Geas

Speaking of powertrained characters, as they tend to be mentioned quite often, I have to say only this: while it may be true that people do that and yes the system helps to encourage that(for example to train sword you have to kill monsters, you really cannot improve fighting the logical way by sparring with a partner), there are many ancient characters who just cannot help to be anything but massive pools of skillpoints simply by virtue of existing in the first place. I mean, the characters are that old and there are a lot of them. Let me check...Delia's age is 281 d 11 h 18 m 40 s and she still interacts with characters that existed before she was created or with younglings of 100+ online days. Just a fact of the system and I agree that this creates peculiar and tricky situations for the game as a whole.

I am not sure I can agree to it because what about characters like Naga? Old and ancient but not strong at all.

The problem is that the game heavily encourages strong characters in general. Players who know how the system works can reap out more skill improves. Players who don't can't (but often they may not want to; hardcore roleplayers won't even allow the system to affect the way they play, this is why I suggested years ago the possibility to disable skill listing altogether for these players, and also seeing skill improves)

It should be noted that I tried to play an evil character a longer while ago. With evil I mean worshipping an evil deity.

I gave up. Not because of other players but because the system punishes me. I don't want to powertrain at all (Lanyara had after +40 online days, surely +75% of these spent non-idling, a grand total of 3 skills at rank 100 - common, gnar, and appraise object) and after worshipping an evil deity, after a death, you soon got the next vitaliy decrease because you quickly revert back to neutral. Do this a few times and you lose fun WANTING to play an evil character in the first place. Besides, there are no options for weak evil characters anyway. Dysfunctional guilds like the Order hate weak characters, guilds like the Sathos are encouraged only for strong characters (weak characters like Imuth faced problems), and the thieves are not allowed to be a major guild (with their own gemstone) after the takedown. Bad way, IMO, the Shadow Lurkers should be re-added into the game as a major guild, WITH gemstone, not the evil rogue-assassin joke that was made out of them after they were taken down.

It should also be noted that PO Glorfindel has tried to play an old evil (but weak) character. I do not know what has happened but I assume he has given up on it.

Let's face it - the way how the game has changed is towards favouring powergaming, powertraining and strength. I refer to you what PO Ronya wrote in her farewell note, and her statement about the game being pushed towards a capture the flag / PvP environment solely is:

one
hundred
percent
correct

All of this can be changed, but as PO Golub wrote in another note, this takes acknowledgement from game staff that there are problems if you want to fix these, and then a PLAN to fix these.

What is your plan/idea?

lanyara wrote: It should also be noted that PO Glorfindel has tried to play an old evil (but weak) character. I do not know what has happened but I assume he has given up on it.

Yes, I had an old "weak" character who was first a satho and then a thief. I gave him up, because of a few things, none of which has to do with the character being 'weak':

a) The character was flawed because I made a few very wrong decisions, which made the character a burden to play RP wise (getting locked out of your single city you still could access is not a great idea ).
b) The char left the sathos because I could not agree neither IC nor OOC with the dreadmaster of that time (that was 10 years ago, mind you).
c) Becoming a thief was a good idea at first, but I found myself not being able to actively steal from others, which is a major hindrance (meaning, I felt so bad about
it that I had to stop ).
d) I managed to lock that char up RP wise a few more times.
e) The biggest problem: I found it annoying to keep Glor and the other char separate and I found myself having to invest a lot of thinking on what the char currently knew. With one char it's easy to track, with two, it's possible, but it wears me out quickly. So one char it is.

On the contrary to what you claim Lanyara, you can be a very effective weak evil char. For example, the char you mentioned managed to be a satho cleric nobody knew about for ooc years. He was walking around, making friends, behaving like a normal person and only if you watched closely that was odd about them. Very odd if you paid real attention. I don't think, that there were more then 5 people outside of the sathos that were aware who my char was till I left.

If you have a weakish char and go all out and say 'hey, am a satho', of course you'll get yourself being torn to pieces. You can't expect to stand ground against a big, seasoned warrior while yourself you only barely know how to handle a sword.

Who says you have to declare you are a cleric? who says you can't work "evil" of any kind from the shadows? Who tells you to reveal yourself openly, no matter what kind of non-good you're up to ? The 'evil' side is always going to be less people then the good side, the common cattle will be always neutral/good. Thus, only the strong can dare to reveal themselves as what they are and be seen commiting those atrocities. The rest may have to do it in secret

And as Lumi said in another thread, good tactics play a better role then one may think. Not to say there are no flaws, am sure there are, but ... I don't think it's as easy to blame everything on the game as you currently do, Lanyara. Sure I have my own gripes and things I believe changing, but it's never that easy as you make it.

Glorfindel

I should mention that sometimes "good tactics" in part means limiting yourself from areas that mean almost certain death. If that doesn't interest you, don't go evil.