Calyx of Isis

I have 64 wins and 56 losses and had to work very hard to get those last four losses. I've hit the XP limit that I never knew exisited. At this point I can still get wins, but they are meaningless. My creatures no longer advance. I've become too powerful to loose unless I put up no defense at all. The game -- one that is the most interesting I've ever encountered -- has suddenly become meaningless. As near as I can tell, the only way for me to loose XP is to the the defender in a healing ritual, but getting anyone into a healing ritual is worse than pulling teeth. I worked so hard to keep my wins and losses within four or five of each other, but now I am being punished for having learned too well. It sucks. Morgana's may be the right solution, but I gather from MP4's the situation is not much brighter there. So I am locked in a situation where all I can do is wander over the same 20 map nodes I've wandered over so many times and see and do nothing new. My interest in the game goes away. And why bother resetting my character when this is only going to happen again. For a game that promotes balance, it does a poor job of rewarding it.

I can't believe that the people here do not understand the concept of a template... If one has multiple of the same kind of creature and all are healthy, then any of that creature type can fill that slot in the template. We all use templates. It works like, "Yeah, I had two dark archers doing weakening, one barren healer, etc." It's not a hard concept people. In the real world and in Magic Duel we learn by creating and amending just these sort of templates. Think about the mental process you go through when creating new rituals or recreating old ones. It's all about memory and templates. There is no reason why the UI cannot aid rather than hamper the process other than our own limited vision. As so much of the came centers around rituals and their maintenance, it is sad that this UI is about the poorest in the game. There is no reason why one should not be able to devise and set a defense (or attack) ritual while in sanctuary. In a "real" Magic Duel world or in the real world, this is what each and every one of us would do. In the real world we work on our rituals both in sanctuary and in the field. That Magic Duel does not have an interface that allows us to work on rituals at any time other than when we are jeopardy is a failing, not a feature. The interface for devising and discarding rituals should be available at any time. The only thing keeping things as they are is linkage between the interface for selecting an attack ritual and the interface for creating a ritual. They are separate actions. As every ritual MUST (at present) be bound to a name, there is no reason why one interface could not manage rituals while another would select an existing ritual to use for attack. Of course, the attack interface could still provide the capabilities of ritual maintenance. As a programmer with almost four decades of experience I see no problems in implementing such interfaces.

No, you can't. Maybe once upon a time this was possible, but not at this time.

I like the idea of player information showing up in the side bar -- that is the information that appears when you click on a player's name. Right now I have to scroll vertically to see and use this information (even though I have a high screen resolution). This game makes poor use of landscape screen layouts by stacking things vertically instead of horizontally. As a consequence, one is constantly scrolling vertically. There are very few screens out there with portrait aspect ratio (higher than they are wide). Mostly they do not exist in the home market.

I'd like to point out the the regeneration problem exists for MP3 players, as well. I have several Dark Archers with 1500 vitality. They require three regeneration cycles right now at 500 VE per cycle. Add in all my other creatures and it take a long time. Then to, my own VE Max is high enough that it takes a couple of hours to regenerate. And I can see it is only going to get worse until I have only a few minutes game per day. I can see it coming. Additionally, there are so few "healthy" players in the game that by the time you've found someone worth attacking, you've most likely had your VE drained off by unwanted attacks. The result is a morass of wounded, dead, and dying players.

I've had the very same idea. I think it is totally lame for a creature not to attack simply because there is no primary target. At the very least, if the primary target is not present it should go after random. Some care may need to be put into this for healing rituals. I don't know. I am too new to the game.

Arg! I sincerely hope not. That had occurred to me, too. However, as creatures get upgraded they get the ability to apply strategies like "attack/aid dying creatures first," and "attack/aid weak creatures first." This is adequate for me though I hope there will be some additions to these in the future, perhaps at higher upgrades. This is the first and only PvP game I have ever chose to play. I avoid them like the plague. However, this game's bias towards a zero-sum "combat" experience and the fact that I don't have to engage in every combat is what makes it comfortable for me to be here. If I had to engage in every battle I would loose interest in this very fast. I am not here to do combat... In 99% of all games combat is the only or primary way to advance. This game does not reward lopsided development, but balanced development. That the duels (I prefer this to "combat," here) are so quick and relatively painless is what enables one to focus on other things and goals.

Welcome to the game. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do.

Ah! But there is no death here! The only "true" death in MagicDuel is the deletion of an account or resetting it it to zero. What people are calling death is merely forced inactivity and meditation. In real life, this is when we learn the most. Most wise people in the real world tell us we usually learn more when we fail than when we succeed. This had been know since before the dawn of history. Success tells you something that works, but it is only a single data point with unknown bounds. So called "failures" or "losses" are often more productive as they define boundaries and reveal then entire breadth of things that might succeed. MagicDuel improves on this by requiring a virtual zero sum with so called "wins" being approximately equal to so called "losses." While I have seen some interesting ideas about counting losses -- and maybe this should be done -- I have accepted the way "creatures" get upgraded because losses go hand-in-hand with wins. However, as I write this, I realize that while the character must have a "zero sum," her creatures need not. This fact suggests to me that maybe losses and wins should both be required to upgrade. My reasoning is this... If we learn the most from from balanced experience, then so it must be for our creatures as they are but parts of or extensions of ourselves. Our aspects and abilities (our "creatures") grow best when they have balanced experiences, not when we manipulate their experience [through manipulations of rituals] to only "succeed." As balance to maximize learning is such an integral part of this world, creature upgrades should require an equal number of "wins" and "losses," and not simply assume the game will force this balance.

If the poll had options, "I am captivated by most of the story lines," and "I am captivated by all of the story lines," I would have selected one of them instead of picking one branch more or less at random. I like Manu's way of growing the game and testing ideas. I hope that my character may one day prove worthy of one of his abductions! It sure is an interesting way to make the game and story grow.

The descriptions of the principle are long, but that is perhaps because there is no simple way to describe them. I use all of the principles in my daily life and have for a long time. However, in forcing myself to read and attend to the whole texts I learned things I had not known and saw new ways to apply the principles in my life and in the game. Life is an ongoing process. Everything is evolving, in transition. Failure to change, to grow, remaining static is equivalent to death. Change must be embraced. The principles are like the laws of physics. They describe the way the processes interact and evolve. It is all one process; with our limited perception and consciousness we perceive it as many processes. In the game we may go to zero vitality, but we do not die as in other games, rather we transition from active to passive, waxing to waining. We are the butterfly's egg. Our vitality grows and we heal ourselves by healing our aspects, our creatures. We emerge from that larval stage to emerge as butterflies and interact with and fertilize/pollinate the world. Our life might be long-ish or spectacularly short. The apparent corpse is the seed of the next cycle. The hardest thing for me at the beginning is having to choose only three principles. I wish I could jump to the future and see how my choices would affect both what I could do and how I would do it. It should be kept in mind that precisely the same effect may be obtained by different applications of the principles. They are nothing more than aspect of the world seen and unseen, real and imagined. As a student of shamanism and Taoism it all seems obvious to me. What amazes me is to find a game where these principles are incorporated in the game to such a degree.

I am thrilled to have found Magic Duel. It is the only game I've found so far which truly incorporates the duality of Death-and-Birth, Light-and-Dark, Reality-and-Dream, etc. It is a distinct pleasure to find and play a game where understanding of these philosophical principles is essential. This is the Tao and for the first time in any game I am comfortable with the fighting and attacking other players. I've always avoided PvP in the past. For those who are curious, I took my name from the title of one of my favorite short stories, The Calyx of Isis by Pat Califa which can be found in the anthology, Macho Sluts and Other Stories. Maybe I will experience that fantasy for real one day. For the truly curious, my path was in the opposite direction of Pat's. I realize that capital building of Marind Bell is formed of two gigantic feathers. However, look at it more abstractly: it resembles a calyx and is thus the opposite of a phallic symbol. As an amazon and feminist I find this greatly appealing. Post script: I see now that the correct name for this building is Marind's Bell. As such, the calyx symbolism must be deliberate!