Poll: Mages vs Law
I've played both and my mage was definitely harder to play. He had two different identities he had to manage and stuff he had to keep track of to make sure he didn't do or say the wrong thing almost all the time. There is more, perhaps I'll add to this post later.
I'd have to say being a 'good' baddie is much harder. Now, that's not to say being a law keeper isn't hard, it's a real pain in the butt. The headaches invovled are large. I have played both sides, up and down. I've had character who were both at the same time. It is far simplier to be a law keeper. If you're the Cardinal or Earl Marshall, you can just wipe out your enemies, and guilt is something you only have to deal with if you choose. The small good law keeper, say a merchant, has very little to worry about in my mind. However, mages and thieves and the like, it's a battle from day one. It does not matter what you do, at some point, someone will accuse you of being a bad guy and you will most likely be killed in some fashion. As I go in knowing this and accepting this, it can be quiet fun, and I have low expectations. I have never thought there was a balance though. The Order, Knights, and Reeves own the game with just a few strong players. I've seen very strong players play mages and I never once thought they overpowered the Law entirely.
I'm not sure what is meant by 'hard' to play. I'll just assume that it means how difficult is it to achieve your goals and go from there.
I'd say that they're both hard in certain lights, but overall, either is quite enjoyable.
The Law is generally pretty cut and dried unless you have other, non-Law motivations as well. You know who your enemies are, and the rest is just details. This from someone who has played the Monarch, Knight GM, another knight, Grand Inquisitor, 2 other inquisitors, and a high ranking Reeve (commis). However, it can be difficult at times, if people aren't okay with their character dying with some OOC pressure and guilt. I'll note that I haven't seen that at all in this iteration of TI (although I'm less face-to-face with it) but everyone has been really good sports that I've noted.
Other side of the fence, not as experienced: I've played a few mages (above Reeve), and a number of heretics (including above Knight GM & one of the Inquisitors.) Never played a thief. What I have played of this has been fun.
Overall I probably prefer being on the law side. Not a fan of playing a mage, in general.
Actually, above all of that, I think I prefer playing on neither side, but instead those characters that make up the populace.
That was a bit of a ramble...
I'd say that they're both hard in certain lights, but overall, either is quite enjoyable.
The Law is generally pretty cut and dried unless you have other, non-Law motivations as well. You know who your enemies are, and the rest is just details. This from someone who has played the Monarch, Knight GM, another knight, Grand Inquisitor, 2 other inquisitors, and a high ranking Reeve (commis). However, it can be difficult at times, if people aren't okay with their character dying with some OOC pressure and guilt. I'll note that I haven't seen that at all in this iteration of TI (although I'm less face-to-face with it) but everyone has been really good sports that I've noted.
Other side of the fence, not as experienced: I've played a few mages (above Reeve), and a number of heretics (including above Knight GM & one of the Inquisitors.) Never played a thief. What I have played of this has been fun.
Overall I probably prefer being on the law side. Not a fan of playing a mage, in general.
Actually, above all of that, I think I prefer playing on neither side, but instead those characters that make up the populace.
That was a bit of a ramble...
What about playing a wrongdoer who isn't a mage? :)
Having played both sides as GL, I think 'harder' is a difficult thing to define. Tenebrae was definitely 'hard' in the sense that you had to keep your cards close as hell, and there was virtually no assistance by the system. No silver sent to you each week by the Crown, no support of warrant and dquarter/burn code, no effing courier in your office, and if you're warranted, well, good luck going about your plots. People do not automatically come to you with information and assistance usually, you have to ferret it out by hook or by crook. And to those who think being an ethical criminal is an easy and biased thing, I can assure you it is not. You will be amazed by the kind of precautions it takes to kidnap someone, for example, without utterly disregarding VNPCs and also making sure you aren't codely caught.
But it is also amazingly 'free' in the sense that there is little theme or 'law' to dictate how you act. The Council may elect to remove a Justiciar, Cardinal, etc who is not behaving according to the dictates and norms of the Law and society. But not so for Tenebrae and Rubeus. Basically, you act however you want, speak however you want, and choose your directions however you want, with little societal or political pressure.
Having played both sides as GL, I think 'harder' is a difficult thing to define. Tenebrae was definitely 'hard' in the sense that you had to keep your cards close as hell, and there was virtually no assistance by the system. No silver sent to you each week by the Crown, no support of warrant and dquarter/burn code, no effing courier in your office, and if you're warranted, well, good luck going about your plots. People do not automatically come to you with information and assistance usually, you have to ferret it out by hook or by crook. And to those who think being an ethical criminal is an easy and biased thing, I can assure you it is not. You will be amazed by the kind of precautions it takes to kidnap someone, for example, without utterly disregarding VNPCs and also making sure you aren't codely caught.
But it is also amazingly 'free' in the sense that there is little theme or 'law' to dictate how you act. The Council may elect to remove a Justiciar, Cardinal, etc who is not behaving according to the dictates and norms of the Law and society. But not so for Tenebrae and Rubeus. Basically, you act however you want, speak however you want, and choose your directions however you want, with little societal or political pressure.
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registerednuisance
- Posts: 45
- Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:47 pm
It sucks being a mage. There, I said it.
It's almost impossible to be a mage alone, be an island. You need help, you need learnin' from others and such. So your identity is probably going to get leaked to someone at some point, even if you're perfect. You can't just sit there and be a mage and do nothing, because it's boring as shit. But if you do ANYTHING people are ALL OVER YOUR ASS immediately, even if you have a swank plot idea in mind. And there are OOC pressures because someone probably knows OOCly or knows one of your alts or whatever and comments on their actions. Neither here, nor there.
You grind. You painstakingly agonize through the skills to get the stuff. You do one thing and it's over. It's like having sex with someone way too excited about it and it's over real quick.
I played a lawful law buddy a while back. I had a lot of interesting RP and guilt issues. It was good. It was easier. You can be who you are in front of errybody.
Being a mage you're all secret all the time, have to keep track of everything, avoid certain people, make sure you've done everything perfect, and then - like I said, it's all over after a moment. Being 'on the run' forever sucks and isn't fun and has an expiration date, either from boredom, giving up, or one of those runs for mail or coin or whatever.
It's almost impossible to be a mage alone, be an island. You need help, you need learnin' from others and such. So your identity is probably going to get leaked to someone at some point, even if you're perfect. You can't just sit there and be a mage and do nothing, because it's boring as shit. But if you do ANYTHING people are ALL OVER YOUR ASS immediately, even if you have a swank plot idea in mind. And there are OOC pressures because someone probably knows OOCly or knows one of your alts or whatever and comments on their actions. Neither here, nor there.
You grind. You painstakingly agonize through the skills to get the stuff. You do one thing and it's over. It's like having sex with someone way too excited about it and it's over real quick.
I played a lawful law buddy a while back. I had a lot of interesting RP and guilt issues. It was good. It was easier. You can be who you are in front of errybody.
Being a mage you're all secret all the time, have to keep track of everything, avoid certain people, make sure you've done everything perfect, and then - like I said, it's all over after a moment. Being 'on the run' forever sucks and isn't fun and has an expiration date, either from boredom, giving up, or one of those runs for mail or coin or whatever.
I have to agree, the only way I ever found around this was either.registerednuisance wrote:It sucks being a mage. There, I said it.
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Being a mage you're all secret all the time, have to keep track of everything, avoid certain people, make sure you've done everything perfect, and then - like I said, it's all over after a moment. Being 'on the run' forever sucks and isn't fun and has an expiration date, either from boredom, giving up, or one of those runs for mail or coin or whatever.
-Being part of a guild, preferbly two guilds, one being a mage guild or the brotherhood.
-Starting my mage character with a background including at least two other new characters who are also mages and who can all trust each other because of a shared ic background going back many years.
The key is you need people to rp magic with, otherwise, it just -sucks-.
Also, the only successful mages I've had, have also been combat oriented. In fact they are -always- going to be oriented around combat first because this provides a basis for rp not dependent on magic and allows the mage to survive a few seconds when being attacked.
I realize this is going to sound strange coming from me, and I realize it is not the direction that the staff wishes to take things, but I do not believe that a mage should have to have combat in order to be able to defend themselves efficiently or even to start a plot. In reality, every time a mage manages to escape without engaging in combat, they are deemed a twinker. Is there -any- way to let the mages have a means of providing an actual threat outside of combat. Most of their current abilities are annoyances at best, and they have to struggle through hours of grinding in order to get the ones that are marginally useful. I am not asking for serious combat magic, but merely a few new things that help them get along.
According to my OOC knowledge, the abilities exist. Every single element has at least one or two that basically provides a free giveaway, or tilts the combat massively in their favour despite having lower skills, as long as the situation is engineered to fit, IMO. That being said, I agree that some people often call ANY mage who even uses their abilities judiciously a twink. Those people, IMO, are ones who have never bothered to play a mage, and thus do not understand that those abilities are not 'free', but rather attained with a massive amount of xp and work.
I think, on the other side of the coin, though, that twinks tend to play mages a lot, however. Case in point: The people sitting around in the Manus Tower (xblocked) casting ranged annoying void spells on random people for absolutely no reason. I understand that in some cases it was part of a plot - excellent! But those random 'neener neener' cases were just... annoying. And probably contributed to the OOC annoyance at mages some.
Let's examine the cases where mages have managed to escape so far (there have been more, but for the sake of not leaking IC info I'll stick to ones that are known by the general public):
1. Arten teleporting away from River Square. I know a couple of people called him a 'twink', but I personally find nothing wrong with this IMO. He had preevoked the spell, he was there, he was actively RPing the procession out, and then he casted the preevoked spell and disappeared. Perfectly fine.
2. Raidon using meditate while being dragged around in restraints and using a node to escape. Would have been fine if he had actually been sitting around stationary IMO. In this case, since he had people actively ON him, those people would have been able to do all sorts of nasty things that would have logically snapped him out of meditation, and it is probably pretty damn hard to meditate while walking or being dragged on the ground anyway. Fudging it with tales of superhuman 'meditation' ability ICly isn't quite believable - possibly if you have meditate at 81 and actually spent the xp and time for such, you could argue your case, but otherwise it is doubtful.
3. Karel using empyrclap three times in a row in the Crossings. I personally think there was absolutely nothing wrong with the first empyrclap - which would've done the trick had he been the one to wish to escape. Call me a non-purist, but I do not think it is absolutely necessary to pose before casting every single time. Perhaps he should have posed his entrance however, or stealthed in if he did not wish to pose. My only issue was him reevoking the rituals and recasting, twice, in an area directly south of the Tower. He has attempted to provide a lot of reasoning for such, and I do not wish to derail the thread to argue with him here, thus I am leaving it up to the reader to decide.
TLDR; mage spells are fine IMO. Not overpowered nor underpowered.
I think, on the other side of the coin, though, that twinks tend to play mages a lot, however. Case in point: The people sitting around in the Manus Tower (xblocked) casting ranged annoying void spells on random people for absolutely no reason. I understand that in some cases it was part of a plot - excellent! But those random 'neener neener' cases were just... annoying. And probably contributed to the OOC annoyance at mages some.
Let's examine the cases where mages have managed to escape so far (there have been more, but for the sake of not leaking IC info I'll stick to ones that are known by the general public):
1. Arten teleporting away from River Square. I know a couple of people called him a 'twink', but I personally find nothing wrong with this IMO. He had preevoked the spell, he was there, he was actively RPing the procession out, and then he casted the preevoked spell and disappeared. Perfectly fine.
2. Raidon using meditate while being dragged around in restraints and using a node to escape. Would have been fine if he had actually been sitting around stationary IMO. In this case, since he had people actively ON him, those people would have been able to do all sorts of nasty things that would have logically snapped him out of meditation, and it is probably pretty damn hard to meditate while walking or being dragged on the ground anyway. Fudging it with tales of superhuman 'meditation' ability ICly isn't quite believable - possibly if you have meditate at 81 and actually spent the xp and time for such, you could argue your case, but otherwise it is doubtful.
3. Karel using empyrclap three times in a row in the Crossings. I personally think there was absolutely nothing wrong with the first empyrclap - which would've done the trick had he been the one to wish to escape. Call me a non-purist, but I do not think it is absolutely necessary to pose before casting every single time. Perhaps he should have posed his entrance however, or stealthed in if he did not wish to pose. My only issue was him reevoking the rituals and recasting, twice, in an area directly south of the Tower. He has attempted to provide a lot of reasoning for such, and I do not wish to derail the thread to argue with him here, thus I am leaving it up to the reader to decide.
TLDR; mage spells are fine IMO. Not overpowered nor underpowered.
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