Key: MatthewW7
Event Preferences: For now, I plan to exclusively run events for The Knowledge Seekers guild. I cannot guarantee that I'll take any other events unless I'm really interested in them.
Contact Information: Matthew#2619
Anything Else: Don't let me procrastinate your event. Please bother me about it, even if you think that you're being annoying.

Quote:Key/Character:
Which Event:

Responsiveness (Were their narrations posted within a reasonable time-frame and were they quick to respond?):
Balance (How entertaining were the battles, and any obstacles/traps?): 
Storytelling (Did it feel like an adventure, did the content of the narrations meet your expectations?):
Fairness (Were the punishments justified and earned, was the risk to reward ratio good?)

Overall:

Any other comments:

So I like the Witch and Druid concepts. But it feels like the Druid gets the short stick! Witches have neat mind games. Well I don't think Druids work that way, with witchy mind tricks. But I can definitely help with ideas. Such as these ones!

Charm: The Druid will make the target 'charmed' to them. They are not able to demand anything from the target. Nor put them in danger. But the person feels more moved to aid the Druid in any way they can. And they won't notice it as it feels completely natural. Great for 'nudging' that person to aid the druid in his nefarious goals!

Phase: The druid is able to move through solid objects. Including doors. Walls. Jail bars. Etc. Great for escaping and entering in private places!

Wisp: The druid enters a trance like state and a barely visible tiny will o wisp is form. These wisps move incredibly fast and are not easy to detect. Great for spy work!

Shapechange: The druid can assume the form of a target that is present when this spell takes place. Great for even more havoc!

I originally made this as a reply under the forum poll for the tomes, but I feel like it should be a suggestion all on its own. I lightly edited it from the original post, so here it is:

I think tomes for the more advanced, non-elemental magics is actually quite fitting that it requires dev. I feel like making most of the tomes accessible will return us to the more battlechaddy meta we had back in spires and people just coming out of the woodwork with abilities out of nowhere when they hardly did any Dev for such advanced abilities. Personally, I think it's bad for the IC to allow unfiltered tome usage of more advanced magics.

Magics like Energy, Cosmic, Illusion, Time and Gravity are incredibly powerful all on their own, and they should require some decent IC Dev and approval before they are used. The IC on them, other than maybe energy is pretty specific, and energy is just plain powerful, and energy's just pretty easy  to Develop, so not being able to do that is just lazy, considering you start off with mana surge, which you can even weave into the dev to help start it off.

These magics are so powerful, they have never even been combined with any other magics officially in the past and they still maintained a pretty high place as far as the fighting meta went, even after they were tweaked with nerfs and such. I don't know if the Non-app tomes are going extend to the more intermediate, more advanced elemental magics too, but I think most of those should still be app-only as well, save for more basic things like Lightning, Riptide, Sand, Explosion, and I still doubt some of those, but I'm trying to meet people with opposing opinions halfway here. 

I liked the premise of Esshar's skill trees from the moment it was even mentioned to the public before the game even came out. It makes players put actual work into their characters with a bit of Admin regulation of the IC so players aren't just coming out of nowhere with extremely powerful magics. Back in Spires, sometimes it felt like people who hardly put work into their IC were coming out on top of the battle meta just because they made their build a certain way. It kind of resulted in the battlechads ruling everything, and I still like the taste of Esshar's development system, considering in order to be a powerful battlecuck, you have to have some decent Dev backing that up.


Let's not forget what this game is about, Creative Writing and making a story that even influences the world around you in Eternia. I feel like if we made these more advanced magics available to the public, we would begin to regress back into the battlecuck meta with very little IC to back it up again. This is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt and don't hate me for this, but I think making the tomes more widely available for Chads to plan their ultimate build without some IC regulation would suck.



On my current character, I use energy magic and I was actually okay with developing it. It wasn't that hard, it only took me a few days and only a few hours each day, and I was done and had my app posted. The very next day, it was approved and I didn't even have to wait very long. On top of that, if you don't want to go through the app process, and you're that much against it, find a mentor. Mentors literally can teach you moves straight out of their skill trees, as long as one has the RPP and prereqs for it. All you have to do is RP with them and let them teach you the magic.



Making more of the tomes available without IC regulation I feel would put a dampener on the IC of Esshar, and make it so we have more people running around with exceptional abilities with no IC dev to actually back it up. Unfortunately, by the looks of this vote, it seems like we have more in favor of the opposite of me, but I guess it's worth stating my thoughts on it to vent it now before the bullsh** racks my brain. Either way, my opinion is stated, IC is important, don't forgo IC just because people don't want to actually work  for the cooler abilities that our artists and coders worked so hard to program and make.



I'm just saying, considering much hard work was put in over the years to make this game the wonderful way it is now, and on top of that our coders and artists still work on other games at the same time as well, like Severed World, we should have at least some resolve to put some work in and develop in a cool way to unlock such cool abilities. For coders and artists to work so hard for us, and the admins who work hard to keep us satisfied as players, for us to have the desire to put no work into IC sickens me in short. I bid whoever actually took the time out to read this a good day.


(Edit: I forgot to mention, making so many of the tomes publicly available would completely defeat the purpose of mentoring. Seriously, there's players who are entrusted the mentor ability in SO MANY different magics in which they could teach just about anyone. Again, if you don't want to app, find a friggin mentor. The premise of mentoring seems really cool to me, considering there's IC dev to be had on both sides of that. To toss such a thing away would be depressing.)

What do you prefer?

For the second answer, this includes all Tomes aside from ones with heavy lore implications (such as Occult, Holy, Cosmic, Light, and Shadow).

The stats of Eternia suck. They always kinda have, but they've had their best showing here by way of combining the attack stat so people aren't stuck with either staff or sword. But!

There's a problem with that. And it's not really Power's fault, this was always kinda true given hybridizing was a bit of a trap; now there's only four stats. You get enough points to max out two of them, put in a significant dent with one (and then use DRUGS to push it nearly the rest of the way) while leaving the last out to dry. By all accounts, this means maxing out vitality and power and getting agility up to speed while dumping spirit - which might be a little more to do with spirit not working as advertised until recently, but hey. 

It gives the illusion of choice. If you don't invest heavily in vitality, you don't have the health and then you'll just die regardless. Power and then you can't beat down the other person and, again, rip you. Leaving it only between agility and spirit, and then doubled down on whether or not you can get an alchemist friend to bump up that third stat after the grueling period of farming crystals like it was meth.

It's not good. There is no customization to be had there, everyone comes out the same. Worse yet, well-liked players/characters will get a boost in comparison to more insular characters. Let's see would-be bandit antag get their perms while not being able to enter the city, huh? Etc. To add to it, the RPP costs of trees means in practice once you get past a certain point in your build your RPL just comes out to how big your numbers are, meaning the little guy has to deal with someone with both more health and more damage then them and maybe an extra spell, too.

So I propose an alternative, ribbing off a little from Fire Emblem Heroes; Boon/Bane. At character generation - and maybe a re-choice with a potion once per life or something - players picks one stat that is a boon and one that's a bane for that character, and their stats are all given a curved array based on their RPL. The two untaken stats proceed as normal, automatically going up with each level up - no input there. The boon, as you might guess, has an notably increased curve, while the bane has a decrease - maybe not as much, but still significant. Have the curve taper off after a certain RPL and then, to a degree, differing match ups aren't that much of a concern. Presto, everything is solved. 

Players can give their characters something they're actually actively good at beyond what magic they have; the guy filled with determination, the explodiest wizard, the fastest dude or Captain Sustain. A fact about them that no one can question, so now the stalwart defender guy can actually feel like they're tankier and harder to put down then the sinisterly cloaked McStabby. Also more importantly, it gives everyone a pronounced drawback of some kind, an active choice the player did. Thumbing over to an example of Dungeons and Dragons, there is a big difference in a character who bought up their stats and decided they didn't need charisma or something over the person who rolled their stats and needed to put an eight somewhere.

There are two immediate drawbacks with this with already established systems. There's also UI snaffu but, well, I believe in you.

The first and simplest is the flee/pursue system, as short of it being a boon/bane stat everyone would be rolling basically the same and it'd just be a RPL contest. This... probably is already kind of true, though? It might need to be adjusted, anyway.

The second is perms, our little enhancement potions of love. Now the simplest answer would just to be have them operate as normal and just be an additional plus to it, but I feel like with four stats that isn't really a good thing; it's another choice, sure, but I feel like allowing some characters to have an even better boon, nearly two boons or neutralizing their bane and some characters not be able to do so by different circumstances would be bad. Really, I am of the opinion to remove them altogether and deliver the killing blow to alchemy's relevancy, even if people would complain about their efforts into getting the perms in the first place would be now null. 


Now, of course, some people likely split their lower two stats to some degree and this system would take that choice away from them, but still; maybe that's okay? I suppose an option would be for a player to not take up a boon/bane and have everything be painfully average if that's a major turn off, though at the cost of still not having a definite "I am good at this" thing.

thx

Nerf Light.
I just watched some barely 190 guy tear through 4 people with cosmic and light and do half their HP without any real effort. The light balls that home in from across the entire map for 2k a tick is stupid and light is getting more full range cross map abilities thats good on anyone, melee or mage.  Shadow doesnt have half that and is trash in comparisson to what light can do. This game just seems heavily unfair and the reason things are so boring is because no one wants to fight a team full of people using this kinda magic that are constantly forced to be good guys even though half of them go out murder-boning and trying to force people to fight them and you cant do anything but bend over for their stupid power trip rp. 

This feels lame, do something please.


I see people talk about it all the time and we need to stop pretending like they arent right. Something is obviously wrong and people keep looking at these trees for that reason. Yeah other trees get a little troublesome and they get nerfed pretty quickly. But stuff like light? That lasts forever. I seen trees nerfed overnight for nothing, where only like two to four people are using it. I see like ten people abusing light with other super strong trees like cosmic and holy and it feels like nothing gets done. 

This  is the real reason everyone is buddy buddy. Why moonfall is planning pool parties with knights. Why syndicate people are quitting left and right. Cause no one wants to fight super huge AoEs with super strong slows that deal super much damage, or who trades their slows for free damage reduction, or who can attack from an entire screen away with homing light that does 2k a tick 8 times, a free off-screen teleport that can be combined with any spell, and beams of light that tick an entire beam's worth of damage instantly and also move across the entire battle screen. 

Make this game fair and give  people more options and watch how life comes back to it. Or you can tell me Im wrong and pretend like I dont know anything and enjoy eveyrone sitting afk and doing nothing for another 3 weeks while you make a new map for people to go wow for the first week or two then go back to afk because the balance still hasn't made proper changes.

/rant

Edit:

Its not even cool to RP against, whenever I see someone win with cosmic or holy or light I just kinda alt tab cause its like, what else were you expecting. And it usually takes them 9x less effort to win while the other person uses everything in the book three times over and the other person still has half their health.

Their homing should do LESS damage because its HOMING. Projectiles like blood, water, even fireball doesnt do half the damage of those abilities and they dont home AT ALL.

Wind is terrible.

Crystal, Plasma, Explosion, Lightning, none of these other trees compare and I see people talk about how the trees arent meant to be equal. Light and Shadow aint equal and Shadow is supposed to be the antithesis. This shit is just unfair and whoever is making it this unfair should feel ashamed of themselves because you are going to be playing alone because people dont want to sign up to be your punching bag. =/

/Rant 2

Edit 2:

Light spells put INTERMEDIATES TO SHAME and people have to do dangerouses out the ass for that. Light users just gotta RP with each other. Wtf?

Edit 3:

Get someone who knows balance not with the first order or on their side to actually take a look at light balance and see whats going on because this is nuts. I feel like no one who defends light actually fights light and knows what its like. They just play alongside light or with light and think "haha this is fine, Im winning because Im good..."

please make perms only happen on 1.

or, stealing from diggy's idea....

make 1 be -20, and make 2 be -10.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Name: The Hunt for the Silverfang
Risk: CoI

Attendeees: Barca Scipio
Leylin
Tanya Ise

Synopsis: After hearing the reports from many miners and scouts that the giant Direwolf from the Silverwall Mines has escaped the mountains into the wilderness, Agrien Vandroy from the Vandroy Company was prompt to organize a hunt for the great beast in order to protect the travellers from it's attacks on the woods, as well as to bring the prize of it's head as Great Game. With that information and goal at hands, Agrien have hired the professional huntress Barca to lead a team into the wild and to track, search and put down the threat of the Silverfang once and for all.

OOC Notes: The tone of event is meant to be a tracking adventure in the search for the Silverfang; the reason why it escaped, the details around the Direwolf, where it escaped to, what type of environment it went to, and why, and everything else can be at the DM discretion to add some freedom to explore and have fun on their end as well. Maybe even build a story around the giant beast and it's surrounding details? Just having fun, you know!

Rewards: Monster parts, probably Silverfang's pelt or hide or fangs, and maybe some herbs or things found at it's den? Anything the DM consider to make sense, being monster parts a preferred reward.

DM: Prego / Nailman