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Improving Imperian Split: Shifting Focus

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  • Monoliths:

    The problem with monoliths is that Aspect powers have made them meaningless. I have one permanent Life monolith, 2 perm change monoliths, and 4 perm terror monoliths. So I basically don't need the monolith system at all for most of my stuff. And since the end of experience loss, there's no reason to actually hold one if you don't need the monolith's effect.

    These are my ideas:

    1) Limit permanent monoliths to 1-2 per Aspect type. This would mean that gaze was either always in reach if you held a monolith, or just always available permanently, but it would increase the dependence on other people holding monoliths.

    2) Change things so that the first four Aspect powers still activate by the number of monoliths held by your Aspect type, but the fifth Aspect power(Warp/Absorb Damage/Resurrection) doesn't care how many monoliths are active. The fifth skill would only activate if you were personally holding a monolith, and it would activate regardless of how many other monoliths there were of your type. This change would mean that there would be a benefit to holding a monolith even if there weren't any other aspects of your subtype around; you'd always get something useful from it.

    If you make holding a monolith something personally rewarding in and of itself, people will do it.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • edited August 2016
    I really like this. Except, I actually think it's worth considering doing the "must hold mono personally" thing to the 4th power instead of the 5th. Modulation/Inhume/Detect Life. Detect Life seems a little weak compared to the others btw, but maybe I just don't know how important it is.

    EDIT: or honestly, you might just have to figure out "which one do players care about most" for each aspect type, and make it, uh THAT. With Terror, for example, it probably actually is absorb if you did a poll (not now, ofc, we'd all say "oh yeah, I can't function without TERRIFY" >.>). Although I really like the idea of limiting Inhume down to a handful of people, too.

    EDIT2: although... so many people rely on Modulation if not artied. Maybe not that one :/
  • Khizan said:

    Right now I'd honestly suggest nuking Anti-Magick as a faction. We're the biggest and the strongest right now, yeah, but we're also the best side to break up. Nobody in AM really has any sort of attachment to the idea of antimagick as a role, and antimagick as a role is basically a horrible idea

    If you do this, make sure you give Kinsarmar monks, we need monks.

  • The AM professions should be neutral imo.

  • Possibly unpopular opinion, but here goes:

    I personally don't believe there's a compelling reason for professions to be tied to circles anymore - I have enough mirrors I could probably play as any prof I wanted for the next 6 months or so, and I didn't buy into the wheel promo barely at all. I dread to think what some people have.

    There would definitely be some super combos if they were all open, but let's face it: finding those is one of the most fun things, and the beauty with a neutral class system is that it is in everyone's best interest to make sure those get fixed in classleads once the novelty runs out, because its usually only fun after the first week when you're the guy doing it to other people who can't do it back. My team of monks can attest to this.

    Plus. Magick and Demonic have been teamed for something like half a year now, and the sky hasn't fallen.
  • I don't know if I like the idea of nuking AM as a faction :( The political power structures in both of the other factions are horribly unappealing to me, tbh. Magick is somewhat workable, but I've also never had to deal with them long term - and Magick's political power players seem almost unbelievably entrenched. And Alvetta, for example, seems fairly supportive of combat, but also has a large city that is full of people who HATE combat, and uh, Iluv.

    Demonic is still a complete no go zone for me (but also, not just me). Maybe that could change eventually, but I don't want to bet everything on it.

  • Khizan said:

    Also, I think you really need to consider paring the game down to two factions. We don't have the population for three factions now and we never really had it to begin with. One of Imperian's major problem since day one has been that this game is seemingly designed around an Achaea-sized population that it never achieved and the end result is that the game always feels sort of empty.

    Right now I'd honestly suggest nuking Anti-Magick as a faction. We're the biggest and the strongest right now, yeah, but we're also the best side to break up. Nobody in AM really has any sort of attachment to the idea of antimagick as a role, and antimagick as a role is basically a horrible idea that's doomed to failure now. The meeting we had with Elokia and the Celani basically seemed to be "Well, you guys would change to only be against SOME magick, but not all of it because some magick would be natural and untainted", which would basically just make us Magick Team 2 and that's just completely pointless.

    So scrap all that and blow us up. Let the main divisions in the world be "Stavenn wants to own Kinsarmar again, Kinsarmar is against that" and "Khandava is about horrible leechtrees, Celidon is about huggable real trees". Those are good solid faction divisions with clear lines and no real room for compromise, and they're the kind of thing that both organizations in a faction can get behind.

    Hi! I want to clear up something with this, as this is not totally true. Although the day of this discussion it should have just been myself and AM, and getting a bunch of other people involved seemed to muddle what I was trying to convey.

    AM is not "ok on some Magick." AM is about pure Diachaim. Diachaim != Magick. Magick is a twisted form of Diachaim. So: Magick is Diachaim, but not all Diachaim is magick.

    With that said, what I was trying to tell you is that we have been attempting to move AM to a "We believe in pure Diachaim, magickers and demonic people twist Diachaim and they suck they shouldn't do that. Pure Diachaim is what the Gods used, we want to be closer to what the Gods used - as they didn't require twisted/tainted Diachaim to use their power, etc. Pure Diachaim is also what flows in and out of the core, to use Pure Diachaim you are directly aligning yourself with the core (The heart of the world) thus connecting you to the world on a "higher level." All in all - I think this paints a pretty cool picture of where AM can go with this. (But I seem to be the only one to think this?)

    So just to clear that up: No AM is not "pro some magick" they are "pro pure Diachaim." Or at least, that is what the lore in the game states, even if the players do not follow this.
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  • Not sure why you'd delete two organisations to be honest. Making each circle have three orgs instead of two is the least intrusive, preserves a lot of potential 'politics', and has pretty much the same end goal.
  • edited August 2016
    The purpose of deleting two organisations would be to increase the populations of the remaining four but on the other side, deleting organisations could lead to driving away players who are attached to them.
  • I am about 99% sure the latter case is more likely.
  • To me it's a lot less about what Antioch has (despite me being Ithaquan currently), and a lot more about what it doesn't have, in terms of what I would call "baggage" that orgs in these games are extremely prone to. Antioch is a one of a kind gem in my eyes, for that reason. I've actually never been anywhere like it.
  • DimitriDimitri Somewhere cold
    Khizan said:



    So scrap all that and blow us up. Let the main divisions in the world be "Stavenn wants to own Kinsarmar again, Kinsarmar is against that" and "Khandava is about horrible leechtrees, Celidon is about huggable real trees". Those are good solid faction divisions with clear lines and no real room for compromise, and they're the kind of thing that both organizations in a faction can get behind.

    1) Please don't actually blow us up, i don't like to explode.
    2) to continue the analogy: Antioch wants sand EVERWHERE and Ithaqua just wants to be left alone because it really needs to concentrate on its art right now.

    Reference attached
  • DimitriDimitri Somewhere cold
    Elokia said:



    Hi! I want to clear up something with this, as this is not totally true. Although the day of this discussion it should have just been myself and AM, and getting a bunch of other people involved seemed to muddle what I was trying to convey.

    AM is not "ok on some Magick." AM is about pure Diachaim. Diachaim != Magick. Magick is a twisted form of Diachaim. So: Magick is Diachaim, but not all Diachaim is magick.

    With that said, what I was trying to tell you is that we have been attempting to move AM to a "We believe in pure Diachaim, magickers and demonic people twist Diachaim and they suck they shouldn't do that. Pure Diachaim is what the Gods used, we want to be closer to what the Gods used - as they didn't require twisted/tainted Diachaim to use their power, etc. Pure Diachaim is also what flows in and out of the core, to use Pure Diachaim you are directly aligning yourself with the core (The heart of the world) thus connecting you to the world on a "higher level." All in all - I think this paints a pretty cool picture of where AM can go with this. (But I seem to be the only one to think this?)

    So just to clear that up: No AM is not "pro some magick" they are "pro pure Diachaim." Or at least, that is what the lore in the game states, even if the players do not follow this.

    Okay this clears up alot for me, because i was fairly confused as to what the stance of AM was, this also explains the usage of shards quite nicely as it seemed like a magick-y thing to use in a faction that seems to (or used to in antioch's case) dislike magick in general. I wasn't around for much of the explanations and i don't ask much cause a) things can get twisted and confusd the more you ask b) sometimes mechanics trump roleplay/plot/lore c) people may not give me the answer im looking for(????)
  • edited August 2016
    Elokia said:

    With that said, what I was trying to tell you is that we have been attempting to move AM to a "We believe in pure Diachaim, magickers and demonic people twist Diachaim and they suck they shouldn't do that. Pure Diachaim is what the Gods used, we want to be closer to what the Gods used - as they didn't require twisted/tainted Diachaim to use their power, etc. Pure Diachaim is also what flows in and out of the core, to use Pure Diachaim you are directly aligning yourself with the core (The heart of the world) thus connecting you to the world on a "higher level." All in all - I think this paints a pretty cool picture of where AM can go with this. (But I seem to be the only one to think this?)

    So just to clear that up: No AM is not "pro some magick" they are "pro pure Diachaim." Or at least, that is what the lore in the game states, even if the players do not follow this.

    To me, this breaks down as following:
    1) Diachaim is some weird power. It's the source of magick so it might as well be magick, so let's call it magick.
    2) AM likes pure magick
    3) Magick likes Twisted Magick A
    4) Demonic likes Twisted Magick B

    To me, this is sort of a fundamentally uninteresting background for a conflict. There's no meat there. There's nothing to sink my teeth into. There's nothing here to get me invested in it. Sure, it's cool and all, but why do I care? What makes this so important that I would kill for it, that I would die for it?

    Nothing, really. There's no story there. Sure, the Gods used pure diachaim. But the honest truth here? The Gods died almost four RL years ago. Nobody cares about them anymore. Lots of our players were never alive to see the Gods, never knew them, and have no investment in them. And the heart of anti-magick was never really "We hate magick for our own reasons", because we never had our own reasons. The heart of anti-magick was always "The Gods will this". And now the Gods are dead. So, please let them go. This is the Age of Mortality. Please don't try to fit us into an RP of "We want to be closer to the Gods that died 4 RL years ago that most of us never met."

    Nobody now really cares about diachaim purity levels and I very much doubt you will ever make anybody care about them very much. They're theoretically interesting, but they're not emotionally gripping. I feel like you would be MUCH better off looking for conflict sources in the places that people are already invested in, instead of trying to make people care about what kind of battery is hooked up to their lightning bolt.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • edited August 2016
    We need to spell out the PK rules a bit better. I know that a lot of people are reluctant to do this because of ye olden days when Achaea had infamously voluminous PK rules. Instead, we like to pretend our rules are "super simple", when they are actually pretty nuanced and detailed. I don't think they are too horribly litigious, but they aren't "just common sense" or "don't be a jerk" either, and you mostly can't read about them. You really, really need to be able to ask a Septus, or a Khizan, or an Eldreth. I think we went too far in not documenting them.

    And so our PK rules are often uncharted waters for anyone who does not have easy access to people who know them inside and out. I have access to people like that. It's great. I can go do stuff and feel confident I am not going to get issued, or that if I AM issued, I should probably get it dismissed with no problem. I can also make sure I don't get myself deeper into something than I am really comfortable with, without fully understanding what I am doing.

    I hope it's clear why I am bringing this up here and what it means, but just in case... It's because if you don't feel confident that you are not "going to get issued", or that you aren't "signing up for a lot more unscripted PK than I thought", people are often hesitant to do things, or sometimes, even to let others do things. So a clear understanding of the rules can liberate people to get more involved. And if you can read some rules that have some meat to them, rules that are detailed enough that you can at least ask some good questions if you're still not sure, then you can go out and do stuff with more confidence.

    EDIT: we also need clarity one way or the other when there are events. It is often conspicuously absent from announces for events too, and believe me, people are scouring those posts wanting to know what the rules of engagement are. If you really, really don't want us to PK (or whatever else) during those, just come out and say it. Some of us won't be super happy, but we'll be happier than we are when we have to guess, and then there is a "you were naughty" follow up announce, or when you tried to mechanically preempt us but it still sort of worked anyway!
  • Khizan said:

    Elokia said:

    With that said, what I was trying to tell you is that we have been attempting to move AM to a "We believe in pure Diachaim, magickers and demonic people twist Diachaim and they suck they shouldn't do that. Pure Diachaim is what the Gods used, we want to be closer to what the Gods used - as they didn't require twisted/tainted Diachaim to use their power, etc. Pure Diachaim is also what flows in and out of the core, to use Pure Diachaim you are directly aligning yourself with the core (The heart of the world) thus connecting you to the world on a "higher level." All in all - I think this paints a pretty cool picture of where AM can go with this. (But I seem to be the only one to think this?)

    So just to clear that up: No AM is not "pro some magick" they are "pro pure Diachaim." Or at least, that is what the lore in the game states, even if the players do not follow this.

    To me, this breaks down as following:
    1) Diachaim is some weird power. It's the source of magick so it might as well be magick, so let's call it magick.
    2) AM likes pure magick
    3) Magick likes Twisted Magick A
    4) Demonic likes Twisted Magick B

    To me, this is sort of a fundamentally uninteresting background for a conflict. There's no meat there. There's nothing to sink my teeth into. There's nothing here to get me invested in it. Sure, it's cool and all, but why do I care? What makes this so important that I would kill for it, that I would die for it?

    Nothing, really. There's no story there. Sure, the Gods used pure diachaim. But the honest truth here? The Gods died almost four RL years ago. Nobody cares about them anymore. Lots of our players were never alive to see the Gods, never knew them, and have no investment in them. And the heart of anti-magick was never really "We hate magick for our own reasons", because we never had our own reasons. The heart of anti-magick was always "The Gods will this". And now the Gods are dead. So, please let them go. This is the Age of Mortality. Please don't try to fit us into an RP of "We want to be closer to the Gods that died 4 RL years ago that most of us never met."

    Nobody now really cares about diachaim purity levels and I very much doubt you will ever make anybody care about them very much. They're theoretically interesting, but they're not emotionally gripping. I feel like you would be MUCH better off looking for conflict sources in the places that people are already invested in, instead of trying to make people care about what kind of battery is hooked up to their lightning bolt.


    There is this thing that is happening in real life too, where some people are saying "This is how people feel so I'm going to claim it as fact." Then they look at fact sheets of things with real facts and go "Well that's not true because that's not how I feel."

    Feelings != Facts.

    I understand this is how YOU feel. That's great, but don't think that because you FEEL something, that makes the lore/facts of the game any different.

    This is also YOUR opinion, this is not the opinion of the entire game.

    If people wish to see changes, if people want to see things happen, I'm all for that. Countless times we have said, "Send us an e-mail, send us a message, send us an orgrequest, let's talk."

    I will be more open to speak with you about changing the direction of areas. I prefer to not do it on the forums, as these threads generally seem to get out of hand quickly, and it deters from what we actually wish to discuss.

    Please see me in game, or e-mail to discuss anything you wish. I have a "door is always open" policy.
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  • I'd prefer option 2 because I think it just adds something new to the game. I know this will affect more people and they may like the current RP and such in their current city. I think you can still satisfy these people if certain NPCs relocated to the new city, and certain things of the old cities were kept.

    I'm sure it will be a joint effort with the players and admin to make either option happen.

  • I'm not entirely opposed to absorbing Stavenn. But considering that Khandava has been doing a lot of internal updates lately, including a full room revamp of the council and forest (we're about halfway through implementing it), I'd be pretty upset if Khandava were destroyed and a new org were created. Though Stavenn is the older of the two organizations (at least in the demonic circle), it's not had a real, compelling role for a long time. Khandava doesn't currently have that issue, and I'd hate to see the work that several people have put into making it what it is scrapped completely.

  • Maybe I'm in the minority, but I strongly dislike the idea of having 3 circles but only one "org" per circle. Only having one org per circle leaves people with no alternative if the dynamics of the org are not to their liking, especially considering that the game mechanics are so heavily tied to org membership (shard skills, sect rituals, etc.).

    I would much prefer having only 2 circles, with 2 orgs per circle. At least this way there are alternatives if one wants to stay in a particular circle (due to professions, artifact investment, and whatnot).
  • I agree with Caelya. I would be fine with absorbing Stavenn. A lot of time and effort has been put into revamping the council from its former pre-blight appearance. It would be discouraging to see that effort wasted.
  • Or just keep the orgs, and ditch a circle, which is how I understand what Septus has in mind. It doesn't really matter all that much if some of them are smallish, if they are allied via circle.
  • Solution #2 is much better, imo.

    The big problem with Solution #1 is that you end up moving a bunch of other people from their organization into another organization's existing power structure and it leaves things out of balance. Cityleaders and such are thrown back to CR1, and other organizations are left with the situation where Khandavans don't want Abigail to join their council but this means that the admin is either forcing her into their org or forcing her out of her circle and blah blah blah. Lots of headaches.

    I think it's better to nuke both orgs and have them resettle. This balances things out more and resolves the issue where you're basically dumping a bunch of uninvited houseguests into somebody else's lap. It would also let you rebuild cities along more sensible lines. Smaller cities, without the giant outdated guildhalls and all the wasted space that just feels empty.

    Personally, I think that turning a refugee camp into a fully fledged small city is much more interesting than Khandava finding a bunch of Stavennites on their doorstep and then continuing with business as usual.

    And if you're redoing the conflict behind the game it's also a good way of redirecting things and avoiding a lot of the entrenched things. I mean, you dump the current Ithaquans into Antioch and nothing in Antioch will change and Antioch will continue on just as it is now. Same with Stavenn into Khandava or Celidon into Kinsarmar. And that would be good if the current setup was working well, but it is not working well at all right now and changing that up is the entire point of this exercise.

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • Ultrix said:

    Maybe I'm in the minority, but I strongly dislike the idea of having 3 circles but only one "org" per circle. Only having one org per circle leaves people with no alternative if the dynamics of the org are not to their liking, especially considering that the game mechanics are so heavily tied to org membership (shard skills, sect rituals, etc.).

    I would much prefer having only 2 circles, with 2 orgs per circle. At least this way there are alternatives if one wants to stay in a particular circle (due to professions, artifact investment, and whatnot).

    I'm still against a two circle system, but I'm equally against one org per circle. Life is hard.
  • Agreed that it is the cleaner solution, but it also pisses off a larger group of people. Not that it may not work out that way. Using Khandava/Stavenn as an example still, another option is to use their massive room update as a chance to close out both orgs and make a new one. While it would be in the Khandava area, they would not lose their work and we could create a new combined org under a new name. I'm not sure that is a good idea, just thinking out loud.

  • This is not Imperian specific but I think having some form of cross-promotions between the IRE games could allow for more population in all games. One example would be Elite memberships giving lessons every month that are available to be transferred to another character in another IRE game. This will allow more people to try out the different realms and see if they like it or not.
  • JuranJuran Ohio
    edited August 2016
    Jeremy said:

    Agreed that it is the cleaner solution, but it also pisses off a larger group of people. Not that it may not work out that way. Using Khandava/Stavenn as an example still, another option is to use their massive room update as a chance to close out both orgs and make a new one. While it would be in the Khandava area, they would not lose their work and we could create a new combined org under a new name. I'm not sure that is a good idea, just thinking out loud.

    I'm suddenly reminded that if Khandava had been the only demonic organization, Juran would not have been allowed to join Demonic. Only by the grace of having a second organization in the circle could I participate in the circle that I wanted to.

    The same would be true if Juran had wanted to join Celidon or (presumably) Ithaqua. So long as you have a system that allows players to take leadership roles and influence city direction, there need to be alternatives available to the rest of the players. You cannot gate the entirety of the content in a circle behind the arbitrary decision making of one mortal player. Either keep a second city or provide some basic support for those that choose (or are forced) to be cityless.
  • So....just hit level 101.


    Can I ask why there is no bonus for going over 100? I mean no extra health/anything aside from 5 lessons? Just very lackluster feeling right now.

    Sorry if this is off-topic some. Didn't really want to create a new thread about my complaint.

    I also understand the Perma Aspect thing, but as many people are saying they're very lackluster especially once you get them all? I mean okay so you get all the Aspect bonuses you want then what? Seems stale in the end game here.


    Initial response to getting 101, if I am wrong feel free to counter this. Thanks in advance
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