Wed Feb 11 16:05:12 2015

At 11 o'clock PM, Day of Thunder, 24th of the Month of Nature
on the Theran calendar Ptolo perished, never to return.

.

***Raybaer mod - editing an imms real name out. Maybe I'm scarred too much by past experiences but I cannot imagine any situation where this would be appropriate.***


This is going to be a little long, but feel like given how this ended, I should type some stuff out just for my own therapy. 100+ hours down the tube seriously screws with your morale to come back to the game.

I started the idea of Ptolo by asking Scarab if he'd tolerate another GWB - apparently there was a string of bad attempts from other players and considering I've done GWB more than any other player in the game, figured why not.

I first wanted a felar shaman - they exist in the game and I had an awesome role already written for one. I was told it was "too OP". Next day, a felar paladin shows up which is a whole lot stronger. I then ask for a goblin shaman - figured you can't get any worse on a combo but the RP would be a lot of fun. I'm told it's not possible. In hind sight, long ago I had asked for Danjuh and Lona (the two-headed giant who won the role contest) to be a druid... and I ultimately deleted over not wanting a fire giant shaman because non-imperial low-int shamans are horrendous. I swear that no balance Immortal has played a neo shaman with expensive paths before. Considering how long I've played this game, having a weird combo I wouldn't think would be that much of a stretch but apparently it is.

This started an ooc connection to my character - people knew who I was playing, especially Scarabaeus. It began to get worse.... empowerment on this character was a struggle. With the last six shamans (yes, six), all had two paths and full empowerment well before 100 or even 75 hours. Behmurra was also an extreme since I played during the christmas break so I had full paths and empowerment under like 30 hours. Ptolo took a long time... and even when I did finally get it, I was only granted it to level 30 - where I sat for a long time. Now, I normally can tough it out waiting but this was particularly bad because of the range and the character.

Ptolo was a flightless arial. Some people caught on to it but I was chugging flight potions most of his life. My range was filled with Ychram, who had 9 levels on me, for easily 50+ hours of his life and wanted nothing more than to kill me. The guy put like 400+ hours into a character over 2 weeks... he was seriously on all day and all he wanted was my head. I'm a flightless arial, without a cabal, fighting an ABS anti-paladin with charges and crushing hand wands with only fatigue.... for 50 hours. Putting my #### into a grinder sounded better than logging in for a lot of this character's life and it made me jaded. The Imperial fest was also making me very jaded because a lot of times I'd log in to no one in my range at all or only imperials because no one else wanted to play.

Then comes incident #1. There's some new player on a shaman, who is very clearly a new player. A new player that didn't know how to find his body in very common zones. I had killed him I think once or twice but I eventually gave up because I felt like I was picking on a terrible guy. For a few days, it was only him... so one day I decide eh, let's fight, and we duke it out a bit but he runs off - I wasn't seriously trying. He then asks why, because earlier that day I had grouped with him to try and level - I wasn't empowered but I was bored out of my mind. I told him I did it because I was "bored".

Now on a particularly bad night, both OOC and IC, I pray asking about if there's anything I can do about empowerment. At this point I'm up to 50 hours of being stuck at the same level. The Imm basically tells me there's nothing I can do, that I need to be patient, and I need to stop being OOC about this. That was my fault completely. With that said, I think that empowerment like this is terrible for the game. I'm sorry but I don't particularly enjoy playing a game for a full work week stuck at a level because my times don't match up with my Imm. I haven't had a problem with empowerment in the entire last year but this waiting period in a particularly ####ty time period of Empire Rules CF was getting to me and I broke character complaining. I was nearing 100% in every major skill/supp and there was nothing to do! You can only afk watch so much Netflix before you're wondering why you're playing this game.

Soon after this I get the wrath of Scarabaeus - yelling at me for telling that player I was bored. I tried to compare it to a cat playing with its food but he wasn't having it. No empowerment, big slap down and an interaction where I basically get slapped.... all because I'm playing a game for days and hours on end, with no paths, no empowerment, and stuck in a midrange of hell. You'd think the one ####ing guy who plays against the odds all the time and isn't an Imperial would get some sort of loving but nope.

So I write an email to Scarab trying to explain this - I was pretty angry with the whole ordeal up to this point. I don't think he understood what it was like... and it just seems in general that he doesn't mind level sitting which I absolutely hate. I want to be in the hero range where there is actually something going on. I don't enjoy picking off new players or fighting permas with only fatigue. He never answered but this was another "ooc connection" that he didn't want made.

I finally get empowered I think around hour 70 from 30-35. A whole 5 levels, yehaw. No interaction or discussion but I'm led to the new GWB shrine. I sit at this for awhile, just doing the same boring #### of logging on to try and fight Imperials. I'll post a thread on gameplay about the demon path but Umiron you are flat out of your mind - across all shamans I've played and nearly every but 2 paths, demon path is by far the worst. The next boost of empowerment comes while I'm offline (title change, 5 more levels of empowerment). Still wracking 0 immexp and apparently someone didn't like my role.... I haven't had below 1k immexp for a base role in at least 2 years of characters but I had 500 for this one.

Then we get to today. Still no interaction since my punishment. No discussion, no option to ask questions about all the cool animal cults or anything. Dead silence for at least 2 weeks and 3 weeks since a positive experience. I'm praying in his shrine, which is a muted room, and I'm beginning to wonder if its bugged and he can't hear me. I report a bug almost every week and since this is a new room you would think it could be bugged right? So I pray, ooc: can anyone hear me? Two visible imms... no answer. So I step out and ask a visible Imm "ooc: hey did you hear that prayer a minute ago?" Smited and I get an emote about my ears screaming with basically "shut up and don't go ooc". Thanks Whisdayn. I've talked to Arvam and other Imms before starting with "ooc:" with zero consequence but apparently from Scarabaeus "this drives some Immortals crazy". Good to know, considering I've played this game for decades and I've never known that or ever heard a complaint of that nature.

Soon after, Scarab shows up and says he's done. Ptolo wasn't Ptolo anymore and all the OOC connection of him knowing who I was and my going OOC with an email plus the two prays was too much. Time to cut our losses and move on - a month and 100+ hours down the drain. No immexp, no tattoo/powers, no cabal, only one good interaction and one bad interaction, all for this trainwreck of a character to end like this. I really wanted Ptolo to work and if it had been any other Immortal I probably would have deleted long ago. I've lost count of how many times I end a character to hear "oh man, we had such plans for you!" that I refused to delete despite this being my worst shaman to date. I wanted it to work out, I wanted to be a thorn in the Empire, and I wanted to have fun but wanting wasn't enough. So after a quick convo with Scarab, we decide it's over.

So that's that - probably one of my worst experiences as of late and I'm beginning to wonder if I just need a break from the game for awhile. The current Imperial dominance, the expectations from the staff, empowerment in general, balance of certain classes and many other things just get to me to the point that it's not a positive experience. I think for Ptolo I spent more time with Netflix open than any character in a long time - and that's saying something considering I spammed most crap on Behmurra, a fire giant, to perfection.

I'm going to write up a post on gameplay about shamans - think it's time for a public discussion about paths in general, not just the completely fubbar'd demon path. I've had more neo shamans than I think anyone else at this point but hey what does my opinion matter? I only called trapper thieves, archers, and a ton of other broken classes months before anything else was done

Anyways, Ptolo is out. If you enjoyed our interactions, cheers. I think the most was with the leaders of the Temple (ironically asking me why I wasn't in the Temple) or leaders of the Tree (who were asking the same things). I didn't have many friends and the list of people I hated was growing... Azwail, Sindrir, Forven, Ychram... I could be missing someone but yeah, I hated you all. Partially for how completely inept this class/combo was at fighting you guys but meh.

Probably time for a break - you know when you start looking to work on a dead coding project like CarrionDashboard to waste time, that you should consider trying something else.

Peace,
Torak

FWIW I thought you were rocking the mid ranks. Poor old Qedkub!

From what I saw Ptolo was kicking ass and taking names.

I would probably recommend taking a break too. Sounds like you are burning out.

Also sounds like Empowerment isn't your style.. Can only recommend trying something where you are in control of all of the factors if you do get the urge to play again.

Not going to comment on the rest because, firstly, it isn't my place to and secondly I really think you take a lot of stuff for granted.

PS: I have no doubt you are a good player, I have no doubt you are fun to be around in game, but you're also beginning to inflict your frustrations on the staff, and that isn't healthy for either party.

Take a deep breath and if the game is getting you this bent out of shape it just isn't worth it.

Also sounds like Empowerment isn't your style.. Can only recommend trying something where you are in control of all of the factors if you do get the urge to play again.


Did you miss the part where he said he just played 6 that's SIX shamans in a row? So you're going to tell him "Empowerment" isn't his style?

An immortal ignoring you for 70 hours is a pretty solid gripe. I understand it might hurt someone's feeling, but I feel that immortals have a responsibility to tell pc's that they have zero interest/intent or empowering that they are wasting their time.

It's just stupid he wasted 70 hours for from my end was an imm who really didn't want to empower Torak and in the end gave him a pity empowerment to shut him up.

A scarabite of any flavour needs to be mentally tough and if that means sucking up a lack of attention or ranking past your empowerment level then so be it

Your supps still rise in level and cost less and your mana goes up. It's not like shaman is unable to fight if only empowered to 30.

To see complaints about a lack of tattoo etc just makes me sigh. I've gone far longer than this and it hasn't ruined my experience. Because I haven't let it. Torak, I get that empire is a bit stupid right now but are you expecting to be juiced to the point you can face down 6 imperials alone?

Also I'd note that leaders asking why you aren't in the temple isn't them saying you should be, necessarily. It could just be them looking to understand your character. If they thought you should be they'd have inducted you, wouldn't they?

It's not saying you shouldn't be either. It's just a question that could mean many things.

I wasn't looking to face down 6 imperials - I was looking to fight one or two of them. The only ones I gave any trouble to where complete newbies like Qedkub. The path/combo was just bad - add in skilled people in a perma, with god gear, and it gets pretty disgusting.

Actually I had two of them want to induct me - early on I had pledged so they both thought I wanted in. I had to to tell them no because Sacer told me no. I said "if it happens, it's up to him" - they just kept asking about it.

And thank you, snarky anonymous player.

I read it twice over. It's pretty simple really:

Torak picked an unusual role, and applied to an Immortal who is on the wizlist stating: "Outstanding candidates note me."

The implication of that statement is two-fold:
- I am quite busy, please send me a note.
- I am not easily impressed, it may take extra work to get some empowerment.

If Torak is unhappy that he didn't achieve what he wanted and has severe misgivings about the empowerment system, the most simple answer is to not play empowerment.

He knew the risks of empowerment. He knew that Scarab is a busy guy and is not a particularly easy Empowerer. He doesn't get to delete and throw someone under the bus and act like a victim after the fact.

>***Raybaer mod - editing an imms real name out. Maybe I'm
>scarred too much by past experiences but I cannot imagine any
>situation where this would be appropriate.***
>
>
>This is going to be a little long, but feel like given how
>this ended, I should type some stuff out just for my own
>therapy. 100+ hours down the tube seriously screws with your
>morale to come back to the game.

I can understand that.

>I started the idea of Ptolo by asking Scarab if he'd tolerate
>another GWB - apparently there was a string of bad attempts
>from other players and considering I've done GWB more than any
>other player in the game, figured why not.
>
>I first wanted a felar shaman - they exist in the game and I
>had an awesome role already written for one. I was told it was
>"too OP". Next day, a felar paladin shows up which is a whole
>lot stronger. I then ask for a goblin shaman - figured you
>can't get any worse on a combo but the RP would be a lot of
>fun. I'm told it's not possible. In hind sight, long ago I had
>asked for Danjuh and Lona (the two-headed giant who won the
>role contest) to be a druid... and I ultimately deleted over
>not wanting a fire giant shaman because non-imperial low-int
>shamans are horrendous. I swear that no balance Immortal has
>played a neo shaman with expensive paths before. Considering
>how long I've played this game, having a weird combo I
>wouldn't think would be that much of a stretch but apparently
>it is.

I can't speak to why you were turned down. You are correct in as much as that I have not played a shaman since the revamp, though you obviously know how I felt about some of your concerns / suggestions (more below).

>This started an ooc connection to my character - people knew
>who I was playing, especially Scarabaeus. It began to get
>worse.... empowerment on this character was a struggle. With
>the last six shamans (yes, six), all had two paths and full
>empowerment well before 100 or even 75 hours. Behmurra was
>also an extreme since I played during the christmas break so I
>had full paths and empowerment under like 30 hours. Ptolo took
>a long time... and even when I did finally get it, I was only
>granted it to level 30 - where I sat for a long time. Now, I
>normally can tough it out waiting but this was particularly
>bad because of the range and the character.

Obviously if you email Scarabaeus and ask to play a GWB follower then he's going to know it's you and I think it goes without saying that by going about things that way you put both parties in an unusual situation.

>Ptolo was a flightless arial. Some people caught on to it but
>I was chugging flight potions most of his life. My range was
>filled with Ychram, who had 9 levels on me, for easily 50+
>hours of his life and wanted nothing more than to kill me. The
>guy put like 400+ hours into a character over 2 weeks... he
>was seriously on all day and all he wanted was my head. I'm a
>flightless arial, without a cabal, fighting an ABS
>anti-paladin with charges and crushing hand wands with only
>fatigue.... for 50 hours. Putting my #### into a grinder
>sounded better than logging in for a lot of this character's
>life and it made me jaded. The Imperial fest was also making
>me very jaded because a lot of times I'd log in to no one in
>my range at all or only imperials because no one else wanted
>to play.

It sounds like you made life harder on yourself than you had to, at which point I think you lose the right to complain about how hard life was.

>Then comes incident #1. There's some new player on a shaman,
>who is very clearly a new player. A new player that didn't
>know how to find his body in very common zones. I had killed
>him I think once or twice but I eventually gave up because I
>felt like I was picking on a terrible guy. For a few days, it
>was only him... so one day I decide eh, let's fight, and we
>duke it out a bit but he runs off - I wasn't seriously trying.
>He then asks why, because earlier that day I had grouped with
>him to try and level - I wasn't empowered but I was bored out
>of my mind. I told him I did it because I was "bored".

I don't know enough about this thing to comment.

>Now on a particularly bad night, both OOC and IC, I pray
>asking about if there's anything I can do about empowerment.
>At this point I'm up to 50 hours of being stuck at the same
>level. The Imm basically tells me there's nothing I can do,
>that I need to be patient, and I need to stop being OOC about
>this. That was my fault completely. With that said, I think
>that empowerment like this is terrible for the game. I'm sorry
>but I don't particularly enjoy playing a game for a full work
>week stuck at a level because my times don't match up with my
>Imm. I haven't had a problem with empowerment in the entire
>last year but this waiting period in a particularly ####ty
>time period of Empire Rules CF was getting to me and I broke
>character complaining. I was nearing 100% in every major
>skill/supp and there was nothing to do! You can only afk watch
>so much Netflix before you're wondering why you're playing
>this game.

For what it's worth, you did pick an immortal whose wizlist information does indicate limited availability. If you want to pile on a ton of hours and go go go without having to rely on other people then stay away from empowerment.

>Soon after this I get the wrath of Scarabaeus - yelling at me
>for telling that player I was bored. I tried to compare it to
>a cat playing with its food but he wasn't having it. No
>empowerment, big slap down and an interaction where I
>basically get slapped.... all because I'm playing a game for
>days and hours on end, with no paths, no empowerment, and
>stuck in a midrange of hell. You'd think the one ####ing guy
>who plays against the odds all the time and isn't an Imperial
>would get some sort of loving but nope.

You don't get empowerment or shaman paths for logging a lot of hours or mixing it up in PK. You get it for doing the religion right, and are often throttled by your immortal's availability/schedule.

>So I write an email to Scarab trying to explain this - I was
>pretty angry with the whole ordeal up to this point. I don't
>think he understood what it was like... and it just seems in
>general that he doesn't mind level sitting which I absolutely
>hate. I want to be in the hero range where there is actually
>something going on. I don't enjoy picking off new players or
>fighting permas with only fatigue. He never answered but this
>was another "ooc connection" that he didn't want made.

I think that's fair.

>I finally get empowered I think around hour 70 from 30-35. A
>whole 5 levels, yehaw. No interaction or discussion but I'm
>led to the new GWB shrine. I sit at this for awhile, just
>doing the same boring #### of logging on to try and fight
>Imperials. I'll post a thread on gameplay about the demon path
>but Umiron you are flat out of your mind - across all shamans
>I've played and nearly every but 2 paths, demon path is by far
>the worst. The next boost of empowerment comes while I'm
>offline (title change, 5 more levels of empowerment). Still
>wracking 0 immexp and apparently someone didn't like my
>role.... I haven't had below 1k immexp for a base role in at
>least 2 years of characters but I had 500 for this one.

When it comes to specialization (in general, not warriors) there will always be specs that might objectively be better or worse, especially situationally, and certainly ones that are preferred over others by one person and not another. I'm not ready to say that Demonspawn is the bee's knees or that it's not, but I did disagree with some of your feedback. This is why it's better to take this stuff to the forums (either anonymously or posthumously) or at the very least email all the immortals instead of just a couple, just in case that one or two disagree with you.

I didn't read your role so I won't comment.

>Then we get to today. Still no interaction since my
>punishment. No discussion, no option to ask questions about
>all the cool animal cults or anything. Dead silence for at
>least 2 weeks and 3 weeks since a positive experience. I'm
>praying in his shrine, which is a muted room, and I'm
>beginning to wonder if its bugged and he can't hear me. I
>report a bug almost every week and since this is a new room
>you would think it could be bugged right? So I pray, ooc: can
>anyone hear me? Two visible imms... no answer. So I step out
>and ask a visible Imm "ooc: hey did you hear that prayer a
>minute ago?" Smited and I get an emote about my ears screaming
>with basically "shut up and don't go ooc". Thanks Whisdayn.
>I've talked to Arvam and other Imms before starting with
>"ooc:" with zero consequence but apparently from Scarabaeus
>"this drives some Immortals crazy". Good to know, considering
>I've played this game for decades and I've never known that or
>ever heard a complaint of that nature.

I know you've heard it plenty today already, but addressing a visible immortal OOC is no good, regardless of whether people tolerated it in the past. If a pray does not work and you think there's a bug then use the bug board. An aside for anyone who is curious: there is basically no reason at all that a pray would ever not go through save for us having taken some obvious punitive action against you.

Again, despite your past experiences I'll just point out that the expectation is clearly spelled out in HELP OOC.

>Soon after, Scarab shows up and says he's done. Ptolo wasn't
>Ptolo anymore and all the OOC connection of him knowing who I
>was and my going OOC with an email plus the two prays was too
>much. Time to cut our losses and move on - a month and 100+
>hours down the drain. No immexp, no tattoo/powers, no cabal,
>only one good interaction and one bad interaction, all for
>this trainwreck of a character to end like this. I really
>wanted Ptolo to work and if it had been any other Immortal I
>probably would have deleted long ago. I've lost count of how
>many times I end a character to hear "oh man, we had such
>plans for you!" that I refused to delete despite this being my
>worst shaman to date. I wanted it to work out, I wanted to be
>a thorn in the Empire, and I wanted to have fun but wanting
>wasn't enough. So after a quick convo with Scarab, we decide
>it's over.

That is unfortunate. Nobody gets any satisfaction out of this or when a character attempt goes bad, especially when the players (immortals included) involved are obviously well-intentioned. You put time and effort into Ptolo, and so did Scarabaeus, and that should be acknowledged.

>So that's that - probably one of my worst experiences as of
>late and I'm beginning to wonder if I just need a break from
>the game for awhile. The current Imperial dominance, the
>expectations from the staff, empowerment in general, balance
>of certain classes and many other things just get to me to the
>point that it's not a positive experience. I think for Ptolo I
>spent more time with Netflix open than any character in a long
>time - and that's saying something considering I spammed most
>crap on Behmurra, a fire giant, to perfection.

My advice would be to take a breath, consider what you've learned and then adjust accordingly. Perhaps it would be a good idea to play something that doesn't rely on other people (i.e., no empowerment) since the waiting seemed like a pain point. Likewise, consider trying to fly under the radar a bit more, so no "custom builds".

>I'm going to write up a post on gameplay about shamans - think
>it's time for a public discussion about paths in general, not
>just the completely fubbar'd demon path. I've had more neo
>shamans than I think anyone else at this point but hey what
>does my opinion matter? I only called trapper thieves,
>archers, and a ton of other broken classes months before
>anything else was done

Go for it.

>Anyways, Ptolo is out. If you enjoyed our interactions,
>cheers. I think the most was with the leaders of the Temple
> ironically asking me why I wasn't in the Temple) or leaders
>of the Tree (who were asking the same things). I didn't have
>many friends and the list of people I hated was growing...
>Azwail, Sindrir, Forven, Ychram... I could be missing someone
>but yeah, I hated you all. Partially for how completely inept
>this class/combo was at fighting you guys but meh.
>
>Probably time for a break - you know when you start looking to
>work on a dead coding project like CarrionDashboard to waste
>time, that you should consider trying something else.

If a break is what it takes, take a break.

>Peace,
>Torak

EDIT: spelling.

Alright


>Obviously if you email Scarabaeus and ask to play a GWB
>follower then he's going to know it's you and I think it goes
>without saying that by going about things that way you put
>both parties in an unusual situation.

I emailed him because his helpfile clearly states it is closed. I've been burned by trying something that no one wanted to deal with before, it's a waste of time for everyone. He said he was fine with it.

>For what it's worth, you did pick an immortal whose wizlist
>information does indicate limited availability. If you want
>to pile on a ton of hours and go go go without having to rely
>on other people then stay away from empowerment.

See, I didn't see it that way - I saw it as someone who wanted only solid people to follow him, which I've done several times. If it would be limited, he would say it like other people have. Although I did ask via two separate notes and email to find a time to meet and was never answered.

>You don't get empowerment or shaman paths for logging a lot of
>hours or mixing it up in PK. You get it for doing the
>religion right, and are often throttled by your immortal's
>availability/schedule.

This is completely different based on the Imm. Some imms give you basically free empowerment and paths after a quick chat, so you can go out and show what you're made of. Then they check in to see how things are going. I'd say out of my last six shamans, four were like this. Hell, two of them I got full empowerment and 2 paths on our first meeting. Some immortals just want to make life hell and others know that people want to enjoy the game and let them go at their own pace.

>When it comes to specialization (in general, not warriors)
>there will always be specs that might objectively be better or
>worse, especially situationally, and certainly ones that are
>preferred over others by one person and not another. I'm not
>ready to say that Demonspawn is the bee's knees or that it's
>not, but I did disagree with some of your feedback. This is
>why it's better to take this stuff to the forums (either
>anonymously or posthumously) or at the very least email all
>the immortals instead of just a couple, just in case that one
>or two disagree with you.

I'll be posting more about shaman balance so I'll deal that then. I sent it to you and Daevryn because you're coders, you usually balance stuff, and generally are the most vocal. Every single time I've sent an email to all immortals I've gotten zero response. I just sent one recently about how an Imm basically chewed a newbie out and the CarrionDashboard project and... nothing.

>I didn't read your role so I won't comment.

If you did happen to read it, I put a pretty decent effort into it. I even used the ARIAL CULTURE helpfile to help build a backstory... then kind of did a V for Vendetta "locked in an unlocked cage" story. I thought it was a great job, it had nice points.... whoever read it for that many points is heartless

>I know you've heard it plenty today already, but addressing a
>visible immortal OOC is no good, regardless of whether people
>tolerated it in the past. If a pray does not work and you
>think there's a bug then use the bug board. An aside for
>anyone who is curious: there is basically no reason at all
>that a pray would ever not go through save for us having taken
>some obvious punitive action against you.

You can say it would never be buggy but there's been plenty of times things like this that shouldn't break, break. For example, I still haven't improved once with Demonic Summons despite you saying it was broken and that you fixed it. Skill improving is pretty high up there with "it should always work".

>My advice would be to take a breath, consider what you've
>learned and then adjust accordingly. Perhaps it would be a
>good idea to play something that doesn't rely on other people
> i.e., no empowerment) since the waiting seemed like a pain
>point. Likewise, consider trying to fly under the radar a bit
>more, so no "custom builds".

I've had six shamans in a row, and it hasn't been a problem yet. It just seems there's always the jackpot case I land where this happens. Every other immortal was stand-up and made it quite painless. I still think the system is flawed... it takes the variance of how often people give immexp, adds in how often an Imm is online or wants to interact, and multiples it to affect every single outcome of your character and not just bonus exp. I couldn't think of a worse way to gate players than by allowing such variance of how to handle empowerment (full versus 5 level steps) and path handout.

Dude, seriously, how many times are you going to go through this?

I feel like we could take a post of yours from 2001, 2008, 2015 and all of them would have the same things...

"I emailed Scar, he knew I was playing the char, I didn't get as much Love as I would have liked, I didn't realize email/praying was bad, etc".

FWIW I like you as a player but holy SSDD dude.

I'm reading the goodbye, thinking, "There sure are so many recurring themes here -- but there's really no way for me to point it out without sparking an argument that exceeds my level of interest."

As a general comment for anyone: You want to try some kind of challenge character? Maybe pick a combo no one plays and make it seem overpowered, get into a cabal that kind of character shouldn't be able to get into, run with a rare religion or absentee imm, play a character whose religion or RP is absolutely guaranteed to clash with the leadership of his cabal, etc.? Honestly, I think that's awesome. I wish more people would do it more often.

But nobody wants to hear anyone complain that they couldn't dominate the mud with one hand tied behind your back because having a hand tied behind your back isn't that fun, or that somebody kicked you out of your cabal when you basically forced their hand, or whatever. If you want to play on hard mode, play on hard mode, but don't complain that it's hard. There's only really one person you can blame for it.

to demonstrate a recurring theme here, but it wouldn't help the situation any.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but given what I have seen, I would be quite happy if Torak never attempted to play any religion that I ran. I'd rather not get thrown to the wolves on a deletion thread after having had to deal with a fair amount of in and out of game heckling.

It is a case of a player's expectations being so high that nothing really is going to avoid said game admin being confronted with a losing situation. Despite this, it isn't fair to pick and choose who can and cannot be empowered, and each new character that people play should have a clean slate. Thus I expect, perhaps even against my better judgment, he will be an empoweree if I ever get that far in the process.

Like I said above, and like you stated here, I like Torak as a player. It's a shame that there the positive influence he brings to bear on other players in game isn't reflected in all aspects of his game.

Your attitude throughout this is streaming through each one of your posts on this. Don't worry, I wouldn't follow you with that attitude.

There was no "in and out game" heckling - you've no idea what I told Sacer in that one email. All I did was try to explain why I acted the way I did because I wasn't allowed to do it IC... and it's kinda hard as a Beast player to say "Hey, I have NO ONE in my range almost all the time I play so I got bored and attacked a guy even though he's such a newbie he can't find his corpse in Darsylon". I was also trying to voice frustration at not hearing anything, from asking a time to meet through 3 notes and an email, to being stuck at a level for 50 ####ing hours. Go play Mario Bros level 1 for 50 hours and explain to me how its fun. I only deleted because Sacer asked me to.

There's a huge difference between wanting any interaction at all, to feeling that someone should get some notice. Do I need to mention people like Marintok who have toughed it out in Nexus, the completely forgotten cabal, always played against the odds against the Imperial #### or outnumbered and alone always, and received pretty much zip? Sometimes things happen that go unnoticed.

> The implication of that statement is two-fold:
> - I am quite busy, please send me a note.
> - I am not easily impressed, it may take extra work to get some empowerment.

Actually I've been empowered by Sacer... several times. Probably more than any other Immortal in the game. I've also had more GWB players than anyone else in the entire game, so it's not like I'm a complete ####ing newbie. I also read his wizlist entry as "Only the elite should bother" not "I'm busy".

I've played several shamans in a row with zero issues. I'm voicing my issue with this time, that got severely screwed both by IC issues with the current playerbase and OOC issues of my frustration growing over several different fronts.

Having immortals screaming in my ears and smiting me for asking if they heard prayer in a buggy ####ing game is NOT what drives people to come back. Maybe you guys should take lessons in how to actually deal with the playerbase instead of just get them to this point like the newbie channel trainwreck that happened recently.

Lzzo: I am trying to get on the dikuclan cf wiki but I cant seem to get my email approved, is it still active?
Ptolo: It is, you can't get an email approved for the forums?
A helpful mortal: Yes.
Ptolo: Send an email to mirotrem@gmail.com
An Immortal: Sorry, but this isn't a support channel for Dioxide's. If his registration system is cumbersome you'll have to deal with it somewhere else.
Ptolo: He's the site admin
Lzzo: I am sorry Imm. I am just trying to find more resources to learn this game


Guess that new player infusion is gonna just get shut out. Keep just driving folks away....

I'm too exhausted to bother arguing and it would reflect poorly on the staff. I should not have bothered posting in the first place.

Feel free to vent, or say whatever you want about me, or anyone else below here.. you can have the last word. I'm done.

thanks for being a fair posted, you and Umiron have been great on the forums (and others too)

>thanks for being a fair posted, you and Umiron have been
>great on the forums (and others too)

I have to agree with you on this. I have a huge man-crush with Mendos, I would definitely Torak him till he blocked/banned me. I love what he is doing to get more players in the game. So to him....get your butt on gear with that area, man. I am really rooting for you to get high in immland.

And I think Umi did a very cool thing with Santaumi, although I do sense a bit of acid on his responses from time to time I really appreciate what he does for the game. Same with Val.

Then again, when someone does something for the game it just makes me happy. So I also thank Torak for what he does in tools/organizing info,etc.

-Jae

I basically told him where to regear, where to find preps, and told him about areas he might want to rank in.

Sadly, he still died a terrible mob death, but I led him back to his corpse.

Of all the things you had an issue with, the newbie one is the situation you are the most "in the right" in.

Forget empowerment. It doesn't work that way. People fall through the cracks all the time. It's not meant to catch everyone. Admins leave, people play in off times, or are ignored for a variety of reasons, etc.

It's a system with some pretty big shortcomings. The admins have tried to shore up some of the weaknesses, such as by posting their times online (which is great), but overall a lot is left to be desired.

I'd say if you're unprepared to put hundreds of hours into the process of getting empowered (I know I don't want to), then you should stay away from empowerment classes.


Hutto

Hundreds of hours to get empowered?

What the hell kind of life do you live where you have that kinda time I had 100 hours in over a month and I had met the guy once. How masochistic are people to think that "well unless you're willing to get raped by a spiked dildo, don't play that class". I came from playing anti-paladins, I can take my beating but hundreds of hours? Seriously?

I've had six shamans in a row, none were this bad or even close.

Oh, I don't have that much time, which is why I rarely play empowerment characters. I had a paladin who prayed to an Imm who had quit playing, and never got any feedback at all. This has happened more for my characters following an Imm than the opposite. I think I have managed to get two characters empowered to hero, ever.

I would say the majority that follow the posted schedules and RP will get empowered. But there are still a lot that don't. Just because you get easily empowered several times in a row doesn't mean the system is without flaws (as witnessed here).

But you might have more info about who is active than what is posted in the game.

Hutto

Seems like your previous empowerment has been rather easy, so maybe your notes, emailing, ooc prays, and pushiness pays off But not always.

You definitely have more luck in general than me.

You were the only one in my range too you know. As much as it was kind of bitchy for you to sac my best attempt at a comeback weapon following an auto disarm, and as much as I was going to sac your weapon if I got the chance, that's not even proportionate retribution, I frankly didn't care all that much about killing you.

Our encounters were so predictable. I hit your guild guard, you recall , I find you, you log out. Good way to waste five minutes streamlining my range for when people willing to take risks showed up. You'd have needed to be aggressive to be a threat but you were liable to steal kills on the weak.

And yeah, I was a 300 hour anathema taking on all comers, you were a 100 hour scarab wannabe who conspicuously avoided difficult fights. Why would you get love if I wasn't?

PS 300 hours in five weeks is a ton but it's not 400 hours in two weeks. I barely play during peak times.

You were outmatched. The best way to play it was accept that you were going to die at some point and give it your best shot, then go about your day. I'm not a multi killer. Instead you preferred to go with autodisarm/sac/always log out/except if you know there's an imm watching. Had you played like that all the time instead of focusing on power gamey pettiness I've no doubt you'd have got better results.

I was not an "ABS antipaladin with charges". I never fought you with barrier up ( in 300 hours I never found my black rod ), not once, and aura/shield only when I had more on my plate than you. Also, after you sac'd what was supposed to be the comeback weapon I never reached six charges again, which as you know is itself not nearly enough to make a difference.

You were horribly outmatched by a higher level A-P but it was a mostly wandless A-P in mostly regear who had no charges (you in particular know that because you made sure of it). That happened, some characters will outmatch you. Make peace with it.

I'm only going to comment on a few things here:

>I first wanted a felar shaman - they exist in the game and I
>had an awesome role already written for one. I was told it was
>"too OP". Next day, a felar paladin shows up which is a whole
>lot stronger. I then ask for a goblin shaman - figured you
>can't get any worse on a combo but the RP would be a lot of
>fun. I'm told it's not possible. In hind sight, long ago I had
>asked for Danjuh and Lona (the two-headed giant who won the
>role contest) to be a druid... and I ultimately deleted over
>not wanting a fire giant shaman because non-imperial low-int
>shamans are horrendous. I swear that no balance Immortal has
>played a neo shaman with expensive paths before. Considering
>how long I've played this game, having a weird combo I
>wouldn't think would be that much of a stretch but apparently
>it is.

Not sure what you mean by "no balance Immortal..." I have nothing to do with the game balance side of things, but I did do okay with a minotaur scarab shaman. I consider myself to be slightly better than average in midranks and wayyyy below average at hero.

>This started an ooc connection to my character - people knew
>who I was playing, especially Scarabaeus. It began to get
>worse.... empowerment on this character was a struggle. With
>the last six shamans (yes, six), all had two paths and full
>empowerment well before 100 or even 75 hours. Behmurra was
>also an extreme since I played during the christmas break so I
>had full paths and empowerment under like 30 hours. Ptolo took
>a long time... and even when I did finally get it, I was only
>granted it to level 30 - where I sat for a long time. Now, I
>normally can tough it out waiting but this was particularly
>bad because of the range and the character.

Your experience with immortals varies with the times they are available. I considered myself lucky to have a speedy empowerment and both paths set by Scarabaeus rather quickly. Sometimes, that's not the case.

Shaman class is in its prime in that area. I don't think your range was especially bad. You had a fair share of targets.

>Ptolo was a flightless arial. Some people caught on to it but
>I was chugging flight potions most of his life. My range was
>filled with Ychram, who had 9 levels on me, for easily 50+
>hours of his life and wanted nothing more than to kill me. The
>guy put like 400+ hours into a character over 2 weeks... he
>was seriously on all day and all he wanted was my head. I'm a
>flightless arial, without a cabal, fighting an ABS
>anti-paladin with charges and crushing hand wands with only
>fatigue.... for 50 hours. Putting my #### into a grinder
>sounded better than logging in for a lot of this character's
>life and it made me jaded. The Imperial fest was also making
>me very jaded because a lot of times I'd log in to no one in
>my range at all or only imperials because no one else wanted
>to play.

I know it's not the answer people want to hear, but some enemies are just tougher than others. If you couldn't beat Ychram then, avoid him until the situation is right when you can. I know, I know, easier said than done. Plus, there is something emasculating about playing a priest of the most evil God in the pantheon and then hiding from someone. I get that.

>Soon after, Scarab shows up and says he's done. Ptolo wasn't
>Ptolo anymore and all the OOC connection of him knowing who I
>was and my going OOC with an email plus the two prays was too
>much. Time to cut our losses and move on - a month and 100+
>hours down the drain. No immexp, no tattoo/powers, no cabal,
>only one good interaction and one bad interaction, all for
>this trainwreck of a character to end like this. I really
>wanted Ptolo to work and if it had been any other Immortal I
>probably would have deleted long ago. I've lost count of how
>many times I end a character to hear "oh man, we had such
>plans for you!" that I refused to delete despite this being my
>worst shaman to date. I wanted it to work out, I wanted to be
>a thorn in the Empire, and I wanted to have fun but wanting
>wasn't enough. So after a quick convo with Scarab, we decide
>it's over.

In my opinion, the LAST thing I want to know is who is playing a character. Once I can relate a character to a forum handle, my willingness to interact with the character drops. I agree with Scarab that I typically do not want to have OOC conversations with players about their characters.*

>I'm going to write up a post on gameplay about shamans - think
>it's time for a public discussion about paths in general, not
>just the completely fubbar'd demon path. I've had more neo
>shamans than I think anyone else at this point but hey what
>does my opinion matter? I only called trapper thieves,
>archers, and a ton of other broken classes months before
>anything else was done

I liked the demon path. :-P

>Anyways, Ptolo is out. If you enjoyed our interactions,
>cheers. I think the most was with the leaders of the Temple
> ironically asking me why I wasn't in the Temple) or leaders
>of the Tree (who were asking the same things). I didn't have
>many friends and the list of people I hated was growing...
>Azwail, Sindrir, Forven, Ychram... I could be missing someone
>but yeah, I hated you all. Partially for how completely inept
>this class/combo was at fighting you guys but meh.
>
>Probably time for a break - you know when you start looking to
>work on a dead coding project like CarrionDashboard to waste
>time, that you should consider trying something else.
>
>Peace,
>Torak

I hope you come back with a great character. Good luck on your next.

What does this acronym stand for?

Gr

Great wild beast was it? It was dead and gone because the vast majority of folks couldn't do it.

Personal opinion and observation is Sacer wants you to have a philosophical education to understand his religions. But that is hearsay and speculative on my part, because I'm always outside looking in.

"Still wracking 0 immexp and apparently someone didn't like my role.... I haven't had below 1k immexp for a base role in at least 2 years of characters but I had 500 for this one."

I was the one to rate your role. It wasn't that it was poorly written but more that you didn't really explain much about your character. You somewhat covered state of mind (which is probably what you were worried about with GWB) but never really explained class/alignment/sphere. This was not an imm slight, this was your role just not explaining your whole character. (It happens to the rest of us too, I've gotten 500 before when I typically get 1000-1500)

"Considering how long I've played this game, having a weird combo I wouldn't think would be that much of a stretch but apparently it is."
"With the last six shamans (yes, six), all had two paths and full empowerment well before 100 or even 75 hours. Behmurra was also an extreme since I played during the christmas break so I had full paths and empowerment under like 30 hours."
"Time to cut our losses and move on - a month and 100+ hours down the drain. No immexp, no tattoo/powers, no cabal, only one good interaction and one bad interaction, all for this trainwreck of a character to end like this."

Read the first statement then these three statements pulled out of your post, take a step back, and see if you can hear the self-entitlement in them. Your current character has nothing to do with any of your past characters or rewards.

I was cheering for you, I was in fact the imm you were speaking to when you prayed about empowerment. You did not listen to my biggest piece of advice, stop going OOC (through prays, tells, or emails) about empowerment and address it all IC.

I won't be doing a back and forth argument with you on any of this, so I can only hope some of this information was useful.

Seriously, define GWB or stop tossing it around

GWB = Great Wild Beast

Read help 881

I appreciate it

I don't think how much you you appreciate "It" matters here because this is a discussion related to Carrion Fields, not fictional literature.

GWB = Great Wild Beast

Read help 881

Contacting me OOC about current or future characters--apart from allegations of cheating or the like--is simply a bad idea. I understand why you wanted to see if a GWB follower was possible, but there are 17 back and forth emails* in my mailbox regarding this character--that's more contact than I've had with the rest of the playerbase in the last 15 years. It's a path I don't want to go down, which is why my wizlist entry requests notes. (Additionally, this is one more reason I'm not the go-to guy for requesting odd race/class combos.)

I think the OOC contact that started the process ended up sideswiping the IC experience. You played Ptolo like empowerment, etc. was merely a formality. I played an Immortal who had no such supposition.



* The conversation about this character started mid-August and my reply to your initial inquiry was: "I'm around, though I can't always be interactive. My schedule is just highly unpredictable right now."

I had several emails that had nothing to do with the character and all but four were prior to the character even being created.

1) Two Behmurra issues with frost giants, including the flaming crown, the class you wrote
2) Two asking if Aspect of the Devil and Aspect of the Demon can combine, since they are your paths
3) Three emails about trying to find out a good time to meet, which you never answered
4) The majority were actually around the felar/goblin shaman questions
5) One asking if you actually got an email, considering the email system fails a ton.
6) Lots of "Thanks for the reply - I'll figure something out then" one-liners.

There'a literally one email about Ptolo directly IC issue which I wrote about and 3 emails asking for times to meet. Nothing else was about Ptolo or even during the time I played the character. This conversation began in August, and all but those 4 were before I even made the character.

Come on man, don't throw out a number and be unfair about it. You make it sound like I'm a stalker.

...but do you really want to have this conversation in a public forum?

Ba dum bump?

n/t