Posts made by kitteh

I kinda flaked here too. Could probably poke in again, but I did feel like there wasn't a whole lot going on outside the combat stuff nor even much interest in the non-crew PCs (unless they were voodoo/shaman people). The isolation really flips a lot of Shore concepts on their heads, because none of that normal economy or society is happening and so we become the 'people you can bar RP with after you're done fighting monsters.'

I even remember one time a couple of us were on kind chatting on channel about 'doing something,' and then despite most the people talking not being fighty crew sorts, the staffer's idea was promptly to run an... on the spot combat event. That was pretty demoralizing, tbh.

So while I'll take blame for not being proactive enough on non-combat hooks (difficulties of the setting aside), there's also a point where it seems like staff doesn't even have interest (or any ideas) in doing stuff with/for non-crew PCs.

I want to put in an echo for this place being a great one to try out too, and hoping to see more folks show up and try it out.

There are a couple active groups RPing and TPs running or being setup, including the usual stuff in Gotham, the future Titans working on getting their team together, and some plotlines on Themyscira.

If anyone here is looking for an opportunity, feel free to ping me here and I can maybe offer some character guidance on character options etc.

@pyrephox Oh believe me, knowing 'all the things' is so far from my goals...

Re: 'poking at the one thing' that's definitely my approach too. I don't mind it and have no real need to, say, solve the big problems or anything, it's just about finding a point where it can dovetail in at all usefully. I have made progress on one particular thing, or feel like I have, but figuring out how to do it mechanically came too late for the relevant crisis/situation (my first attempt was an example of, I think, staff subconsciously being more 'yes'-prone for combat, but more critical/restrictive with non-combat). At this point I'm waiting around for that one to go back on the docket. I am cautiously hopeful!

@OldFrightful Haha, OK maybe I won't worry about those too much then.

@roz @Pyrephox Ah OK! That makes more sense and is better, although it still gives me anxiety >.>

@pyrephox Well, I was going by your description of it which said combination. The helpfile indeed doesn't explain anything.

As not to be mischaracterized as merely omg so negative...

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

I will also say that I think that the new @action system helps, or can help, in regards to that feeling of flailing around in the dark. The ooc_intent switch is, or at least I have found it to be, /very/ helpful. Hopefully it is as helpful for staff as it is for me, but making me state 'out loud' what I hope this action is capable of accomplishing has helped clarify what I want out of what I'm doing. Before it went in, I know sometimes I would hear people mention that the response to a storyrequest was completely unexpected, and it could sometimes feel like a dialogue in Mass Effect, where the prompt says 'express skepticism' and the dialogue is like, "YOU LYING FUCK."

This this this a million times this.

I absolutely do love @action and think it's a great addition. The prior request system was very vague and my success rate with them turning back anything useful was terrible. And /ooc_intent is like the best MUing invention I've seen in... the entire time I've been MUing maybe? It means that no matter how much you flail around trying to ICly describe sometimes obscure and arcane actions, you can very clearly state: 'This is what I want out of this' in that section. And staff seems good about honoring it.

MORE GAMES NEED THIS OMG. Just culturally, actually asking what your players want rather than make them swing blindly at your plot-pinatas is amazing.

Conversely, the @revelations explanation makes me... uh, even more anxious, because you not only need up to date clues but a perfect combination of clues to get the useful info? Idk. Seems kind of moving backward. The only way I can see this being positive is if 'key' (to completing the revelation) clues get handed out to... the least clued in people (via visions, background ones to new players, etc) with a hint that they're part of a big picture, so that those people can then go and shop their key piece around to get the other stuff from the better-knowing people. Maybe that's the bottom-up structure @Apos is getting at, but I can't say I've quite seen anything like that in play so far.

@wildbaboons I had a similar eye-opening moment when during uh, some kind of Q&A session they ran on public channel, @Apos mentioned the (fairly large, though I forget the exact) # of secret orgs. With neither of my characters being in any, it was a little perception-changing.

As a newer player it's of tremendous benefit to have a dino-mentor who can basically hand-hold you through things, share relevant (and sometimes gating) @clues, and so on. I've had help of this kind, although even then it can be hard to stay up to date to the clue-storm. Conversely, most of the times I've discovered anything clue-like through my own action, it's strangely proved to be out of date or hard to act on, and it's usually easier just to go back to those players and tag along on their +crises.

@roz That seems like the absolutely most intentionally negative reading of everything I've said and basically a pure attempt to drag this into the pit. To me, you sound like you're irrationally upset by people having an ongoing but largely civil, constructive discussion in which some criticisms happen to occur.

I don't think I've posted anything inaccurate per my own experiences. They may be limited, but every newer player is going to have a narrow view. If you dismiss them, you won't keep them as players (and I believe it's even been said the game has a lot of turnover). If things are happening but they're all huge secrets, then maybe something needs to be done about making secrets more accessible.

Anyway, good job dragging this toward the pit.

@roz I realize plenty of stuff happened with the Nox long before I showed up, and I didn't mean to come off as negative toward that plotline (if anything, I mentioned it because I wanted to be fair / didn't want to short change staff on credit for it). Certainly it's the thing I've had some of the most fun with on the game, with my favorite NPC, even coming into it at the tail end.

Taking it as the gold standard of non-stabby offerings, however... well, it's exactly that. It's the high point, and things go downhill (or simply grow more scarce, there were what... 5 of us there for the final Nox thing?) from there. So really, I'd love to see more plots of that kind. For instance, we have a bunch of far off kingdoms menacing us... it would be cool if not all of them were not pure evilocracies and there were major opportunities to treat with them diplomatically over prolonged periods, both inviting and sending emissaries, working on cultural exchanges, building alliances, etc.

Maybe this is precisely what staff has planned, in which case great. But it doesn't hurt to ask

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

Back to the issues of dinosaurs: Arx features something that some folks don't notice(I know I didn't when it first happened to me) and that is that Prestige does begin to deteriorate after reaching a certain point. So if you get to be the biggest, shiniest Prestige-bearer and then decide to just sit back, relax, and think you'll be the Kingliest or Queenliest of All Kings and Queens? Well, that's going to slowly erode away the longer you're not working to offset that deterioration. You want to offset it? You have to do things, probably involving others, generally create/generate RP, and ultimately participate in the game.

This is largely what I'd look for, in terms of the future design for this system vs. how its current very Firan-eqsue version. Regardless of whether they do a reset, they need a system that isn't just static accumulation, or you're guaranteed to end up with an unremarkable list of dinos who are millions of points ahead and discourage a new player from even interacting with the system (and I say that as someone who will arguably be much more dino than new player by the time any such system comes around). If it has decay now, well... it doesn't seem significant, considering the top list is filled with several characters that haven't been actively played recently, are dead, etc.

So they need to think about that, and maybe design it so those points are being spent as much as earned.

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

First, as always I think you guys are well-intentioned!

Reasons for combat characters to think - you know, maybe I could slaughter this person but in a social setting maybe I shouldn't be a douchebag because I have a sword and could do anything, because that person will get me laughed out of this party. Or shame my family. Or have some kind of meaningful impact.

I'm not sure this hits on any real issue, though? The whole 'maybe not slaughter this guy' 'there could be consequences' etc... I mean how much does that even apply to Arx? There's very little PvP, and the antagonists are all clearly evil supernatural doom armies. Who is actually swording people with impunity that this is problem social needs to address? I dunno, maybe this is just me not being in on the fun stuff where this is happening.

I'm not saying all combat characters do this (#notallcombatbeasts) or that everyone is a dick to social characters, but we want our social characters to have shiny things to play with and reasons to feel badass with what they do, and not just "hey, we're just biding our time until the combat beasts take care of business." That's seriously uncool and it's not very inclusive.

I think this is the real issue more, and it reflects your overall story structures. What use are negotiators when our enemies are demon generals or demon pirate kings or demon-elves or... you get the picture. Oh, also all the foreign nations are run by evil sorcerer kings/dragons. Staff does run some 'social' stuff (I've been on a couple), but it just doesn't seem to have the weight that 'I killed the demon of the week' does. The occasional elf treaties are the only dimplomacy that even really touches the metaplot tier of importance, but those seem very quickly handled by comparison to the months we spend tracking down ways to kill demons and searching weapons to kill demons and building armies to kill demons and then eventually actually killing demons.

Beyond that, I agree with @Arkandel's points a lot. I recognize social stuff is much harder to do. But it's still largely the case that the combat people generally can still get a lion's share of the social fun but not the other way around. Several highlords are top badasses. They get all the sitting in councils debating decisions and leading the armies and fighting the stuff. Victus being gruff and uncooth and supposedly hated (according to the system) rarely seems to do him any practical disservice (I'm not picking on his player or anything, he's just a glaring example, where staff made the effort to make him and his faction 'disliked' and... then doesn't do much with it?).

It's also a problem with the orgs, because everything (money, military AND social power) is concentrated in the top tier houses (and maybe in the faith) and so specialized lower tier ones often seem overlooked. I once had a staffer ask me 'why my (purely social) org even needed money' and basically imply I was being twinkish for thinking about it, which again feels like that subconscious bias at work.

@Pyrephox It would be good if they did, yeah, at least re: the reset. The system is a total black box as it is so it's unclear how to even get higher on the list.

Re overall character stuff, I don't even know. XP has very little impact for me, largely because I don't do combat. Both my characters have their primary skills at 5 and then sometimes even sit around accruing xp they don't use. But that's also, in turn, another thing that 'devalues' social (and other non-coded things). Anyone can have those stats while combat is this rare and special thing. And while I am sure staff doesn't consciosuly think of it this way, you do get the subconscious reaction that combat is 'honored' while asking to do something impactful with another skill often gets you side-eyed as overreaching.

So I want to preface this by saying I love some of you guys (especially @Apos and @sparks) but I do kind of agree that the game has issues in terms of combat being 'the thing' compared to social (or maybe that should be, combat/investigation/snowflake magic being the stuff vs anything else). I've had the prestige system sold to me as a future patch to this.

But I'm just gonna say... looking at those lists, I can't help but get a really Firan feeling of 'some dudes just have a million SP and you'll never really catch up so why even try.' Which feels like it's going to get in the way of RP more than it helps, if that's all it is. Do we really need another system to tell us that the top houses and their leaders are on top? etc.

I have a supposed social-maven type char. Yet despite that, both her and her org are barely blips on that radar. She'd use a fashion system (heck, I've already had a major storyline hinge on her clothing choice!). But mostly I dread the idea of the Prestige stuff more than I look forward to it, because it just seems like another unassailable dino-fortress / grind / reminder that the Graysons are the best / etc.

@deadculture I don't remember the details of the character trying it. Some noble. But it was right in the main, public area of the Temple. She was sitting in the pews praying, he sat next to her, and a pose or two later had a hand under her dress trying to... well, I'll leave it there, before I went scrambling.

@deadculture The uh... Gold Dragon temple place? Whatever that was called.

@deadculture I got festival pavilions beat!

@deadculture I'm sure if you had a player saying OMG YOU MUST TS and you went nopenope ftb and they were haranguing you in OOC and you raised a fuss about it... in the moment, staff would side with you and perhaps even discipline the player (assuming it wasn't a staffalt).

That's not the same thing as the expectation not being there, particularly re: 'wasting' Dove slots as I mentioned.

I (blessedly) never got the long term Dove experience, but even in my short time, I had people attempt explicit sexual stuff in public rooms with almost no warning, let alone any kind of check or chance to pause or FTB out of that. That was against policy too, but I didn't get the feeling it was culturally unusual on the game.

Having (briefly) played one... they treated the IC hookers like OOC hookers. There was a real, if just barely unspoken expectation of TS being on offer and the idea that if you weren't doing it you shouldn't be wasting one of the character slots. Which maybe figured into them not wanting dudes playing them.

That or heebiejeebies over accidentally text-boning a dude... though I dunno how they avoided that worry with all the commoner ladies!

I'm sure someone could investigate this quite efficiently on Shang.

For science.

Yikes. I really only saw the tip of this iceberg.