A Short Letter To The Council

[awiiya]

@Mur - I've never been one to leave just because the world doesn't match up with what I expect or desire to happen. You'd have to burn MD to the ground to get me to leave at this point.

I recognize the fact that you have chosen these people carefully and you've had considerably time to weigh the decisions, but still - how good your choices really have been won't be apparent until far into the future. Given that I trust nothing and no one blindly (a habit leftover from past disillusionment with organized religion), I will just have to live with the unknown, but I keep my doubt just as alive as my hope.

Besides - who said that the Council gets to learn only from you? Are you to be the only teacher? I think that they learn from us as well, most of the time indirectly. I view the forum as more of a suggestion box of sorts - although I have a feeling that other people take it far more seriously.

Awi

[Lifeline]

[quote name='Tarquinus' timestamp='1291092302' post='73749']
From my perspective, MagicDuel has improved steadily in almost every way since I joined it in the early fall of '08. No, not everyone has liked every change. No, not everyone has benefited equally. But this is a fairer and more open game than the one I joined. Don't talk to me about the good old days, which had different and in many ways uglier problems: the appearance of favoritism, the dominance of very exclusive cliques, and a far less balanced and more exploitable combat system.
[/quote]
I agree with that and MD hasn't become more automated or anything. The specialness isn't being taken away as well. The game is improving since a long time and on the best way to become even greater. I mean no offense to anybody or want to attack any decisions I just want to point out a general fact that in my opinion limits MD a lot but is unseen.

What I meant in my earlier posts is limited responsibility and freedom being taken away from the players. I made the best example I could by referring to Murs topic with the knowledge/info trade for freedom. The more a god/creator is taking responsibility from his community the more it limits their minds. What is a god/creator to begin with? A caring nurturing mother and while the god is intervening to much with his children he keeps them from growing independently. Its the very same Mur said in his other topic just instead of knowledge/info taking the freedom a higher entities interventions are. I don't understand how it is so hard to see... as long as you live under the responsibility of your parents you aren't living by yourself. Same is with MD community we live under the wing of its god and not by ourselves. And no I am not saying the god has to die he just needs to distance himself more and let his people take care of themselves.

Mur I don't know how to say this better... just compare it to giving information/knowledge to somebody. You said it comes at the cost of their freedom. Its the very same when a higher entity dictates the course of life for other people. Each time the god intervenes with decisions that concern people in MD, he takes freedom and responsibility from them. And with that limits them.
You said “There is just one single way to grasp this kind of information without limiting your freedom (inner freedom)..and that is discovering it yourself. “ Discovering it yourself is key here. The community in MD should discover life by itself and not have a god guide them though all steps.

[Kafuuka]

[quote name='Tarquinus' timestamp='1291092302' post='73749']
I have to say: I reject this line of thinking absolutely. You say MD is less "special" but you admit you weren't around to know what it was like before, and you provide no evidence at all, for example by citing similarities in other games, to support your opinion. And Kafuuka seems to be attacking a "straw hat man", to use his words, by claiming that WP for days (which I can only assume is his basis for saying this) will soon make Wish Points "common", and thus MD is "regressing toward the mean".
[/quote]
There is an entire thread on people debating the consequences of WP for days in the quantities we currently expect them to be delivered. If I remember correctly, several people would get more AD WP than the current bottom of the WP top has. As far as WP are concerned that is a regression towards the mean.
I am not saying this is a bad thing per se. I am not saying MD overall is becoming less special. I say that it is easier to spot the things that we do not like. It is easier to pick up arms against a change we dislike and it is easier for me to think of examples of MD being automated more. eg. I think Rendril's job is to support automatization and that the council has mostly executive tasks. If I am asked to give examples of personal touch, I'd refer to the recent new tree in the game and Mur's current burst of activity on esoteric topics in the forum.
In general I just don't spend as much time on agreeing with people. 'I think so too' doesn't make for interesting debates and +rep is virtually the same gesture. Whenever I tell someone something bad, I won't preface it with an extensive list of everything that's good.. it would consume too much time or worse, be incredibly short and even more insulting.

[Aysun]

I could be over-stepping myself in interjecting anything into this, but there are a couple of things I feel should be pointed out that I think have been looked over.

One is that MD is the least automated thing I have ever experienced. Those who say it is perhaps need to take a look at what 'automated' actually means. MD is not, for the most part, self-sufficient. It rests on Mur as a lynch pin for major activity in the realm- when Mur is not active in some sense, the mood of the land is often lacking in excitement. Of course there are user run quests, but the quests themselves are more external to the land, as they cannot affect the environment or scenes in any direct way. Mur is the one who causes the changes. Sure, someone can say something in chat that Mur sees in secret and decides to make real (such as Awiiya becoming a tree), but unless Mur sees it himself or even decides to act on it, it cannot really be effectual in some way. Automation would be the rebel system, as an example, recognizing so many rebels in a land and that triggering a vote for kingship in the system which is how I originally proposed the idea. But even so, the idea was taken and formed by Mur and the council into something that would best fit MD and which again relies entirely upon Mur noticing enough upheaval himself to *consider* some sort of vote, or even in this case the Council taking notice and choosing to act. So instead of it being a self-sufficient interface based mechanism, it is instead entirely based on the action Mur or the Council might want to take at their leisure. That is the difference here.

Two, I think people are perhaps overstretching the profundity of this event with Lifeline's spell removal. To me, without all of the subjectivity and feelings involved, it appears as such: Someone had a spell. The spell was misused to allow others into areas already declared restricted. The spell was removed from that person for the knowledgeable infringement. It seems fairly straightforward and doesn't seem to have so much to do with roleplay and gameplay excitement but simple misuse- if you are given a toy to play with, you are to play with it, not use it to throw through a window. If you throw it through a window, even if you say that's how you were playing with it, you know there's the very good chance that you're never going to see that toy again.

A solution to this that I can think of offhand would be a more intricate classification of locations throughout MD. If certain spells are not to be used in some locations, they should be marked and coded as such. Granted, Jail is such a place, but the Lair is not jail so should probably not have that sort of classification but something different. Perhaps there are also other such places that are considered mostly restricted and thus are considered places that 99% of people do not need to be in without Mur's express permission and knowledge, and if that is so perhaps all those places collectively could share this new sort of location type that prevents those sorts of spells from working there, thus preventing abuse but still allowing the spell to be used freely within the boundaries that it is intended to be used.



If I have misinterpreted things at all with my words here, please forgive me as I am predominantly going by what has been said already in this thread. I acknowledge that there are most likely personal complexities at work here influencing some ideas presented, but none the less wanted to share a perhaps more objective perspective on the event.

[Muratus del Mur]

lost chimes of an ending melody

[Ravenstrider]

[quote name='Muratus del Mur' timestamp='1291077652' post='73737']
so let me get this right, you are blaming me for not playing with you from characters like knaty or ss or whatever? because otherwise i don't see where i am hindering your creativity in play, or how i make things automated.

Please detail how i make things automated or whatever you wanted to say. Please give examples so i understand in what you see this trend you fear of. I am serious, maybe i don't see it as you do.
[/quote]


No, I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just saying that characters like Knatty and SS make players that interact with them feel special. It's like interacting with a part of the world. Maybe I chose the wrong example in Knatty's quest. Hm, you can take Renavoid's quest as the other example... Quests that change the world are always more special than those that require you to solve riddles on clickies. That was my point.

When you join MD now, and read the whole AL, see the newspaper, etc, it seems like that things were vibrant and alive back then and that they are quite dull at the moment... You go: I can be a part of this great adventure... Oh, wait, it's gone and it's not returning... But instead, you can gather branches and join the endless bickering that goes on in MD now. (It seems that all people can do lately is gnaw at each others necks)

Let's take the Necrovion Rebelion... Something that could have been so much fun and has so much RP potential has been reduced to slinging insults. Same with this Drachorn Cave deal... (though there was the braking of the rules here, so not the best example)


Automation of MD is not a bad thing, in most cases... But one of the things that makes MD special is a mix of the human factor... Automate too much and it's less "special"... That's what I was trying to say. One of the things that made me feel this way is the implementation of gathering professions... and later on, I'm guessing crafting as well...(not in a sense that's done now) Which would be more or less taking a feature most mmorpg games already have... It could be something else, probably, but from what I've seen of the Woodcutters, it's just a guild of alts that farm resources. With the implementation of the rest of the professions can you say for certain that MDP won't start being flooded with: WTS Branches, 5sc... WTS water, 1sc, etc. With raising the ammount of items, you raise the amount of trade goods, raising the amount of trade, which can lead to that situation...

And just to wrap it up: My opinion isn't really based on facts, but a feeling, so it isn't too relevant. And I'm just one guy who likes to whine. (apparently)

(Just for the record, I still think most of the recently implemented technical stuff is really good...)


Edit: I was meaning to post this a couple of hours ago, but my internet went out... So I kind of missed the last few posts... ^.^

Edited November 30, 2010 by Ravenstrider

[Tarquinus]

[quote name='Ravenstrider' timestamp='1291154320' post='73857']Quests that change the world are always more special than those that require you to solve riddles on clickies. That was my point.[/quote]
I certainly agree with that. Story-based quests - that is, quests around things that "actually happened" in the game - are something I'd like to see more of.

But it's often quite hard to write quests around things people care about, since so many players (as distinct from their characters, which I will always maintain is a useful distinction) have investments in one aspect of the game or another. It's not common to find a player who is willing to give up his/her possessions, freedom, or part of his/her role for the sake of crafting a fun interactive story.

It is further very difficult indeed to write a roleplayed, story-based quest that uses symbols in a manner appropriate to, and commensurate with, the use of symbols in MD as a whole. Though I have been thinking about how to do just that for a while now.

[Mya Celestia]

[color="#8B0000"][font="Palatino Linotype"]I keep hearing about a loss of freedom. Sometimes losing something forces a growth of creativity. How much groaning did we hear from non-land people when the ap was changed? How they had lost access to certain places because of it? Some simply gave up. Others put their brains to work and found ways around it.

Instead of looking at what is lost, try coming up with something else. MD is a land of possibilities. We just have to try and be creative.[/font][/color]