@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
After playing for a few days on Arx, some thoughts.
- I really really like its investigative/task/support system. It's pretty smart that it's built so not only are there diminishing returns to getting backing up by the same people, you can't support your own primary faction - so you can't just have a huge House circle-jerking support, as it's implied that it's a given, and all those people need to go out there and recruit others to help.
Just to clarify: you can get investigative help from your primary faction. But I think this does make sense, because it's asking individual people for their help hunting down clues (in whatever form that may take), whereas tasks/support are an organization-level thing. Definitely agree that it makes sense and is a good setup for tasks to not allow a circle of support from within the same org that it's originating from.
- I'm torn about resource management. Basically the way it works (to my understanding) is larger Houses have more money to give out but also, typically, more people. So Lord Bob of House Large can choose to share the wealth and buy everyone a small present or play favorites, buy a couple of people a Death Star and piss off the rest - plus it makes smaller, well populated Houses' players even more short on cash. That's both a good thing (since it makes sense, it's realistic and life ain't fair, plus it gives leaders meaningful choices to make) and bad (since some players will feel bad about it).
It's definitely designed to give a lot of autonomy and power to the org leaders. I run a duchy-level house (with @Meg!) and, sure, I'd love to have the income of a high house -- who wouldn't? For me, it still falls within the realms of "realistic and not maddening." I think a better perspective might be from folks in a March level house or lower who have even less money coming in.
- My main concern is the suggestion someone made that at times support is given for OOC reasons. While staff has made it clear it's not cool to apply OOC pressure ("hey, did you back me up for my zoo project yet??") there's no real way to regulate trading favors OOC without RP and without running the game as a police state - which I agree it shouldn't be. And although I've watched people get bitched at on channels by staff about trying to get favors for their alts, once again it's pretty hard to track down alt-circlejerking trading.
Yeah, that's a bit -- I'm not sure how to combat it unless it gets reported. I'm sure it happens, because the idea that it doesn't is more unrealistic to me and there's always jerks who don't care about the rules, unfortunately.
- I haven't done combat at all so far, despite playing a soldier type, so no idea how the balance works yet. I've heard some bellyaching about dino-monsters but no idea if that's true either.
There are definitely combat monsters on the game. However, I'd actually say that if you want to play a combat monster and decide to focus all your XP there, you can do a lot to catch up in your early weeks. The XP tax really slows down the ability to keep raising skills quickly. I mean, I kind of heard a little implied bellyaching about my combat-focused commoner alt maxing out his weapon skill within his first month on the game. I can also say that he's crappy at other things, and that crappiness has had a negative impact at times. (Just ask anyone who's seen me run a Perception check. He's the most oblivious guy on the game sometimes, and it's cost him successes on plot that would've translated to actual money. Which is part of the fun!) He's also in the position of not being able to afford the sort of fancy armor that rich nobles can, so that's another limitation. (I could whine about noble combat monsters with fancy armor who skip over skills nobles should probably learn even if they're not in the line of inheritance, but I have to trust that they'll probably get stuck failing etiquette checks at some point on some plot the same way I fail checks at stuff my characters aren't good at. And there's no point stressing over being the best, because that way lies madness.)
- The randomscene idea is excellent, more MU* should use it. Basically every week it generates a list of people you can RP with for extra XP and every newbie is also on that list automatically... so as soon as you get in suddenly there're a bunch of people trying to play with you for their own good. Big thumbs up for that.
I looooooove randomscene, too. And it does have a good point of diminishing returns (you're not going to get twice as much XP claiming 20 people than claiming 10).
- Getting settled into the metaplot is a bitch and a half. It's probably the worst thing about the game, at least for me, because so much has happened and it takes a lot of reading to catch up. Arx can probably really benefit from a very basic 101 page somewhere, giving the fundamental facts and nothing else but links to where you can learn more.
There is a whole lot. That's definitely true. Having been around since Alpha -- AKA before plot was actually moving forward -- I do feel rather sympathetic to people coming in now after it's all gotten started already. And the other difficulty with having a "Basic 101 Page" is sort of indicating what's public knowledge and what isn't. But -- maybe we should try it anyways, at the very least on the player wiki we have going. Just stuff that really is public knowledge (story updates, stuff that happened in big public events, etc.). I know a big problem I've witnessed newcomers talk about is coming in asking about what they should know about certain things getting discussed and the answer being "not much, you probably didn't think it existed as of yesterday."
There's also an instinct on the part of a lot of players to want to have ALL THE CLUES which is neither realistic nor a productive angle to approach the game from. It's a very natural instinct, and I've had to temper it in myself, so it's not like I don't get it. But it's probably more productive if people kind of focus in on certain topics/areas instead of worrying about what everyone else knows about other things.
- My former major concern - the lack of PrPs - doesn't apply any more. They are doable, and due to code limitations they are even light on mechanics which for me at least is the best case scenario. But others' mileage may vary.
We've had a lot of cool PrPs, which is awesome. I'm super excited for the formal, coded PrP system. @Tehom did a great (and hilarious) summary of the current envisioning of the system.