to me as sort of an outside observer, having only just come back, that this almost falls into the my mechanics > your rp arguments we've all participated in. And I'd remind @toz what side of that you've been on if I recall correctly.
Hate to see anyone go. There really isn't another game like this out there. And please forgive what autocorrect may have done.
What I mean by that is we had one of the most charismatic players to play the game carve a niche for the Carnifex (with a level of dedication, time and effort we should never expect from any one player and considerable help from T biggie) and she made some really cool things happen for both the guild and Spinesreach...
But let's be honest. That person was also very very capable of ignoring realities that occurred outside of her intentions and using blunt force personality to Make It So. And so the whole time we've been ignoring - or at least sort of glossing over - the fact that thematically the Carnifex are really one of the most aggressively vile and 'evil' entities/organizations in the world. Let's ignore the Mike Vick animal abuse, no matter how you want to sugar coat it, and just remember that these people steal souls. They're essentially at war with life and maybe literally (I've been gone a bit) at war with Dhar.
Even most vampires are really only corrupted by their nature. Beyond that - feeding on people? That's survival at this point, realistically. Let's be real. There are a lot of fluffy leeches in Aetolia.
I feel bad for y'all, because you did some really neat things with that guild. But there's just no argument to be made for the Carnifex being Spirean. Or, as was mentioned to me yesterday, to really even be living.
I'll say the same thing I've said to others who threatened or did quit over similar circumstances (Daru disbandment) - in the end, 'my rp just won't let me' is a poor excuse. We make ooc decisions all the time and then formulate them into IC actions. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and make something happen.
It's of interest to me as sort of an outside observer, having only just come back, that this almost falls into the my mechanics > your rp arguments we've all participated in. And I'd remind @toz what side of that you've been on if I recall correctly.
Hate to see anyone go. There really isn't another game like this out there. And please forgive what autocorrect may have done.
Khiral
5
Re: City and Guilds - Goals and Consequences
even as someone who is ultimately unaffected by this: I still see this as a complete Misstep. There has to be OTHER options that won't upheave two major guilds, and won't completely destroy the RP of a large number of characters, causing the players to either have to undergo a severe character change that might not even make any -sense- for their characters, or just up and leave the game in hopes of finding a more stable platform elsewhere. With MKO having gone down the drain, we're back to being one of the smallest (I'm not sure if Imperian is smaller, or bigger, but I'm estimating us to be around the same size), so something like this -isn't- going to help the game. It's going to hurt the game all in the name of "storytelling". Which while I appreciate the attempt. There's gotta be better ways. The rest is good, the last point is the issue for me.
It also sounds like it's more for the benefits of Duiran than anyone else, who actually probably would be the one incident of a case of "conflict of interest" since their city leadership is based around the guilds. Which I'll indicate isn't really an ideal thing at all, if you're changing a major mechanic in order to fix a problem there.
The squeaky wheel might get the oil, but dagnabbit, don't completely jam a stick into the spokes of every other cog on the machine just trying to oil the one squeaky wheel.
Edit: As an additional note: I've heard that it was suggested that the Carnifex and the Illuminati were to be divested from cities. I think this would ultimately be a better option if you're going to enforce these changes, because the Carnifex, at least, was BUILT as a guild not tied to a city. They have an outside guildhall. The vision must compromise when it harms the playerbase more than it helps anything else. And weighing the benefits and the disadvantages, going ahead as planned without at -least- divulging the Carnifex and (possibly) the Illuminati from their cities is going to result in our small game losing players. And I guarantee you, a loss of players is bad, but I'm fairly certain a large number of those players are going to be people who have and would normally continue to invest -MONEY- into this game. And this is forcing those players away from the game.
It also sounds like it's more for the benefits of Duiran than anyone else, who actually probably would be the one incident of a case of "conflict of interest" since their city leadership is based around the guilds. Which I'll indicate isn't really an ideal thing at all, if you're changing a major mechanic in order to fix a problem there.
The squeaky wheel might get the oil, but dagnabbit, don't completely jam a stick into the spokes of every other cog on the machine just trying to oil the one squeaky wheel.
Edit: As an additional note: I've heard that it was suggested that the Carnifex and the Illuminati were to be divested from cities. I think this would ultimately be a better option if you're going to enforce these changes, because the Carnifex, at least, was BUILT as a guild not tied to a city. They have an outside guildhall. The vision must compromise when it harms the playerbase more than it helps anything else. And weighing the benefits and the disadvantages, going ahead as planned without at -least- divulging the Carnifex and (possibly) the Illuminati from their cities is going to result in our small game losing players. And I guarantee you, a loss of players is bad, but I'm fairly certain a large number of those players are going to be people who have and would normally continue to invest -MONEY- into this game. And this is forcing those players away from the game.
Axius
0
