The Clan Lord Sentinel

Org du Lac wrote:

Lorikeet wrote:

Org du Lac wrote: Yes. It has absolutely nothing to do with getting ranks in the Mystic trainers, and yes I do speak for all Mystics, because there is a reason, and no, it's not ranks or library experience.

This is really strange to me. Do you mean there is a secret mystic reason why after having waited so long to be promoted they no longer want to play the game? What kind of a mechanic is that, to discourage game play? Sorry, it just sounds weird to me.

Not exactly, no, it's just that there's more to the 'disappearance' than meets the eyes. I don't know if the post-promotion disappearance of FMs sounds weirder than anything else about Mystics, though..

Perhaps you'd be willing to answer this question:
Is the reason most FMs disappear upon promotion an IC reason or an OOC reason?
Followup: Is the hiatus of freshly dubbed FMs accepted by the existing FMs or is it frowned upon?

Sproutfoot wrote:Perhaps you'd be willing to answer this question:
Is the reason most FMs disappear upon promotion an IC reason or an OOC reason?
Followup: Is the hiatus of freshly dubbed FMs accepted by the existing FMs or is it frowned upon?

I certainly haven't asked them all but I would assume they fall into the OOC catagory.

Far as the break after hitting FM it's widely known that it happens as people have generally put in a lot of work and time and they need a break of some kind. No one really likes it that newly promoted FM take a break but it's generally accepted that it happens and there's not much anyone can do about it (it does take a lot of time and effort to get to FM after all).

Now the FM that come back from their promotion break and then disappear leave for other reasons.

Salandra wrote:

Sproutfoot wrote:Perhaps you'd be willing to answer this question:
Is the reason most FMs disappear upon promotion an IC reason or an OOC reason?
Followup: Is the hiatus of freshly dubbed FMs accepted by the existing FMs or is it frowned upon?

I certainly haven't asked them all but I would assume they fall into the OOC catagory.

Far as the break after hitting FM it's widely known that it happens as people have generally put in a lot of work and time and they need a break of some kind. No one really likes it that newly promoted FM take a break but it's generally accepted that it happens and there's not much anyone can do about it (it does take a lot of time and effort to get to FM after all). Not all FMs join the Council, and not all do so immediately, although most do fairly quickly, hence the absence.

Now the FM that come back from their promotion break and then disappear leave for other reasons.

Did you never join the Council? Perhaps not, but if you had ever joined (perhaps not), it's an IC reason, not OOC, and involves meta-gaming as someone (Lorikeet?) suspected. It has very little to nothing to do with boredom nor with "phew, I've finally passed my final exam." The "hiatus" is almost expected, and not at all frowned upon.

Mystics are meticulous record keepers. I keep meticulous records. Here are some facts for you, which although Maeght will reject, I hope the rest of you will accept, since they are easily verifiable in-game by a member of any class:

There have been 33 Mystics, 3 of which have been ejected from the full Mystic class (Nyssa, Salandra, Manticore.)
Of the 30 remaining, 27 have clanned within the last two years. (Minus Zorton, minus Robin Greyhawk, minus Callia.)
Of the 27 who have clanned, 26 have clanned within the last year. (Minus Sutai.)
Of the 26 who have clanned within the last year, 22 have clanned within the last 4 months. (Minus several others.)

I don't have "time spent clanning" records, but that seems like a disproportionately high retention rate to me.

If you're wondering "where are Aki, Malkor, and Leonin? They never clan?!!!" then you're objectively wrong.


E: However, a valid argument that can be made is "why aren't full Mystics playing the same game as us?" in which case, the answer is probably split betwen "it kind of sucks to play the fighter/healer Clan Lord game as a Mystic" and "the Mystic Clan Lord game is more easily played by people without a lot of consistent free time and accommodates people without free time to open the client and chat in TC."

Of the most active Mystics, I know most of their alts, and the alts generally do not get more play time than the FMs. I think you, Salandra, know who the alts of most of the FMs are, and you can back this up.

Org du Lac wrote: Mystics are meticulous record keepers. I keep meticulous records. Here are some facts for you, which although Maeght will reject, I hope the rest of you will accept, since they are easily verifiable in-game by a member of any class:

I don't reject these as facts and I don't even need to ask Stora.

Org du Lac wrote: There have been 33 Mystics, 3 of which have been ejected from the guild (Nyssa, Salandra, Manticore.)
Of the 30 remaining, 27 have clanned within the last two years. (Minus Zorton, minus Robin Greyhawk, minus Callia.)
Of the 27 who have clanned, 27 have clanned within the last year. (Minus Sutai.)
Of the 27 who have clanned within the last year, 23 have clanned within the last 4 months. (Minus several others.)

I don't have "time spent clanning" records, but that seems like a disproportionately high retention rate to me.

Since you're so meticulous, of those FMs that have clanned within the last 4 months, how many of them have been engaged in significant AM/JM interactions and for how long.

Since you're so meticulous, how many hours logged do those FMs clanning within the last 4 months have? Seriously, you count a flyby visit by Aki as "clanning"?

For all intents and purposes, the FM council is an alumni association that's more about the club than supporting mystics as a whole.

Maeght wrote:

Org du Lac wrote: I don't have "time spent clanning" records, but that seems like a disproportionately high retention rate to me.

Since you're so meticulous, how many hours logged do those FMs clanning within the last 4 months have?

The more I interact with you, the less I suspect that you can read, much less apply critical thinking to arguments.

Org du Lac wrote: The more I interact with you, the less I suspect that you can read, much less apply critical thinking to arguments.

The more I interact with you, the more consistently evade my points. I see you've learned your Full Mystic tricks well.

I've said several times now that FMs are doing jack squat for mystics, let alone the rest of the game. You posting bogus statistics showing how FMs pop in every year or so is about as evasive as it gets.

I wonder if Stora's keeper keeps Stora's logs. Because you'd see that I check on mystics pretty frequently myself.

The social part of the mystic game, except apparently for the non-clanning Full Mystic is just about gone. And blaming AMs and JMs for not being around because FMs aren't around is just complete and utter BS.

Org du Lac wrote:Did you never join the Council? Perhaps not, but if you had ever joined (perhaps not), it's an IC reason, not OOC, and involves meta-gaming as someone (Lorikeet?) suspected. It has very little to nothing to do with boredom nor with "phew, I've finally passed my final exam." The "hiatus" is almost expected, and not at all frowned upon.

After your rant about how much of a record keeper you are I'm going to assume you know very well that I was a part of the Council and that I was generally very active when I first became a FM. Of course there is always the potential that the record keepers (certain FM) have gone through and erased all of the evidence of such activity. I factually know some of it has been removed but to be honest I haven't put in the effort to see how much.

Of course to be fair to your recollection I was promoted to and fell from the FM graces while you were still a library alt used by your main or friends as a illusion breaker and not much more. Don't mistake that comment as me attempting to take away from what you've achieved as Org and what you've contributed to the Guild. However I don't think you should forget the rather colorful past that Org has.

Org du Lac wrote:Mystics are meticulous record keepers. I keep meticulous records. Here are some facts for you, which although Maeght will reject, I hope the rest of you will accept, since they are easily verifiable in-game by a member of any class:

I don't really refer to Stora as keeping records. Nor do I think using Stora to monitor the "activity" of guild members as a responsible practice of any FM. In fact my personal belief is that using stora (or some other kind of script/program/web page) is one of the most disgusting practices that _some_ FM take part in.

To address the stats you shared... Those numbers do not take into account:

How many of those FM are clicked by friends to spend ranks
How many of those FM only come out to spend ranks so they don't go over an EXP cap
How much time is spent actively mentoring/teaching/observing AM/JM

Needless to say there is a large difference between logging on or being in game and playing in any capacity that would allow FM to contribute to the betterment of the guild/AM/JM.

Org du Lac wrote:Of the most active Mystics, I know most of their alts, and the alts generally do not get more play time than the FMs. I think you, Salandra, know who the alts of most of the FMs are, and you can back this up.

I do in fact know who most of them are and I will say that those who actively play a lot do give a lot of time to their FM.

Well I got Malkor to log on once for five minutes to look for something he couldn't find. I guess that counts.

Org du Lac wrote:There have been 33 Mystics, 3 of which have been ejected from the full Mystic class (Nyssa, Salandra, Manticore.)
Of the 30 remaining, 27 have clanned within the last two years. (Minus Zorton, minus Robin Greyhawk, minus Callia.)
Of the 27 who have clanned, 26 have clanned within the last year. (Minus Sutai.)
Of the 26 who have clanned within the last year, 22 have clanned within the last 4 months. (Minus several others.)

So in a game that has been going for over 13 years there have been a grand total of 33 people actually made it to full mystic?
How do those numbers stack up to the number of AMs and JMs there are/have been over the years?

Mjollnir wrote: So in a game that has been going for over 13 years there have been a grand total of 33 people actually made it to full mystic?
How do those numbers stack up to the number of AMs and JMs there are/have been over the years?

Callia on Mar 25, 2008 3:22 pm wrote:Guild records (maintained serially as a joint effort primarily by myself and Diotima, although with assistance from most other FMs) include:
39 total FMs
108 JMs
185 AMs.

So I don't know how to read Org's "meticulous" records. It also lends credence to the notion that records either get lost or deliberately expunged.

But lets just say it's a LOT.

Maeght wrote:

Mjollnir wrote: So in a game that has been going for over 13 years there have been a grand total of 33 people actually made it to full mystic?
How do those numbers stack up to the number of AMs and JMs there are/have been over the years?

Callia on Mar 25, 2008 3:22 pm wrote:Guild records (maintained serially as a joint effort primarily by myself and Diotima, although with assistance from most other FMs) include:
39 total FMs
108 JMs
185 AMs.

So I don't know how to read Org's "meticulous" records. It also lends credence to the notion that records either get lost or deliberately expunged.

But lets just say it's a LOT.

So 5 years ago there were 332 mystics of one stripe or another and approximately 12% of them were full mystics, that's actually a lot higher than I was expecting.
Although yes there obviously are some discrepencies in the records with regards to how many people of each rank there are.
It's a bit of a spoiler but isnt there an npc who tracks how many people have "qualified" for apprenticeship? what figures do they come out with?

Mjollnir wrote: It's a bit of a spoiler but isnt there an npc who tracks how many people have "qualified" for apprenticeship? what figures do they come out with?

Becoming an AM is a vastly different animal from moving on to JM. One may as well toss out the number of AMs altogether. What makes it more interesting, is that the skills that mystics possess which most exiles would see as "helpful" are available at AM level.

One strives (in one way or another) to progress through mystic ranks, toward skills that get progressively less helpful to the population. At least in their view. Arguably to some mystics as well.

- For the record, as a not-FM, I only play Sproutfoot unless my home rental runs out or I need to make a large purchase. Then out comes the coiner for a couple days.

Sproutfoot wrote:

Mjollnir wrote: It's a bit of a spoiler but isnt there an npc who tracks how many people have "qualified" for apprenticeship? what figures do they come out with?

Becoming an AM is a vastly different animal from moving on to JM. One may as well toss out the number of AMs altogether. What makes it more interesting, is that the skills that mystics possess which most exiles would see as "helpful" are available at AM level.

One strives (in one way or another) to progress through mystic ranks, toward skills that get progressively less helpful to the population. At least in their view. Arguably to some mystics as well.

Well considering the main question in this thread was about why mystics suck id say the total number of AMs compared to the number of current AMs will show you the number of people who have tried and given up either because it sucks or because of RL getting in the way, you then compare it to the number of people who sucessfully make JM and FM and it shows you what percentage of the entire mystic population actually manage to progress.

Callia on Mar 25, 2008 3:22 pm wrote:Guild records (maintained serially as a joint effort primarily by myself and Diotima, although with assistance from most other FMs) include:
39 total FMs
108 JMs
185 AMs.

Callia's count is "IC", which include a many GM full Mystics clicked by Joe, HGM, etc, that should not be counted (e.g. Ap'o, Sie'Limpa) in this context as they were never real characters and never were journeymen or apprentices.

Mystic records currently count 41FM, 119 JM, and 196 AM; if a JM isn't on that list, they must literally never play at all, because it's updated pretty regularly, and old records aren't typically expunged.

Honestly I'd say that's a pretty decent promotion ratio (~20%), particularly considering how many JM are library alts that are never used.

E: I just noticed Nyssa is not on that list (I guess because she was only a FM for like literally only 30 minutes, untrained herself, and then quit forever after Untrainus demoted her), so add +1 to my count of "real Mystics" and you can count up to 42FM any time ever if you like keeping things IC.

Org du Lac wrote:

Callia on Mar 25, 2008 3:22 pm wrote:Guild records (maintained serially as a joint effort primarily by myself and Diotima, although with assistance from most other FMs) include:
39 total FMs
108 JMs
185 AMs.

Callia's count is "IC", which include a many GM full Mystics clicked by Joe, HGM, etc, that should not be counted (e.g. Ap'o, Sie'Limpa) in this context as they were never real characters and never were journeymen or apprentices.

Mystic records currently count 41FM, 119 JM, and 196 AM; if a JM isn't on that list, they must literally never play at all, because it's updated pretty regularly, and old records aren't typically expunged.

Ok.

Org du Lac wrote: Honestly I'd say that's a pretty decent promotion ratio (~20%), particularly considering how many JM are library alts that are never used.

The rate has not been constant. And personally I lay that issue right at the feet of FMs. With fewer and fewer promotions and hugely reduced FM participation, what's the point of coming out of the library? The critter control ability snaked out a couple dozen mystics for a while. That's about it.

Org du Lac wrote: E: I just noticed Nyssa is not on that list (I guess because she was only a FM for like literally only 30 minutes, untrained herself, and then quit forever after Untrainus demoted her), so add +1 to my count of "real Mystics" and you can count up to 42FM any time ever if you like keeping things IC.

Honestly, I don't care about the number of FMs that participate in some mailing list. I've spent a lot of time talking to mystics of various ranks over the last few years (as my mystic), and I'm left wondering how anyone besides the Arindal mystics gets promoted at all. (And this has nothing to do with my JM and promotion. His hat is deliberately not in the ring.)