Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Options can be a bad thing if they distract from the gameplay or give an advantage that some might consider unfair, both things others have offered some concern over. This is normal. I wouldn’t want the rules to change my character or force me into unwelcome gameplay either.

What's 'unwelcome' is relative though.

This is why I said, "me" and "my" and "some". I fucking swear, sometimes I think people pick on things they don't like without realizing that they are not adding anything.

Seriously, "it depends" is a tautology. It's cliché. I'm going to ride @surreality into the weeds on this too, because it's argumentative without looking to solve an issue. So is "what works for some doesn't work for others." No kidding? Here, let me write that down in my journal. Clue Discovered: Nobody is the same.

Maybe what you meant to say was, "What do you consider unwelcome gameplay?" There. That's searching for information instead of making overall meaningless hand-waving toward our desire to be non-confrontational yet still make judgements against people's viewpoints.

Sheesh.

[Arkandel]

@thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Sheesh.

Indeed.

[Lisse24]

I want to add that I'm fine with people doing whatever if I choose not to do it, and that I don't view myself as one of those people out there to "win" the game.

I am worried about systems being sold as optional, but in the end become a necessity just to keep up with the game. "Keeping up with the game" being defined as finding meaningful RP and being able to interact with plot in some manner or another.

If the way that fashion is implemented allows me to ignore it completely, and doesn't result in me needing to go out and buy some prettyprettything to be included in PlotX, then I'm fine with it.

[Aria]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Roz and @Darinelle too: just wrote a journal! (Apparently I accidentally wrote one before, but this one was intentional.) I hope brevity and terrible puns are OK.

FACT: Puns are the highest form of humor.

[Darinelle]

@aria So sayeth the Queen of Endings, Death.

[Aria]

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@aria So sayeth the Queen of Endings, Death.

Well, nobody's ever called me that before, but I guess I'll take it....

[Sparks]

@lisse24 said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

If the way that fashion is implemented allows me to ignore it completely, and doesn't result in me needing to go out and buy some prettyprettything to be included in PlotX, then I'm fine with it.

So right now, a lot of people view combat as what you "have to have" to get involved in plots. This isn't exactly true—there's lots of things that involve stuff other than combat, but there's still a perception.

I think the idea @Apos describes about fashion is meant to give other avenues: letting there be more play for social and fashionable characters who can build up prestige, and use that in plots to influence NPCs to influence the story. Giving more paths to influence than just having to be the Strong Person What Uses Sharp Metal Things For To Hit Demons.

I mean, there probably will be plots that are focused towards the social mavens who deftly influence the social scene with style, just like there are plots for the people with the pointy metal bits, or the people who dig into all the occult lore, etc. So I don't know that "ignore it completely" is 100% true, any more than you can "ignore it completely" for combat if you want to go into situations where combat is required.

But you can probably ignore it in terms of "do I need to go buy the pretty things or play the fashion game myself", and instead find someone who does play that part of the game to use if you need someone with a lot of social prestige for some other plotline.

And I'd imagine there will be times you might need an influential social powerhouse to do things, like if you want to convince all the NPCs that Plan A is really better than Plan B, please and thank you. Just like how sometimes you might need a combat powerhouse to do things, such as keep you alive while you explore ancient ruins full of monsters.

But the goal as described seems to be to make those people useful to others, not to make those skills required by everyone.

(This is, mind you, just me talking about what I read as the intent of the design. So don't read too much into this.)

[Sparks]

(Watch me double-post!)

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

• @clues should auto-refresh with new PCs: some of mine I know are defunct. Others, I'm just wild-ass guessing whether they are or aren't. Investigative PCs should (maybe randomly?) have new @clues added. This is being worked on, though.

So, until recently I played one of the most clue-laden characters on the game. Not because I was particularly seeded with clues to start with, but because I was a very active info-trader; I would find that person X was invested in plotline Y, and give them clue Z to further that. Generally, being invested in that plotline, they had other clues about plotline Y and would share them in return, and thus I had more plotline Y clues the next time someone was interested in plotline Y.

(Aislin didn't actually do as much as people seem to think—she was rarely a decision-maker or the character in the spotlight—but she was a really solid support character, who was on the edges of a large number of plotlines as a result.)

But the real value people seemed to find from my portrayal of her was that I got very, very good at putting together a set of related clues to form a coherent theory, and then sharing that theory—sometimes a coded @theory, sometimes just sharing information in RP—with the people interested in that plotline. So I highly, highly recommend not just collecting clues, but gathering them together into coherent @theories and trading information in general. You will find you can amass quite a few clues that way through info trading.

Which is why the automated refreshing of clues seems very hard to automate in a meaningful sense, simply because there's so many clues on so many topics, and some of them are related to a player's secrets or something you couldn't find through investigation, etc. Others are clues you could find through investigation but which wouldn't be terribly useful for information brokering. (For instance, knowing about the fate of Frosthaven—which was the outcome of a player run plot—may be neat, yes. But no one is really looking for that information, so it's not a useful clue to trade.)

At any rate, trying to just automate giving 'hey, X could use more clues' is probably a really bad way of giving them a useful set of clues; having a single clue on each of 10 different topics is often far less useful for getting involved in things than having 5 clues on each of two different topics that flesh those topics out really well. So I feel like giving a curated, hand-selected set of a couple sets of clues that relate to each other would be more useful, at least based on my own experience having played a very lore/clue-focused character for a while.

And also as one former investigator/clue-collector to a current one, that's what I'd highly recommend you focus on: find what storylines interest you and focus on those to start, trying to get all the information you can on them. And if there's a specific storyline that intrigues you, ask staff to help refresh your clues with ones focused on that specific storyline.

I mean, trying to track every single storyline going on will probably drive you just a little bit mad.

I don't know if that helps at all for a little bit of clue-focused direction, but I hope so!

[fortydeuce]

@Sparks -- thanks very much! Amidst RP at the moment, but I'll come back and reply more substantively later tonight/tomorrow.

[Lithium]

@sparks The reason so many find combat integral to plot fu, is because it is the one thing that doesn't seem impartial. Stats are on the sheet, dice are rolled, system is consulted, results are given. There are no vagaries to it. When a plot is more social, it is really easy to feel like someone doesn't matter at all.

To whit: I was in a plot once, it was literally a discovery plot. Me and one other person. The NPC flat out /ignored/ my character, which was due to social merits and stats, pretty much impossible and yet... I was ignored. Nothing I said was responded to.

It's these kind of situations that burn people on social plot fu, and it totally is a once bitten twice shy situation for many people because as we all know, people remember the bad much more easily than the good.

[DeadEmpire]

@sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

And if there's a specific storyline that intrigues you, ask staff to help refresh your clues with ones focused on that specific storyline

I had no idea that was even an option!

[Roz]

@deadempire said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

And if there's a specific storyline that intrigues you, ask staff to help refresh your clues with ones focused on that specific storyline

I had no idea that was even an option!

Well, I don't think it's a general action, I think that it was more @Sparks saying, "If you really want to ask staff for a bit of a refresh because you're an investigative character, do so in a more focused rather than general way." But not that the request would necessarily be granted.

[Darinelle]

@deadempire said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

And if there's a specific storyline that intrigues you, ask staff to help refresh your clues with ones focused on that specific storyline

I had no idea that was even an option!

This is really specific to a new character on the grid. If you're an established character and someone tells you about something you've never heard before, we expect you'll contact your friends, talk to them, maybe get some clues or an investigation going, put in an action or two.

A new character with the concept of "information broker" is really dependent upon the kindness of strangers, in that they have nothing with which to broker. So in the interest of getting a new character (or a new player, or a new-to-a-never-been-played roster char) involved and give them enough hooks to RP with, we'd be far more likely to send some clues that way in response to "I'm supposed to be this thing or knowledgeable about this thing and I know NOTHING" than someone who has been in the game and has the tools to discover and people to RP with.

Part of Arx is about discovering information, after all.

@Lithium - The social system we're trying to implement is in part because there are so many social characters who get ignored when doing diplomatic or social things. And it's to take away some of the doubt - so that there are some hard guidelines that indicate social power, the way there are hard guidelines that indicate combat power.

[fortydeuce]

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

A new character with the concept of "information broker" is really dependent upon the kindness of strangers, in that they have nothing with which to broker. So in the interest of getting a new character (or a new player, or a new-to-a-never-been-played roster char) involved and give them enough hooks to RP with, we'd be far more likely to send some clues that way in response to "I'm supposed to be this thing or knowledgeable about this thing and I know NOTHING" than someone who has been in the game and has the tools to discover and people to RP with.

My situation; thanks for any help! New player to the game, too.

[Darinelle]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

My situation; thanks for any help! New player to the game, too.

I know! Welcome to Arx, it's good to have you!

[DeadEmpire]

@darinelle I mean, that's a fair point. I'm pretty well established at this point and while I'm not looking to ask for that on any of my current alts, it's something that might be handy down the line if anything were to happen to my current batch. The me from February really could've used a boost, is all I'm saying!

[boneghazi]

@fortydeuce Welcome to the most addictive MU I have ever come across. I think we have crossed paths ICly within the last two or three days.

I had to take a brief break previously, not because of any fault of the game, and I have jumped back in with both feet. Thankfully, I have an etch-a-sketch memory and the ability to do pretty near complete memory wipes and I get to rediscover the game again. Ugh. It's oh so addictive that I think I spend about 12 hours logged in a day, so hey if you need any help I know exactly your situation. Let me know if there's anything I can help with.

Ugh I think this post needs to go into the hog pit I have a bone to pick with @Apos for not offering counseling services for the withdrawal I've had. (I'm joking).

But also seriously damn this game for sucking up every ounce of free time I have. Crazy about it.

I hope you know what you're getting in to. You've been warned. I hope you don't have a life. It's now Arx. Arx is life.

[fortydeuce]

We may have! Page me with whomever you are, if you would like (no worries if not!). And I teach university IRL, and right now we're on a January break, so my life consists of Starbucks and ignoring working avidly on dissertation chapters! Aka: all the time in the world, at least for another few weeks.

But yeah, I picked the char I did because it seemed like he could scene, and productively scene, with just about everybody, so anyone, please don't hesitate to look me up while I'm still @rsable (or even later!).

[dontpanda]

@darinelle said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Lithium - The social system we're trying to implement is in part because there are so many social characters who get ignored when doing diplomatic or social things. And it's to take away some of the doubt - so that there are some hard guidelines that indicate social power, the way there are hard guidelines that indicate combat power.

I'm a big fan of having some way to use the social skills. I tend to play those sorts of characters (whether by chance or subconsciously choosing them), and it can be a challenge to feel as though these stats have any meaning.

@Arkandel had an interesting topic about social stats some time ago, so I'm glad to see that Arx is trying to make them have some sort of usefulness. Even if I don't like fashion stuff, I like overall depth in a game, and that adds another layer.

[saosmash]

I recently gave away a lot of Aureth's fancy clothes because he's literally never going to change his shirt again, but I'm still excited for the fashion system. I THINK IT'S FUN.