Wed Jul 20 17:04:02 2011

At 2 o'clock AM, Day of the Sun, 20th of the Month of the Spring
on the Theran calendar Fhul perished, never to return.

Race:	arial
Class:	warrior
Level:	46
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Orderly
Cabal:	FORTRESS, the Fortress of Light
Age:	21
Hours:	47

OK,

So I'm going to have to start taking a harder line on inducting folks. You had a really interesting RP. Morin liked it _alot_. And to have you in and out me like this.... Man that just hurts.

Hope it wasn't RL getting in the way, but in a way I hope it was, cause that's one of the faster burnouts I've seen.

Well couple things happen here:

-My laptop sucks ####ing ASS! and dropped linked on me maybe 3/5 PK loses I suffered. I just only recently got the laptop fixed, but at that point I just felt like WTF and gave up. Horrible loser, I am.

-Squire/Maran Status is really out of whack for me. Being I played every other cabal except the Fortress. I don't understand how we are expected to go through the troubles of getting into a cabal, only to receive one power and fight against people with full powers. That was just wierd to me. I suppose Fortress is just not my cup of tea until things CHANGE with that, IF they change.

-As for the people, man I never been in a cabal with people so helpful and friendly with true rp experiences.

Morin - AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME. Nothing more I can say. Sorry bud.
Maravon - Dude you looked out for me more then anybody else. I appreciated it so much.
Balaki - Good rp, good luck
Baerinika - Sorry we could not finish, I was looking forward to our talks.


Everyone else that I may have forgotten thanks for the fun. I guess I will stick to my normal cabals.

I think the idea is that they don't want Fortress to be the default choice for pk powergamers. Maran powers can be really nasty, but if they were given to everyone upon induction, Fortress would steamroll everyone all the time. As a group, Fortress should be the most cohesive unit internally. Everyone is the same alignment and there's not any backstabbing for position (or there shouldn't be). Theoretically, they should be really difficult to deal with, but they also tend to attract a lot of cabal newcomers.

Anyway, good luck with your next. If you don't get a pbf, can I ask what your specs and legacy were? And what were you considering for second legacy?

Cause in my opinion, they're the worst powergaming abilities available. Everything except cry of the phoenix, eyes, fire absorption, and altruism can basically be replaced by prepwork and gear-gathering. Even more lulzy, many of the common fortress classes already have access to stuff like protection from evil and fly as default class spells, making those cabal abilities even more useless.

In stark contrast to, say, despoil or centurions or resist or chameleon, which offer huge bonuses above and beyond what a few hours of prepwork will give people from those respective cabals.

If you gave full maran/acolyte powers to every single person inducted, I feel like fortress would find its PK status almost completely unchanged. Well, it might be harder to trip the newbie forties down at lower levels, but aside from that...

I think the big problem is that Maran don't use the skillset as well as they should - and the builds that are in Fort don't really seem to take good advantage of it. I think in terms of mileage for skills that arial and elf warriors (which seem to be real popular lately) are far behind storm giant and dwarf.

1) Cry is a real killer, especially if you have good teamwork. It lags too, you know? Problem is you need two non retards to usually pull it off, but if one or both of those guys is a mace spec, I really don't think I want to be going near any of them. It boggles my mind that there haven't been gangs of assassin trip, cry, rpk rpk rpk with all the Fort assassins that were running around. You might get 0-1 commands off if all goes well.

2) Zeal is just good. Same with phoenix brand - if you don't appreciate phoenix brand, I feel like you aren't using it very much or probably not a warrior/paladin.

3) Long fly that can't be dispelled except by a shaman is worth something. A lot even if you are a mage and have the spell.

4) Eyes is pretty nice - opens up a lot of possibilities with dash for warriors.

5) Lightforge is very strong and gives you a lot of flexibility.

The big problem is that the Fort guys right now play like a bunch of mediocre solo players that happen to be in the same room at the same time. Empire doesn't play like that, mostly because there's one guy leading and it's a lot clearer what everyone's task is and you know you can count on them to do it. When you have a guy that you're counting on to word you and he decides to spam flee at centurions, it can be insanely frustrating. But if you don't teamfight with these guys, then you look like a prick.

I'm not a great pk'er. I probably fall under the "mediocre solo player" category. That said, if Fortress members worked together like Imperials worked together, god...

Now I'm fantasizing about two sword spec giants with the bash legacy. One starts the fight, then cry of the phoenix, then alternating bashes and flurries.

>The big problem is that the Fort guys right now play like a
>bunch of mediocre solo players that happen to be in the same
>room at the same time. Empire doesn't play like that, mostly
>because there's one guy leading and it's a lot clearer what
>everyone's task is and you know you can count on them to do
>it. When you have a guy that you're counting on to word you
>and he decides to spam flee at centurions, it can be insanely
>frustrating. But if you don't teamfight with these guys, then
>you look like a prick.


And probably not just "right now" but pretty consistently through
the years.

The ability to not only create any type of weapon you want, but to make any person who fights you vuln to that weapon, not to mention the assorted progs to said weapon (okay I did mention it, but hey I didn't make up that saying, which is clearly a contradiction of itself) ALONE are scary in the hands of a powergamey person. Imagine having a single weapon that EVERYONE is vuln to in the hands of a powergamer, rather than having to lug around a pile of different weapons.

Then the ability to perm fly, ignore damage from fire, and prot evil on tap is a huge deal. Yeah okay paladins and shamans get prot evil anyway, but coupled with the other two powers that come with mantle means only having to carry a couple of extra flight potions for retrievals.

Cry? Cry is what people did when there was a cabal full of experienced powergamers in the Fort at one point a few years back, which is why the gate to/cry to thing was made verboten by Shokai.

Zeal? Who the hell doesn't want extra hit/dam that stacks with frenzy and berserk, also on tap?

Eyes mean never being summoned and slept. You don't think that's a huge advantage as a powergamer? It's one more thing to not need to prep for.

Essentially, you get a whole SLEW of things covered for you, without having to prep for them. This means more time to hunt, rather than prep. It means less weight, from not having to carry a mountain of extra weapons/preps with you everywhere, which frees you up to carry yet other preps to further assist you. It means the ability to instantly transport yourself to your pal when he manages to find that elusive guy in a vulnerable position, at last.

If you can't find what, in all this, would be attractive to a powergamer, then I don't know what else to say. Taking away the RP/time investment/need to earn status of full Maran would really just open up the Fort to a lot of the people the whole thing was designed to discourage.

Really, if you're doing what you should be doing, Maranation usually doesn't take all THAT long to get anyway. Unless you're an Eshval paladin, anyway. ;)

Baer has no such rules, and actually this is the first I ever heard of a "no gate/cry" rule.

Healer gates, initiates attack and Maran crys in.

Basically because you can do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Unless cry has a mana cost? I don't remember from my Maran.

PS Cry was largely unreliable for me, actually. Often times it would fail at inopportune moments (ie, I wouldn't cry when I needed to and when I finally succeeded at the skill the person wouldn't be fighting anymore).

It does have a cost I think. Also there's a timer (on cabal guardians at least) before anybody can cry in again. So my guess is that gate/cry would only work once, after which subsequent cries (to the same healer) would fail.

I can't speak for the current Fortress policies, but it had become such an issue for a while with healers joining the Maran and gating, then bunches of Marans gating to that healer after he initiated a fight that Shokai (or possibly Aarn, it's been a bit) said anyone caught using the tactic would not only get slapped down, but ejected from the Fortress over it. I assumed the policy was still in place today.

> Imagine having a single weapon that EVERYONE is vuln to in the hands of a powergamer, rather than having to lug around a pile of different weapons.

That's mostly true, but Phoenix Brand can't beat resistance or immunity to that damage type.

Just in the interest of completeness.

It still cuts down on what you have to lug around/switch over to in a huge/general way.

...with the fact you have total PK n00bs on your team more often than not.

Most competant PK'rs end up "loners" in the Fortress.

And this is why :)

http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,664035,664035#msg-664035

Scroll down to me dying horribly at Empire inners...with two hero healers spamming curse :)

But yeah, the "Oh my god I want to stab my cabalmate but I can't or I'll get the boot" factor can be a HUGE drawback at times(Especially if Amber/Jesse/Whoevertheyactuallywere are playing in the Fort still. Ugh. ). Hell, I was uninducted once just for typing scream, after having corpses repeatedly sacced by an (ooc) drunk Obaznuk, after repeatedly asking him not to. :P

> ...with the fact you have total PK n00bs on your team more often than not. Most competant PK'rs end up "loners" in the Fortress.

but I think that those players are loners to begin with, has more to do with it.

Being a loner in Fortress imho is not really playing it right. Especially as a Maran, if you don't feel comfortable having someone around you, you should take them under your wing and train them until you do.

In the last post I defended Maran powers - but I have to strongly disagree with you - Fortress is not a good cabal for a powergamer, assuming you mean someone who is PK heavy and a skillful min/maxer.
#1 is that you are obligated to defend a much higher percentage of the time, because if you don't, random fort human warrior #337 will come in and defend against your warning and get 1 rounded by the mummy and then you'll look like an ass and a coward. But the powers also:

>The ability to not only create any type of weapon you want,
>but to make any person who fights you vuln to that weapon, not
>to mention the assorted progs to said weapon (okay I did
>mention it, but hey I didn't make up that saying, which is
>clearly a contradiction of itself) ALONE are scary in the
>hands of a powergamey person. Imagine having a single weapon
>that EVERYONE is vuln to in the hands of a powergamer, rather
>than having to lug around a pile of different weapons.

Lugging around a pile of different weapons is not a significant disadvantage, as warrior classes need to store only weapons and preps. That said, a very good player will very often have a norem/nodisarm main wield that trumps lightforge. Lightforge is a great skill for the guy who considers a potion of return a prep and is going to be coming at you the second he unghosts from the last full loot you dropped on him. That's where it really shines.

>Then the ability to perm fly, ignore damage from fire, and
>prot evil on tap is a huge deal. Yeah okay paladins and
>shamans get prot evil anyway, but coupled with the other two
>powers that come with mantle means only having to carry a
>couple of extra flight potions for retrievals.

It's not perm-fly (although it is handy) ignoring damage from fire is not as great as it seems in PK, because everyone knows you're immune fire. Prot evil is meh because every powergamer would stock it otherwise.

>Cry? Cry is what people did when there was a cabal full of
>experienced powergamers in the Fort at one point a few years
>back, which is why the gate to/cry to thing was made verboten
>by Shokai.

Cry is a good skill, but team powergang doesn't get separated often/ever.
>
>Zeal? Who the hell doesn't want extra hit/dam that stacks with
>frenzy and berserk, also on tap?
>
>Eyes mean never being summoned and slept. You don't think
>that's a huge advantage as a powergamer? It's one more thing
>to not need to prep for.

The last time I was summoned and slept by the same person sans black circle: Probably 2005. With black circle? Probably a few years at least. By two different people? Can't remember. If you're a good player with a good set you probably have some good saves. That means someone needs to summon you, and another player needs to land a sleep before you see them and split. Prob not happening, eyes or no eyes.

>Essentially, you get a whole SLEW of things covered for you,
>without having to prep for them. This means more time to hunt,
>rather than prep. It means less weight, from not having to
>carry a mountain of extra weapons/preps with you everywhere,
>which frees you up to carry yet other preps to further assist
>you. It means the ability to instantly transport yourself to
>your pal when he manages to find that elusive guy in a
>vulnerable position, at last.

I don't mind prepping. Stocking flight and prot good is not going to break my weight, or my purse. Cry is usually used as a reactive skill, not a skill to take the initiative and land the kill. That's not to say it couldn't be used in the latter way - just people don't do it that often.

>If you can't find what, in all this, would be attractive to a
>powergamer, then I don't know what else to say. Taking away
>the RP/time investment/need to earn status of full Maran would
>really just open up the Fort to a lot of the people the whole
>thing was designed to discourage.

+1 wisdom would be attractive to a powergamer too. That doesn't mean that it stacks up well against other cabal powers. I feel like Maran is a reward for not deleting after being hit in the balls 30-40 times with a ball-peen hammer wielded by your cabalmates, who were aiming for the Imperial behind you.

I think Maran powers are good - if I'm looking to maximize my PK potential though, I'm almost always choosing another cabal. That doesn't mean that it's not the most effective powers for another style of player - I like that diversity about CF.

>Really, if you're doing what you should be doing, Maranation
>usually doesn't take all THAT long to get anyway. Unless
>you're an Eshval paladin, anyway. ;)

Basically there's two ways I've seen to get the early Maranation (pre auto-Maran) 1) Be a PK superstar or 2) Grind it out until someone up there feels sorry for you. The truth is that lots of vets often play characters that just never hit their stride, never fall into the first category. I think that's where you see most frustration - having to stick it out without powers against a tough group of enemies and allies who are just as dangerous to you (and themselves).

>Basically there's two ways I've seen to get the early
>Maranation (pre auto-Maran) 1) Be a PK superstar or 2)
>Grind it out until someone up there feels sorry for you. The
>truth is that lots of vets often play characters that just
>never hit their stride, never fall into the first category. I
>think that's where you see most frustration - having to stick
>it out without powers against a tough group of enemies and
>allies who are just as dangerous to you (and themselves).
>


I don't even think you have to be a "superstar" - we're really talking in the neighborhood of 15-20 PKs, and spend a decent amount of time in the cabal not acting like a douche. Considering the average time from bloodoath to elite is roughly comparable to the time from Squire to Maran last time Isildur compared them .. "a decent amount of time" component doesn't seem too onerous to me. Fhul, for example, had 47 hours TOTAL on this character.

The fact that Taffer, who truly was as under the radar as a character can be, with only ~20 PKs, was made Maran in a decent amount of time should indicate that the system works unless the Maran Imms all go dormant.

First, I think you don't really mention that many Fortress powers are geared around teamwork. A lot of the genuinely interesting, unique fortress powers like cry of the phoenix and altruism are designed almost SOLELY for use with allies. Furthermore, given the limitations of Cry of the Phoenix and inherent drawbacks of altruism, you require COMPETENT allies. And considering how ####ty squire and scribe abilities are, these allies ALSO need to be full maran or acolyte if you want the full range of flexibility and power.

Like, if CF had three times its current playerbase and there was ALWAYS 2-3 forties on, suddenly these powers become useful. If these 2-3 forties ALWAYS had acolyte or maran status and were competent to boot, I'd say these powers suddenly become the equal of any other set of cabal abilities out there - equal to despoil a/b/s or chameleon or empire leadership positions or what have you.

However, that isn't how CF (or the Fort) is at this moment. In fact, its almost never like that. So these powers go from amazing to decent, but limited - only of use in certain situations. If you play different hours and rarely see any friendlies on at all, I guess I can still think of situations where cry of the phoenix and altruism are useful, but they really have little to offer relative to other cabal abilities.

Second, I also believe that the gap between well-prepared, skilled maran and well-prepared, skilled squire is tiny. Like, seriously fuggin tiny. There's almost nothing a well-prepared, skilled maran can offer in PK that a well-prepared, skilled squire cannot, except maybe extra hit/dam from zeal.

There's this huge gap between unskilled, unprepared squires and unskilled, unprepared maran - things like eyes, lightforge, innate fly and protection from evil and phoenix brand can make an unskilled, unprepared warrior much stronger and more dangerous than he originally was (I should know, I've played enough unskilled squires promoted to unskilled maran to attest to it). But if you can find and maintain fly and protection, find high average undisarmable or vuln exploiting weapons superior to lightforged, and are intelligent enough to avoid walking into c sleep spam, maran powers offer very little you can't get on your own, while almost every other cabal has significantly more to offer.

Some of the most notable maran, like Isildur's thieves or Jalim's Niheriva (was that Jalim?), badasses and leaders - I honestly believe that they would have been just as strong if they were uncaballed goodies, and that their primary benefit from joining the fortress was utility (people to talk to, allies to help them regear, more goals and roleplay objectives).

I don't think this is true of notable badass leader characters from any other cabal.

>I feel like Maran is a reward for not deleting after
>being hit in the balls 30-40 times with a ball-peen hammer
>wielded by your cabalmates, who were aiming for the Imperial
>behind you.

In all my years of playing CF, no one has said this better.

>Cause in my opinion, they're the worst powergaming abilities
>available. Everything except cry of the phoenix, eyes, fire
>absorption, and altruism can basically be replaced by prepwork
>and gear-gathering.

Having flight and protection vs. alignment up all the time is beneficial even when those abilities can be replicated by preps. Because sometimes you're surprised. You wander into quicksand, someone blackjacks you when you weren't expecting it, etc.

Eyes makes you much less likely to ever get slept. It somewhat nerfs one of the most effective tactics of two of your common enemy classes.

Cry lets you go and actually "do stuff" while still defending the fortress. It lets you create surprise gang situations and get some cheap kills that way.

Fire absorption is "meh" unless you happen to be vuln_fire. Zeal is also a little "meh" but hey: free hit/dam.

Lightforge gives everybody vuln weapons of the type of their choosing for use against duergar and orcs. You also get free non-metal weapons against invokers and druids. Or you can make silver ones and benefit from the fire prog. Or you can make light of heaven scrolls and crushing hand wands.

Leaders also get a leader weapon.

Not a terrible set of powers.

Much like Empire has. I think this might be a good idea with "full" maran only being made possible by the Immortals. Just a thought.

First I tried playing from a laptop myself for a while, it was... sad.

Second not even 50 hours? not loser quitter, hehe I was typing out to
talk to you when you deleted. I thought I was going to be able to say
a few things. That's okay though, just a little sad. Wish you had
stuck it out.

Third It's less out of whack than you think. If you decide to give
it another try, here's a piece of advice. From the time you become a
squire/scribe think 100 hours minimum before even thinking of becoming
acolyte/maran If it happens earlier cheer, if it happens later don't
even sweat it until you've been in the cabal 200 hours. I'm not sure
what other criteria there are, but figure 20 pks for a maran on top
of the 100 hours and you'll probably be doing okay. This is just my
rule of thumb.
I am sure a good chunk of it is the RP and behavior WHILE that 100
or so hours is going on. I did it myself man, just doing my thing
and not 'verbally' interacting for long periods of time. I'm pretty
sure it was pointed out to me, but I may have just misinterpreted :)

I saw a load of what could have been... Maybe give it a try again
when you feel like spending a while to get where you are going.

I DID have fun in the panic and havoc you could create by racing
into things, mad-man. :) I assumed it was RP: always in a rush.

MORE IMPORTANT than all of the above: If fort just isn't your thing
or you don't think you could have fun there, go ahead and stick to
other cabals, just make sure whatever you do, you enjoy it.
Another rule of thumb: If you don't like it but have to do it,
it's work. If you don't like it and don't have to do it but you are
anyway... you're retarded. :) Oh crap I'm retarded.

none

It just when I tried to mud with it, a couple of keys are in different
places and the angle is wierd etc... I'm not knocking them, I'm saying
I understand having issues with them so nyaaaah. :)
The sad part (for me) is the laptop rigs to the widescreen TV and
wireless kb and mouse hooked up, AWESOME sound system hooked up...
*sigh* Unfortunately when I try to play FPS I have to sit at the
edge of my bed, with the kb and mouse on a tray table because my brain
won't accept a different position. And when it came to mudding. oh man
it was... pathetic. Who would put a delete key THERE!!! I need it over
HERE!!! hehe. Stuff like that. So I'm back at the desktop, where I can't
just take it with me when I go smoke. Grrrr...
Hehe. I should just learn the new layout eh?

n/t

>-Squire/Maran Status is really out of whack for me. Being I
>played every other cabal except the Fortress. I don't
>understand how we are expected to go through the troubles of
>getting into a cabal, only to receive one power and fight
>against people with full powers.

Have you been in Empire? It would seem to have the same issue. Outlander powers are also a little underwhelming until you figure out the non-obvious ones.

Couple things I can think of mentioning. First off, 47 hours is nothing. You are in the cabal, which is already a huge advantage. You talk about "all the troubles of getting into the cabal" like it's a huge hassle to get into the Fortress. You can rank to 11, tell someone you hate evil, and wait for a leader character to show up. A ten minute RP session later and you're in. Try having to impress someone like Kostyan who is roleplaying Thera's greatest A-hole. Or having a giant "I can't prep, use healers or even see you before 25" sign on your back. Then try having that sign on your back as you rank into the 30's, then the 40's, sometimes even damn near to hero. Or, you could have to go scour Thera for 5 or 10 places to conduct commerce without coins, not in cities and whatever other restrictions are in place for Outlanders. Now, you say you have been in every cabal, so I just find it odd that after suffering the horrible degradations of squiredom for all of 47 hours you would understand all of that... But maybe not. I think this ramble came off kind of mean spirited, and it wasn't really meant to, but yeah, you should have stuck it out.

Because on that note, I did fight you a few times recently and you seemed to do fairly well. I think you had the basic PK knowledge to probably get Maran by 150 hours, if your RP was solid as well. On another note, the history of Maran does not lend itself to being a quick thing, as far as I remember. It was once an (very?) elite religion, not a cabal, just a religion. So I personally like that becoming one is a great challenge. It's the reason I haven't tried a squire in a number of years either, as I haven't felt ready to step up PK wise. I'm getting to that point now however, and I look forward to the challenge and the opportunity. So my advice is try again, stick with it for more than 47 hours. Good luck.

Et tu, Fhul? You hadn't really been in the cabal that long. You didn't seem to be suffering overly many ganks/stupid deaths, I had you figured for a sure Maranation after a little bit. I didn't get to spend much time with you, but I liked you and you seemed really solid. Sigh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOrtJMQmVs

Yep.

nt

bt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jACrmwTsi08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieg6iME8muU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2015S3A-lg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FPGJrzzq_I

...I love you. Thanks for the smile.

heart,

Nae-nae.

And I ain't foolin'.

I'm not clicking on that because I'd only be disappointed in you if it didn't involve Mr. T.

It doesn't. However, his 2nd batch of posts has a Mr. T link in there :)

I am *SO* picking a phonetic name that I can start a song-list that includes it. Maybe "Wiskye" or something, so I can listen to all the assorted whiskey songs as I play.

warcry Stand and deliver-ah! Ohr, the devil, he may take ya!

sphere sloth

lastname Ndjarr'O

Role Subject The Devil Take that Woman!
Role + Some men like the fishin'. Some men like the fowlin'.
Role + Some men like to hear the arena crowd a-roarin'.
Role + But me, I like sleepin'. Especially in my Molly's chamber.
Role + But there I was in prison! There I was with a ball and chain, yeah.
Role + Then I escaped and decided to take revenge on all whores
Role + for the betrayal I felt, and on the Empire and Tribunal for
Role + protecting the brothels.
Role add

Pledge Huntress

What happened?

You were doing so well