Posts made by Groth

The way things right now, the 3/3 haggler and 3/3 socialite is about 1/10th as effective as the 5/5 however the socialite has the additional aspect that they continue to scale linearly with how many 5's they have in the 'primary' social skills. Someone with four 5's is about twice as good as someone with two etc.

That's just a consequence of how roll and keep works. The result of a given roll is roughly linear with the stats/skills used, once you have enough dice to consistently beat the difficulty, all additional bonuses just add linearly to your result.

For the 'base' difficulty of 15, that's about 3 dice. Haggling uses 20 which is about 4 dice and modeling uses diff 30 which is about 6 dice worth. That leaves a hypothetical 3/3 character with only 3, 2 and 0 dice remaining respectively for getting the result compared to the 5/5 who has 7/6/4

If you want to achieve something like what @brent suggests, the difficulty needs to be kept relatively low (like 10-15) in order to allow a 3/3 to actually beat it with some threshold. Then you can squeeze the high end by running the result through something like the power of 0.9. At that point 5/5 would still get about 2x the result of 3/3.

@thenomain
I don't think Arx needs to be defended. The purpose of the thread as I see it is examination, feedback and suggestions, not attack.

@arkandel said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Why not?

What's the upside of creating systems specifically so knowledge of how they work or optimization can't give an advantage?

You'll never be able to create a system where knowledge and optimization are not things. However you can create a system where a player just making their sheet according to what they feel their character should be like will be succesful and not be subjected to pressures about doing things 'wrong'.

@sparks said in The Arx Peeve Thread:

But telling other people that their fun is "wrong"—that they need to adjust their sheet or their very concept to be more "effective" mathematically instead of playing the thing they want to play—is what staff's really not okay with.

"Oh, you need to be a combat character, social stuff isn't really useful."

"Oh, you want to do market stuff? You need to pick these specific skills, in this specific order, or else you aren't maximizing your effectiveness and XP spends; if you do anything else, you're just wrong about it."

Being pressed on those things is not usually fun for the people who are being told they're "doing it wrong", when they have a character concept they want to play. It's especially bad if it happens to someone brand-new to the game who doesn't know any better.

If you don't want people to feel pressured to optimize characters this or that way, why are the game systems built to give such massive advantages to specialized characters? Almost all Arx systems involve high base difficulties combined with massive multipliers.

If there exists a real and actual concern of HoH's robbing the house bank to refine weapons or whatever. It could be worth considering making a different kind of resource that houses earn their income in. We could call it Grain or Tribute or anything along those lines.

We could then make it so this would be efficiently converted into silver when paying stipends and it could still be used for things like Actions, but it could not be withdrawn as silver at will. I think that would also lower the expectation you should be using the house funds for weapons/armor, since it would be difficult to spend it that way.

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Making someone wear the same outfit for a week is a punishment. I don't even fathom how this is not obvious.

I think we interpreted the suggestion very differently. Having to wear the same outfit for a week sounds very strange and arbitrary and I don't think anyone would enjoy that very much.

If I were to implement a system with the goal of ensuring outfits are worn before they're eligble for rewards, I would simply require the outfit to have been exposed to maybe 5-10 emits from another player, maybe require it to have been looked at atleast once. Ideally players shouldn't notice there is a minimum requirement at all, it should just happen automatically during the normal course of their RP.

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

• I would like people who are high in prestige to have a chance to throw their weight behind societal trends in some form while they're in the limelight, but I'm honestly not sure how; we don't have a good 'social trends' system or anything like that, and trying to add one would be a horrible headache to maintain. This is the one I'm really stuck on. Sure, we could have them lend their weight to an org and give it some benefit by making that org the 'in thing' for one or two weeks, but as soon as there's any meaningful mechanical benefit to an org—like income, or resource generation—I currently feel like that's just going to circle back to this frothing "now it's necessary to grind prestige or else you're doing it wrong" mentality, which isn't what we want.

It could work if it was designed to be completely unmaintainable and once the org falls out of the trend, it can't come back into trend for some amount of time (a few months?). It would create some pressure on the org to maximize the gains from their time in the sun, but not more so then the pressure to maximize the gains from say Grandeour during a week someone made massive gains.

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

• I would like people who are high in prestige to have at least some benefit at the market while they're high in prestige, because a merchant can go "this celebrity shops at my stall!". (Think of Mass Effect; "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store in the Citadel!")

To me that sounds like something that's accomplished to a significant degree by the prestige gains on the designer from modeling. Currently weapon/armor designers get somewhat left out of the idea of being famous for their work, maybe they should get fame whenever someone wearing their things get fame from other sources?

@sparks
I think a broader design rework really needs to address all the various character archetypes that you want to have a fulfilling role in the system. You really do need the military clout, investigation clout, economic clout etc if you don't want the game distorted around this one thing that has proper representation while the others don't.

They don't need to be the most engaging or deep systems ever, but making War/Command more important then Etiquette for generating millitary resources would go a long way I think.

@roz
The feelings people have about a system are useful in all sorts of ways, they tell you a lot about how the system is perceived and used and where there might exist clashes between design intent and how things work out in practise.

I also agree that when it comes to guide writing, you want the math and figures in the appendix. It's also something that makes writing a good guide for things like Work and Modeling somewhat hard since you want something that you can point people new to the game to without overwhelming them.

That said if someone makes a factually incorrect statement at me, I'm going to correct them with math and it will be in spoiler tags from now on so those who think working things out is the devil don't need to snark all over the thread.

@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

It's kind of weird to see pretty much...all of Arx's staff continue with the "oh it's just a fun minigame haha!" thing, when Prestige is tied, in significant ways, to pretty much every manner of generating resources/silver/etc.

The other thing is...it doesn't even make "social characters" valuable or useful.

Being a social character doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is "did you model this week?" That's not really....a 'social character' thing?

Every other method of gaining prestige is light years behind modelling.

You can be a social character all you want. If you're not modelling, you're not doing anything valuable for your house.

Clout is a ridiculously dominating factor in resource generation.

Who are generating your military resources? The social characters
Who are generating your economic resources? The social characters
Who are generating your social resources? The social characters.

Saying social characters arn't doing anything valuable outside of modeling is a strange thing to say.

As far as I can tell, clout isn't doing a ton for you unless you have the prestige to go with it.

And modelling is the only way to get more than a pittance of prestige. (Invest around 500 resouces for 100k prestige or...go model for millions of prestige? Hm.)

If you want to get an idea for how clout interacts with work, you can play with this spreadsheet, just keep in mind it's misleading because outfit value does not scale linearly with silver and I havn't bothered accounting for that yet.

***NSFW content***

@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

It's kind of weird to see pretty much...all of Arx's staff continue with the "oh it's just a fun minigame haha!" thing, when Prestige is tied, in significant ways, to pretty much every manner of generating resources/silver/etc.

The other thing is...it doesn't even make "social characters" valuable or useful.

Being a social character doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is "did you model this week?" That's not really....a 'social character' thing?

Every other method of gaining prestige is light years behind modelling.

You can be a social character all you want. If you're not modelling, you're not doing anything valuable for your house.

Clout is a ridiculously dominating factor in resource generation.

Who are generating your military resources? The social characters
Who are generating your economic resources? The social characters
Who are generating your social resources? The social characters.

Saying social characters arn't doing anything valuable outside of modeling is a strange thing to say.

@roz said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@mietze said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Or out of fear that they are not doing it right because their skills are "too low/not good enough."

This is why I also dislike system discussions that are based on, like, a basis of "what is the absolute most efficient way to do this," because it quickly turns into "people are doing this wrong/not doing it well enough because they're doing it at less than peak efficiency." Which I don't mean as "people shouldn't crunch numbers if that's where their happiness lies" or "people should obfuscate their efficiency," but when we're talking about user engagement in a system and how to make it feel better, I think that a hyperfocus on "peak efficient way of utilizing a system" tends to actually have a negative effect on the discussion. It reduces the human element in favor of math and it gives the false impression that the math can predict how people will engage and how they'll feel about it. The math can predict a lot! Not denying that. But it very much loses the human element that is going to be the most common reaction.

I think it would help a lot as far as the constructiveness of the topic is concerned if people didn't take it as a personal insult when the math of the system is explained. Based on the fact I see statements upvoted that are trivially proven wrong by anyone with a minute to spare and the windows calculator, I can only conclude that people want to feel validated over their decisions more then they want to know how things work which isn't very helpful.

When I lay out the math for a system, it's not with the intention of telling anyone they're playing the game wrong, it's with the intent of allowing them to make informed decisions and provide the foundation I make conclusions from. If someone doesn't want to know how the systems work, then a systems discussion thread is probably not the best thread for them to be in, maybe we can make a no-spoilers version of the thread for people who don't want to know, or maybe I should start putting the math behind spoiler tags.

@mietze said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Maybe we should get rid of the leaderboards since they seem to be used as a reason to be shitty to other people and to get resentful or think that if you don't have 6s in everything that you are useless

It's my understanding that they're going to be removed and replaced by something more abstract and descriptive.

@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

There's no REQUIREMENT that it be at a huge event, just a bonus if it is. The only requirement is that it be in public with other humans, as opposed to in your room by yourself.

Just like there's no REQUIREMENT that you train all your skills with a Teaching 5 teacher, but if you don't you throw away 45% of your XP or 90% of the value of your outfit.

You CAN, you're ALLOWED, but does it feel good?

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@groth

How is punishment going to make people use it more?

Explain to me how it's a punishment.

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@groth

Staff has literally said many times it is not a problem, people are not doing it, so I want to know why people are suggesting that we punish models more. This isn't a problem. What problem is trying to be solved?

The problem right now appears to be extremely few people are using the modeling command. I think that's because of a combination of relatively high skill/stat requirements to get big shiny numbers and that people feel they need to save their modelings for the zomghugh events.

I think the suggestion that the outfit should be worn for a time should be seen as a replacement of the current requirement to be in a hugh event. A thing that's easy to do and encourages people to get out there.

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@jeshin

But what problem does requiring a model to wear an outfit for a week solve? What is even the point? Like...why?

The goal would be to reward the people who enjoy making new outfits while discouraging making outfits for the sole goal of scoring points with no intention of ever using them as outfits.

If you wanted to take Auspices approach further while wanting to make it hard to 'cheat', you could make it a counter based on the emits received while wearing the item in order to turn it into 'worn for a scene or two' instead of idling.

Is it worthwhile? I don't know, often trying to discourage 'cheating' makes things a lot less enjoyable for everyone else who just want to have fun. Are people making items named 'for modeling' and junking them a real issue?

@sparks
Belatedly, if anyone isn't using haggling right now, I'd speculate it's one of two reasons.

1. They don't know that it was recently buffed to be really really strong even if they previously got bad results because of low prestige.
2. Their skill/stats are too low to benefit. It scales really sharply, for instance Stat 3, Skill 3 means you grab 150 resources at a time for about 50 profit margin. That works out to about 750 silver per AP compared to the 4,225 of 5/5 who can grab 370 at 115 margin.

I think it's mostly a knowledge issue though, or wanting to run a bunch of code in the market issue. The buy orders should have lowered the barrier of entry somewhat. I know my character isn't using haggling because I have no idea how to get a trainer so I can spend the xp to buy the skills so I can use haggling.

@apos said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Now for the biggest group, and the ones that I think are left most hungry at the moment by as it stands since it's something we don't offer, are being able to tell stories and being able to RP about consequence. it just is not interesting to people to have Nameless Vassal #1 and Nameless Vassal #2 paying taxes week after week, with a clearly mechanical, automated way. Seeing the effects of their actions, good or bad, which then has an impact on others and creating opportunities or crises that turn into Major Things is a huge appeal and what many people mean when they talk about politics in games, and needing to maneuver the many different divergent and overlapping goals of a ton of different factions. This also is the most dangerous one if it's implemented poorly, since it can antagonize people or make them unbelievably stressed, but also the one that would be far and away the most rewarding and offer people the largest possibility to tell stories and create large scale organic reactions from their own actions.

I can tell you that if other games are anything to go by, the moment you add coded organisation level PvP with some actual rewards for winning, people will get ludicriously invested to the extent you shouldn't be surprised if white vans start driving up to the newbies offering candy in the hope of kidnapping them away for more manpower

It's something people really like, but it's also something that easily stresses people out as you say, so it's difficult.

@apos said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Yeah exactly, that's what I was getting at in my post. That the non-formula factors are much more significant than the formulas and ease of use is why we'll revamp it and not the astronomical differences in prestige so much.

I agree. What's always going to be the most significant is the ease of use and how it 'feels' to use the system. That's why most suggestions I make on the github are usability improvements. Astronomical differences in numbers become part of the feel however, it shouldn't have come as a surprise when people felt discouraged over their investments into donations/largesse when they became a drop in the ocean that is modeling prestige.

It also shouldn't surprise anyone when my character with 0's in all social skills opts to not run the modeling command because it would net nothing, which is about as well as it would go if someone with 0's in all combats tries to wrestle a bear

My concerns about AP trades ever coming back are twofold.

1. AP trades incentivize piling AP on the most efficient character in the game to make them even more efficient.
2. When you trade away your AP, you trade away your characters agency. It makes no difference if the AP comes from Alice, Bob or Charlie, it has the exact same effect either way and those characters are no longer spending AP on doing their own thing, whatever that might be.

@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

People definitely know that modeling exists, though. This is a reduction in numbers from people using the command before.

Before people could run the command in the privacy of their own homes couldn't they? It's a pretty big ask for most people to have to be at a big event to run a command.