Frustrations at Play
Certain things have been bugging me of late on the primary MUCK where I play. My instinct is to not go into detail, but I've been told I should vent, so maybe I'll try that here.
Obviously, if you don't care about MUCKing, the below isn't worth the bother. And if you MUCK with me, you probably shouldn't read the below while in a poor mood, 'cause such rants always seem to make those worse...
Argh!
Now, I always have a baseline level of annoyance. I figure it can't be helped. That has to do with the finite amount of concentration and time I have to put into characters and how it doesn't add up to the amount of attention and time others want from me. I cannot keep up with everyone, especially when half the people I know seem to prefer exclusive time with my characters. Heaven forbid I roleplay in a group. I've lost count of how many times I've heard 'Oh, I don't want to interrupt, I'll just go away' with all the mopey connotations.
But I can *usually* deal with that.
Lately, however, it's become clear that power creep and loopholes are becoming more apparent in the RP system being used. 7-8 months of play and my lead character is... well, a machine of melee death, while my next one is possibly the most powerful dedicated mage character around that didn't receive a large windfall of points from something. The growing difference in power levels makes it very difficult to balance challenges against a group of particular PCs. That, in turn, hinders fun.
And the loopholes. Gah. Ways to bypass normal limitations and throw around the greatest spell effects on the chart instantly with no real drawback, ways to pull the same tricks with a prayer and possibly a starting character, ways to buy and sell items until you have all the money you need for a massive project. They are there. They've been there. What bothers me is people are using them more and more.
Someone has argued to me before: "If a character can do X and it benefits them, why shouldn't they." The answer for that, and it doesn't *always* apply, has come to me since. "Because it ruins the player(s) fun."
When I see someone exploiting a loophole for massive mechanical benefits, it makes me feel ill. It gets even worse when, to not be left behind and unable to contribute, I feel forced to do the same. This sort of situation can make me miserable. I can only assume the same of other players. Obviously not everyone is affected so. Some people feel their characters have to be the best, and they'll strive toward that heedless of any repercussions - to characters or players.
I reasoned out a way to make potent, permanent magical items long before it should have been possible. I checked to see if it was valid. Upon confirmation... I sat on it. I don't want to open that can of worms. I'd rather see a fix that patches a hole I found than leap through it myself. The same doesn't apply to others, though, and it doesn't take long before several people are barrelling along blindly. I get to either stand and watch or follow along. Neither appeals.
And thus concludes this installment...
Obviously, if you don't care about MUCKing, the below isn't worth the bother. And if you MUCK with me, you probably shouldn't read the below while in a poor mood, 'cause such rants always seem to make those worse...
Argh!
Now, I always have a baseline level of annoyance. I figure it can't be helped. That has to do with the finite amount of concentration and time I have to put into characters and how it doesn't add up to the amount of attention and time others want from me. I cannot keep up with everyone, especially when half the people I know seem to prefer exclusive time with my characters. Heaven forbid I roleplay in a group. I've lost count of how many times I've heard 'Oh, I don't want to interrupt, I'll just go away' with all the mopey connotations.
But I can *usually* deal with that.
Lately, however, it's become clear that power creep and loopholes are becoming more apparent in the RP system being used. 7-8 months of play and my lead character is... well, a machine of melee death, while my next one is possibly the most powerful dedicated mage character around that didn't receive a large windfall of points from something. The growing difference in power levels makes it very difficult to balance challenges against a group of particular PCs. That, in turn, hinders fun.
And the loopholes. Gah. Ways to bypass normal limitations and throw around the greatest spell effects on the chart instantly with no real drawback, ways to pull the same tricks with a prayer and possibly a starting character, ways to buy and sell items until you have all the money you need for a massive project. They are there. They've been there. What bothers me is people are using them more and more.
Someone has argued to me before: "If a character can do X and it benefits them, why shouldn't they." The answer for that, and it doesn't *always* apply, has come to me since. "Because it ruins the player(s) fun."
When I see someone exploiting a loophole for massive mechanical benefits, it makes me feel ill. It gets even worse when, to not be left behind and unable to contribute, I feel forced to do the same. This sort of situation can make me miserable. I can only assume the same of other players. Obviously not everyone is affected so. Some people feel their characters have to be the best, and they'll strive toward that heedless of any repercussions - to characters or players.
I reasoned out a way to make potent, permanent magical items long before it should have been possible. I checked to see if it was valid. Upon confirmation... I sat on it. I don't want to open that can of worms. I'd rather see a fix that patches a hole I found than leap through it myself. The same doesn't apply to others, though, and it doesn't take long before several people are barrelling along blindly. I get to either stand and watch or follow along. Neither appeals.
And thus concludes this installment...
You said it, others are thinking it. The only thing I can say that applies is something that was said to me once: The place was built on a no-rules, anything-goes playerbase who wanted to overpower, it was part of the theme. So I stopped trying to keep up.
ReplyDeleteIf someone is willing to sit down and work with me on plugging the holes (and offers to do the writing so I don't have to), we could see about getting those closed up.
ReplyDeleteIt has taken me ages to get rid of a section of that. The 'anything goes' was a pain in the rump originally, since the place had no real history or background for what existed. The power creep... you know, I can't think of an effective way of stifling that. (Double the XP costs for everything?)
ReplyDeleteThinking on this more, what would be the appropriate pace for things? I'm thinking that, instead of XP per session of a TP, it should be probably XP upon completion, and only for those people who saw it to the end. That would probably be one way to do it. Would that be enough, though? Perhaps so, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteYeah... that may have been the case. I wasn't very in touch with the overall feel of things back then. But the idea of 'resetting' and coming up with a new system was supposed to address that. So the theory went... Still, I'm less bothered by the big picture than the little things. Friend A says "Look at what I can do!" Friend B gets all defensive and crunches numbers for a way to do even better. It's... wearying.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure either. I posted about this to the Faire list. What response did I get? One reply from someone who only gave an opinion on one of the polls, which really was a secondary point of my post. I've tried to talk to you about various issues as they come up. Sometimes they get fixed, sometimes you're distracted with another project and they don't. The XP issue can be mitigated by cutting back on rewards. It's a little late to 'fix' the situation, but as I said, I think the biggest part of that problem came from points being given for doing something for the MUCK and points being given for a session or RP regardless of content or contribution. The upper tiers of the magic system are just frelled right now. That's going to take more work and care than I can possibly go into here.
ReplyDeleteSo why do people get their vote xp every week if we've a problem with too much xp going around? I know vote xp doesn't account for much ultimately compared to TP 'candy' xp. At completion of an arc sounds good. But give some to people who participated in -some way- This might encourage short little one-shots though. :/ Be a jerk and make a 'scale' of xp to award? 1 xp for each week of game time spent? 1 xp for each major fight you went into? 1 xp if the puzzles were solved and the goal attained? As for magic's loopholes? Heh. Never shoulda been there maybe. Ways to bypass aspects and mastery should be very limited (Artificing ignoring only time, shamanism ignoring only range and that's conditional based upon a 'personal' object and increasing casting time by a 'step') or having huge downfall (Infernalism's Diabolic Rites being able to kill a character) Azure Ritual is a free 'I can do anything if I roll well. Let's see how many dice I can scramble up.' break in the system.
ReplyDelete"Saw it through to completion" is difficult to hold to when a player might attend 4/5 of the sessions in a TP and then have a date or a pile of homework at the "completion." I do feel that 2XP just for showing up for two hours of TP is probably too much, but how to scale this? I wish I had more useful ideas. I can see what's wrong, but I'm not very good at fixing these things, so mostly, I just try to keep my mouth shut. Part of my problem is that I've always favored the games where XP is granted for awesome RP, which means it's strictly a GM-driven thing. This means it varies by GM. It also means that players who quietly roleplay their character wonderfully often get overlooked in the XP-handout because their characters weren't the vocal ones who led the "saving the day."
ReplyDeleteI mentioned, when essence costs first changed, a problem of escallation. People used essence too freely, so costs went up, so people bought Powers that gave them more essence, so costs went up again, so starting characters hadn't a prayer of competing. Part of the problem is in the system--characters want to be able to do *anything*, and do it right away, and if they don't, they bitch and moan until work-arounds are written so they can. Part of the problem is in the GM-ing. Mind you, I have the greatest respect for the folks who actually take on the running of plot on mu*'s. It's a headache I wouldn't want, for the most part. But on FFa2 in particular, I noticed that when we were all starting new, we had several plots run involving deities and other absurdly-powered NPCs. I don't think the intention was for the interactions to turn out the way they did, but situations evolved where a character made an unexpected choice and ripped a hole in the plane. Or where a first pass by the big baddie made it very clear that none of the characters would survive a second pass. People came up with creatives ways to meet these kinds of challenges, but some of them involved doing very absurd things in terms of the amount of power they felt they had to be able to fling around. This leads to over-escalation of character growth in terms of power levels and more of the afore-mentioned bitching and moaning. And part of the problem, of course, is the people. We have a lot of people who want to play a certain way, regardless of how it affects the characters around them. And we have a very heroicly-oriented group of players. In the real world, you need not just heroes but sidekicks, partners, followers, people who stand in the shadows and pull strings, broken people, klutzes, etc. FML always impressed me because it had such a good mix, and they all managed to play together. FFa2 just doesn't seem to balance that way. Back to system . . . what kind of differences do we have here vs., say, FFDA? The reason I ask is that I notice Derynn powered up far too quickly in this system. In FFDA, it took months before he could even change shape, and he worked on his skills as a fighter and a sneak. He just barely got to the point where he could start futzing with magic when the whole thing went bust. I hate being able to see the what, and not see the why . . . As for time spent . . . you're right. You have limited resources. At a certain point, you have to be self-protective. For what it's worth, I always enjoy roleplaying with you regardless of situation or character. And there is a place where you're welcome to show up any time, rp or not as you choose, and nobody's real likely to push or pull at you for anything. If you need that.
ReplyDelete