Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning
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Damn, I liked that Gareth. Then again I haven't met the new Gareth either. You were fun, just wanted to let you know.
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Well I decided to make my own character, because screw the rules.
Augustus Grayson. Hit me up, yo.
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Finally leaving alpha and heading into beta on November 1st. For purposes of my gross misuse of those terms, that pretty much means the same thing that we have been doing but now we'll also be GMing and moving the story forward. If any system we add in spectacularly explodes in a horrifying display of imbalance and regret, we'll try limit the damage as much as we can to keep a consistent play environment, but hopefully we can avoid many retcons. Systems remaining to be added in will be primarily dealing with automated coded systems for controlling domains/armies, dynamically generated exploration rooms and GM commands for players running plots in them, social combat, and agents (npc minions). And a lot more website/game integration. We'll be adding/testing most of those during beta, and aim for full release once the systems are done and the first major season/storyarc of the metaplot ties up.
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come play with us it's fun
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@Tinuviel, I think what you meant to say was: Screw the rules because, I'm Charles Dance.
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@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
If any system we add in spectacularly explodes in a horrifying display of imbalance and regret, we'll try limit the damage as much as we can to keep a consistent play environment, but hopefully we can avoid many retcons. Systems remaining to be added in will be primarily dealing with automated coded systems for controlling domains/armies, dynamically generated exploration rooms and GM commands for players running plots in them, social combat, and agents (npc minions).
Speaking of imbalances, the +roster census, for lack of a better word, does concern me. The number of characters with fealty to Velenosa is approximately twice the number, if not a little more, than Grayson, Redrain, and Thrax each have. I'm not even talking that there are more than 40 Velenosa PCs taken off the +roster vs those taken off the +roster of other Houses. I am talking about how there is more than double the number of Velenosa characters, period, than three of the other Houses. Even Valardin comes behind with 11 or so characters less than Velenosa. Unless it changed within the past few days, Thrax doesn't even have 20 characters chargenned.
I realize that some of those Velenosa probably are not Staff-made characters, although I have no idea how many qualify as such. Nonetheless, I feel the lack of equal representation needs to be resolved, especially with influence and resources and whatever systems. Just by sheer numbers, Velenosa has an unfair advantage. And even if it's just that a lot of people want to play Velenosa, there still is no excuse that the other houses have significantly less characters created.
ETA a word I forgot.
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@Karmageddon Yeah, agreed, I'll have to do a wave for the other houses, the amount of OCs created by players in velenosa dwarfs everyone else by a good margin, and to give an idea by how much, the amount of PCs generated by staff was close to the same for each fealty. It definitely is an issue I'll have to tackle, though I don't think it's as bad as it seems at a glance, since the much of the values are independent of player pop and are essentially divided up amongst members (that's why some of the small houses seem more wealthy than the bigger ones). But still something for me to very carefully keep an eye on and trying to spread out the population more.
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Maskes you onder what makes Velenosa so 'interesting?
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@Songtress They're the Daeva/Spring Court of the theme.
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Are people still rabid about the +task system, or whatever it was called? And has it been overhauled yet?
I really liked it in theory, but....A large part of why I stopped logging in is due to the fact that it got turned off for like 2 days and a portion of the game's players /would not stop whining about when it was going to be back and how much their PC was being affected/ (meanwhile, I never did a task at all). Coupled with the massive rewards from the system, the way it was being used by people (it appeared to be /incredibly/ easy to complete tasks if you were actually willing to go do that sort of scene), and the fact that I generally dislike 'chore' rp that I have to do to not fall behind other players, it just really killed my interest in the game in general. There's a difference between like politicking RP, getting support, etc. If i'm not doing that, obviously I'm going to not have the same political power as somebody else. Going and meeting people to go 'hey buy my house's wine!' every other day so I'm not poor as dirt compared to everybody else, not my thing.
1 of the 'easy' tasks was getting an /individual PC/ more income than an entire Great House makes from their land income/etc in a week or whatever, and people were doing 1-2 every week. This may just be me grouching, but I also felt the way they were being done was pretty lame. Random nobles negotiating trade deals with other random nobles, neither of who really ICly had anything to do with trade, etc.
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@Tempest Tasks don't give money anymore. Except through selling the resources at highly reduced prices. Its still kind of a chore, I guess, if you're afraid of falling behind. I don't think its that important.
That said, I don't disagree that some of the tasks being shopped around are a stretch.
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TBH, I just pretend the task system doesn't exist. May hurt me in the long run, but I don't shop them out nor respond to the ones that come in.
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@Auspice I support those I think my character would in some way support. If I'm lucky I do one task every few weeks at this point, myself. But I don't begrudge others being more active, except when they're obviously trying to game the system. Then I just refuse to play along.
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My feeling is that tasks are designed the wrong way around. Right now you do stuff to get resources. I wonder if it wouldn't work better and be more intuitive if you spent resources to do meaningful stuff.
I might, if I were redesigning it, do away with silver income for people above a certain social strata. Instead, they'd get an automatic salary of social, economic, and military resources each week based on the total resources of the house/organization that represents how much of that house's resources that they, on their own authority, can bring to bear. Tasks, then, would be meaningful activities that require resources to accomplish, and once accomplished, would have some significant effect. Default tasks for noble houses might be Land Improvement (improve econ resources of the house), Play the Game (improve social resources), Military Training (improve mil resources), Trade War (reduce economic resources of the target House/Organization), Character Assassination (reduce social resources of the target House), Sabotage (reduce military resources of the target House), plus a few tasks devoted to whatever phase the game is currently in - right now, for example, it might be Calm the Commons or Rouse the Commons (increase or decrease civil unrest in a House's territory) that could have consequences for specific houses or organizations. Task thresholds would be large enough that people would have to get other PCs to support their Tasks, but without the current restriction on 'cannot be of the primary organization as the task', so if all the Velenosas want to spend their resources on making their House bigger, better regarded, and militarily powerful, they can, although it reduces their ability to be able to wheel and deal in the short term with other Houses, which means others could form an alliance against their interests.
Characters could still exchange resources for silver, if they wanted, or trade resources directly to artisans/crafters (who would continue to get silver salaries, not resources) so that they can accomplish their tasks (which would have much smaller thresholds, since such PCs are usually working for themselves, not for a large organization) in exchange for shiny gewgaws. Throw in a few special tasks that can ONLY be accomplished through spending large amounts of silver cash (Establish New Trade Route, perhaps), just to change things up on people.
To me, it just makes more conceptual sense for people to have the income first, and be courted on how they should spend/invest that income, rather than having to run around trying to get support for some nebulous thing that, for some reason, gives you lots of resources. You could also add some fun intra-House stuff where the heads of houses can tweak the incomes of individual members, including putting that dissolute, useless second cousin on a silver income (so he can carouse and drink all he wants) but no resources (because no one wants him making decisions anyway).
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@Songtress We have a rule that we won't create a whole new house for just one CG, so to make one requires at least two people trying to CG into it. With the Velenosa faction, we had one fairly big house CG in. At least one!
But they are the sexy, tricky Mediterranean-flavored people. That has a lot of appeal.
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Thank you for the reply, @Apos, and for keeping it in mind. The comments of @Tempest, @lordbelh, and @Auspice definitely underline some of my concerns regarding imbalanced representation and any system that can change an organization's standing. It just doesn't feel like a level playing field.
As an aside, I'm also not a fan of +task. It stresses me out, and I feel as though I have to do X, whatever X may be, Y many times if I don't want my character to fall behind or be ineffectual. It also makes me feel that I am not pulling my weight in my organization because I am not adding tangible-in-numbers value. (For the record, the other players in the org are totally chill and not guilt-trippy in the slightest. If I want to +task, cool. If I don't, also cool. There is zero pressure from them.) I realize that the system is still being developed and will ultimately be revised -- including, as I understand it, having Stats and Skills factored in -- but it feels icky to me in its current incarnation, and I subsequently wish it did not exist.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
But they are the sexy, tricky Mediterranean-flavored people.
But they don't have Jensen Ackles, which, really, we all know is the true reason Velenosa loathes Valardin.
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How about if its called +obligation or +responsibility or +onus or +expectation or +duty or +geas or +obedience?
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@Karmageddon said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
As an aside, I'm also not a fan of +task. It stresses me out, and I feel as though I have to do X, whatever X may be, Y many times if I don't want my character to fall behind or be ineffectual. It also makes me feel that I am not pulling my weight in my organization because I am not adding tangible-in-numbers value.
I can definitely see where you're coming from. But something to keep in mind is that, on the other hand, it limits those people who want every plot to be about them, and they have to steal the spotlight and do all of the things; by giving them a finite amount of background actions they can take per week it opens up some useful tasks for other players, too, not just those who get to play 24/7 or have meticulously crunched the numbers on their +sheets to be great at everything.
A secondary but important effect of this is it makes forming alliances and groups actually necessarily instead of just being social conveniences. If you want to keep up with competing factions or save the world or...whatever you are forced to find others to compliment your IC skills, or just so they can focus on one thing while you do another. Whereas for example a triple-Master on Mage@TR all that stuff was really pretty optional; they could have researched, investigated or scried all the things you could possibly throw at them, forever.
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@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I can definitely see where you're coming from. But something to keep in mind is that, on the other hand, it limits those people who want every plot to be about them, and they have to steal the spotlight and do all of the things; by giving them a finite amount of background actions they can take per week it opens up some useful tasks for other players, too, not just those who get to play 24/7 or have meticulously crunched the numbers on their +sheets to be great at everything.
A secondary but important effect of this is it makes forming alliances and groups actually necessarily instead of just being social conveniences. If you want to keep up with competing factions or save the world or...whatever you are forced to find others to compliment your IC skills, or just so they can focus on one thing while you do another. Whereas for example a triple-Master on Mage@TR all that stuff was really pretty optional; they could have researched, investigated or scried all the things you could possibly throw at them, forever.
I'm not exactly sure that it's meeting that goal yet, but I also know they're still working on improving the system.