Latency clarification

[galaxgal]

As for latency having 'coded' effects - if there are going to be.. obvious, random signs that might eventually have people suspect you as a latent (including mages and yourself) then the RPXP cost should stay the same, because then it will be actual risk with the Order finding out.

What I mean is that basically there are two routes I see to resolving the odd nature of latency IC right now:

1. Leave latency as-is, and add a scaling buy-in to magery. This suggests intentfulness or commitment in the latent/mage population to play those desirable roles to their fullest rather than just as an incident of chargen. This is cheap and reflects the current way people seem to treat those roles.

2. Make latency dangerous, but keep the current cost to avoid it. Add more detail and coded effects that portray that something dangerous is going on, spur the latent character to seek help or answers. Random and totally obvious things wouldn't be fun imo, but there should be some inherent risk to sitting on latency for literally hundreds of hours and doing nothing about it.
EDIT:
You could kind of model it with how diseases already work: start with some echoes only the player can see and have it gradually progress if unaddressed into seriously dangerous effects.

I'm more in favor of option 2: it encourages interaction, and feels more faithful to the 'magery and Taint is a big scary disease-like-thing' aspect of lore.

[Alpharius]

What I mean is that basically there are two routes I see to resolving the odd nature of latency IC right now:

1. Leave latency as-is, and add a scaling buy-in to magery. This suggests intentfulness or commitment in the latent/mage population to play those desirable roles to their fullest rather than just as an incident of chargen. This is cheap and reflects the current way people seem to treat those roles.

2. Make latency dangerous, but keep the current cost to avoid it. Add more detail and coded effects that portray that something dangerous is going on, spur the latent character to seek help or answers. Random and totally obvious things wouldn't be fun imo, but there should be some inherent risk to sitting on latency for literally hundreds of hours and doing nothing about it.

Good suggestions, but I am inclined to say that the second option would make latents even more riskier to play than actual awakened mages.

I think you are confusing what was said a bit, there were suggested pvents around latency at some point, but clearly they are not in the game (or did for brief period of time and didn't hold), and the only command you get is an OOC one that you are latent. That's it, and that's not instructions at all, just discovery for the OOC player that his IC character is latent. There is nothing more. I recommend for you to roll a latent second and see.

Again, I think you are mixing things up. I didn't say that htey are not playing their parts, but that if they do not then mages cannot awaken them. But at the same time if there is no guidance on how to play a latent, then the confusion of new players who try to play it, but don't know how, is extremely understandable and needs fixing. I know how to play a latent character, but only because I had pervious characters, and on my first I had quite a lot of conversations with staff trying ot figure it out. Otherwise I would have zero idea what to do with this latent thing. And this is something that echos every few weeks/months through visnet, so I am not the only one (and has been going on for years).

And for mages to be able to investigate anything, players must know how to play the part as for awakening you need serious cnoting that leads you to that conclusion that the person is latent. So we need people to play the latency, otherwise they cannot do their thing.

Now I don't think I like the idea of just making the latency somehting you can ignore, that's not how it was ever set to be, and you can see some helpfiles + history of roleplay to the contrary. It is of course the easy way out, you don't want to be a mage, you just ignore the latency. But that's kinda like ignoring your characters bad stat, it is not exactly in great form, especially since the system of latent lottery seems to have been put to do the exact opposite. Before that you had a binary chocie at creation - latent or not (with occasionally latent being replaced with starting directly as awakened), so it seems that the intention is to put people out of the comfort zone. I am also pretty sure that in chargen you can spend QP (or was it XP) to guarantee to not be a mage, so given that it seems even weirder that not paying the fee, and ignoring consequences of that choice would be okay.

But there is a helpfile for latency that has a paragraph on what latents are, and what could technically happen. Look above for my post. As I said, a guide for latency sounds like you'd be telling players how to roleplay their characters. Someone may choose to ignore their latency. Someone could (using the guidelines in that help file) act out on their latency. If a new player is confused, then they can talk to staff or ask on the mage channel or come up with ways that are similar to what is outlined in the help file to RP the 'signs' of their latency.

If people want to ignore their latency, that is up to them. If people want to roll a mage and do nothing with their powers, it's up to them. It's their character. I do not think we should be forcing anyone to RP a certain way and take risks -- because that takes away from the nature of TI where people can RP freely. Yes, maybe that's not how you're supposed to play in your view -- and I do agree people taking more risks is a good thing -- but it is up to the player behind the screen what they want to do.

It might be bad form, it might be not... but it is their character.

As for the pvents, there were a few people on visnet who mentioned you get little pvents like the ones in pregnancy. If that's wrong, then perhaps something like that could be implemented to allow the player to RP it out if they want or not -- just like pvents. Nothing forced, a few ideas for them to hook on if they want to.

I generally disagree with 'guides' on free character concepts because it forces players to conform to it. There should definitely be hard bounds, but they should be kept as IC as possible (like Davite religion on TI, which is entirely IC and people can go against it if they want). But when you turn something into OOC and start going into territory of 'you should not ignore this' or 'you should do this' or 'you should RP this out' then it is a big no from me.

I think this issue isn't necessarily because people do not understand how to play latency. The help file does give examples of what can happen (like candles snuffing, animals reacting differently) and there is nothing stopping players from RPing that out, is there?

[galaxgal]

What I mean is that basically there are two routes I see to resolving the odd nature of latency IC right now:

1. Leave latency as-is, and add a scaling buy-in to magery. This suggests intentfulness or commitment in the latent/mage population to play those desirable roles to their fullest rather than just as an incident of chargen. This is cheap and reflects the current way people seem to treat those roles.

2. Make latency dangerous, but keep the current cost to avoid it. Add more detail and coded effects that portray that something dangerous is going on, spur the latent character to seek help or answers. Random and totally obvious things wouldn't be fun imo, but there should be some inherent risk to sitting on latency for literally hundreds of hours and doing nothing about it.

Good suggestions, but I am inclined to say that the second option would make latents even more riskier to play than actual awakened mages.

Honestly, I feel it's a little too 'safe' to roll up a mage, gather 50% of nearly free(!) reclevel, and then sit on it as is.

EDIT: To clarify -- yeah, I agree it's their character, but there are mage population limits and having lots of mages who do nothing with their powers and get a reward for it stifles that vein of RP. I think people should really have to ask at chargen, 'is access to magic, a thing I know is dangerous and hunted down/interrogated about frequently, essential to my concept?'

[Alpharius]

Honestly, I feel it's a little too 'safe' to roll up a mage, gather 50% of nearly free(!) reclevel, and then sit on it as is.

Well, what I mean is that let's say latents do have this coded 'thing' that gets worse with time and codedly WILL out them as latents/Tainted. Mages don't have anything like that -- a mage player can just sit on their powers and take no risks whatsoever and play it safe with no consequences. If we were to give coded 'effects' to latency, then I'd think mages should receive something akin to it too, because otherwise everyone will just roll awakened mages and never latents (there can be exceptions of course, if you want to RP being a time bomb)

EDIT: To clarify -- yeah, I agree it's their character, but there are mage population limits and having lots of mages who do nothing with their powers and get a reward for it stifles that vein of RP. I think people should really have to ask at chargen, 'is access to magic, a thing I know is dangerous and hunted down/interrogated about frequently, essential to my concept?'

I do agree, but as I mentioned since that's getting into the territory of telling people how to RP/play I don't think it's up to us to decide that. It might be stifling, but the argument devolves to whether OOCly the players want to take risks or not. A lot of people are afraid of losing their characters, so they may choose to play it passively. We've had great, right out there and aggressive mage characters (which brought A LOT of RP).

[galaxgal]

It might be stifling, but the argument devolves to whether OOCly the players want to take risks or not.

If you choose to play an awakened mage, you are given big red text warning that your role entails great personal danger, and compensated with bonus reclevel in exchange for that danger. Fulfilling that promise of danger isn't forcing the player to do anything except participate in the game as advertised. Choosing to play the mage was the OOC decision to take a risk, and it is rewarded by code.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not suggesting that mages have a duty or obligation to 'play a certain way'. I am saying that the risk should actually match the reward we are giving them, and yes, this might entail giving players who's job it is to uncover them a few more tools or freedoms they currently don't have.

I also fundamentally disagree that taking up space in a limited role is only 'personal choice'. Other people may need or want those roles.

[Starstarfish]

I do agree, but as I mentioned since that's getting into the territory of telling people how to RP/play I don't think it's up to us to decide that. It might be stifling, but the argument devolves to whether OOCly the players want to take risks or not. A lot of people are afraid of losing their characters, so they may choose to play it passively. We've had great, right out there and aggressive mage characters (which brought A LOT of RP).

Rec level is an OOC award for an expected style of roleplay attached to the role of being an awakened mage. Accepting that role and its attached benefits but then opting not to participate in those expectations seems a bit against the point. As otherwise it provides an OOC incentive to create/awaken mages (more death XP return earlier on compared to other builds) without providing the expected return to the RP community at large.

That being said there are still some issues where a lot of coded mage activities do not codewise count as active RP even if they are engaging and interacting with other players in an IC fashion.

[Kuzco]

I agree with the OP's point, latent RP could use some clarifications, maybe a private echo here and there. As it is, there is zero risk of being discovered, and zero consequences for not seeking awakening.
In the tangents, yes, playing a mage is an overwhelmingly richer experience, it brings far more coded power, and the XP bonus is, to me, nonsensical. Playing mundane humans should have said bonus instead. I've heard from more than a few players that they prefer to roll mages for the XP, even if they do no mage RP or even train mage skills. And with a limit to the total number of active mages, yes, this is both counter to theme and a bit of an issue.

[Alpharius]

Might be worth making another thread on suggestions on how to enforce mages taking a more 'active' role then - or ways for the Order to investigate/hunt down mages if said mages don't do much and take barely any risks at all (thus making their consequences almost zero).

[galaxgal]

Agree - I'll raise the discussion on current mage meta design to another thread so that we can separate this topic from latency.

RE: echoes and effects of latency in specific, I think there are multiple 'tiers' of visibility to consider if a 'consequence' is ever considered:

1 - Whether the latent knows they are latent. This is the lowest-risk, and even allows the latent to try to avoid situations where they might be outed or discovered.

2 - Whether signs are visible to other mages only. This has the 'risk' of being invited into what commonly gets referred to as 'spicy RP', which is usually being seen as a benefit. Mages don't usually want to kill each other because there are benefits to having other mages around for them. Like getting to do mage RP!

3 - Whether signs are visible to non-mages. This is blackmail material at best and a death flag at worst.

4 - Whether signs are visible specifically to Orderites. This is almost always going to be a death flag.

Or being latent can just become a buy-in instead of a buy-out and we can continue to allow players to ignore it. It is almost always an advantage to have latency rather than a drawback, unless you are trying to play an Orderite.

[Satoshi]

As someone who had a character that I specifically requested to staff to be latent, that was eventually awakened (through some, admittedly somewhat heavy-handed 'latency' RP on my part) I really REALLY wish that mages in specific had a more sure-fire way to tell latency. Some sort of spell to sniff it out on a target, or something, because honestly, if I had not been... a bit obvious about my character's latency, he would have never been awoken.

And honestly? The awakening scene was, hands down, one of the MOST FUN scenes I had ever had on that character. But I never felt in danger of a mage finding me, or the order finding out or anything. In my many hours of playing him, there were no mechanical effects of latency, I received no pvents about latency, I didn't even know about the helpfile that says that animals react strangely or candles snuff out occasionally. That was totally new info to me. All I got was a 'X is latent' message, which... since I had asked for it I had already known

I think the latency helpfile could be updated or another one could be made with some suggestions for latency. Things I've seen in suggestions: animals reacting oddly, elements reacting oddly (cooking fires burn hotter when you're trying to cook so you burn food a lot, more ripply reactions from water when near, or clothes stay soaked longer, etc) general signs of social distance, lack of empathy etc. I'm on the fence about mages all being sociopaths but tha'ts a different thing entirely.

SO to wrap up:
1) I think mages should have a more common reliable way to sniff out latents, adding a level of possible danger to a latent's RP.
(After all, some helpfiles say that mages were ALL awoken so mages who think of it as a gift could be seeking to spread the gift, and others might use it as punishment to a woeful latent.)

2) I think some latency examples for subtle RP add ins should be added just as guidelines for the new people who aren't familiar with latency into the game.

UPDATE: Since latency is technically something that a character has always been, perhaps alerting the player SOONER so they can incorporate it into their RP better, since if you just abruptly add in something like the above it might be fishy.