Posts made by Roz

@Olsson I do like "flec" and "shards" that the game in general made up and got approval on. (Housed in the Arx Lexicon.)

@Shincashay Yessssssss salty knight. I don't think anyone has picked him up previously, no.

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

So probably sometime in the next week or two, characters will be added to the roster that belong to one of the counties underneath my character's March. I have an inkling of the personalities involved, so if you might be interested, hit me up and we can chat.

I can confirm that all of these characters are super awesome.

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

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

I find it frustrating to have it be implied that to be successful, you have to be online a lot, not have a life, etc. I am not successful because I have a time advantage (being on and being engaged are very different).

I delegate.

While I may be taking a short break from Arx, this is something I have felt very strongly in the time that I have been away from it. The game moves fast, almost too fast for my liking and at times it feels like there is almost a suggestion that if you don't dedicate the majority of your life to it, you're going to fall behind. And to note, I was completely one of those people who wanted 'all the clues ever' as unrealistic as that is.

Now, I know this probably isn't true at all, but the point is that it feels like it is. I'm hoping at some point the game decides to slow itself down to allow some to catch their breath, or at least feel like you're not missing out on a lot of things. It might be at the speed in which metaplot unravels, or the fact that the game moves at 3:1 time or a combination of both.

Either way, I know exactly what you're talking about. But again, even if I feel that, I don't think it's the case.

They've actually made some purposeful strides while you've been away to slow things down and give people a little more time to take thoughtful action. They've added a new +crisis system that lets people basically decide on actions to take for big metaplot stuff so it's not just like "I have to respond right now so the world doesn't end!!!" and "I have to respond first before other people get in there!!!" Now big stuff is given a certain timeline so people can see the earliest date actions will be resolved, and people have until then to figure out what they want to do (and each PC can only pick ONE thing to do). We haven't hit our first crisis resolution, but I think it's already been helpful in mitigating the whole sense of hyper-urgency in some quarters, and I'm really optimistic about watching things play out.

@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.

I think it was fair for me to say "that's rude" when @Thenomain called something someone else had made "vomit."

I also have a lot of affection and respect for @Kanye-Qwest based on her work on Arx. She's really integral to a lot of the cultural aspects of the game that I really value.

THAT SAID. I think she should probably stop responding to Theno in general (and vice versa) because it always tends to blow up. And, like has been pointed out, it doesn't offer a great view into things for people reading the thread.

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

@Kanye-Qwest

@Roz had it covered. @Meg had it covered. Hell, even I had it covered.

I mean, you had it covered in a weirdly rambling, roundabout way. Just don't call other people's things vomit? Idk man. You gave some weird explanation for saying a rude thing but also things like "my rudeness has objective backup."

Also, KQ is very aggressive on Arx about letting people have their fun when it's not hurting others or the game. You may have decided that she posted solely to take some sort of sideswipe at you, but actually what she said is something that she says regularly about stuff she wants people not to criticize each other for on the game. So maybe, like...you also think things are about you more than they are?

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

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

@Thenomain My only point was that you were being rude. You clearly have a lot more feelings about it than I do.

You did just as a good job about expressing it as I did about how my opinion, no matter how strongly I felt about it, wasn't important.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Thenomain My only point was that you were being rude. You clearly have a lot more feelings about it than I do.

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

I'm usually amused at my own reaction to ANSI coloring.

I'm willing to bet other people aren't as amused as you are.

Back up!

@Packrat Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

@Packrat Yup!

@Arkandel Similar to how it's egalitarian about gender, it's totally egalitarian about sexuality. I don't even think there's regional differences there (like how Thrax still has sexism issues that everyone else has moved past). Of course, nobles are still going to be generally expected to marry where they're directed, which are going to be matches capable of producing babies. (Hopefully they can agree on a marital contract that allows both parties to seek sex outside the marriage.) But even same-sex marriage has come up as a topic a lot as a thing that's possible. (Commoners are often in the equivalent of common law marriages, so it doesn't make a difference at all, but I know staff has said that it might be wingable for certain nobles far enough away from importance/inheritance.)

@Deviante Jasher's maybe the only roster I've seen go up that's really explicit. (He likes men, he doesn't like women.) So I'd say it's vague almost all the time rather than on occasion. Some others do have explicit "this character did fall in love in their past so they are attracted to that gender" bits, but who knows how they feel about other genders, etc.

I know for Jasher the staff wanted it to be pretty explicit (since he was written with a firm sexuality instead of vague). They didn't want a potential player missing hints and then having the sexuality seem like a surprise once they got him and got a better look at the sheet. Which is fair.

@Kanye-Qwest However, a millennia old lunatic is exactly who you want to keep happy when they instruct you to make out.

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

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

There are definitely a few bisexual men on the grid.

Yea I watched as two made out in the Murder of Crows... that was an amusing scene. Though they probably weren't bisexual and just did it to impress an elf.

Lol I can tell you definitively that both of those characters are bisexual, although one more comfortable with it than the other.

@TNP Oh, yeah, I don't generally take "this character has expressed heterosexual tendencies" as the same as declaring "this character only experiences hetereosexual tendencies and nothing else."

@TNP I don't know of any other roster characters I've noticed with a declared sexuality written in -- I imagine most are open for player interpretation. But I probably have thoroughly read each and every roster.

@TNP Jasher was one of my favorite rosters @saosmash wrote