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Comments
Celebrate the new class, or move along.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Alrighty, going to put a few things to rest here, so we can hopefully get back on track.
The Tsol'teth did conceptualise/create/whatever the three Depthswalker skills. That's cannon. You have to realise: these guys are old. Like, really, really old. As old as the oldest lore in Achaea. They don't draw any of their powers from a god's realm, they'd never use something tied (probably even tangentially) to one of the divine. Interestingly, part of that is specifically due to the factional class issue: power someone can take away isn't power worth having.
Making classes up to Achaea's general standards takes a long time. We almost certainly could bring one out pretty fast. It'd suck, and we're not going to do that. There's 0 (I'm not disclaimering that one, its really a 0) chance that we will be reusing class skills to bring out a new class. That's (1) incredibly lazy and (2) a longterm balancing nightmare. My personal view is that if we're not trying something new, we're wasting our time on said class.
That's the reason that, even if we were inclined to do more faction bound classes (which we aren't), its just not viable. It isn't fair on 5/6ths of the playerbase to devote a good part of our dev year to something that they'll never see other than on the wrong side of deathsight.
Busted!
If your RP and clans/orgs around the class are strong AF, it will draw people to them. Make them Hashani only and function like a House with events and ceremonies and whatnot. Jesus just stop complaining when The Big Guy Upstairs(tm) has already said "hell to the fuq naw". Stop expecting everything to be handed to you.
Ask around. I'm pretty sure @Xenomorph and the other Infernals can speak to how "hell to the fuq naw" isn't always a perma-no if you put in the damn work.
Hey now. If over a decade of classleads have failed to take Aeon away from jesters, I'm confident the Tsol'teth are safe from Aeon coming back from the grave to ask them to stop using the affliction named after him.
However, if events conspire to prove me wrong, I pledge to tweak the abfile. It is written.
So basically there is an almost nil chance for Hashan, the only factional warring state left, to have a factional class? I understand the usage of Dev time and the minority it would satisfy, but frankly the mistakes of previous administration was already made (that being faction based classes) and we cant just ignore that now and say 'NO' to the other factions without it. It simply is not fair. Additionally, from a game development point of view, it would be seen as funds spent well to give the last faction its own factional class in the bigger picture of things.
It simply is unfair to deny the last faction with a factional class based on the idea that previous admins "should not have done it". What does Hashan get out of this, especially if a class based on Shadow-magic was -not- made their factional class. It is just a slap in the face.
Are you saying there is nothing that can ever be done to fix this unbalance of power?
We don't need a factional class. Why? Because making one would be bad for the game even if it would be good for Hashan.
End of story. Just let it go.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Shadows =/= Darkness
They don't even really manipulate darkness, that much.
They fucking use shadow magic and just destroy all light in an area (tm).
The rest of their skills aren't even towards that end. If you want a factional class, make it yours. Make one of the existing classes yours and make people your bitch if they don't conform. Imagine if Runewardens existed.. and then Cyrene said, "Nah. Ya'll comin back to Cyrene less we pk ya'll asses back 2 minia".
Do that sort of shit, except with depthswalkers. Make it yours.
It's not Hashan's class. It's not going to be Hashan's class. End of discussion.
I mean Darkness is extremely far below the others on the world stage in terms of threat. If you're not motivated because you don't have a special class, you're not going to be motivated with one either.
Hashan doesn't need a factional class centered around an ideology the faction doesn't even completely embrace.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE HAS SAID AT LEAST 3 TIMES THAT I HAVE READ. NO FACTION CLASSES ANYMORE.
It is perfectly fair. Mainly because, well, he decides what is fair. But even in your own arguments you have shown that Hashan isnt losing out on anything (except maybe the power to fuck over other players who get you all mad and sad). "but waaah.. occies can steal skills.. so can mhaldor". Mak has said more than once they are moving away from that. Sorry.. too late. you dont get a trophy just for playing.
The RP dev og it within Hashan would be good for the city, and then when they try to remove access by killing people/whatever, it creates an external RP environment for them and other players. Literally wrestling for control. Kind of like a mini event
Let's look at the factions of Achaea. I'm going to use a very simple metric on each of them:
1. What motivates you?
2. Why should people join your cause?
3. What happens to everyone else if your side wins?
This is definitely an oversimplification, but it's meant to be a foundation and basically mimic what someone with absolutely no knowledge of any side might have. If you can't come up with an answer for these questions, how are you supposed to sell people on your side?
Once you have something like this down, you can build whatever the hell you want off of it, provided you're still sticking to the foundation. Take the Insidium/Luminai: They're introverted and covert expressions of very extroverted and overt ideologies because they still end up serving the same ends, yet they appeal to a far broader range of personalities than the more visible "I HIT YOU OVER HEAD UNTIL YOU PRAISE THE BLOODSWORN/SARTAN NOW".
I can do this metric for Evil and Chaos. Good and Nature are a little trickier to me personally because they're not as compelling, but I could still come up with something if pressed. But I can't do this for Darkness. I'd like to see someone do so because it might help me understand why they want to be taken seriously as a faction, and it might actually help them sell the idea that they should be taken more seriously than "Cyrene, but we occasionally want to raid too".
It's the fact that Shadowmancy is so thematic to Hashan and the identity we're trying to restore. We're literally the Court of Shadows now. We've worked hard to get back to this point. And while people may say "Darkness and darkness/shadows aren't the same", the evil parts of necromancy and Evil, the pious, righteous aspects of devotion are associated with good but not exclusive to Good... They're thematic to those cities but not necessarily to the ideologies. At least, not specifically and exclusively to those ideologies. The Evil of Achaea is the Seven Truths. The Seven Truths aren't exclusively thematic with necromancy. You could easily have a necromancer who didn't abide by the Seven Truths if necromancy weren't controlled by Sartan, and except for the precedent set by it, it wouldn't even seem all that unusual. So why is necromancy associated with Evil? Because it's classically evil. Good with a capital 'G' get things that are thematic with classically good, 'holy' stuff. So why is it that the Darkness ideology is considered so far removed from classical "darkness"? Why, despite all the associations between Darkness and darkness made in things like the Darkenwood, Twilight's temple, Twilight's symbols, how Twilight Himself appears, do people say that darkness and shadows have little to do with the Darkness ideology, when the same tenuous connections are made between Evil and unholy, and Good and holy? Because, now that there's this new class everyone outside Hashan wants, it's convenient to make the distinction. They've already got the lore and precedent behind their themes being attached to their cities and their ideologies, but since Hashan's grasp on that theme is tenuous, it's easy to suddenly decry these conventions.
And that's really burns us. It's what gets me (and the other Hashani who might not be as vocal on the forums, but feel the same) a little upset by this class: not the injury that Hashan isn't getting a factional class, but the bold insult that its primarily ability is thematic with Hashan, and the denial of the association. A denial borne purely out of the desire to play the class for oneself. To some of us, it's like having part of the identity Hashan has been trying to rebuild after a rather disappointing past ripped from us again. We were restablishing Hashan as a world power, not the joke city of Achaea. We were returning to our Dark roots. And now, suddenly, the darkness and shadows which we were trying to return to now belongs to everyone.
Like I said, factionalization is not going to happen, no matter what. From a game design perspective, I see exactly what Makarios and Nicola wanted to accomplish with this class, and all of that would be undone if it were factionalized. It's not going to happen. So we'll accept it, and move on. But some of us aren't going to do so quickly, nor quietly, when it's this insulting.
Edit: Yeah, it's long, but it's the last I'm going to say on this whole subject, so please take the time to read it, so you can at least understand.
Hashan already has a factional class though. Alchemists! Let me return and seduce all the alchemists of the other cities back to Hashan! Just like the old times! You're all just borrowing from Hashan!/s
In all seriousness, Hashan doesn't especially need a factional class. I mean, it's be nice to have one, but I fear that we'd be a bit too heavy-handed in it's use sometimes. I didn't spend months during the whole Sundering thing constantly arguing and seeing my Order get harassed out of the city for it to just grow complacent about these kinds of things. I mean, I might have personally gotten screwed over by the end of the Sundering but I'd rather the city maintain it's current course.
It's going well, with several strong leaders stepping up and leading the city in a positive direction. It's amazing to see that the city could become something like this. It has it's problems, but they're slowly being worked over after the awkward transitionary period we had. The city's growing stronger, I see more people around, and I see healthy relationships growing, even if I'm not here all that often. The fact that it's easy to see, to me, suggests that we're on the right track. People are showing up for army exercises. They're talking at least among one another. We're not afraid to talk, which is very important to me.
And with that, I'm back to lurking. Have fun!
You failed to provide even a hint as to what Hashan and Darkness actually is. I'm not asking you to write up a new mythos or history, I'm asking you to give me a reason as to why anyone should care.
You mentioned symbols and themes but didn't elaborate on them. You talk about how Hashan should have dominion over things dealing with shadows, but not why. There should be a reason why Hashan should have something and all you can say is that Hashan should have shadowy things because Hashan is rooted in Darkness and shadows are a part of Darkness.
I'm not asking for the keys to the hidden Black Library of All Things Dark, Shadowy, and Maligned in the Obelisk, I'm asking for what Hashan's motivation is beyond perpetuating its own existence. Help me understand what you actually want here.
It's easy for the other factions to say things like Hashan needing to prove itself to get a factional class when they already have one (three in Eleusis's case