Icons

Jarrel

Anyone else think it would be nice to tune an icon to what you want as an individual instead of a house? Allows for more flexibility and more towards the 'own build' that we seem to be moving towards. Also would increase the importance of icons and promote the combat to bring them down/put them up.

Sylvance

I must say I actually love this idea.  Are you suggesting that this be done with the current Icon effects, or of tweaking them alongside this change?

Iocun

I don't like it, personally. I think there's already enough personal flexibility within orgs. I like if there are still some things that call for a united stance, which also rewards single-class houses. There's currently a tradeoff between allowing as many diverse classes into your house as you can, in order to gain lots of members, but not being able to make an icon choice to fit all, or to create a stronger focus on a class or idea, which you can support with your icon tuning.

The issue about icons is also not that they're not powerful enough to make them worth it or fight against them. The benefits they provide are definitely powerful already. The issue is more how much of an annoyance it can be to keep them up, and the very nature of how icon combat takes place.

Mizik

@Jarrel

No way. Icons provide added incentive to join one House over another.

Just quit beating around the bush and join the damned Ashura already, you wanker. 

Miz misses u

Aepas

What's an Icon?

Jarrel

food for thought, how many icons are being wasted with +1 con because people can't agree on a better benefit from Icon or because the class selection based on RP makes +1con the most beneficial overall?

Jacen

A agree with Jarrel. Anything that allows the House to focus more on its lore/RP is a plus, and allowing the individual to choose the Icon bonus will get rid of the "I wanna join X but their Icon is tuned to Y" idea, which I have heard many many times in the past few months.

You should choose the House that most closely matches the philosophy/style you wish to play, and this would take one more facet that pulls you away from that out of the equation.

Eld

Iocun said:

I don't like it, personally. I think there's already enough personal flexibility within orgs. I like if there are still some things that call for a united stance, which also rewards single-class houses. There's currently a tradeoff between allowing as many diverse classes into your house as you can, in order to gain lots of members, but not being able to make an icon choice to fit all, or to create a stronger focus on a class or idea, which you can support with your icon tuning.

The issue about icons is also not that they're not powerful enough to make them worth it or fight against them. The benefits they provide are definitely powerful already. The issue is more how much of an annoyance it can be to keep them up, and the very nature of how icon combat takes place.

The biggest problem I see with this is that single-class houses are mostly infeasible. A few of the serpent houses have held on to that, but the more classes that are added, the less feasible it becomes, unless you want to a) make a lot more houses (14 classes * 6 cities, less factional restrictions), b) deny a large fraction of people in a given city membership in a house, or c) align a lot more of the currently unaligned classes with specific cities.

Like it or not, multiple class houses are the norm and don't seem to be going anywhere, and there's no guarantee that the RP basis for two classes being in the same house will correspond to them benefiting from the same icon bonuses. As an example, in most cities (Eleusis I think being the sole exception), monks and blademasters are accepted by the same house. If you just consider stat bonuses, a monk house could have a good debate over strength, con, or int, but strength and int are of minimal benefit to blademasters. Similar calculations go on for any house that accepts multiple classes, and I would bet that the most common answer is +1 con.

tl;dr Rewarding single-class houses is appealing in principle, but infeasible in practice. A strong RP focus for a multi-classed house does not necessarily imply a convergence in desired icon tunings.

Iocun

Jacen said:

A agree with Jarrel. Anything that allows the House to focus more on its lore/RP is a plus, and allowing the individual to choose the Icon bonus will get rid of the "I wanna join X but their Icon is tuned to Y" idea, which I have heard many many times in the past few months.

You should choose the House that most closely matches the philosophy/style you wish to play, and this would take one more facet that pulls you away from that out of the equation.

That makes no sense to me. If currently icon tunings prevent people from making their optimal RP choices because the house they'd like to join doesn't have an optimal tuning, that also means that people will be prevented from making their optimal RP choices due to a house not having an icon at all, while another does. And the difference between houses that do and houses that don't will become even more marked if icons are changed to work like this, so really, the temptation to join/not join a house merely because of mechanical benefits becomes even more pronounced.

If you wanted to eliminate such mechanical considerations from the decision which house to join, you'd have to either delete icons altogether, or give every house an icon that doesn't need to be kept up and cannot be destroyed. The very purpose of icons is to create such mechanical distinctions between houses.

@Eld: Perhaps, but single-class isn't the only configuration for which icon tunings can work out well. Any multi-class forestal house can profit from a nature tuning. Any multi-class house of physical damage fighters can profit from a strength tuning. Any house with "hunting" as its theme can profit from a constitution tuning. Pretty much any house can benefit from a willpower regen tuning. Etc.

It just may be that the "best" tunings are a bit more restrictive. The increased damage tunings are very powerful, yet only benefit a selection of people each. So that's a choice a house needs to make: Go for something that benefits everyone a bit, or for something more powerful that's more selective?

To me, that's something of a balancing aspect.

Berenene

Nevermind

Iocun

Well, pretty much anyone can gain some benefit from +con, the damage resistances, and probably willpower regen.

But yes, there's some classes that can't gain any offensive combat advantages, while others can do so easily. A monk will gain offensive combat benefits from +blunt, +strength, +intelligence, while any affliction class can't get any offensive boost at all. I guess apostates can at least get the hell tuning as a bonus, but serpents/jesters/shamans really can't get anything particularly useful in combat.

That's an inherent problem about damage being so much easier to scale than afflictions. This problem was somewhat addressed in the traits revision, with creating a few major traits that have offensive benefits without affecting damage. I agree that adding something like that to icons would be nice too, although I can't really think of anything that would work well off the top of my head.

Blujixapug

Icons are terrible.

If they completely revamped them, I'd be cool with changing the Icon benefit, making them more personally customisable or whatever.

But Icons as they exist right now are almost broken. It was meant to be a game system where Icons gave minor benefits, and Houses fought over them. Icons were meant to be about House vs House PK. People almost never fight over Icons. Their benefits fade into the background and quickly become taken for granted. And the price paid for keeping an Icon (shard upkeep and PK defending) is not felt by most people who benefit from them - usually 2-3 dragons per House do 95% of the upkeep, and PK is handed off to the House's city's A-team.

Why add more perks to a broken system?

I started writing a much longer post about Icons but I think that's enough.

Oh, also, I think city improvements have the same problem. When was the last time you realised that you have 10% extra mana, or 7% extra damage vs players? The benefits are taken for granted. And their upkeep is crazy expensive (10% of initial cost per game year, could be 1m gold or more), but that cost is only known by 3 people in the city - city leader, Dev Min, and maybe the Steward/Treasurer.

Mizik

Jarrel said:

food for thought, how many icons are being wasted with +1 con because people can't agree on a better benefit from Icon...

HELP DICTATORSHIP


8->

Xith

Aepas said:

What's an Icon?

Also: What's a SPHERIC tuning?

Definitely want to point this cannon in another direction too. The icon problem is just like the removal of Triage and other traits that everybody picked. I can't say for certain but it seems like every house picks +1 Con just cause it's applicable to everything and has the greatest benefit or helps everyone equally.

Couple thoughts:

a) remove stat boosts from icon bonuses

b) Add more Spheric tunings and allow each house to choose both a primary and spheric tuning

c) remove current spheric tunings and allow the choosing of both stat or resistance (primary) and will or endurance (spheric)

- current spherics only appeal to monoclass houses

d) let houses select a pool of 3 or 4 potential benefits, and let each member specify their choice

Example:

SS selects: (+1 Con, magic protection, +1 dexterity, Willpower regeneration)

- Xith picks +1 dex cause he likes getting on knights' nerves

- Allow a change in personal tuning once per year (or when the pool of choices is changed)

Jonathin

I'd just like to see a complete rework of the entire icon system so that it's much more dynamic than either Ashtan or Shallam holding icons for X number of years. It'd be nice if Hashan, Eleusis, Mhaldor and Cyrene could get icons up without them being crushed to dust in 8 miliseconds because Ashtan or Shallam decides to dogpile every dragon they have onto Nishnatoba.

ETA: That's not to say that I don't like parts of the current system. I enjoy conflict on Nishnatoba, but the actual icon wars are boring as all hell. Camping Nish 24 hours a day for three days straight is pretty much what I did when Shallam's icons last fell.

Eld

Xith said:

Aepas said:

What's an Icon?

Also: What's a SPHERIC tuning?

Definitely want to point this cannon in another direction too. The icon problem is just like the removal of Triage and other traits that everybody picked. I can't say for certain but it seems like every house picks +1 Con just cause it's applicable to everything and has the greatest benefit or helps everyone equally.

Couple thoughts:

a) remove stat boosts from icon bonuses

b) Add more Spheric tunings and allow each house to choose both a primary and spheric tuning

c) remove current spheric tunings and allow the choosing of both stat or resistance (primary) and will or endurance (spheric)

- current spherics only appeal to monoclass houses

d) let houses select a pool of 3 or 4 potential benefits, and let each member specify their choice

Example:

SS selects: (+1 Con, magic protection, +1 dexterity, Willpower regeneration)

- Xith picks +1 dex cause he likes getting on knights' nerves

- Allow a change in personal tuning once per year (or when the pool of choices is changed)

You do know that each house already gets both a primary and a spheric tuning, right?

Delphinus

Eld said:

You do know that each house already gets both a primary and a spheric tuning, right?

Not only that, but members can switch between them at will.

Xith

Yeah. Having more spheric possibilities will increase the number of houses that can have a spheric though. But with a pool of multiple icon choices, I imagine the changing should be limited.

Trevize

Give Houses multiple choices (say, 3), give members the ability to choose which they want (one of the three, can only change once a year or so).

Jraatha

I disagree heavily with personal tuning. It encourages further min-maxing, being able to do so freely, less dedication to a house for its lore an members, and all in all decimates the since of Unity in this game.

I however would voucher for icons at certain power thresholds "splitting" dropping the current power level of the icon by a lot. But now allowing the controller of the icon to designate an different bonus and who would receive that bonus instead of the original one. Deciding who got which one of the bonuses could be determined by rank and class only, no specific names. Of course to destroy the icon you would have to damage it enough to destroy each "split" causing a random bonus to fail.

Trevize

Jraatha said:

I disagree heavily with personal tuning. It encourages further min-maxing, being able to do so freely, less dedication to a house for its lore an members, and all in all decimates the since of Unity in this game.

You'd prefer people join a House for the bonus, rather than being able to choose what fits them best, among many? Seems to me the current way would be a blow to dedication to the lore, rather than the proposal.

Jonathin

So, here are my issues with icons.

#1: shard vices. These practically render icon wars pointless. A house hunts, buys, or otherwise obtains a large amount of shards and then compresses them into one or a couple large shards. Said House/city takes a large group to Nish and rushes the attackers. One person in that group strengthens the icon and in one fell swoop, a good amount of icon damage can be completely undone. Anything that has the potential to make icon wars last even longer is a bad thing. People get bored and the side who can retain the most people that actually care (the defending side) pretty much wins by default.

#2: Icons have a huge impact on house membership, regardless of the number of benefits.

#3: Maintaining the icons requires people who like to mash their bashing macros and gets progressively more difficult to maintain as House membership rises. Not everyone likes to bash and not everyone has a bunch of gold to do so (although, this one gets the last spot because Houses usually have tons of gold they could waste on shards in the bank).