Knights vs Mages - Game Design

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Noobus
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Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2015 8:26 am

Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:48 pm

A bit late in response but here goes!
Starstarfish wrote:Isn't it written right into the major help file on magic that it can be temperamental and unpredictable? So .. isn't there being a random/unpredictable nature to things on theme/point? Should things magically always go exactly as you want them to?
That help file was placed in to make changes on magic --for balance reasons-- easier to explain IC and not as part of theme: it has always been difficult to, one day know how to cast a spell then not know how to cast it the next day, players were uncertain on how to address that in the game so the help file was added. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

Randomizing the timer is pretty much like saying that when someone swings a weapon there is a chance of it recoiling and smacking their face. 8/10, people won't bother trying to use those unless they want to compute things for whatever reasons.

I mean, if you want unexpected results from magic why bother with trying to balance the moons to get what you want in the first place?
Starstarfish wrote:As for the output of ashes, I'll take the heat and say I was the one who put forth the idea. One first and foremost for realism to the role play that no human produces just a single handful of ashes - a search reveals it's something usually more like 4 to 6 lbs.
While I understand the need for RP realism, I still don't agree with offering 3x of what I know to be a nuke, per pyring. As stated before, Ashes are already broken even if they check against a defense skill. Why can't we make them a lot less broken than they already are or just revert back to the one pile they gave?

--Cloaks were broken and they got picked apart until they became barely usable.
--Orbs were broken and they too got picked apart until they became barely usable.
--Mattack was broken and it went through the same process.
--Flight was broken and it too went through the same thing.
--Utterance, etc.

--Ashes are broken... and we increase the output they have and make it so mages can't cast while holding them?

I don't expect fairness nor am I as well-versed in game design as the wonderful staff members handling this but I think this is a problem... and I don't really see why the Sultanate is still standing when the Kingdom has something like that.
Starstarfish wrote: Also expecting one side of the "equation" here to need to potentially spend QP or hope staff can answer an RPA request in order to fulfill their basic job function while the other does not, is not indeed from an OOC player perspective fair.
I am not sure what you mean by this?


That said, the recent changes do have an impact somewhat on the anonymity of a mage who wishes to offer those once in a while scenes to awe the crowds like Vox said, it also lowers the chances of a successful escape from doing such a thing drastically... or an escape when they come for you, for that matter.
Zellos Syllus, Beorhtmund ab Gladnor, Jemven Lynilin

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Kinaed
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Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Fri Feb 24, 2017 9:35 pm

It's strange to have mages themselves tell me they think orbs are broken, then when staff reduce them in line with mage suggestions, we get told on the forums that we "picked it apart until it was unusable" - and a whole series of other things besides. This is, in effect, sliding into that eerie land where people cherry pick the things that support their views and present them as evidence.

In my mind, the real picture is thus - Staff review multiple aspects of the game multiple times over time, then revise them, to achieve desired affects. This iterative approach allows us to incrementally improve game design. In real terms, this means both "nerfing" magic as well as "beefing" it up. In particular, we have nerfed combative magic because the desired game design isn't about mages beating combat characters in a fight. We are so extremely open about this that the remark is literally commenting on a thread where we're saying exactly that (I'm not sure I can overstate the irony there.)

In return, however, we have focused on beefing up non-combative magic so that your average mage enjoys a good handful of spells they wouldn't even leave their house without. Beyond that, there are there a dozen really nasty things a mage can do that are just fun as hell, and some fifty-odd things that have great situational use also. And there's more coming, already specced up on the bug board waiting for Az to have time.

So, please cut it out with the talk of "staff are always nerfing magic". That's an unfair characterization.

NOTE: I realize on re-reading that the previous post didn't quite say that staff were nuking mages specifically - however, we have had a lot of players say it (in tells to me), and I think it is probably going through people's minds in reading the above. So, whereas I apologize to the previous poster if I misread, I still want this message to get out there for those who are thinking we're taking a game design stance in favor of knights. We're not. We love our mage players as much as we love our knights.

vaxin
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Fri Feb 24, 2017 9:48 pm

All of the things that have been nerfed were broken and bad for the game, with the possible exception of cloaks, since there you just rewarded wealthy mages and hurt those who can't purchase silver. I personally wouldn't argue against any of those derogations. You've already removed any use of mattack or combat spells in any serious fight. Which makes sense for the game, if one wants absolute parity.

But ash isn't making combat any different. If I draw a sword and whack a Knight, they're still going to die. What it is doing is removing the interesting application of non-combative spells to create a public scene.

If you think that mages have too many advantages in combat then make ash blind mages, or weaken their physical stats for a time, or give the a shield of protection for a set amount of spells cast on the holder, or make it a temporary aura of sanctuary. Don't make it a catch all that utterly removes any strategy from the use of magic and forces mages into boring carbon copies of any other combat character for fear of its use.

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Kinaed
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Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Fri Feb 24, 2017 9:56 pm

I haven't seen mage ash used effectively in game at this stage. As kindly as I can, I think there's a bit of catastrophizing in the mage community about how dramatic mage ash is. From what I hear, the most recent knight to be PKed had mage ash on their person, and still failed to survive.

With regards to mage ash reducing public displays of grand magic - I'm on board with the idea that using magic in public ought to be extremely risky. Most of the non-mage populace feels helpless and finds it unfun to interact with magic in that manner. Further, TI is supposed to be a low fantasy game where magic happens in the shadows. Big fireworks in Church Square aren't our aim; rather mages finding out your deepest, darkest secrets and blackmailing you or posting them on the rumor mill is.

I do think TI could use more fun utility spells, and I'd love to see suggestions thereof. *points to ideas thread*

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Voxumo
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Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:33 pm

Kinaed wrote: With regards to mage ash reducing public displays of grand magic - I'm on board with the idea that using magic in public ought to be extremely risky. Most of the non-mage populace feels helpless and finds it unfun to interact with magic in that manner. Further, TI is supposed to be a low fantasy game where magic happens in the shadows. Big fireworks in Church Square aren't our aim; rather mages finding out your deepest, darkest secrets and blackmailing you or posting them on the rumor mill is.
Low fantasy setting makes no sense with the plots and lore you've allowed to occur.

First example that comes to mind is the Daravi using magic to literally break off a chunk of land and turn it into an island. Unless that bit of lore has been redacted without me noticing, that's rather grand display of magery that none of our mages can even come close to.

Second more recent example would be the Longest night, darkest day, whatever you want to call that whole event where the farin quarter was consumed by darkness, once again at the hands of daravi. That wasn't a fireworks display, that was a bloody tactical nuke level of display.

What TI needs is to get what it wants to be straight. I think if we actually knew what TI was suppose to be, there likely wouldn't be as much issues popping up, or staff versus player theme conflicts.

Also Kinaed, the recommends I received from many of people in that scene, and scenes in the past of similar nature with rhea... well frankly they'd contradict your statement of the non-mage populace feeling helpless. Yes their characters might, but generally I've seen the response to large mage to non-mage scenes without use of damaging spells, or actions that physically harm characters, have been positively received. It's incidents such as the madison magebane incident that I think are the type you are referring to, as everyone was generally upset about that.


Also just to clarify, I don't have an active mage currently, nor an active combat character, so I'm not exactly being biased here as I have no stake in either side currently.
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Kinaed
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Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:36 pm

Thematically, Lithmorran mages can achieve 5th Circle. This is due to the damage the Lithmorran purge did to magic, the continuity of magic, etc.

There are seven circles of magery, and Daravi never went through the purge. Nor are demons limited in the same manner. Thematically, I see no conflict.

With regards to people complaining to me and recommending you - I can't really speak to what that really means in terms of player approval, though I believe we're both speaking honestly from our experience in that area.

Misstery
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Joined: Mon Aug 29, 2016 7:13 pm

Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:03 pm

Someone mentioned RPA and QP and it not being fair, I would like clarification on this because Guilds have RPA to use. They don't have to use QP while individual players do. This is actually a huge advantage to the Order, they can also get a lot of information through RPA or other guilds that individuals can't get. There is a lot they can do.

What I find interesting is that there have been times where a lot of mages got caught by the Order. Why? Did they have super cool tools? No, they investigated, they followed clues, they RPA'd, they did search after search after search and they either trapped or hunted them down. There is far more than just combat, spells and handy objects. People need to put their on ingenuity into the games. Something, I'd love to see more of because that's what we call RP. A lot of times it's not just because a person is in the Order, or a Knight or a Reeve that they get targeted, but because of IC actions. Or vice versa and people getting caught or arrested. I'd suggest that people to focus more energy IC and try to build cases rather than take it OOC at the first sign that they might get hurt.

Tasker
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Sat Feb 25, 2017 6:46 am

Misstery wrote:What I find interesting is that there have been times where a lot of mages got caught by the Order. Why? Did they have super cool tools? No, they investigated, they followed clues, they RPA'd, they did search after search after search and they either trapped or hunted them down. There is far more than just combat, spells and handy objects. People need to put their on ingenuity into the games.
We have used RPA investigations quite extensively in my time as the Earl Marshal, but the information we usually always get from these investigations are always negligible in the sense that 'A cloaked man was seen doing something fucky!'. It gives us almost nothing to go on, which has stumped a lot of our attempted trails. Perhaps we could get a bit more creative with the RPA, but when you put a lot of time and words into describing what your character did, how they went about doing it to find out info-- and all you receive is a vague desc of some guy in a funny mask. It gets a bit frustrating to keep doing it, when you know what the answer is going to be.

chronodbu
Posts: 106
Joined: Sun Oct 26, 2014 7:27 pm

Sat Feb 25, 2017 2:14 pm

My issue with this argument is that there seems to be this common misconception that playing a mage is about being a mustache twirling villain and "awwing the masses" when in truth that isn't what playing one is supposed to be about. Magery is supposed to be this thing you keep secret and live in paranoia about because the Order will eventually come for you. It's about fearing for your loved ones and knowing you will likely eventually end up at the pyre.

Thematically, it's unrealistic to expect to be able to cast magic publicly in the RELIGIOUS CENTER OF THE KNOWN WORLD. You should be wary of casting publicly. You shouldn't expect to be able to be openly a mage and survive. You should be working in the shadows forming cabals or fostering underground communities.

Being a mage, thematically, isn't about being flashy. It's about surviving in a cruel world that inherently rejects you.

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Rothgar
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Sat Feb 25, 2017 3:38 pm

I'll toss my own $0.02 as I'm wont to do. A few people have made some pretty good points, and I'd just like to toss in my own hat to the conversation.

"Knights are untouchable in combat, there's too many of them and they're all Grandmasters tricked out with plate and Damascus."

This is actually something I do agree with. I spent a lot of time railing on it when I played a Mage, and I'm not going to turn around and argue against it simply because I'm on the other side, now. Those of you who know me probably know that I'm dogshit at fighting, and I've literally never won a personal battle code-wise since 2012. That said, there are people out there who are just grandmaster everything, have every armor, all that. I'd argue more liberally that they're a threat to RP everywhere, but when you pick it apart down to brass tacks - What were you expecting? Honestly? Knights to be some sort of pushover that you can just 1v1 all day long? They, even moreso then Reeves, are meant to be combat buffs that beat the ever-loving piss out of anyone who questions the Order.

"Ashes are a 'get out of jail free' card for the Knights."

It's funny how much shade is being thrown at Ashes. I'm getting an enormous giggle out of all of it, because I can tell you for a fact that A) There's no one alive IC'ly who knows exactly what they do, and B) OOC'ly the Order, from what I've seen, is still uncertain as to it's power. It's all well and good that the Mages among us know what it does, but I'll be blunt - we've not been able to use it in an effective way thus far, and we're still reeling over what I personally believe to be a major IC/OOC blunder which cost us all of it.

TL;DR Can any Mages tell me what the Arien magedust does, because none of us know, and the one time we were able to use it, we were told that it didn't work because of "IC reasons." Maybe I'm just slow and out of the loop, but I haven't the foggiest of how this stuff works.

"Capturing Mages takes being prepared."

There's only so much preparation one can do without being psychic. The brutal truth of this is that, for AGES, the reason the Order was so good at getting Mages was because those players sold one another out freely and commonly. I'm not complaining that that's no longer the case, but lets face it - I freaking suck at my job as Inquisitor, and it's literally me and two other people calling the shots on the MUD. Three people represent the entirety of the Order's powers of investigations, and I don't think any of us have the time or inclination to play spymaster extraordinaires like we once did. We're lacking a shitload of IC AND OOC knowledge of our roles because - as we all know - the Order is constantly short on members and is constantly shifting leadership in a major way.

"Orbs are now useless and Magic has been nerfed."

I'm gonna call BS on that. Magick is more powerful now then it's ever been, and even I - one of the most dull and slower players on the MUD - can think of a thousand and one ways to eff over someone's day in a major way. It disappoints me very badly that after railing for ages for Mages to be given more spells on the Forums and on OOC chat that someone has the gall to say that Mages are weaker now then they were, say, a year or two ago. The imms and the playerbase both have seen me kirk out all over the forums about Mage weaknesses for ages, now, and I won't go on further about it, but we're getting to the point where our spell-list looks like a DnD 5E handbook for Wizards, and that's impressive in the extremes.

"The Order has access to highly useful and pointed RPA."

Tasker hit this one, and I agree. I think it's super neat that people think of us as this powerful and highly investigative force, but roughly 60% of the time, we're given the 'A masked person did X in Y location.' 20% of the time it's NPC's telling us that we're stupid for asking such questions, and 20% of the time we might get some useful information. Additionally, we've all only got so much QP to spare as a guild. I usually try to assist in RPA when I'm made aware of it, and the toll on my QP is real. I'm not complaining - I'm not doing anything with it anyway - but people should be made aware that our RPA more often then not leads to a complete brick wall.

I'm going to wrap all this up by voicing my own personal opinion on it : As an Orderite, I'm tired. I'm not really mad (Though I freely admit that I'm fannyflustered about some things, I won't burden the playerbase or the Imms with listening to that absolute nonsense), but more... Overworked and underpaid, if that makes any sense at all. The imms and players both have made it crystal clear that the Inquisition is NOT meant to take a combat role in the Order, and that those roles are to be given to KNIGHTS ONLY. But, more and more, my assistance is requested by those people. And that's not to say that I blame them - they genuinely require the help. But think about it from my point of view : I'm doing Priestly stuff (Taking confession, signing off on marriages, Reviewing, being a pappa to people on the MUD without parent figures), I'm doing Inquisition stuff (Looking over ancient and half-completed case-files, pouring over old, ripped-up tomes about Mages, trying desperately to give information to Knights and all), and I ALSO now need to worry about putting 100k RPXP into combat stuff because the Order cannot POSSIBLY be online 24/7, and it's just lunacy to tell people that they can't RP unless they're with a combat-ready RP partner. On top of all of this, I'm having to deal to getting a new Guildmaster every week, attend social events because it's expected of high-ranking Orderites, and foster my own, personal RP on the side. If it took you a long time to read that, then good - it's draining. There are advantages, like QP, IP, and RP literally whenever I want, but I am SWAMPED. And, shoot, maybe it's different for others, maybe I take this jazz too seriously. But it's becoming more and more of a hassle to log onto my main simply because if I don't play in 8-hour blocks of time, I'll fall behind on my 'work.' I get a new incident every day, and that's a MINIMUM of 6 hours of RP for me to look over the file, talk to the people involved, get other reports, and on and on and on... Because people wouldn't have mailed me if they didn't want that RP. I do understand how intoxicating being a Mage is. I do understand how playing witch to the Order for a few months can get to you before you attain power overwhelming. And I do understand the wont to exercise that, and give us RP and the like. But there's only three of us, guys. And I've been told that 33% of the MUD is Mages, Latent or otherwise. Three people within the Order that are meant to take care of the investigation of the entirety of the MUD. Three people in the Order who NEED to be called every time something goes down, because the aforementioned agreement between Knights and Orderites is a two-way street. Three people to handle ALL the mail, ALL the reports, ALL the daily goings-on of Lithmore.

All I'm asking of others - Mages and nonmages alike - is to recall that we're just a few dudes who do this in our spare time. I can't speak for the others. I won't speak for the others, but I'm just doing my best, man. I can only make up so much stuff every day. Without Orderites, the theme would absolutely break apart, and I'm running through a burnt-down library, scrambling to get a couple rotted pieces of paper to try and put together something - anything - that will make sense to other people when they ask me why Lithmore, the Capital of the known Urth, is constantly getting it's ass kicked by Mages and Daravi. I keep telling people this, and no one believes me : I don't know what I'm doing. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least to know that new Orderites won't know what they're doing, either.

Anywho. I won't tell anyone to do anything one way or the other. It's disingenuous of me, because I spent ages railing the Imms about how weak Mages were. Then I spent ages telling them how weak non-combatants were. I'm sure they're sick of listening to me ramble on about it. All I'm asking is that people understand why others get flustered. All I'm asking is that people be cool with those they RP with. And also realize how utterly wreck-face powerful older characters can be to newbies. Some of them get highly discouraged because of that stuff, man - just think about it. Someone like me could have his character die today, and I'd have more death RPXP then a person who's only been playing for a year or so would have made in his LIFETIME. The disconnect between old and new characters is insane. So just... Think, and be chill with one another.
Rothgar Astartes, Fyurii Rynnya, Nils 'Smith' Mattias, Edward Darson, Curos Arents.

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