Clergies/clans

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Olrane
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Re: Clergies/clans

#21 Post by Olrane » Mon Jun 07, 2010 12:35 pm

lanyara wrote:Let me bring another examplke, the old thieves (or lurkers).

I never had a thief here but I guess quite a few players here played a thief here.

What guild agenda would the thieves have? Go and steal things, because that is what they are supposed to do? Hmmmmm. I would not agree with this.

I would think that such an agenda would be bad to have as well.

Not every guild needs to have a beset single-goal purpose.

Now if I would be a leader of a band of thieves, I would foremost do something which I think wasn't done - I would try to maintain good relations, and appear as a neutral guild. From behind the scenes, we all know that thieves would actually tend to be more evil, so I would then try and think about ways expanding my influence without pissing off too many people at the same time. I would also act as a "nice guy".

Right now this is not possible at all. Thieves are treated as evil by the game, you can't be or pretend to be a good or neutral thief really.

Guild agendas overruling individual characters can be really bad to have - you lose options that way.
You seem to have a plan for how you'd do it better, why don't you try it out?

I just want to quickly dispel the myth that you "can't be or pretend to be a good or neutral thief really". It's simply not true. Thief actions negligibly affect karma, if at all (I can 100% say that backstab does not affect karma, for instance). The most important thief mechanic in the game is related to reducing reputation penalties. It's doable.

Play a thief, play well. Be alert and analytical at all times, it's not a half-ass role. Then there will be good or neutral thieves.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#22 Post by stilgar » Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:22 am

Whether we like it or not, most of a character's/guild's "playability" comes from the tools (miracles, skills, equipment) coded for them. While a player might offer a wonderful roleplay without proper coded background specific roles or situation can pretty much limit its possibilities.

For example.. the clergy of Asral. I did play with Asral clerics for a while and experienced first-handed how can minor changes in the miracle/skill system seriously decrease the ability to function as a powerful warcleric. No matter what kind of roleplay you wish to offer if its not backed up by code :wink:

I also still remember the time when a considerable portion of the combat oriented characters were using a great deal of shaolin techniques > Yegerfin vs XeXo spars, where an armoured Taniel cleric, backed up by miracles fought against the legendary "Lizzie" :wink:

About the necessity of "goals" for a certain guild.. just remember the argument around the Shaolin's purpose (and existence?) from time to time.. same about the Asrals.. as long as they had a strong code-support the guild "goal" question was not on schedule as players had the freedom (provided by code backup) to play whatever plot/goal they had...
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Re: Clergies/clans

#23 Post by arxthas » Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:31 am

stilgar wrote:Whether we like it or not, most of a character's/guild's "playability" comes from the tools (miracles, skills, equipment) coded for them.
Ehh... I would say the setting (and other players to interact with) is more important than what is coded.
stilgar wrote:While a player might offer a wonderful roleplay without proper coded background specific roles or situation can pretty much limit its possibilities.
Agree on that..
stilgar wrote:About the necessity of "goals" for a certain guild.. just remember the argument around the Shaolin's purpose (and existence?) from time to time.. same about the Asrals.. as long as they had a strong code-support the guild "goal" question was not on schedule as players had the freedom (provided by code backup) to play whatever plot/goal they had...
.. and you think the Asrals and Shaolin is an example of a well-played guild?!?! :-) These two are some of the worst functioned throughout the history. The Asrals especially..

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Re: Clergies/clans

#24 Post by stilgar » Mon Jun 21, 2010 10:46 am

arxthas wrote:.. and you think the Asrals and Shaolin is an example of a well-played guild?!?! These two are some of the worst functioned throughout the history. The Asrals especially..
I was talking about the past.. when a group of two Asral priests could fend off an insect attack on Arborea.. or was able to breach the defenses of any city... when they were able to solo a certain city full of nasty undead :twisted:

Since that time the code changed a lot :wink: I very seriously doubt those characters could do the same right now :twisted:

Which does not mean one cannot play or should not be able to play a warcleric properly.. BUT.. for sure it can be quite demanding on behalf of roleplay to play the cleric of a militant war-god properly while the Crusade the Sathonys clergy or the Taniel clergy alone are more than a match for their current abilities :oops:

I could offer similar examples from the past of the Shaolin.. when a single monk was able to rampage through Elvandars guards without much trouble :twisted:

Just imagine how good roleplay could a Sathonys cleric offer right now if they had only those undead (skeletons, zombies, ghouls) they had in the past? Those undead were mostly useless on their own, only good enough for practicing turn undead for the Taniels :wink:
How fearful and threatening could be a crusader knight with regular mounts, regular weaponry, without their auras and in regular armor? :wink:

So.. while I don't doubt that a role-playing environment can always be improved, I seriously doubt that certain roles can be fulfilled without proper code support
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Re: Clergies/clans

#25 Post by lanyara » Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:17 pm

you think the Asrals and Shaolin is an example of a well-played guild?!?! :-) These two are some of the worst functioned throughout the history. The Asrals especially..
The Shaolins are ancient. They were basically just a fighter guild which was "neutral" to "good" - good insofar that, when there was a threat, they could come and fight that threat. In ancient times mostly Sathos. That was the time when a single Satho could occupy 3-5 other playerchars on his own.

It was also quite easier because the whole MUD was much more in "beta testphase", for some time. Today of course, the general roleplay has improved a lot, but the code has also changed, new guilds emerged, gods are different now, miracles are different now, skill system changed a bit.

Currently, the shaolins are not so much "needed" anymore in this conflict, as crusaders etc.. all keep Sathos very busy anyway, and while Sathos are still strong - especially combined with their undeads - they just don't have the same power in comparison.

I also think characters today seem to be somewhat stronger than they used to be... or there was some other change.... hmmm (Or was it the change in the skill system ... or just that characters today can be easily +100 days online, all time training up hmm.. Perhaps I am wrong.)

But I don't think it is good to state that the older guilds might be less "well-played" as a guild entity, with all the code changes that happened - or the addition of new guilds, it simply changed the game.
New guilds change the landscape. Even something as trivial like the backstab change had a big impact on the action pattern of certain characters.

The Asrals are a bit crazy, true. But in all fairness, the job they can do here can be done by crusaders/clerics of Taniel combined much better - insofar as being the good guys.

In general, I would like to ask - how "evil" can anyone be today, anyway? Every "evil" action has repercussions and drawbacks.

One of my favourite example is "killing an unicorn" costing you... like what, 80 gold coins if you want to come back to a neutral state again - or you want to remain an outlaw and basically will be driven out of the areas where you are an outlaw. Which happen to be the main interaction places too (Arborea and Elvandar, the rest is not so important for meeting other characters).

Who will do actions which hinder your ability to participate and play?

It is much easier to not do this at all.

Let's also briefly mention The Order. Are they well played? They probably are or were, but they are also quite strong. They could definitely be more "evil", but I do wonder how evil they really wanted to be. They can't complain if the good guys rally up against them if they would like to be the ultimate evil for instance.
Yet, let's be brutally honest here - they are extremely inactive as a guild.

There was only one of them openly visible and active, and after a bit PvP that character no longer is as active anymore, at least not in the classical good areas. If I would be that character, I really would not know what else to do other than endless, tiring PvP.

Sure, they can be mysterious as a guild entity, but if noone of them is really playing then their guild goal can hardly be achieved due to their own inactivity - unless the guild goal is to not play at all ...

Which brings me to the crusaders. Even the crusaders struggle a LOT with active players. If you don't have active, participative players in a guild, the guild can hardly be functional and active, and hence no matter the grand guild goal - it can hardly be achieved by inactivity. The crusaders are also very well designed to combat the threats (everything that is evil or happens to be enemy of the crusaders). Or in other words, as a guild the crusaders are by far the strongest guild - as long as they are sufficiently active.

In essence it boils down to a design of a game, and the amount of players who can support this - or participate in the framework. One design flaw in my humble opinion is that competitive playing often leads to a bad result - one side gives up playing. Or becomes a "casual player", which is really really bad, and right now it is so especially for the evil characters.

It is like wielding a knife, or having a machine gun. The guy with the machine gun should normally have an advantage ... the one using a knife needs to workaround here, like by lying or sneaking or some other strategy. In many situations though, getting a machine gun is better than continuing with the knife. ;)

The direct confrontation against the machine gun guy will usually simply not work. And we should not forget that using a machine gun again and again just becomes tiring after some time ... which is, honestly, often a reason why players don't like endless PvP even if they win. ;-)
How fearful and threatening could be a crusader knight with regular mounts, regular weaponry, without their auras and in regular armor?
It would be roleplay without sufficient firepower behind. Of course they would still want to drive out the evil, but they would completely have to change their strategies. :-)

It is easy to achieve certain things if you get enough firepower behind it, and very hard if you don't have it.
while I don't doubt that a role-playing environment can always be improved, I seriously doubt that certain roles can be fulfilled without proper code support
Here, I wonder if the main functionality of the game should center around PvP conflict. I guess if PvP alone were to work as easily we would have the heavy PvP guilds filled with many active players ...

But back on the topic of the thread, I personally really think it would be better to think less in the traditional sense of "guild wizards" maintaining guilds, and more in a general framework of clans, or completely player-driven agendas - including "setting" up guilds.

Just imagine if suddenly 10 new players were to come together, without extra powers, yet they could have the ability to roleplay, and establish guidelines fitting within the game. (Or in other words, they would establish a ~clan)

To me this would sound nice - less classical guild thinking, more thinking what playercharacters could come up with on their own (since players can be very creative).

Last but not least, I would like to state that it can often be VERY difficult to join a guild, especially for real newbies. But the PvP heavy guilds often prefer trained characters, and also high activity - both can be very, very difficult for new players.
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Re: Clergies/clans

#26 Post by arxthas » Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:59 am

lanyara wrote: Sure, they can be mysterious as a guild entity, but if noone of them is really playing then their guild goal can hardly be achieved due to their own inactivity - unless the guild goal is to not play at all ...
.. another reason to reduce the number of guilds. This is why I say reduce the number of guilds to something that makes sense and that the player base can support. An inactive guild (or inactive leadership of a guild) is naturally bad for the game. Not to mention the guilds that in practice consist of one person.

When I log in to the game today there were 6 players online, and I was the only one visible. I kind of suspect that the first 4-5 were hidden wizards. But how many guilds can that support? None. If I log on at a different time, I have somewhere between 5-10 names on the list. How many guilds can that support? 1? 2 at best. About a third or more is probably going to be outside the major guilds. I am not sure exactly how many players are on average, but say we have 5-10 players on average - then we should have IMHO 1 or 2 guilds.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#27 Post by arxthas » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:09 am

lanyara wrote: Currently, the shaolins are not so much "needed" anymore in this conflict, as crusaders etc..
While I do not think that the entire game should revolve around good vs evil, it's pretty much the only thing you can make out of the game world right now. I would like to see more diversity, and I think that is achieved by having less guilds, not more.

I think typical example of a guild that is not needed is the one with a bunch of cool armours/weapons/skills without a real goal/place in the world that actually affects in the world or drives new stories. The Shaolin is really nice, but in the setting of the game, what role do they play? The history (which is sparsely described) is essentially a story of humans arriving at a new continent and causing trouble. Okay, that's a one-line, but you get the idea. It's not a lot more than that - so where does this oriental-style mixup come from? How does it anchor in history? Where did it come from and where is it going? You can not just say "the goal is to focus on your inner soul" or something similiar. That has nothing to do with anything! As far as I know at least 2-3 years ago the guild has an object introduced (no spoilers) which was aimed to give the guild a meaning. But such an attempt in no way makes the guild more consistent. You need a thought/tructure/setting that you can build the setting/history from. Out of that, most things will come automatically, like which guilds that make sense..

The game needs more documentation of its setting/history. From this you can think about which guilds that make sense, while considering the amount of players there is for support.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#28 Post by arxthas » Tue Jun 22, 2010 5:24 am

lanyara wrote:In general, I would like to ask - how "evil" can anyone be today, anyway? Every "evil" action has repercussions and drawbacks.
You can be evil, but it is probably quite hard. I think it should be hard. Maybe more interesting than it is right now though.

I do not give much for the "but guild X is stronger than guild Y" argument though, since most times it was about which side had most players on it. And people will log out their good character and join the evil side when that is winning and vice versa. I think the idea of trying to win really sucks to begin with. It has nothing to do with RP.

The point is to make possibilities for interesting character developments, whether you are the good or the bad guy. Can you enjoy the game on the losing side? You should be able to. If your focus is to RP a belieavable character consistently, this "winning the war" has no focus. Naturally, there are those who will use whatever means necessary to "win", but then they probably are not roleplaying either. In my opinion it is cheating.

Most of the ideas of being good or bad seems to be to attack-on-sight the other side. I think that stuff really sucks. It basically kills any possibilities for some tension to build up, or for some side-plots to start from a major event. Sadly, I think this will shadow everything as the common denominator since everything else is too weak. People tend to "kill stuff" when there is nothing else going on. A slightly more advanced version of "kill stuff" is to do it in groups against others. That is hardly the book you want to read..

I think there is a lot of work to be done in fleshing out the guilds. A lot of it is to define what guild members should Not do and tying it all together to a background that makes sense. For some guilds, this is IMHO impossible..

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Re: Clergies/clans

#29 Post by stilgar » Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:32 am

lanyara wrote: Currently, the shaolins are not so much "needed" anymore in this conflict, as crusaders etc..
arxthas wrote:As far as I know at least 2-3 years ago the guild has an object introduced (no spoilers) which was aimed to give the guild a meaning. But such an attempt in no way makes the guild more consistent.
Trouble with this was.. the guild was given a task they lacked the firepower to fulfill... quite hard to play a role about guarding something or to maintain balance if anyone of those tend to oppose you while you try to fulfill your tasks can simply walk through your ranks laughing at you in the process as you simply lack the coded abilities to harm them seriously :twisted:

if they can walk into your guild, kill everyone inside with ease in the players absence, take your line-item plus the artifact you were given to guard and hide it away in a place you're simple not even powerful enough to reach solely depending on your guild's resources :twisted:

not to mention if you're serious about your goal to maintain balance... you have to face BOTH good and evil.. who usually happen to be the ones to be able to ban you from cities as a retaliation for your actions towards your guild goal :lol:
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Re: Clergies/clans

#30 Post by Delmon » Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:28 pm

It's a shame you ditched your asral. He was getting strong real fast Stilgar, and he was a true asral.

About the evils. Awhile ago I decided to give it a shot. From playing actively for about 16 online days, I can honestly say it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Playing an evil is fun and challenging to roleplay. I found that there was a thriving evil society that was, for the most part, fun to interact with. One of the issues the evils have is the amount of alternate characters it has. Some of them seem to play as alts as well. It's almost annoyingly obvious to have players give a less than par effort in pvp situations and training. For example, when a character puts on stunmode before trying to take the tower of pain.

I found that training a sathos up is not that difficult and in many ways a sathos can be extremely efficient. There are limited yet good training areas for evils. I've found that with proper numbers and intelligent actions the sathos can win in pvp fighting. The one on one versus a crusader or cleric seemed very difficult, almost impossible, but that might have been due to the opposing character's skill differences and score. Even so, I've found that with smart and catious tactics the sathos will win many of their encounters. The leader of the sathos has proven that alot of sathos pvp wins comes from smart playing.

I've had some good times capturing characters (Mostly newbs. And I wonder why the nibbler hut isn't being used these days...). I've noticed that many of the characters, newbie and strong alike, who are captured are played as idignant pain-resistant crazies that choose to laugh in the face of a gruesome mask and yawn as thier arms and legs are being cut off. I have my theories on how to handle this, but let's face it, they are rping badly, so at the end of the day I figure it's best to leave newbs with a lost limb or two, and stronger characters with a stat loss. Evils don't generally get the same options. In fact, out of three encounters I was captured, only one player left me with a life. The one "forgot" to put on stunmode(?), and the other, well, that tshahark was out to kill period. I'm sure there have been other opportunities in which a player has "Let" me escape so for those very few times I'll say thanks.

And people will log out their good character and join the evil side when that is winning and vice versa.
Honestly, it's been alot of fun to switch to the evil side when truly, they haven't been winning much. To answer a bit of Arxthas concerns, I have noticed from observing the reaction that people get from Jezz or Kaspars versus my character, it pays to "win" in pvp. This is possible to do and rp well.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#31 Post by isengoo » Wed Jun 23, 2010 9:22 pm

If you want to see disparity in guild mechanics look at the newest guild's (Crusaders) help pages and code support vs one of the oldest guild's (Shaolin) help pages and code support.

It's such a massive difference that there really isn't any reason to play the latter, unless you want to suffer in below mediocrity.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#32 Post by adanath » Fri Jun 25, 2010 3:36 pm

I love how so many of these topics degrade into the same subject.

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Re: Clergies/clans

#33 Post by Delmon » Fri Jun 25, 2010 5:33 pm

How many topics degrade into "this guild is actually good" and generally things are well balanced?

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