Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning
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I'm very torn about the +task system, and well...a lot of the systems, to be honest. They're kind of like mini-games to me, only I got the idea early on that if I neglected them too much I'd be screwed. Adjusting to the toggle style (eg, using @<command> instead of +<command> for a lot of things, the @bb, etc) is new, not being able to use aliases or shortened names in pages, three different kinds of message systems, systems for developing npc's, systems for clothing, systems for building.) It's pretty overwhelming, and fortunately people have been very patient when I've asked questions. I try to look stuff up first but I don't always find the right syntax, or the command to do what I want to do is not intuitive to me.
I've been kind of regarding these as MY problems, and not necessarily those of the game. It's a much heavier focus on coded systems than I'm used to and I just have to take the time to get used it and get into the practice.
I've suggested a sort of To-Do List cheat sheet that a couple of people said was a good idea, along the lines of "Run these weekly, do these daily" and while the part of me that loves order and Tetris and putting things in neat boxes loves the idea of a checklist, I worry that it will start to feel more like an obligation, or "homework" in order to keep up.
Kvetching aside, I am enjoying my RP there, there's always something to do, and thus far I have been welcome to every scene I've asked to join.
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They are definitely meant to be mini-games that are opt in. Why do you feel like you'll be screwed if you don't participate?
I think there's a bit of necessity there, as tasks are a way to get resources, and resources are necessary to do some things - but those things are also meant to be opt in. The most rp/story 'necessary' use of resources I can think of is investigations, because it costs 25 social to start one (with a discount for each point of the investigate skill you have). But, you can get enough social resources to start an investigation by doing @task/work 7 times a week for ...well, 3 weeks if you don't have any of the investigation skill.
I'm honestly very curious what is making you feel you'll fall behind if you don't do tasks.
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I don't think I understand whats going on. How wouldn't they fall behind if they aren't generating these resources?
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I think goals can vary greatly from player to player, so I'm asking.
But in general, fall behind what? If your minigame is to be the person with all the resources, then not doing tasks will definitely put you behind. If your minigame is to become the go to bridal fashion designer for Arx, you'll need a bit of resources to build a shop (if you want a shop), but once that is done you wouldn't (I think!) need more for that goal. If your minigame is to be at the top of the prestige list for your @org, you'll need to do tasks to gain resources for it. If your minigame is to be the bestest sword fighter in the known world, you will not at all fall behind by not doing tasks.
Does that clarify my curiosity? Not everyone is on the same ladder.
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"But in general, fall behind what?"
You're either being purposefully being disingenuous or the +task code has changed a ton since I was active.
The way it felt when I was still actively playing, if you're a noble, you need to be generating resources --because whatever you make, your family gets a copy of. So you either do tasks, or your entire family is going to fall behind all the other families, and then you're fucked if/when another house decides they don't like you and they're all +task spammers. Especially with all the 'NPC soldier'/NPC war stuff supposed to be coming. Hell, perhaps this is wrong, but I was told it costs resources for Noble players to get NPC bodyguards.
I mean sure. If you're just commoner joe the dress maker, you don't need to worry about tasks or resources (and uh I don't even think you have as much access to them in the first place).
It's all good and well to say 'oh people don't need to do tasks! don't be silly!' but...if you aren't, you are basically resigning yourself to be a nobody, because the other people will have way more money/etc than you and it /does/ actually impact several facets of the game.
Somebody said tasks don't generate money anymore. But, if they still generate economic resources...which you can trade for money...how much money is a task worth? Is it still more than a WHOLE GREAT HOUSE makes in a week? Because it was before.
I'd personally much rather just be able to RP building alliances and shit without a coded 'checklist' thing. My opinion of the task system is that it just waters down RP, because people aren't coming to you for RP, they're coming to you to get coded support for their task.
Edit : Further edit. The +task system provides a coded popularity contest and way to circlejerk and promotes mentality you don't really want on an RP game. The game becomes less about roleplaying with other characters, and more about getting your tasks done. Is it any surprise that players like the Gareth-guy that got banned were ALL ABOUT IT? I think there was a Redrain noble who was rabid about tasks that /also/ got banned, but I could be mistaken. Rokhir or something? He and Gareth were both the two biggest parties whining about 'omg when is the task system coming back!?' 'pls! tasks fixed yet!?' 'tasks again when!?' when it got turned off for a day or two, months ago. Not everybody is going to be as blatantly crazy about it as those two, but I feel pretty confident in saying it still severely impacts the way people play the game and the way they think about 'rp'. And I don't mean that in a good way.
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@Kanye-Qwest That is a good point, though I guess it would depend on whether there are additional things resources can get you that actually affect your ability to be good at something. EG Advertising, lavish fashion shows, wide distribution and a secure delivery network for your bridal shop may be de rigueur.
I guess the designers should chime in!
Or someone who has played there ...
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
They are definitely meant to be mini-games that are opt in. Why do you feel like you'll be screwed if you don't participate?
I think there's a bit of necessity there, as tasks are a way to get resources, and resources are necessary to do some things - but those things are also meant to be opt in. The most rp/story 'necessary' use of resources I can think of is investigations, because it costs 25 social to start one (with a discount for each point of the investigate skill you have). But, you can get enough social resources to start an investigation by doing @task/work 7 times a week for ...well, 3 weeks if you don't have any of the investigation skill.
I'm honestly very curious what is making you feel you'll fall behind if you don't do tasks.
Out of curiosity, why DOES an Investigation cost social resources? I've never quite been able to understand that, conceptually. Originally, I rationalized as oh, I'm probably getting scribes or underlings to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. But that doesn't really make any sense, because that's never factored in as far as I can see, with chance of success. Chance of success seems to come strictly from a PCs own stats and skills with no bonus or penalty due to the organization they belong to. Now, you can pay /extra/ resources to get a better chance, and that makes more sense in a way, I can see how that plays into it, but the initial cost seems to just be a random speedbump like the designers thought, "Hey, we need something for people to spend social resources on."
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@Kanye-Qwest: I feel like in this there's a difference between "IC Goals" and "Mini Games". I play a character who has her own lands, and must make sure that they are profitable not just for her but for her people (she's altruistic like that). When she comes into conflict or must contribute in some way to interact with those around her, if I don't participate in mini-game usage, she will lack for resources (clothes, money, social credit, whathaveyou) to do what she needs to do in order to be successful. Some - a lot of it feels overly complicated.
Just to build her home, she has to go to the bank, withdraw X amount of funds, go to the market, exchange those funds for credits of "economic resource", go back to the bank, deposit the resources, and then rooms can be built. Each room built is exponentially more expensive so there's additional calculation of how much money to withdraw based on the exchange rate. To me this is a matter of punching buttons and pulling levers so to speak, and isn't really something that spawns rp.
I don't mind supporting other people's tasks, but I don't really have a handle on how to effectively develop my own. Questions like whether or not the Thing I Want To Do is an economic or a social task. Examples of different types of tasks. I know there's a switch for customization but I haven't the faintest idea how to use it in the string syntax.
It all adds up to feeling like I'm trying to tread water while I'm slowly sinking. To be clear, I'm not planning to quit and I think the game overall is well constructed, the players are nice, the roster is beautifully done - this is just a different "rp culture" for me, I suppose.
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
-- Hamilton: An American Musical -
@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Kanye-Qwest That is a good point, though I guess it would depend on whether there are additional things resources can get you that actually affect your ability to be good at something. EG Advertising, lavish fashion shows, wide distribution and a secure delivery network for your bridal shop may be de rigueur.
I guess the designers should chime in!
Or someone who has played there ...
Last I knew, they are supposed to tie heavily into the yet-to-be-made 'war games' and territory management stuff. I mean, one of the resources currencies is /Military Resources/.
--Yeah, fall behind in those, I'm sure you'll be fine.
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Ok, I feel you. I don't think clothes are ever going to be necessary for any success. In fact, I feel pretty strongly about that, so if something is happening in game that is making you feel like you can't accomplish an RP goal because you don't have coded clothing, please do tell us about it.
Since you are in a position where generating resources is important to you, I would personally like the task system to feel accessible to you. Or, maybe we need to look at resource generation and tone down what tasks offer, since the idea was to give people reasons to RP outside of their orgs/social circles. A carrot is necessary, but maybe it doesn't need to be a HUGE carrot.
Because we want to gate it so there aren't a million billion random investigations being started up that aren't given any thought. If you get investigation 4 (you can get 5 in cg, and another skill or 2 to boot if that's your dream), the cost to start one is 5 social resources, which anyone can earn in a week by doing @task/work 5 times. Just that command, no asking for support or admin.
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This game looks really interesting to me, especially as it approaches beta, but I have been curious about the tasks.
Are there ones you have to complete daily? I'm fine with weekly, but leery of anything that's going to need maintenance on a daily basis. I just dunno if I'm going to be in the mood to log in that often, even if I'm able to (and I won't be sometimes).
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@Three-Eyed-Crow
They aren't like a faction grind daily in WoW, no. Tasks/Support are prompts that you can go out and rp about (or throw events to satisfy), like for instance there's one about orphans. So you find someone to rp with and make them promise to join you in starting a charity to give orphans 10 minutes a day in a big pit of puppies or something. Then you ask for their coded support in your endeavor and they have to do a lot of typing to give it. Each task you take on has a certain requirement of support you have to earn to complete it. It's checked weekly. If you got enough this week, yay! Completed task. Resources for you, and the organization you did the task for. If not, well, you can leave the task going and try for more support the next week. They aren't timed, and progress is cumulative. -
@Three-Eyed-Crow There isn't anything that requires daily check ins, or even weekly. Tasks are opt-in, investigations are opt-in. 99% of the RP I get (and I get a lot of RP in spite of beta not starting for another two weeks) has nothing at all to do with tasks.
I play a faction head and get my own resources (which I then put in my faction's accounts) by offering support to other people's tasks. I haven't run my own +task in weeks.
They have changed a lot since @Tempest was active. The game is not what it was several months ago. Several months from now, after the revisions of beta, it will probably be changed too. There are a lot of things still in adjustment mode, so I would recommend going in with the understanding that it's like moving into an unfinished apartment, work is still going on all around you and staff is being generous to allow people to RP while that work is being done.
But it is a fun atmosphere, and a better group of helpful, enthusiastic, creative players I haven't encountered in many, many years.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
This game looks really interesting to me, especially as it approaches beta, but I have been curious about the tasks.
Are there ones you have to complete daily? I'm fine with weekly, but leery of anything that's going to need maintenance on a daily basis. I just dunno if I'm going to be in the mood to log in that often, even if I'm able to (and I won't be sometimes).
Naw, everything is on a weekly system, and most aren't intended to be completed in a single week. How they work right now is an abstraction for Leader of Group A asking People with influence over Group B for help with any random task off screen. For example, a noble of a house concerned that the recent chaos has made merchant shipping by sea more dangerous asks some of the coastal houses with large navies for to help guard the waters, that'd be a military task, they agree to support it, and once it passes a threshold it completes, different rumors are generated automatically so everyone in the city can see what's going on (even if the individuals involved are obscured), and resources are generated. I think it's misleading from the posts to see it as a heart of the game or anything like that, since it's more of a minigame for players to make offscreen actions from bargaining RP meaningful, and I haven't heard about anyone being pressured about them and none of the tasks have innate time crunches on them and just persist until someone finally gets enough support for it.
While I do want to be pretty careful about the resources generated giving some groups a larger edge, I don't think it's too much of a realistic concern since while the resources are meaningful, it's still very minor compared to the bulk of the economic strength of the noble houses from their domains. For example. Someone trying to do a Littlefinger-I-Know-Everyone-And-Can-Get-Dozens-To-Help-Me type guy can do it, and probably knock out a couple tasks, maybe getting like 30-50 resources or something if they worked like mad at it. That would be under 2% of the income of the wealthiest great house at the moment, and like a tenth of a percent of some of the Scary Big Bad Organizations. So there's definitely a sense of, 'Bob the Fast Talker is getting rich' from an individual perspective, but from a macro perspective compared to what the powerful organizations are doing, it's pretty mild.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
maybe getting like 30-50 resources or something if they worked like mad at it. That would be under 2% of the income of the wealthiest great house at the moment, and like a tenth of a percent of some of the Scary Big Bad Organizations. So there's definitely a sense of, 'Bob the Fast Talker is getting rich' from an individual perspective, but from a macro perspective compared to what the powerful organizations are doing, it's pretty mild.
That is definitely good to hear.
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@Tempest Yeah before it was definitely disproportionate, and it was more like a popularity contest, and I wanted something that felt a little more immersive in the sense that it represented player actions. I still don't think it's quite there though, and Tehom and I were working on something else that's a lot closer to what @Pyrephox was talking about that'll be an extension of the system. Since right now it shows a way people can generate resources, but we'll have something parallel to show how players can work together, invest on something together, and utilize their skills/stats as leaders to produce a game effect as projects. Which frankly isn't that much different that what really would be happening in requests in most games but a little bit more streamlined and easier, hopefully.
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I have an Investigation going. It's been running for a few weeks. I can update/tweak it as needed or start another, but I don't have to do anything day to day... or even week to week.
Now, tasks... I'll be honest, I barely understand the system. I probably should learn it now that we're nearing beta and my char will probably be doing a lot more.
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@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
They are definitely meant to be mini-games that are opt in. Why do you feel like you'll be screwed if you don't participate?
I think there's a bit of necessity there, as tasks are a way to get resources, and resources are necessary to do some things - but those things are also meant to be opt in. The most rp/story 'necessary' use of resources I can think of is investigations, because it costs 25 social to start one (with a discount for each point of the investigate skill you have). But, you can get enough social resources to start an investigation by doing @task/work 7 times a week for ...well, 3 weeks if you don't have any of the investigation skill.
I'm honestly very curious what is making you feel you'll fall behind if you don't do tasks.
Out of curiosity, why DOES an Investigation cost social resources? I've never quite been able to understand that, conceptually. Originally, I rationalized as oh, I'm probably getting scribes or underlings to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. But that doesn't really make any sense, because that's never factored in as far as I can see, with chance of success. Chance of success seems to come strictly from a PCs own stats and skills with no bonus or penalty due to the organization they belong to. Now, you can pay /extra/ resources to get a better chance, and that makes more sense in a way, I can see how that plays into it, but the initial cost seems to just be a random speedbump like the designers thought, "Hey, we need something for people to spend social resources on."
My guess and I am not affiliated with the game in any way is that it takes a far bit of time and effort to track down the people you need to learn stuff from and likely more pressure/influence/bribery/blackmail to get them to talk.
Unless it is something that can be researched completely in a library it takes a fair bit of effort. Heck even with modern tech a lot of investigations stuff requires things like stakeouts etc.
Now that could be RPed out but I can also see the logic of this work costs this many units of whatever. -
@ThatGuyThere That was kind of my thinking about it, and I'm not married to it/violently opposed to tweaking it, but I thought it fit and I wanted to give an extra bonus to people with the investigation skill (where each level discounts it, and someone with maxed does it for free).
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@ThatGuyThere said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
They are definitely meant to be mini-games that are opt in. Why do you feel like you'll be screwed if you don't participate?
I think there's a bit of necessity there, as tasks are a way to get resources, and resources are necessary to do some things - but those things are also meant to be opt in. The most rp/story 'necessary' use of resources I can think of is investigations, because it costs 25 social to start one (with a discount for each point of the investigate skill you have). But, you can get enough social resources to start an investigation by doing @task/work 7 times a week for ...well, 3 weeks if you don't have any of the investigation skill.
I'm honestly very curious what is making you feel you'll fall behind if you don't do tasks.
Out of curiosity, why DOES an Investigation cost social resources? I've never quite been able to understand that, conceptually. Originally, I rationalized as oh, I'm probably getting scribes or underlings to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. But that doesn't really make any sense, because that's never factored in as far as I can see, with chance of success. Chance of success seems to come strictly from a PCs own stats and skills with no bonus or penalty due to the organization they belong to. Now, you can pay /extra/ resources to get a better chance, and that makes more sense in a way, I can see how that plays into it, but the initial cost seems to just be a random speedbump like the designers thought, "Hey, we need something for people to spend social resources on."
My guess and I am not affiliated with the game in any way is that it takes a far bit of time and effort to track down the people you need to learn stuff from and likely more pressure/influence/bribery/blackmail to get them to talk.
Unless it is something that can be researched completely in a library it takes a fair bit of effort. Heck even with modern tech a lot of investigations stuff requires things like stakeouts etc.
Now that could be RPed out but I can also see the logic of this work costs this many units of whatever.That sort of makes sense, although 25 social resources is equivalent to what...12K silver? Even if you're a terrible investigator, you're probably not spending a noble's salary worth a week of effort on just getting people to talk to you. And I feel like the "not have five hundred investigations going on without thought" is already covered by the fact that you can only make progress in one investigation per week.
It's not, I should clarify, the IDEA that bothers me, but economies of scale are currently /really/ wonky when it comes to resources, money, how they interact, and what they're supposed to represent. I struggle to relate any of them or the requirements to how things translate from "I filled out this code bit" to "this is a logical chain of IC events that receives a logical result". Which is to be expected when people are creating a system from scratch, but I'm enough of a system person that it still bothers me when I interact with a lot of the systems. Right now, there's not a lot of...coherence? Across mechanics, which means that you're learning a lot of completely unique and separate mechanical systems that nonetheless are using the same resources and stats, but not necessarily in the same or predictable ways.
