Kiara on alignment balance

[Snowrose]

Moderator: I moved this from the Chemosh thread, which I'd prefer to reserve for discussions of that actual guild. I goofed in splitting the topic, so here's Kiara's original post which started the new discussion, followed by the post which came after.

Hmmmmm. So now we have 2 evil occupational magic guilds and 1 goodie. The current plan is to change that to 3 evil, 1 neutral and 0 goodie. Am I understanding this correctly??

Whats the thought behind this? It doesnt seem very balanced at all. I understand that wizards code whatever they feel like is fun but... whaaaaat? Theres been plenty of totally sensible changes and decisions from upstairs lately, but this one doesnt really make sense!

I cant possible see anything good coming from this? Evil magic needs good magic to counter. Dont it?

i think the plan is have all the ranger and preast guilds counter mage guilds see its like paper scissor rock rock is fighter magic is paper ranger/rogue and or hybrid classes is scissors. the good side has most of the scissors evil has most of the paper both sides have rocks. if they add more good mages they might have to add somthing roguy to evil.

id of course love to see a occ minstrel/gypsy or academic. I know elemental worshipers is kinda academic but they are still clerics.

[Kiara]

Rangers and priests? There's the rangers. Priests?!? What priests? I only know of the priests of Takhisis, and those are totally evil. Hmmmm. Rangers vs 3 evil casters. Still doesnt seem like a fair fight. Good side has one pair of your scissors, evils got three. And rangers... are they really a good counter against evil magic? If its one versus three then rangers badly needs to be recoded to be as powerful as the mages, or even more so.

[Kas]

I think the scops or elementalists are "priests".

[Zhar]

I think the scops or elementalists are "priests".

WotE, SCoP, HotV, RotW, PoT are all "priests". MM are priests to an extent too (since they draw power from a "deity").

[Kas]

I think the scops or elementalists are "priests".

WotE, SCoP, HotV, RotW, PoT are all "priests". MM are priests to an extent too (since they draw power from a "deity").

Not necessarily a cleric/priest because you proxy powers from an entity though, but sure, there's some similarities.

I think it's closer to how liches in d&D proxy their powers to lesser undead mininions - undead minions cast fireballs/chainlightning etc, drawing the energies from the pool of their undead master without ever involving a deity, while the priests or clerics definitely draw their powers through prayers to their entities who are obvious deities.

[Kiara]

Yes yes, those are priest/clerical guilds. Sure. But that doesnt change the fact that we'll be looking at 3 evil casters, 1 neutral and 0 goodie caster. Except from pretty lame ones like valars and rangers. Even if rangers and valars could counter all that from a player against player perspective (which I doubt!!) its still pretty sad from an RP perspective if you wanna play a goodie spellcaster. Your only option will be the new elemental, and you'll still have the share the guild with a bunch of evils (I assume). So...... I just think its a weird decision to remove the undead counter guild, the only goodie casters, Scops. You might say they technically arent "goodies", just anti undead, or whatnot, but in Genesis they are counted as "goodies" for sure. And instead add another undead caster guild. So instead of one undead caster guild, and one anti undead caster guild, you get 2 undead casters. I just cant figure out how it makes sense... The logical choice to me when its 2 vs 1 is to add one to the 1 side so it becomes 2 vs 2, not remove the 1 and add another to the already bigger number side making it 3 vs 0!

Rock, papers, scissors or not. It doesnt compute for me. And whats rock, paper and scissors anyway? Magic guilds beat fighters? And.... nobody beats magic guilds? If magic is paper, and fighter is rock, then paper always beat rock, but there's no scissors around to beat the paper. Except possibly rangers, who to my knowledge have a decent, but not great, chance to _escape_ the mages. But fight them? Kill them? Hm? And if after the recodes they have a better chance against mages (maybe they do?) the poor rangers still have a lot of "papers" to cut...

And it seems so complex! Why not have equal numbers of good and evil caster guilds? Thats so much simpler. 2 each. Wanna play a goodie caster, have fun. An evil? Have fun. Wanna fight, sure, we have two each so that should work out. I just dont get it! Oh I get you wanna work on what you wanna work on. But it still has to fit into the game right? Aaaaanyway, the biggest question for me is from RP point, maybe stuff will balance out in pvp, but that we dont have many options if we wanna play in a goodie caster guild is sad, and the only one we have is removed, or transformed, to a more neutral one.

[Kiara]

Oh, and dont get me wrong, I think Chemosh and Elemental Occ seems like cool and fun ideas. I am just curious to hear what the plan for balance is. Because it sounds kinda unbalanced.

[Kas]

I think elementals may compensate for the lack of 'goodie'-casters. If it's treated in 5-in-1 guild (four casters, or five), there may be no problem countering the two undeads and the evil priesthood in Neraka.

Considering everyone who joins elementalists regardless of alignment, are considered to be one unit under the sway of their
ruling masters anyway, and definitely hostile to undeads (which means AA's, shields will probably never enter their ranks since they can't aid their masters, facing an impossible dilemma).

Four/five elements, tons of potential versiability there that could easily counter the more specialized undead guilds.

So, let's wait for the elementals and see where they end up in the spectrum of rock/paper/shotgun.

[Snowrose]

Traditionally in games the thing that best beats mages is the stealthy guilds, so yes in this case its rangers. and I do agree this game woefully lacks good(scissors) stealthy guilds and or magic/fighter hybrids. I understand why there are a lack of "stealthy" guilds in genesis due to the problems they seem to cause in most games. stealth is notoriously hard to balance. rangers are a bit more preasty than stealthy.

I do count scop as a good aligned caster guild because they are anti undead. not many good aligned or even neutral undead in gen. so even if its not hard coded they still should count as good.

over all lorewise genesis is not really big on arcane magic in general if you think about it most magic guilds weather clerical or mage answer to a diety/entity of some sort. necromancers(maybe) and or academics would be the exceptions and academics are kind of baby EW. so my definition of preasty is more along the types of spells, healer/buffer guilds is what i consider preasty since this is a game balance argument not a lore argument.

However even if there were 12 evil mage guild coming out and no good casters I would not speak against ANY new guild because its NEW its a different dynamic and its a new choice for the players of genesis. even if it is not one id personally choose for myself. some people might like it so id not wish to discourage it. Because if new guilds can be made that are balenced and well liked. It encourages other New things to be coded and one of them might be a thing i enjoy.

You can not please everyone in any game but its a good idea to not discourage people coding new stuff for the sake of balance because in my experience. balance arguments tend to end in a rather nihilistic way. resulting in NO new guilds at all.
and i think we can all agree ANY new guild for genesis that inspires wizards = good.

[Kiara]

You can not please everyone in any game but its a good idea to not discourage people coding new stuff for the sake of balance because in my experience. balance arguments tend to end in a rather nihilistic way. resulting in NO new guilds at all.
and i think we can all agree ANY new guild for genesis that inspires wizards = good.

Meh, whats the fun in agreeing??! And maybe all the rest of you agree, but I dont I agree. Not all additions to a game are good additions just because they are additions. Motivated wizards are great, but I am pretty sure there's plenty of ideas and projects that are stopped by the admin because they dont fit in the game, or arent balanced, or just simply badly coded, or any number of reasons. All additions have to make sense. That's a no-brainer to me. Wizards gotta work on things that inspire them, absolutely, but it doesnt mean just because someone is inspired by something, its ultimately a good thing to have in a game. You comment makes it sound like it doesnt matter much to you if stuff in the game is balanced? You mean unbalanced new content is better than no content? Or I am misunderstanding you??

Does this move make sense? I dont know. I dont know what the "big plan" is for balance between guilds, and like Kas said maybe new Elementals will be just what we need. Although I am a bit worried that we're removing that one goodie caster guild we have and adding a third evil one instead. Looking at it from the outside, not knowing all the facts, it does seem like a pretty odd choice to make for a game that has spent a decade trying to recode all guilds for the sake of balance.