Jubaris

22gc 5sc

20gc

24 gc

15 gc

Scanning through those avies might not be that difficult, problem would be to 'trust' someone's taste. For example, I am willing to do the scan, but is my perception of those avys equivalent to "what it should be"? We have the art team, though. It isn't something that has to be done tomorrow, the point is just for the agreement to be made, so these cases can be solved step by step throughout a period of time. (and prevented from happening again)

Two problems: 1) an old one - lots of inadequate avatars in the avatar shop. examples: 2) new one, proactively being done: Impromer tags. People get too much official tags (and also, alternative tags inside brackets look really ugly). Create some sort of an admin page for listing up relevant people, leave the tags for something in-character. For example, Eon's "Former Boss Heads Master" tag is a shame, considering Eon is one of the best fighters that maltreats (or used to) realm's population. Even if he was an active Boss Heads Master, I would refrain from putting up that particular tag. I also dislike tags in the spirit of "Leader of X", or "2nd leader of X". Kind of a mood breaker those two. Thoughts?

Happy birthday Kets! :)

Guardian is beyond awesome. I'm kinda sorry I'm not really a combat char in MD, otherwise I would sell my house and posessions to get that avy :D

Veteran lost in time, but I hope I can help :)

Combo training is now very attractive, considering the ally timers dropped - perma balance is the best thing to do around now. 'Problem' those dropped ally times created with the favor of perma balance is that you are not looking for losses anymore, now you want to win 'em all. That sounds fun to me, challenges in defeating other players, being in alliance is more attractive (another plus), but it creates bad opportunities for unprepared fresh mp5s. (solution - teach mp4s how to prepare themselves for surviving mp5. Make them train VE on mp4, and join combo trainings on mp5, win for everybody) Tokens are a big problem in our combat system indeed, not that much because of their sac bonus, but because of their combat bonuses, like antifreeze (which Ary complained about recently rightfully), too overpowering. Not to mention that they look ugly in combat :P Symbol of everything that is bad in our combat system. Raw high stats can be countered so and so on their own, but what do you do against a creature that has a million stats in attack and defense, and a permanent anti-freeze? You can't steal its stats with a soulweaver enough to beat it, you can only beat it if you have a million of stats yourself. Too overpowering. Decreasing tokens boost in saccing, other than probably not a good decision on its own, is a surprise, and it's a big hit to those that invested a lot of resources to stack up wins on those creatures. "Heads up" could have been given at least, although I suspect the announcement was made just to provoke this discussion. My opinion in short: Previous token sac boost was alright, problems are in certain overpowering tokens that should be removed/calmed, new various auras for creatures should be developed in the "Combat talk" thread (we're lacking in versatility of defensive auras/abilities as was mentioned there, I think).

Don't be so literal. What I meant was that tokens boost percentage should drop, while the regular stat gain should increase (so the rewards with the tokens would still be the same, looking at their fixed value, while their relative importance would drop). Example. Creature without tokens gives 100 attack. Same creature with X tokens gives 1000 attack. New system: Creature without tokens gives 800 attack. Same creature with X tokens gives 1000 attack.

Better to increase reward from no-tokens, rather than to decrease rewards from tokens when sacrifising, how about that?

Normally you would be right, Curi, but since he opened the topic, I think he has the right to ask for its closure.

And what does that tell you Chewy? Nothing is going on for the need to arise to make requests. It's a reflection of the general situation, the kings are not the problem, they are just the symptoms. You were a king for a good while as well, so I'm sure you're familiar with what I'm saying. There's also a thing how MD looks at things. There's been a "school-of-thought" when you wish to increase activity, (try to) bribe people to make quests and events. That's an example of how principle of entropy is failing us here. When amount of energy goes critically low, we try to do extraordinary effort to push that amount of energy only a bit up with a quest or two. Open up the treasury, use the big guns, gamble everything on that new quest that will solve everything - but the intended quest/event doesn't happen, and even if it did, it wouldn't solve everything. Let's abandon that "pressuring" attitude, "maintaining" quest quotas, it's all very creative-killing. We need a good ambient, people hang out, they feel good with each other, they play in all sorts of ways (discuss research, do some combo training, etc.) and in those moments ideas arise and you will get your requests and activity. Good ambient for the principle of syntropy to take place. In general and @ nobody in particular: Kings lead their lands, every land is specific in nature, this is not a team white, team black, team orange and team green game where you need to get as many people as you can and beat all the others. There are LHOs to help newbs, there are advertisers to bring the people in the game. If a land doesn't function with its leader, its citizens will find the way to change him or at least make the world know how they are unsatisfied, it's easy 'fixing stuff' after that. If the whole land is a mess, then start a population transplantation and make it the way you want it to be, in the meantime, fight your own battles and do your own contribution where you can for the progress of the game. BFH for example is a GG citizen, that wasn't around for a while, and he for sure doesn't know what's the situation in MB, or in NV, or as such.

I'll 'apologize' for the incoming short reply as well (but I think the general public will be grateful :D). I didn't take it personal at all, you still have the same amount of (positive) rep points in my head system, I felt I needed to respond because you were speaking about inactiveness of monarchs, of which I am one, and you received more than a dozen reputation points for that, meaning a solid proportion of the community thinks so too. I do agree that (except Azull) most leaders seem inactive in some percentage, I disagree that the solution to the problem is annoying new players, what I think should be done is just "playing the game". Be there online and active more than others, encourage conversations, encourage activities in general, because that's what the game lacks lately, not because it's something the kings should do by default. If there were enough of activity in people, a king could stay in a sanctuary idling 90% of the time and just respond to requests from citizens, judging and such.

BFH, you are speaking like we have 50 non-aligned players doing nothing because of lands lack of marketing, and all the kings need to do is reach out for them, but I'll try to respond to your statements. I wasn't talking about the voting system. The feature is indeed very good to be present - the problem that existed before was that several lands were without a leader, and they didn't have a mechanism to make someone their citizen, without inviting them into an ally. Those votings are very hard to succeed because you have to 'alarm' the whole populace of the land to vote for you, and are now (in general) secondary towards the kingship tools. People start the game, get to know how it works, meet people and talk, they get informed of the world and learn more. I wouldn't like for someone to force their opinion on me in that stage, first lead me to knowledge and then let me decide on my own. Options are numerous, whether you wish to enquire about a land, or you wish to directly apply to join. If you're saying (and I think you are) that a new player has no motivation to join a land, unless someone urges him to join one, then you're saying MD is not a game, you're forcing someone play it, that's the wrong approach if you're keen on making MD survive. My opinion evolved, when it comes to recruiting players, from principle of entropy towards principle of syntropy. You should not look at things from the perspective of your faction, you should analyse the player and guide (advise) him towards a place where he would be most comfortable to progress as a MD individual. If you sway them to join your side, you have to maintain their interest, and (there's a chance) you create some kind of a pressure in them, they must feel free. Continuing on this part: It does. If you succeed in your attempt to make that player join you, they become attached, they don't want to betray you, they want to be honorable, etc, and it takes extra effort for them to realize they are not comfortable where they are and to make that decision to leave, it's not that simple. If you sway them to you, you have to be there for them 100% for a considerable amount of time until they truely become comfortable and treat your faction as a home. You are responsible for them. If something happens to you in that transition period, they become very vulnerable and prone to abandoning MD. I have experience with this because, other than leading MB, I also lead Savelites for a year with which I was forced to start with scratch and make it an alliance of a dozen people. Aggressive recruiting is anti-MD, and only works in the short-term. Yep, they will feel more important than your offer and go for the ones that are not trying to recruit them :)) Mur played with concept of rare throughout the whole evolution of the game, take a look on how that worked nicely in some situations, how insignificant creatures have extraordinary value because they are hard to get, and how that value reduces once they become less rare. Apply the same towards availability of the lands. Appreciating people is good, but don't push it and be annoying, we go back to that "aggressive recruiting is anti-MD". For example, it's noticeable opinion of some younger players that MB is lame because joining it is easy to do, not because of our aggressive recruitment, because there wasn't one as such, but because of our known welcoming nature and openess of the land. Imagine if we added that "join us, join us" shouting, they would run away like from a plague. Make the game 'fun' by default, lands will come easy afterwards as a flavour. Joining lands can't be the reason MD is played, especially when there's no strategical competition between them. MD (at the moment) is all about patience, and you're proposing rushing players into something. They can talk with people, they can read announcements, read forum, adapt into the world for a month before pondering upon which land to join. If they are unable to do that, then they are not for MD, remember Mur saying MD is a filter. You are pointing out the power of 'bribe', and I pointed it out in my previous post that 'feature' is no longer exploitable, because of the fall in rarity of such bribes. There are too few of us in MD at the moment, and it is the policy of the game to be more welcoming towards rewards (in wider sense) in comparison with the older times, which stimulates indolence in some cases, but then, the game has no option because no encouragment in the form of awards kills the little will that remained, it's a paradox that can only be solved with influx of many new people, or by principle of syntropy, which would consist of people having fun "by default" perpetually. Now you're known and powerful, and by your logic, you can do your job 10x better, but you seemed to have stopped. Your accomplishments are impressive, but I'm not sure what do you want to say with this - you wish to be a king and try it out? Are you asking why isn't everyone as productive as you? This is a bit of a philosophical question - are kings supposed to create action or stir it (the existing one) for the good of their realm? They should respond to the situation actually, and the situation is that we have a shortage of players, and that people are hard to motivate nowdays to do anything (there was a recent increase in activity which makes me happy, but let's be skeptical). Situations can be created, but you can't expect that of people, this is a blessing and a rare thing. You were the master advertiser, and we are in shortage of people, maybe I should hate you the way you hate kings? :D (In truth, I value your work, and it is known how important your work is, but I wanted to make a point)

In which case he would cheer for Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers, but he is not.

@BFH: I disagree with some of your points. The lands are already very open to new members, especially when it comes to citizenship. Of what high requirements are you speaking of? I can only speak in the name of Marind Bell, although I'm pretty sure it's relatively the same case with other mainlands as well - it's quite easy to obtain a citizenship, all you need to do is get to know someone, introduce yourself, talk a bit so others know you're alive. If you do all that, you're basically in, unless you have a very different character than the wider system of values of the land/group of people in it. I disagree on many levels: - Propaganda should not be enforced, players should develop a bit and then make an independent decision where to join. Let's just look at Necrovion, with their clever socializing and creation of image, they managed to get a lot of 'cool' people. Many of them don't really feel like being truely Necrovian (intuitively), no? Syrian, the great mp6, helper, very productive member of society, I don't see what's so Necrovion about her (we didn't talk a lot in truth, but I'm talking about the influence/aura of her personality that touched me as well). - We don't have people in the first place to inflict propaganda on! I agree, but it's not something upon kings to do. We can't create fake reasons to compete in. Well, we can, but it won't be "it". The game, at the moment, lacks strategic points to compete about, except in some kind of prestige "how many adept questers/fighters/researchers you have", etc. We are all part of the community, let's work together. I know it's attractive to point fingers at someone, on paper, at the top, and conclude that it is all their fault we're not succeeding, but I think it is a bit surficial. There have been ideas like restoring Torch competition in favor of that competitive spirit, let's bring out some new, not that hard to impement/code ideas, suggest things you want to see happening. Consider that not all leaders of the lands were chosen to be charismatic visionaires that can make everything out of nothing, some were chosen simply so that their land does not fall into a disadvantage by not having a leader (lack of representative with the Council, lack of monarch tools, etc. = lot's of disadvantages). I've been king for some 6-7 months already. Do you realize how little to no requests for roles I've received, even though it is my strong wish to help people on that matter? I remember when I was a younger player, getting a mere tag was making you the happiest man in the world. Now nobody cares. Do you really think a king can do much when a large part of the realm does not feel like playing the game anymore? You have a lot of players that already established their roles, they did not have problems integrating into the society, yet still you don't feel them having fun. This is a game, we should do what we feel like doing, focus on that, having fun, not "maintaining" something. There's something very wrong in the perception we have about this site. Not all of us have much free time, or are too distracted by RL thoughts to 'slip in' into this wonderful world truely, but let's not encourage dispiritedness, lead by your own example (people), be around, have fun, talk with people, try to picture what would they like to do and see if your interests are similar. Understand that the game will shape per our needs, we will not shape ourselves (completely) as per its needs - this is not something said egoistically, it's how the game evolved up till now.

I actually had a desire to post here asking where have you been with some new cool drawings :) I also have a question that has been killing me - why is this topic named "Are saying?", I can't make a connection :D

Gonzalo, why don't you root for your own country, since Argentina is at the cup? :) Out of big names, I'm for England, but my favourite is Bosnia!

I think that most of CoE's core is truely inactive now, except maybe Phantom Orchid who is less inactive due periodical status updates. I would like to see CoE around again very much, but this would not be the CoE, it would be a different ally with the same symbols, kind of like the Savelites Church, when it was always a different ally as the leaders changed (as well as the people in the ally). If you proceed with this, Aeo, try not to make the alliance yet another in the series of "minimal requirements for the ally not to get disbanded, no activity at all", I hope you have a clear idea what you want to do and that you are sure that this would help you with the concept "enjoying the game I'm playing", which would also apply on your hypothetical future co-ally people, rather than in the end, it just being the matter of you maintaining an alliance, a memory - in that case it would truly be better off without the ally, better for you on many levels, better for the realm in the fight against dispiritedness and apathy.

Down with the bunny empire spell, details: http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/13565-personal-request-month/?p=130213 proof of it getting the admin green light: http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/13749-selfish-wishes-granted/#entry132835 --- reply to princ rhaegar about mb forum access stuff: http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/index.php?app=members&module=messaging&section=view&do=showConversation&topicID=25764&st=20#msg77749 ---

happy birthday!

Happy birthday Grannos!

Happy birthday Valoryn :)