Thu Aug 15 07:12:55 2013

At 3 o'clock AM, Day of the Great Gods, 26th of the Month of the Spring
on the Theran calendar Gazriac perished, never to return.

http://forums.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?5,1002331,1002402#msg-1002402

I hope you were just trying to be "Ha ha jk" funny here. If not, you look ridiculous. In my eyes at least.

Retarded in fact.

You've got a conservative sleep artist that will only stick to the fight when he gets all of his maledictions in. An AP, I'm assuming? Waiting until you've slept him, cast your ####, and are confident of victory to call in the healer for altruism so he can bash your face into the dirt is probably one of the smarter tactics I've had explained to me in a couple of years.

It sounds to me like you just got outsmarted there. Nothing wrong with that, it happens. You should remove the stick.

He said he didn't call I the healer over CB because he was THAT confident. He waited until he woke up. Yeah right.

And that wasn't my character he was referring to.

It sounds like total BS to me.

I may not agree with the rest of what he said in his goodbye, but what he explained is pretty much exactly how it went down....

as for the rest of the Character, I'll probably reserve judgement.

I was on CB at the time. Gazriac says, "I don't want to scare him off, so don't gate to me yet, but I'm slept by Merf in the sewers of Galadon." Then goes on to say, "When I call for it, gate to me and take my afflictions." I was waiting for you at your recall spot if you managed to flee/word.

n/t

I enjoyed our interactions.

We didn't interact, but I did watch you from the sidelines and I was very
impressed. It seemed like you were very good at the PvP parts of the game.

I'll start this by saying I had no idea who the player was.

Being a Maran to me is about a lot more than just PK'ing up a storm and aside from a few rare moments where you'd turn on the RP because Baer was vis or whatever, your RP seemed frequently to be the opposite of a Maran. I know there's going to be issues when I'm asking for rec's from the Forties so I can do imm inductions and they're like "Well, I tried to talk to this guy but he said he was too busy, that rec's were a waste of his time, and he told me to go ask the other people he'd already talked to about him. That he'd told these other people and those squires can tell you about him." It's pretty easy to get Fort recs so if someone is actually NOT willing to recommend you to the cabal, you've really screwed up. And that seemed to be your attitude the entire time you played the character, and you didn't have a role to tell me why you were sphere Arrogant. Your persona genuinely reminded me of Jerro when he's posting to actively try and piss people off.

I will add that I did look at Maran'ing you the other day but then you either were demeaning one of your enemies, demeaning someone on cabal channel, or just continuing on with the same attitude and I thought I'd give it a little more time.

Your post on the other forums is way misleading. You did not pk better than 95% of the Fort, you had 95 hours total, inducted at 25, so you did not spend 100 hours as a Squire. You did have 150 immxp for a good kill. You also had some negative history about your pray of: Gazriac prayed for: Imperial Lords, I hope you see how rigidly Sicarius adheres to your Law! <- Maran do not implore Imperial Lords with hopes. You could have done this OOC and it would have worked better.

TL;DR version: Write a role. Don't be a ####. RP is a really important part of the game and you shouldn't act like you just stepped in dog #### when you need to do it. I think things might be different if you made these changes.

Maran powers are quite lackluster in comparison to those of most cabals, the only cabal that they actually trump in my opinion is nexus.

That being said, with the declining player base maybe ya'll should loosen the reigns on how you promote squires. Honestly, I think the squire period is completely un-needed.

Battle powers are arguably 100X more powerful than anything a full blooded Maran gets, and I don't need to spend countless hours AFTER going through the 'interview hoops' to get them. I get into the cabal, I have the power! (He-man quote!).

Even if you Maran someone you can always take it away (which is how ALL of the other cabals work)

Please consider bringing fort more in line for your playerbase, I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way.

-Sarien

>Battle powers are arguably 100X more powerful than anything a
>full blooded Maran gets

I'd like to meet the person who is stupid enough to argue that.

That aside, I find it frustrating that you consistently try to frame your arguments as."what all the players want to happen" whrn it's never so clear cut.

Fair enough.

However: You cannot argue the simple fact that multiple people have echo'd this desire on every single board related to this game. I framed my argument this way because of that fact. This is one of those 'things' where a (seemingly) large amount of people have posted "Hey, the whole squire thing really sucks ass" and, it seems to fall on deaf ears. If you want me to back up that claim, I can go ahead and search the officals and provide links, or provide them from QHCF.


As a player, I find it frustrating when a plethora of feedback is provided on certain topics, and the general IMM response is "This isn't ####ing burger king. Our way or the highway"

Change it, or don't change it. I don't really care. In the end its your game, and if you guys don't want to listen to feedback that is your choice.

-Sarien

... That meaning... More that you start out in the cabal with no/low powers so that you can grow in the cabal, show what you can do etc before you are really accepted.

And with Baers riducilus online hours, I doubt anyone will fall between the chairs when it comes to being Maranated.

This is a tough hard RP/PK mud, I at least, don't want this to be another instant gratification game.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

I used to be able to dedicate 10-20 hrs per week to CF. And, hell..I loved playing it.

At this point in my life (34 - holy ####) I can "maybe" play 2 sessions 2-5 hrs in length every 10 days or so. I just deleted a arguably successful battle defender, because my logins caused me to lose my gear due to anti-hoarding.

CF has aged, and with it so have the players. While there may be a small influx of true "new" players, the majority are returning vets who have like myself, aged with CF.

When I roll a character, it is planned out from start to finish ethos/align/cabal/etc

Why make people go through a bunch of arduous un-needed BS just to get to the point where they can start to 'enjoy' the game. Now, not everyone LIVES for cabalwars - but a lot of them do

The longer you make someone wait to start having fun in cabalwars the more likely you are to see people delete much like the dude who's BF thread we were hijacking.

If I had to wait 100 hrs to get into battle, I wouldn't have been in battle at all.

Honestly, if your change was implemented, I would walk the #### away and not look back . Because, it's just "not worth" the investment.

-Sarien

I'm 31 myself, got family, work, farm, animals etc. I don't have those insane hours anymore either.

BUT, I don't think the game STARTS when you become a Maran. I've had 1 Maran and maybe 2-3 Squires, I've had tons of fun with my Squires and once I did get that Maran, ooh man did it feel cool and special.

I've had a ####load of imperials, you don't hear them whining about only being a low-class citizen etc.

Game meachincs-wise however, I do believe it's quite unbalanced to have the Fortress/Empire alone to have this system. Especially the Fortress since it never takes 100+ hours to get to at least second class citizen.

I think one should perhaps scale down the big wait for Maran/Acolyte a littlebit, and do something similar for other cabals.

But that's me, even if I don't have the time to put down on this game anymore, I still don't want it to be instant gratification, hell, then I could go back to playing ####ty games like WoW again.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

I disagree. It's not about hard or easy. It's essentially random chance. I know this because I've been Maran'd in 20 hours or Maran'd in 200 hours and there was no difference (that I'm aware of - and its kinda important if i screwed up to be aware of that fact) other than who overlapped with what playing times and etc. Unless you consider ensuring you overlap heavily with the Imm you need interaction with a "skill" it's not any easier or harder than empowerment.

PVP is a competitive sport. Not having your powers is a handicap. I don't want to rely on Imm involvement more than is already necessary - too much of the game is driven by Imm involvement - edges, third legacies, leadership powers like insect, etc are all things I have to deal with against my adversaries that I can't necessarily resolve on any particular character to compete against.

As an example, if I'm dealing with a 3 legacy warrior, I can't just magically get a third legacy myself to even things out. And maybe for extreme circumstances like legacies and specs that's ok. It shouldn't be that way for basic Maran powers.

If it was a legitimately hard mechanic, uniformly applied everywhere, that you could resolve before being on the competitive field of play at level 51 then I wouldn't have an issue with this. But it's a selectively good-aligned thing, which is already the hardest alignment to play competitively because of gear availability and kill-target restrictions and you're going to face the "Baddest of the bad" for a while before it gets resolved and you don't even know *why*.

To take a page from the Imms I'd also challenge you to show me any numbers that say that Maran powers are more lethal than any other powers in the game. Marans and Squires *typically* have the worst pk ratios hands down in the entire game (heralds excluded).

The progression from squire to maran is good as is imo. Maybe reduce the gap between squire/maran powers, but I don't think becoming Maran should be any easier.

>However: You cannot argue the simple fact that multiple
>people have echo'd this desire on every single board related
>to this game.

Sure. You also can't argue that multiple people have echoed pretty much every opinion ever. It's not hard to find multiple people who wanted cabals go to away entirely, for example.

That doesn't mean I don't listen to what the players have to say, but that I weigh that with that player's clear biases and what I also believe to be true.

The mistake you serially make is that you assume that if two people agree with you, your opinion is the majority one, and somehow manage to disregard everyone who disagrees.

Yep, I agree with you Daev. Get rid of the cabals. Thumbs up.

If we somehow were more nation and race centric the RP opportunities would be much greater.

Disband the cabals, pass the powers around to citizens of different cities and races or as rewards etc.

That would be my perfect CF.

Would give more opportunity for ebb and flow of powers. Cabals are definitely too static. More rapid ebb and flow of power (instead of just relying on the influx/outflux of permas) would be a boon imo.

Heralds being a notable exception.

and before the naysayers start in. What passes for RP in the cabals here is not what I consider RP in most cases.

I would happily give up every maran power for just one battle power - resist - and I'm fairly certain just about everyone not playing a character with sanctuary or barrier would agree with me. Most people would also be willing to give up every maran power in exchange for bloodthirst or deathblow or spellbane, but probably not everyone, since some character types don't get as much benefit from those skills.

You seem to be under the impression that nerfing the utility and escape abilities of battle negates the massive straight up power boost given to every battle character. I don't think that's ever been true. It means they die a little more and kill a lot more and are less reliant on their groupmates to be powerful.

The low end of battle dies just as much as the low end of fort, but gets lots more kills. Always has. In fort, you tend to stand out if you have more than 20 kills - the vast majority of fort characters in my experience never go past it. In battle, even a really bad player can easily double it, just by playing for awhile and following a more experienced player around in raids.

The high end of battle can compete against the strongest builds in the game, ranging from emperors to a/b/s despoil scions to defiance double virtue pallies. The funny part is, there isn't that much difference between the stupidly strong battle players and the weak battle players, the divide is mostly player skill and player knowledge. Not so much builds, class composition, or preparation.

Cry can be very, very powerful but *only* in some circumstances, one of which is having other heroes who will use it to help you or tell you when you should use it to help them. This power would be much better if there were less "I want to solo everyone" Marans running around.

The rest of the powers in my opinion are not very strong, certainly not as strong as any of the rager berserker powers for warrior types. Eyes of flames for instance is not as good as thirst + spellbane...not even in the same ballpark. Resist is epic. At that point, deathblow is just a freebie.

And what you lose is magic, which is irritating but certainly hasn't stopped lots of mid-tier PVP'ers from racking up 100-200 kills - the same people who are going to go 5 and 25 with a Squire. You're also not required to be good aligned in Village and if I were a power gamer I'd take evil without magic over good aligned with magic any day, since my number of potential targets to attack is now probably doubled if not tripled.

>And what you lose is magic, which is irritating but certainly
>hasn't stopped lots of mid-tier PVP'ers from racking up
>100-200 kills - the same people who are going to go 5 and 25
>with a Squire.

I'd like to see an example or two on this.

Now if you'd said that someone who probably would go 5-25 with a Squire might go like 20-25 with a Berserker I probably would agree with you. It can bring the low end up but the lower-end Battle (I don't think I'd consider someone who runs 5-25 in Fort mid-tier but that's me) still die like crazy and usually more than they kill.

I was exaggerating for effect, not looking to be literal - but to be truthful I don't think its really up for debate that most people do generally better with rager powers than without unless they know ABS very well and play that subset of classes.

Rager powers will land a kill more often. Rager restrictions will end up in the rager's death more often.

So you're obviously saying "do generally better" equates to "get more pkwins". I think that's true.

Rager restrictions make it really tough to keep a good set and really start to steamroll people, though. And when you start talking about mid-tier people, a good set is really something that you have to take into account.

No, guys like Marcus and Beront don't need a good set to still put down the mass pwnage, but few and far between are the guys who can instill real fear while rocking ragesteel and a couple daggers.

I'm not even sure that plays out really. Or at least, most goodies play like they're sphere honor and die quite a bit - probably as much if not more than ragers do.

And I wasn't even a Maran until like hour 200. And Alex and JMC took pleasure in destroying my polite polespec Storm Giant for whatever reason before I even got Maran.

But I think this more reinforces my point.

One of the big reasons I think we can all accept that a battle player tends to kill more than a fort player of equal skill is because of an increased list of targets - he has more people to fight, thus more potential kills to make. This is part of the price of playing a goodie - you have less people to kill and rigid RP restrictions on how you can kill them (can't blow through goodie guildguards to make kills in voralia guilds, for example).

However, I think you're missing the inversion of it, wherein battle player has far more people trying to kill HIM than fort player does, and has far less escape to handle it with. And yet, though a low-end battle might quadruple the fort guy's kills, he probably won't quadruple the fort guy's deaths - he'll generally end up dying just as much, maybe a little more.

That, to me, suggests power imbalance. A severe one. It's similar to the good vs evil question - evils generally get a lot more kills cause they can kill anyone they want - but shouldn't they get a lot more deaths, as well, with so many more people trying to kill them? Generally, they don't. Most certainly not in proportion to kills. Why? Because evil cabals and abilities are a LOT more powerful than good ones, while the corresponding downsides aren't nearly as big (maybe from an RP perspective, but not so much from a PK one).

You're not seeing the number of failed evil characters that don't make it onto PBFs. Emperor powers might be sweet, but there's only one Emperor, and Scion powers are likewise limited by number of who can have them. Empire sect powers don't really hold up against Maran, and Imperial Law heavily restricts where you can PK.

Did the power get toned up in the year I haven't seriously played?

Because I remember it being around 40% dam reduction. Which has a mana cost to use (that, for most low int warriors in the village, is a pain in the ass to keep up all the time before rank 40).

If I'm a non-rager I just pop a protection pill/potion and stoneskin and already I'm at rager resist levels. Now add invoker shields, shield, aura, sanctuary...yeah, resist is not that great.

Now spellbane on the other hand. I loves me some spellbane.

Compared to what thye used to be. The fact that a transmuter can outmelee melee classes and get nearly all of their spells through spellbane quickly tells me spellbane isn't all it used to be. Resist also isn't, and depending on the veil, which is usually weaker than stronger...it is usually weaker.

Thats my .02

Elsewhere in this thread I mention that when I listen to the players, I have to weigh their biases. In your specific case it's you and anything Battle-related.

Play the cabal seriously -- try to age death a character or the equivalent -- and get back to me.

Eyes and Cry alone are absurdly awesome in a lot of situations. I mean, I suppose you could rationalize that spellbane and eyes offer similar protection, but not really. With Eyes, you basically negate getting slept when you have the Orb...all the ####ing time. That's such a huge power I'm not sure what to say to you thinking it's not that great.

As an aside, I've died horribly to eyes (Baer even commented in my PBF about it!) a few times at least, so I understand it has its' drawbacks. But yeah, you're drinking the Orb crazy-juice eh?

I recall one thread where tongni said that he doesn't remember the last time someone landed sleep on him in the last two years. I agree with this.

It's a basic skill divide; if you're good, sleep shouldn't be much of a problem for you. There are both preps and tactics that easily counter it. It's mostly newer players that die to sleep. Eyes becomes more of a liability than a benefit when stuff like sleep becomes a non-factor due to skill. Skilled opponents can easily turn eyes against you, giving you warrants, extra lag, disadvantaged rounds, etc when it's up. Meanwhile, the big threats it neutralizes: sleep and maybe stuff like cleave, are simply not particularly dangerous to good players.

You should -always- see the sleep guy incoming (its not like any of the c sleep characters can stealth, anyway) and can either disengage or prepare beforehand. If a guy manages to sleep you before you can do anything, the problem isn't the sleep spell but the fact that you weren't paying attention, got caught unawares, and gave up the initiative. A lot of builds can kill you like that and sleep isn't the issue.

Cry is a decent ability, one of the few decent abilities the Fort gets, but its limited to some really bad niches. It's good when you have competent teammates, nearly useless when you're alone, and completely useless when you're ALREADY TRAVELING IN A COORDINATED, ORGANIZED GROUP WITH YOUR TEAMMATES AS YOU SHOULD BE and doesn't directly boost your power at all. It's really good for when you have ten maran online and are spreading out to hunt down the last two enemy characters who are uncoordinated and hiding, but it's ####ing useless for making big plays in 3v3 raids or winning key 1v1 fights, both of which are much higher priority for me than ganging down lone, outnumbered enemies, which is what cry really excels at.

That's a huge part of PK

There's very few people who don't pay attention. Yeah, it happens (mostly at the low ranks) but its so excessively rare by the time these powers would be available to you that it's not even worth mentioning.

Permaflight would be epic at like level 20. When you get it at level 51 its just not very good because you're not dying to trip + cheapshot. Unless I'm a caster or fighting an invoker I don't even really care about flight near hero.

Honestly, for most skilled people, zeal is probably the best Maran power - and the fire healing from mantle.

But being a squire is just somewhat insulting - like being a level 51 imperial who isn't even elite yet. Every time you're out fighting against the odds and die or win its just a little needle pricking you telling you that your efforts aren't being appreciated. That's not the intention of the whole Squire vs Maran thing but that's how it feels - it feels like you're not being appreciated for the effort you put in.

The rest of the reason is stuff like insects/pounce

That's somewhere near the bottom 1000 ways to get killed at hero.

Bash
Flurry
Legsweep/Pincer/Cranial/Etc
Entwine
Pounce
Insects
Quicksand
Good old gang-lag.
Knockout + Bind


I could go on for days and days about the things more likely to kill you at hero than getting slept while AFK. If you don't go AFK its not even remotely a problem.

Right now there's what? One guy at hero who even has the sleep spell? And assuming you know how to gear he has a snowballs chance in hell of landing it - not including the preps you can take that can actively prevent it from ever happening.

Honestly I get that people have different opinions on how good some powers are versus other powers...but there's a pretty big difference between theory and practice. In practice, bash is probably the most lethal skill in the game (despite the massive abundance of ways to defeat it) and skills like eyes of flames just don't get much use. There was a thread a few weeks ago where I was talking about how good insect swarm was and people are telling me its not really a big deal, then of course there's 20 logs on the boards with Norfis and Nyst killing people using insects, landing it in 1 or 2 shots against people with divine saves. Insect swarm is awesome. Eyes of flames, not so much.

Hero Angel using conjurer vs AP or Necro. Most times, you can initiate combat in a situation with Eyes, and if they get away and teleport, you can Tess to them an finish it off. Super high burst damage + ability to autoattack. Other than that it isn't an I Win button by any means except when using it to summon an unsuspecting AP/Necro.

Agreed, in this rare and obscure situation, it's very good.

At least there is for me. If somebody sneaks up on me unaware because I was exchanging tells, or sleeping a few ticks or whatever I'll usually survive. (unless they land sleep/assassinate/cheapshot etc)

I'm guessing you're saying eyes is almost useless from having played a maran, but having played five hero A-P's I can assure you my life would have been much, much easier if not for eyes.

Both times I caught Tolgrumm out of town with eyes down I landed sleep. On a recent fire giant I landed sleep on a higher level Yuolud twice (admittedly it didn't work because he also has CB, but..) before he learned to keep eyes up. It totally screws over two classes for getting the upper hand in a fight. It may not have any effect against a warrior or a shapeshifter but it's totally asinine to claim it's no help.

As, for example, it can enable allies within pk to perfect combat skills easily.

I don't agree that I can't get the element of surprise though. I can regularly be on someone so fast that they haven't I lagged from their last skill use even when they think they are not near the edge of the area. I can also gate with my necros and aps if I can be bothered.

In short, I can easily get first strike on people and use it to sleep if they don't have eyes or volley. I've done so many times to those considered to be top players.

That's before you start thinking about things like request lag, or being summoned to a black circle just as your command to cure something at the watcher goes through etc.

It may be my imagination but it feels to me as if eyes may give some kind of bonus to saving vs magical blindness too.

Only things of certain alignments using fire will heal you. Otherwise you'd have random invokers following maran around and healing them to full with nova.

It is cleave too, for example.

It stops the dude trying to run to his inner. It can counter flee, quaff etc.

I sense confirmation bias here.

Eyes is a power that only works on maybe 5% of all the enemies you will fight, and mostly does things that experienced players already do themselves.

... I ALWAYS know when I'm about to get slept. Most of the times I have some sort of prep for it, but sometimes, I've just ran out.

And with my bad connection, my oponents are HIGHLY likely to get sleep in before I get any command in. (Even if I sit and wait for them. haha)

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

Is assuming 'any decent player' can get the first command through in PK. What if they're both decent players? They can't both get the first command through.

If you're fighting someone with sleep, you either set up a situation where him getting sleep isn't going to kill you (prep for it with firenewt) or set up a situation where he can't get the first command (sit in a room and spam your own skill/spell and wait for him to come to you; now he cannot sleep you) or set up a situation where an ally can bring him out of sleep nearly reliably whenever he's in trouble.

It's not a matter of they're both decent players, suddenly they both can get first command in, it's just there are situations where sleep is not effective against people and experienced players can create them much more reliably.

Eyes is a power that works on maybe 5% of all the enemies you will ever fight. And most of the time, it does little that experience and paranoia doesn't do already, and can further prove to be a liability when fighting an experienced player.

You're forced to sit in the same room spamming your skill over and over, whereas with eyes you can walk up to the A-P/necro.

Without eyes if you don't have an ally online to rescue you from sleep then you're taking a risk fighting the A-P/necro while with eyes you aren't.

Without eyes you have to be an experienced player, paying attention, creating a situation where sleep is not effective. With eyes sleep is never effective, not need for experience or engineering the situation.

I've fought fortress leaders, caught them without eyes up, and landed sleep on them - this has either led to them being bailed out by allies, or an interesting fight that isn't completely one-sided in their favour. I fight them with eyes up - I go x rounds, realise I'm getting my ass handed to me and go off to regather all the preps I just burned to avoid getting 2-rounded.

I forgot what the point of this was other than calling out your crap. I'm not sure why it's in my interest to argue that it's useful, if it's as useless as you say it may as well just be removed right? Suits me.

I don't think so. The reason is battle powers have to compensate for not being able to use preps. That's it. Plain and simple. A fort guy has a whole range of options that are simply not available to the battle guy.

That is also a major factor in that claim you are making about low end battle being better than low end fort. Battle is plug and play. You could go rock out in Ragesteel if you wanted and have at least a fighting chance to land a PK. You do not need a ton of prep knowledge etc to excel, and that is a major dividing line.

Neither the low end battle guy or the low end fort guy probably has great prepping and gearing abilities, but, the low end battle guy can get by much easier without it then the low end fort guy.

Not trying to argue here, but I know I would like to see maran made a tad easier, but I am horrible at PK. I know I probably will never make it to maran because I just do not land the kills. So after my attempt at it (Kalgranesh) I gave up on Maran. I will never reach a PK level that is expected for it, sad but true.


On the flip side, lowering requirements for maran can and probably will make it less exciting for those who enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when they finally do. This is the exact reason I think that it will not be lowered and should not be lowered for people like me. I will just have to play acolyte if I want to do fort.

Toktok didn't have massive PKs, he was a very good and titled Maran. And there's been others.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

Is the feedback system.

I used to play Maran heavily before Shokai left, had 4+ Marans over the years including one in right when the cabal first started.

With Shok you'd basically go to his shrine and pray for a *long* time - but eventually your play time would overlap with his and he'd do an interview. And if you messed up, he gave you something to reflect upon and you thought about it for a week and you adjusted your approach and maybe you gained 5 levels and went back to talk to him again.

And then you got in and you had all the powers. I had full maran powers on my elf warrior at level 15 or so (and I was *awful*).

But the point is, you interviewed, you got feedback and then you go in and the powers were really good for a level 20-30 character. The weapons were weightless, prog'd, which is epic at level 23 or so. Zeal is really nice around those levels too. Then of course there's permaflight starting at level 35.

These days, it's rare (not unheard of but rare) to have full Maran powers pre-hero or at least pre-40 (keep in mind that Maran powers are still level gaited, so its not like you have fire immunity at level 20). And you have no idea *why* - maybe Baer doesn't know who you are because your play times don't overlap? Maybe you did something to piss her off? Who knows...guess you just gotta wait and guess, kill some more people and hope it works itself out.

It strikes me as a lot more of a 'punishment' system than an RP device. IE, you did something wrong so now you wait 2 weeks and we'll check back in - course you don't know *what* you did wrong but hey...bad on you for not guessing.

This isn't a bash on Baer, it's just the way this particular mechanic tends to work in practice is a bit painful for the players. I have a really strong preference for a tell (even from 'An Immortal' if need be) that says, "Hey, you messed up, here's what you did wrong, think about how you're going to fix it and get back to me in a week."

>These days, it's rare (not unheard of but rare) to have full
>Maran powers pre-hero or at least pre-40 (keep in mind that
>Maran powers are still level gaited, so its not like you have
>fire immunity at level 20). And you have no idea *why* -
>maybe Baer doesn't know who you are because your play times
>don't overlap? Maybe you did something to piss her off? Who
>knows...guess you just gotta wait and guess, kill some more
>people and hope it works itself out.

I have to agree with the statement that it is difficult to determine your progress in the process towards Maran, or in fact any 'rp' associated goal. I've played two squires, lastnamed, empowered paladins, one virtued, one not in the last year to the tune of ~100+ hours each as a squire. I'm not terrible competent at pk, or at least at landing kills as a paladin but I think successful in cabal wars and received positive feedback from my imms in both cases. My guess with both characters was that unless I could land kills, I wasn't going to make maran. Odd to find out that a character who is succeeding at PK as this player seemingly was is also not making maran.

As I found in my Battlefield thread perhaps the fault lies in my not asking Baer directly for this feedback. But I certainly struggle with how to approach this IC:

How does one humbly ask, Why have I not received a benefit I'm not supposed to consider a guarantee? ie virtues, maran etc.?

Could it be helpful to use the "reputation" stat of the player for their own cabal in showing progress towards a goal like this? As far as I can tell the reputation system isnt used for anything currently.

"As I found in my Battlefield thread perhaps the fault lies in my not asking Baer directly for this feedback. But I certainly struggle with how to approach this IC: "

As far as I know you can't. It's not something that you should do something like "pray OOC: Guys can I get some feedback on why I'm not a Maran yet?"

If you can, that's great but its news to me. In character almost every good-aligned toon is not going to ask for more powers directly without breaking role. You're basically just supposed to guess.

Shokai did not have to deal with the sheer number of maran wannabes that exist now because there were two alternative goodie cabals for the masses: Dawn and Warlock. There were probably as many maran then as there are now - despite the playerbase # changes.

Quality was hugely important to Shok, and he almost didn't create the cabal because he was concerned he could not maintain it. This resulted in longer waiting periods than what exist now, and you did not have the benefit of any cabal powers or cb (notwithstanding the immediate induct experience of your level 15 elf).

So really, I think the issue is that Acolytes have the same waiting period, and more generally that there is not another goodie alternative. If there was a place for the immediate gratification crowd that are just looking for lightforge weapons and zeal to go and get their powers, Maran would not have to change at all (although instead of weapons and zeal they get altruism and succor).

My shaman got in at level 20's or so as well but he was a Shokai follower. If you didn't match up times for an interview you didn't get in, so there were tons of people who just plain never got in. Warlock was epic. It's a shame that went away.

CB and mantle are better than nothing, that's for sure.

It's still a pretty frustrating experience for players though. I guess my point is that it would be less frustrating if you could understand the expectations and remove artificial bottlenecks or at least have feedback to drive you down the correct path faster rather than the "wait and hope" approach. How many times do people delete thinking they've cursed themselves to never be Maran and there's a post like, "Hey, I was going to do it tomorrow!" on their goodbye thread? That sorta thing isn't good for anyone.

I'll add one more thing is that, to me, even 20 hours of *game time* is a huge amount of time. That's half a work week just playing a game. You can explore, practice up skills, etc. but at some point you're going to want to get your powers and move on with your life.

I would be slightly motivated to come back if you're back.

nt

NT

I will say this. Kalgranesh was and still is my most successful PK character (maybe 3 kills). I worked ridiculously hard trying to learn to track and kill people and I only grabbed those kills because they had very reasonable expectations to kill me. Two of them ganged me and they both fell, and the third would have killed me if my flurry had missed.


Just trying to concrete that fact of low PK numbers and my complete lack of being able to do it....

...I've had two Maran.

Here are relative stats:

FIRST MARAN ---

Sat Apr 18 17:21:32 2009 at level 36 (60 hrs):
Inducted into FORTRESS by Sarien.

Tue Apr 21 04:08:27 2009 at level 40 (73 hrs):
Aeinrez advanced to level 40 <PK: 1-6>

Sat Apr 25 07:01:47 2009 at level 51 (91 hrs):
Aeinrez advanced to level 51 <PK: 1-13>

Wed May 20 06:42:13 2009 at level 51 (163 hrs):
Baerinika made Aeinrez a Maran

Total PK Wins 23 (22 at level 51)
Total PK Losses 39


SECOND MARAN ---

Wed Dec 21 15:49:01 2011 at level 34 (52 hrs):
Inducted into FORTRESS by Eachainn.

Sat Jan 14 16:32:55 2012 at level 40 (103 hrs):
Laesron advanced to level 40 <PK: 16-17>

Sat Jan 21 21:07:03 2012 at level 51 (152 hrs):
Laesron advanced to level 51 <PK: 20-20>

Sat Feb 11 09:56:00 2012 at level 51 (247 hrs):
Baerinika made Laesron a Maran <PK: 41-36>

Total PK Wins 54 (34 at level 51)
Total PK Losses 47


There is often no Rhyme or Reason as to why some people get made Maran quick, and some get made Maran slow.

You could have a situation where you are out being Billy Bad-Ass, but it's at 2am West-Coast time so not a single person notices. Just some food for thought.

The squire period is there for a reason. It is to promote actually role-playing your role.
You want the powers? Great. Work for them.

Imms maybe should loosen making people Maran. Maybe. Deserving squires should get Maran in a timely fashion. So what is a timely fashion?
Those who RP their role I think should get this round the 80-150 hour mark depending on how good they RP their role.
How good they are at conveying their role and playing it is what matters.
Those who do not make the effort, maybe longer.

I do think Squires should get a bonus power.
Maybe fire resist from mantle at some level or something. Maybe flight.
Idk. Something would be cool. Maybe give them zeal/that mage spell as a squire?

I quit playing Fortress characters first and foremost because of how mind numbing, simple minded and repetitious my interviews with characters from that cabal have been.

Fortress Characters have also tended to abandon their group mates at the drop of a hat to go get those interviews and then group with the heroes of the cabal to go ranking, leaving the party they had in a lurch. Usually this second group is formed quietly while their previous party waits patiently for them to return.

So I guess I'm highlighting two things I don't like about them. Their penchant for discussing ethics, morality and virtue and their propensity to toss all that out of the window when it suits them.

Edit: I remembered my second point.

I can understand why they do break away from groups so readily. Because getting those recommendations ISN'T easy. It's time consuming and full of telling people what they want to hear/agreeing with them on all points. So if you can get the uber long interview in with a ranking session (As well as some phat loot) who can blame the player?

When I'm in between leaders I think they're very important. Gives me a good idea of who WANTS leadership and who will be good at it. I do also think taking the time to sit and RP about Fort stuff is important, especially for newer players. They learn a lot during these recs that the books in the Hall of Light might not teach very well.

That said, I totally get the other side of it. Serial Fort Player is probably tired of giving their "Why I Want To Be A Maran" speech.

>When I'm in between leaders I think they're very important.
>Gives me a good idea of who WANTS leadership and who will be
>good at it. I do also think taking the time to sit and RP
>about Fort stuff is important, especially for newer players.
>They learn a lot during these recs that the books in the Hall
>of Light might not teach very well.
>
>That said, I totally get the other side of it. Serial Fort
>Player is probably tired of giving their "Why I Want To Be A
>Maran" speech.


Now I'm interested in getting an interview / recc process to find out that info. My past two squires met with Vallinane and Tolgrumm respectively for about 20 minutes a piece and got inducted. In the case of Tolgrumm I think I spent more than half that time actually defending myself rather than speaking.

Guess it's time to get off the sidelines.

Not to steal the thread, but since it's a bit off-topic anyway...

Did you like or dislike my interview approach? As Azidreth I thought it was a little too boring (what's your story, cool, induct). With Tolgrumm I tried instead to eliminate recommendations and instead sit longer and challenge more -- and I think I only turned down one guy.

Suggestions for improvement?

Why is it that imms frown on shifters asking for quest forms but not paladins asking for virtues?

IMHO people shouldn't be rewarded for asking. They should be offered the opportunity if they deserve it, not because they are self promoting.