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Three Circle to Two Circle World?
I'm sure this has come up before and shot down before. So not really a new idea
But I feel that at this point there really isn't a population base to support three circles. Magick doesn't have a place anymore it seems. There are no combatants. There are no real objectives. They just continue to exist - towards what end? I mean even their Entities are all dead.
Has the time come to make this a two circle system.
Post edited by Ohm on
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I can't actually remember the last time all three sides were truely able to compete on a fairly equal footing. Its pretty much been two v one in all of the pk events in recent memory (am/magick vs demonic in the egg event, magick/demonic vs am in the plagues event, etc).
While three circles has its perks, it does kind of suck pretty massively for whichever faction is currently the one with near zero capability to participate in most of the day to day conflicts.
Right now, you have players split into six cities/councils. Lets assume they're evenly divided (which they won't be). At peak there's about 70~ people on. At the wee hours of the day there's usually closer to 14. Some simple arithmetic puts that to between 2 and 14 people per city. Assuming they're evenly divided.
And, to speak frankly, to say they're evenly divided is a concession I'm not really willing to make. When there's no one really around, people will gravitate to where there IS people around, that's just human nature. Suggesting that organizations that no longer really serve a purpose should stick around because it is somehow their own fault as the leadership is stagnant seems counter-productive at best. I've a few people I talk to in the magick circle - many of whom talk to Anette at all because she's the one person around when they are that will talk back - and it's not at all uncommon for them to be the only people awake in Celidon or Kinsarmar, especially come early AM american time. For a person like me that just wants to bash in peace most of the time with the occasional side discussion maybe that's heaven. For a more social player, however, that's hell. To a degree it's somewhat expected that time of day, but try getting a highfavour, trying to advance in orgrank, or just get anything done you cannot do yourself when there's no one else around and you'll quickly get frustrated.
This bleeds into the problem posed by novices joining those organizations. I like wizards. Mages are a neat class in RPGs! Usually anyways. So lets say I made a little Celidonian mage novice. Now I'm usually bashing around 2-6am EST. Whose going to be around to help me then? Who will answer my nooby questions about the use of the profession, or do as @Jules so helpfully did with Anette and set her up with herbs and a vialbelt? No one, that's who. And that might be okay for me, who can power through on a base understanding of the game. For someone new to Imperian, however, I cannot imagine that would end up very fun at all. I'd probably lose interest and go elsewhere.
When claymore DSL went in the Runeguard Legion was the terror of the world.
Honestly, one of the universal combat truths of the game is that, no matter what circle you're talking about, the more people you move into knight classes, the better you'll do. It's tanky. It's easy. It handles shield well. It synergizes with everything. More knight more good.
That aside, you'll never see a switch to a three-circle system at this point because players are too invested in their organizations. Maybe you could see the orgs as a whole go AM or go Demonic, like Khandava did, but I sort of doubt it because then we'd have to deal with classes and which faction gets what and so forth, or we'd have magick classes on both circles and then have to balance around different team environments with them and it would generally be ugly.
"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."
Which I guess brings up the question, should MUDs now be targetting a more casual audience than the niche hardcore players? Is our whale credit purchasing behavior enough to sustain the games in the long term? Credit prices are absolutely ridiculous compared to what I could get for my money in other games. I guess I'm going off on a tangent here, but I feel as if the entire two v three circle argument is rooted entirely in player numbers and player activity.
All classes do have access to that stuff.
The problem is that all those classes take more skill and more coordination. Most magick players don't have much of either to start with and they don't want to work to acquire any. And then a lot of them get offended when you tell them that they're doing things wrong and that they should be focusing on maximizing damage in groups. So you get a couple of your guys basically doing their own bad affliction strategies or whatever, and everything basically goes to crap.
"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."