Crystalism Changes

Bonko

If anyone should be complaining it should be Mhaldor. Their one and only past time is officially over.

Sena

Mithridates said:

It's got it's ups and downs. Not having to worry about over-refining is pretty cool. 

But the easiest way to explain this is:

Let's say you spend like.. two years cultivating a lawn, or a flowerbed. Lots of watering, fertilizing, making trips to the store for soil, etc. Then one day, the government says 'We're confiscating (x) amount of land from you. Sorry.'

And also the land is worthless and you can't realistically sell it or use it for anything useful, except maybe giving it all up yourself in some unforeseen event. And they give you new land instead which is better, even if it's not the same as your old land.

Cooper

Also, saying that "this solves over-refining" is pretty funny to me.

You know what would have been a better way of solving over refining? Removing house rules that don't let people refine enough crystals when their master crystal had MILLIONS of facets. That makes me want to go punch every person in a leadership position in a house with a crystal in the face.

Santar

What pisses me off is that Cyrenians were sitting over there hoarding crystals that served no purpose, yet when Targossians tried to negotiate with them to get crystals during our [still] lack of MC, they get shoved aside. 

Looking for reasons that Targossians hate Cyrenians? Good place to start.

So yeah, maybe now you can actually -use- your crystals when you hit the max limit, instead of just continuing to pile them on for RL years for no good reason.  But the more likely thing that's going to happen is houses are going to withdraw their crystals from the MC and group them in non decay rooms since the MC is limited now. So, guess the hoarding will probably continue afterall. 

Melodie

To be fair, Kindred didn't sell to -anyone-. Not just Targossians. It's an old rule dating back from the Guild days. I can't really say if it's fair or not, because I've never had the experience, but as far as I recall, don't only the Merchants sell theirs? So it wasn't an uncommon thing.

If you're just mad someone isn't selling you things, though, that's a silly reason to hate someone. I think the whole "harbouring enemies of Creation" face will get you better grounding, overall (after all, Rho fought for that pretty hard years ago).

More on-topic, I think this is a good change overall, but agree that implementation could have been a bit smoother. I hope given time and further changes, this will be seen more as a postive than a negative or just "we'll deal with it". Speaking from experience, though, I know how forced change can be.

Looking forward to continued changes! Hopefully ones that are slightly less rage-inducing.

Kaden

You make it sound as if Cyrene (though it really is just the Kindred) is obligated to share...and should be hated because it doesn't even though it's currently one of the only cities that can provide Targossas with other goods and services like venoms and enchantments. It's really an odd reason to gripe about when there are tons of other richer reasons for the odd discord Targossas and Cyrene have with each other. 

But yeah, the Kindred doesn't really share its crystals to any magi, including Cyrenian rogues like Kaden. 

As for the MC change itself, it's probably the rl months of not having a House speaking, but I find the changes to be pretty reasonable and good and doubt it'd really affect much in the long run even for the Merchants as long as they keep their pearling up.

Zii

I hear the anguished cries of the playerbase.

I approve of this change.

Nim

Tecton said:

@Events - I'd love to introduce every single change with an event, but there's just not the manpower available to do this at the rate we need to make adjustments, especially as we move closer to our city/house and multiclass changes. It takes exponentially more time for our volunteers to develop and execute an event from start to finish than it does to code a change, particularly a minor one like this. But we do try and do it when possible!

Honestly, I personally agree not every change should be brought in with some kind of event. It might get stale over a while, and it'd certainly slow things down quite a bit.

However, it would be cool if more changes were handled in some IC manner. Just keeping changes OOCly challenges one's suspense of disbelief, and it's not awfully difficult to explain things in a more IC manner. For example:

Tecton said:

If you want a better spin to put on it, the change is not that all master crystals suddenly shrank in size (or grew in some cases) - there is simply a limit on how many refinable facets you/your house can access.

That one sentence is loads better than nothing. Heck, there doesn't even have to be a discernible reason behind the change - just some administrative direction to let people know what's up. If it's clever enough, you can leave all the actual event-esque work up to the players at their own discretion with a few nudges.

It's of course true that a clever roleplayer might look at a purely OOC change, and think of a way to explain it ICly - but without any direction or focus at all, it'll likely just seem clunky, and might very well clash with other people's interpretations. Of course, that can happen no matter how much information you give, but there's a huge difference between people arguing about stuff they've made up and people arguing about their characters' interpretations of things that actually happened.

tl;dr: MINIMALIST ROLEPLAYING - minimum cost, maximum creative potential!

Trevize

Good change.

Re the comment from @Tecton: If the MC 'size' is going to be determined by prior crystals, and magi houses want to use this as an important factor, may I suggest they be allowed to 'build' their MC, sacrificing facets from the communal pool? Set the size to increase exponentially, so it takes say, twice as many to go from size 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, et cetera. Require using communal facets to build the MC to have over 100k, and remove 100k. Implement it so facets can, under no circumstances, be recovered from this. Give a city/House something they can do with the facets, and let them place their own importance upon doing so (or not, as they choose).

Mathonwy

That's actually not a bad idea.

Xith

My first char was a Magi. Back then pearls sold for 80 gold and given that I could keep 4 refined crystals for every pearl, I valued crystals at 20g. I feel like they changed pearl value a while back for the Tasur'ke jeweler. But anyway...

I had no idea houses built crystal size to have "a bigger 'un than they got". I thought it was mainly to keep the crystal from being destroyed or dusted during house estate invasions or in the case of thieving traitors.

Can master crystals be destroyed that way or do they just reach 0 facets?

Accipiter

When Magi were first introduced, we were told not to let the crystal hit 0, and I think the Warlocks lost theirs once due to it hitting 0 and breaking.

Mathonwy

I don't think you can refine them down past one facet now, at least as of a few years ago.

Xith

Remembered crystal dusting in the Qashar days.

Tahquil

Crystal dust(ing)?

That just reminds me of going to the chemist.

"Excuse me, may I have some diamond dust please?"

"Would you prefer a cheaper, generic alternative."

"Yes please."

"Alright here is your crystal dust."

"Thanks!"

Then you have night terrors for the next week.

 

Mathonwy

Xith said:

Remembered crystal dusting in the Qashar days.

EA's MC was refined to one facet and apparently they couldn't refine past that, and it happened during the Qashar era.

Aliath

Tecton said:

We do still have details of how many facets each crystal had (that will still be there, just "locked"), so house members/leadership/patrons are all fine to incorporate that history in upcoming events. If a psychotic, world-ending dragon comes to threaten Cyrene, and the Kindred want to trebuchet their master crystal at the dragon to destroy it, we're not going to say "Sorry, your crystal only has 200,000 facets, it barely made a scratch." We're going to keep the stored history there, so it'll be the biggest crystal in Sapience, built upon a core of a million facets. To help with this, after I finish posting this, I'll go through and adjust the descriptions of all of the master crystals to reflect the quantity of facets that were there before the change.

Fairly sure Kindred didn't have the biggest of the time of implementation, unless they have gone crazy gathering pearls in my semidormancy.

Couple of concerns though...

The 200k limit is rather low, I know for a fact that I alone have added more facets to the Sorcerer/Merchant MC over the years than that.

Also reading the announcement it seems the House can transfer facets to a member, could it be made possible for a member to transfer facets to the house as well, just I know it is possible to reach the personal limit of 5k in less than a day.

Accipiter

It doesn't matter how many you added, it matters how many you used. If you can hit the 5k in a day, great, sit back and enjoy yourself knowing that you have a good amount of crystals, or refine them all and fill it up again tomorrow until your rift is full, then sit back.

There are RP implications sure, but it is a better gameplay change not encouraging people to constantly go pearling, and the limit is high enough that you can still send newbies out to discover the wonderful world of oysters.

Rangor

What they mean to say is, "Thanks for taking the time @Tecton!"

Kyrra

I mass pearl on occasion just to have something to do and I sell the pearls in Tasurke unless someone wants them. I miss being able to sell the oysters in Shallam though, as I don't think they offer much essence.

I think I donated about two hundred pearls to the Arcane Kindred before I left Cyrene. Honestly with the changes to the MC, it's a fantastic way for new people to get involved with the city if donating to help out appeals. It's an exciting new change.

Aliath

Santar said:

What pisses me off is that Cyrenians were sitting over there hoarding crystals that served no purpose, yet when Targossians tried to negotiate with them to get crystals during our [still] lack of MC, they get shoved aside. 

Looking for reasons that Targossians hate Cyrenians? Good place to start.

Targossas had mostly if not exclusively old Crystalline magi, a guild that endorsed crystal theft, so why would they help a bunch of thieves?

Mithridates

wut

Veldrin

We didn't endorse crystal theft, but we also couldn't justify returning crystals to a house that supported necromancers. Which I believe I told you at least twice was the main problem.