04-27-2024, 03:43 PM
The following is just a series of mostly ramblings and putting thoughts to 'paper'. Moreso things I have been considering about the game wrt this topic.
A big issue that I haven't seen fully touched upon and it is a reason why people use rebirth potions and change builds: Balance changes can often be sweeping and completely change how a build plays. I'm not going to doomer and say that things get "ruined" by changes but they do get altered to the point where it's no longer compatible with what you are doing.
The game's conflict resolution for anything below big diplomacy is pretty much always going to be a fight because that's the only way people can "evenly" interact with one another without going towards areas of potential god modding. It very often feels like the only way you get to prove your point is by beating the opposition in a fight. This in turn means that "might makes right" is always going to be the perceived main route.
Yes, there are likely examples of people not needing to verb to settle something but there are no other mechanically supported avenues. The issue then is that there aren't any other avenues that can reasonably be supported. There is also the issue that a character's IC strength is tied to their OOC ability as a player. I am truly hoping that the turn based fighting can be embraced more due to this as the realtime reaction style verbing currently is quite inaccessible.
Though with all this you have the other hand, where verbing and fights like this are Eternia's core identity. Many people play this game because the conflict resolution revolves around how competent they are at the combat. And so when people ask to change the fundamentals of the game, they are doing so at the expense of these players. There is room for improvement in places, tightening up systems and such but they are a core part of the game's identity.
The game has always been "pvp oriented" there's just more ways now to be rapidly and publicly vocal about it. I don't think there is more discourse overall, just that it can be posted easily and without much considering in a discord channel over the previous suggestion threads in the past. I think it would lead to healthier discussions to reduce the discord posting, honestly I think wizard wars is just a venting channel for the most part and the combat suggestions channel as a whole could do with slow posting enabled so that people consider their points a little more.
A big issue that I haven't seen fully touched upon and it is a reason why people use rebirth potions and change builds: Balance changes can often be sweeping and completely change how a build plays. I'm not going to doomer and say that things get "ruined" by changes but they do get altered to the point where it's no longer compatible with what you are doing.
The game's conflict resolution for anything below big diplomacy is pretty much always going to be a fight because that's the only way people can "evenly" interact with one another without going towards areas of potential god modding. It very often feels like the only way you get to prove your point is by beating the opposition in a fight. This in turn means that "might makes right" is always going to be the perceived main route.
Yes, there are likely examples of people not needing to verb to settle something but there are no other mechanically supported avenues. The issue then is that there aren't any other avenues that can reasonably be supported. There is also the issue that a character's IC strength is tied to their OOC ability as a player. I am truly hoping that the turn based fighting can be embraced more due to this as the realtime reaction style verbing currently is quite inaccessible.
Though with all this you have the other hand, where verbing and fights like this are Eternia's core identity. Many people play this game because the conflict resolution revolves around how competent they are at the combat. And so when people ask to change the fundamentals of the game, they are doing so at the expense of these players. There is room for improvement in places, tightening up systems and such but they are a core part of the game's identity.
The game has always been "pvp oriented" there's just more ways now to be rapidly and publicly vocal about it. I don't think there is more discourse overall, just that it can be posted easily and without much considering in a discord channel over the previous suggestion threads in the past. I think it would lead to healthier discussions to reduce the discord posting, honestly I think wizard wars is just a venting channel for the most part and the combat suggestions channel as a whole could do with slow posting enabled so that people consider their points a little more.
Rob
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