The Clan Lord Sentinel

Eldon wrote:

Skirwan wrote:(The Clan Lord GMs stand around a table in a dimly lit room. Cigarette smoke swirls in the air above.

Very helpful post. There go the NPCs with your name.

I've tried being helpful; it rarely gets me anywhere. I'm really more about being entertaining right now.

You've (plural 'you') decided to add an oft-request feature in such a fashion that only a vanishingly small portion of the player base will even have the oppurtunity to use it, and with such costs and limitations that very few of those lucky people will ever elect to pursue this new ability.

Asserting that this is a game balance issue is specious, as far superior functionality is already available via out-of-game means and is in widespread use. Promoting an in-game alternative that is strictly inferior to the out-of-game system in every single way will do nothing but drive more people to AIM/ICQ/MSN.

The only logically consistent explanation for this decision that I have heard anywhere is that you're just screwing with us and as of yet there has been no substantive rebuttal from your side of the table.

What are we supposed to think?

Eldon wrote:

Kerrah wrote:I don't see why. From what I have heard, GMs typically frown on people using ICQ or other avenues to communicate, and having restrictions on the sunstones just frustrates people and encourages them to use OOC methods to communicate. Okay, *maybe* I can see merit in requiring people to train some Mentus to shorten the cool-down time between sunstone messages, but I don't see why Mystics should be the only ones to have the capability of messaging more than 5 people at once. And if it does cost ranks, I don't think that having to train 30 ranks just to get one extra sungem group slot is worthwhile. Making someone train a month (since a lot of people only get 1 rank a day) for something that should be a helpful communication device really sucks.

Because that's what they're supposed to be all about?

I'd like to implement them as a relay system. They create a group of X individuals. You SS to them, perhaps with a keyword in the sunstone or perhaps only with a sungem, and they relay to all of the individuals.

There are many variations on this, but the idea is to put them as the hub of the communications, thereby allowing them to have some value-add in a hunt.

I find it somewhat disingenious for some players to ask/demand that Mystics get more useful skills then bawk when it actually might interfere with their getting the same skills. This isn't necessarily directed to you, of course. I don't remember your views on Mystic skills.

Was the smiley face at the end to tell us your joking on this whole post? Mystics are doorman and not PA systems..... Mike will be pleased.
-Sielk

Eldon wrote:I'd like to implement them as a relay system. They create a group of X individuals. You SS to them, perhaps with a keyword in the sunstone or perhaps only with a sungem, and they relay to all of the individuals.

People could use sungems in a relay fashion already: 1->5->25. Unless the group exceeds 25, having a mystic is not much better: 1->mystic->25. In either case, the relay causes delay in the flow of information in a real-time situtation, undoing one of the advantages of a sungem.

Eldon wrote: I find it somewhat disingenious for some players to ask/demand that Mystics get more useful skills then bawk when it actually might interfere with their getting the same skills.

You're assuming that the skill in question, sunstoning messages to a large group, would be useful for many mystics to have, and you're assuming that a large group would find useful having a mystic with such an ability. I would argue both assumptions are incorrect. To the first, how often do mystics use a sungem to send a message to a group now? To the second, see my reply to the "relay" idea above. Merely giving someone, whether mystic or champion or whoever, the tools a leader could use doesn't make that person a leader.

Taryn.

Eldon wrote:

Daimoth wrote:It shouldn't require rank investment at all, in my opinion.

If this was really hard to get to but didn't cost ranks, and merely unlocked more sungem slots, then I'm totally fine with the location.

Shrug.

I disagree. I think it should cost ranks, be in town, and available only to Mystics. They are the communications class, after all. But, as you can tell, I didn't do it.

Well, your not doing it has ruined my life.

As much as I would like to have the ability, Eldon's right.

Instead of the relay action, include the ability for the Mystic to volunteer their group channels as slaves to a designated exile. Thus the mastery over information and it's dissemination.

Skirwan wrote:What are we supposed to think?

You're supposed to think it's not personal. You're supposed to realize that our 'jobs' as GMs are make long-term decisions regardless of the current number of people in the game. I tend to make things very conservative at first then relax the criteria over time. Constant complaining does not help me relax things. Rather, I naturally become defense and further slow-down my glacial progress because my enthusiam is dampened. Furthermore, you're supposed to realize that a great idea for SkirwanLord may have nothing to do with Clan Lord.

Your constant caustic sarcasm does nothing to constructively suggest things that I find useful and, quite often, are not compatible with Clan Lord's Ways(tm) [regardless of whether you agree with it.]

Eldon wrote:Furthermore, you're supposed to realize that a great idea for SkirwanLord may have nothing to do with Clan Lord.

Burn!

But seriously, there's pretty much no reason for Xel to have any extra sungem slots. There aren't even any important things for Xel to be SSing.

While he could easily assume the role of leader in any given hunt, there is very little reason for him to do so, when a front-lines fighter or healer is able to convey a much larger volume and higher level of importance of information with a simple yell or focusing a group on a given creature.

Typically, if I'm in any kind of a rush to get information out to many people at once, the best option is either /think, frantically sunstoning individual people (As is often the case when attempting to participate in some kind of roleplaying scenario, probably the most fun, because of the wide range of specifics that I might have to convey to people he knows in order to coordinate some effort), or SSing another quick-reflexed individual. At least, it's far too slow to actually make a custom thinkgroup unless I'm hunting with, well, exactly five people. Macros shouldn't really be a required intervention.

The only mystically useful thing I've used sungem /grouping for has been recruiting a bunch of folks to an FMOCR. And that was just to cut down on the delay between messages.

I'm not really sure what my conclusion is, .. I guess it's that 1 or 2 sungem slots isn't worth 20 ranks (to me)? I'd spend maybe 30 for an extra five, given access to such a book, but that's about where I would cut off the level of usefulness. And even then, I'd rather my fighter had the training.

I have to admit, I dont understand how the mystics should consider being doorman/-woman fun (15 sec in a 5 hour hunt, yay!) I equally dont understand how mystics should consider relaying information fun. They should think it fun to be kinda an extended sungem? I strongly miss the ooh and aaah posts by mystics in this thread.

In my opinion, the trainer needs to be close by (not town), middle-hardish to reach (maybe even DTN, though that is quite hard sometimes), and available to all. As has been pointed out, the ones needing more slots the most, are the leaders. Who is leader? Fighter, yay, Healer, yay, Mystic, yay (rare in my experience, but great fun). So the professionless a bit less then. All else should be included.

It should cost ranks. Because if you are really serious about leading large groups, you will invest the ranks. If you are so so about leading such groups, rather not invest the ranks probably. In my experience, we now have either the kinda-normal looking hunts, with up to 10 peeps. And then we have the armies. In the armies you need more thinkgroup slots, not in the smaller groups. And the person willing to help lead an army should be willing to invest some ranks into it. It is like a training of an ability of anything else. If I want to heal from distance, I train proxi. If I want to skin such critters, I get that skea. If I want to help lead an army....

How many ranks total, and if it really has to be that odd guy mentus, I dont mind the current situation. It is a long time that I have counted my ranks, but I should be around 2.8K now. 10 ranks is way more than 10 days for me, but seen in the total picture, a rather ridiculous amount. What I can imagine is, that with each slot gained, the investment gets lowered. After all you learn how to expertly use your sungem with every rank/slot gained.

Having the trainer where it is now, is totally way beyond, IMO. There, I am with Skirwan, I can either quit, or just go on a sarcastic fit. I spare you both

Xel wrote:I'm not really sure what my conclusion is, .. I guess it's that 1 or 2 sungem slots isn't worth 20 ranks (to me)? I'd spend maybe 30 for an extra five, given access to such a book, but that's about where I would cut off the level of usefulness. And even then, I'd rather my fighter had the training.

We're just talking here, of course, since I'm not the MysticGM, but I think the rank cost for Mystics gaining extra /thinkgroup slots should be much cheaper than 10/slot.

I've seen some good leader ability ideas in this thread. Doing some of them is fairly easy. Voting for a leader and having that ability expire might be a tad harder, but I'm thinking on it.

Eldon wrote:We're just talking here, of course, since I'm not the MysticGM, but I think the rank cost for Mystics gaining extra /thinkgroup slots should be much cheaper than 10/slot.

It very well might be, I'm living through the quotes of others.

Eldon wrote:I've seen some good leader ability ideas in this thread. Doing some of them is fairly easy. Voting for a leader and having that ability expire might be a tad harder, but I'm thinking on it.

I agree.. Voting for leaders would probably be more of an issue than a solution to much of this, but some of the leadership skills mentioned and quoted earlier would be quite a keen addition. I'd look into those preferentially, Champion offerings or not (Couldn't care less, honestly, the only problem I have with it is the potential for too many people training these abilities and overwhelming a group. I hope to god there's a /leadership /off option in your implementation).

I've never even bothered using my first 5 thinkgroup slots because even most small hunts consist of at 6 members. If I can't sunstone the entire group using thinkgroup, then it's pointless to use it. I certainly can't see the point in training ranks just to be able to broadcast to just 1 more person.

-Gurgi

Eldon wrote:I've seen some good leader ability ideas in this thread. Doing some of them is fairly easy. Voting for a leader and having that ability expire might be a tad harder, but I'm thinking on it.

Well thats good news, i like my original post, i also liked some of the ideas, so be good to see some changes

Eldon wrote:You're supposed to think it's not personal

If anything in this thread has given you the impression that I take this issue or anything concerning it personally, you're mistaken and I apologize for giving you that impression.

Further, since you seem to have taken personal offense at my little joke earlier in the thread, you have my sincerest apology. I thought the fact that the post referred to itself as "Skirwan's Paranoid Sarcasm Theater" would be sufficiently self-deprecating to avoid grievious harm to anyone's ego.

Eldon wrote:You're supposed to realize that our 'jobs' as GMs are make long-term decisions regardless of the current number of people in the game.

My reasoning is as follow. You'll notice that the number of people in the game doesn't appear. I'm not really sure where that came from.

1. AIM and ICQ are an alternative to in-game sunstoning.
2. AIM and ICQ offer more features than in-game sunstoning.
3. AIM and ICQ have no cost in or out of game.
4. Many players are unsatisfied with the capabilities of in-game sunstoning.
5. When a customer is unsatisfied with one solution (4), and an alternative (1) exists with greater utility (2) and lesser cost (3) then those customers will tend to migrate towards the alternative solution.
6. When asked to explain the appeal of Clan Lord, many players cite the sense of community.
7. The use of an out-of-game communications system tends to hurt the sense of community within the game.

What point do you disagree with? Where's my logical flaw? Points 1-4 are pretty obvious, 5 is Econ 101, and point 6 has been fairly well established over the years. If you disagree with point 7, I'd love to hear your take and have a discussion.

Or you can stick with the argument quoted above, which basically boils down to 'we know best'.

Skirwan wrote: If anything in this thread has given you the impression that I take this issue or anything concerning it personally, you're mistaken and I apologize for giving you that impression.

Further, since you seem to have taken personal offense at my little joke earlier in the thread, you have my sincerest apology. I thought the fact that the post referred to itself as "Skirwan's Paranoid Sarcasm Theater" would be sufficiently self-deprecating to avoid grievious harm to anyone's ego.

Ah. I didn't catch that. I apologize.

Skirwan wrote:Or you can stick with the argument quoted above, which basically boils down to 'we know best'.

No, I don't think we always know best. The communciation tools we have now are in the game because Joe realizes that in-game communication is crucial to a social game. There are, however, limits to what we feel should be allowed. Unfortunately, as you correctly point out, there do exist out-of-game tools that reduce in-game limitations (or eliminate it). There's not much we can do about that.

Let me give an example. When sunstones were first introduced, you could SS while fallen. Then, one day, an exile fell in Dark Temple and started sunstoning every few seconds that he was fallen and he needed a rescue. This continued unabated. This experience, and a few others, convinced GMs to put some limits on sunstones. In some ways, there should be more limits, like not being able to communicate to Peaceton or other planes, but there aren't because the social reasons trumped the IC reasons to do so.

So, I'm not sure what we can make drastic changes and still preserve CL's core values. Saying that "others do it" and "it's easy to circumvent" aren't really good arguments. Of course, that too has limits. Mail, for instance, could be more convenient and easily accessed, but that would take a lot of work that I'm not sure it a good use of limited GM resources. But, no one's stopping a GM from taking it on as a project.

So, while I know everyone on this board is intelligent and knows and cares about Clan Lord a lot, introducing more communication tools will be a balancing act between what should rightfully be given to Mystics and what should be deemed a social tool and made available to everyone.

Eldon wrote:...introducing more communication tools will be a balancing act between what should rightfully be given to Mystics and what should be deemed a social tool and made available to everyone.

A communications "boost." Temporary in duration (but longer than current mystic boosts), affects all sungems in a range, proportionally adds slots according to how many are sharing the boosting mystic (so larger groups will get more slots). This would make mystics providers of communication skills, consistent with their being providers of sunstones and upgrades (and not being the sunstones/upgrades themselves).

Taryn.

Taryn wrote:

Eldon wrote:...introducing more communication tools will be a balancing act between what should rightfully be given to Mystics and what should be deemed a social tool and made available to everyone.

A communications "boost." Temporary in duration (but longer than current mystic boosts), affects all sungems in a range, proportionally adds slots according to how many are sharing the boosting mystic (so larger groups will get more slots). This would make mystics providers of communication skills, consistent with their being providers of sunstones and upgrades (and not being the sunstones/upgrades themselves).

This idea has a lot of merit, and in my mind would couple itself well with giving Mystics extra slots without needing the boost. Mystics would always have the communication advantage, and would optionally be able to share it with others.