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As the title implies, balancing. A couple of implementations caused de-synchronized counters, that is to say, some mind control implementations were made when anti-mind control was a lot more freely available and easy to get to. Then these counters were removed, and now we're dealing with game breaking mind control mechanics. Some other abilities were also considered moot or pointless or invasive, so we decided to change them (ex: "Rape" pheromones that caused a lot of commotion).
List of Pages affected:
We hope that these changes are to the liking of the community and that they quell any kind of negative energy that keeps arising from some of these control spells. We flirted with the idea of allowing third party control, but after the amount of complaints received over the past months, it became obvious that it is too contentious of an ability to keep around so wholesale, and that we would rather tone it all down to a more acceptable Vitkaar base core (for those who remember the one time use mind control scorpion). The Slizzar suffered as a racial design to be moved further and further into the background because of all the mind control capacities in all other forms of abilities, and so we hope that with this buff, they become far more relevant again.
If because of the lore change you need to change any muters or swap Estel faith, please simply tag your reviewer for a re-approval. None of these changes require you to file for a complete re-review. Re-tagging the thread should be good enough.
List of Pages affected:
- https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Phantasma
- https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Vampirism
- https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Silven
- https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Slizzar
- https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Altalar
- Regarding Witchblood:
- Purged the entire Hallowblood system.
- Those who ended up with Hallowblood powers got them through meta cheating from our perspective and the concept of Hallowblood had no future. We just chose to get rid of it completely and revert the Witchblood back to their original state.
- Added a feeding mechanic for both Altalar and Vampires
- Aiding in the "anti Magic" niche, but also widening the scope of the Witchblood so they don't constantly have to succ the same people.
- Changed the feeding mechanics to be more forgiving. Mages and combat characters don't become combat useless for 2 days now, only for 1 hour. Vampires and Altalar lose on-cast abilities for 48 hours but gain no other downsides.
- Feeding made Witchblood hated. They impaired characters for unnecessary long periods of time without any sort of narrative that was compelling in any way. It was "just because". While there is still a "physically tired" aspect, it's not a form of exhaustion and a character can still "fight" at 80% peak efficiency.
- Gave the Witchblood a cast interrupt ability through a shockwave of antimagic.
- Aiding in the antimage appeal.
- Gave the Witchblood a passive prey detection mechanic.
- Mostly Aesthetic, but also useful for general roleplay narration between players.
- Future implementations are still on the table pending more deep lore being revealed about Witchbloods through storywebs and other progressions.
- Purged the entire Hallowblood system.
- Regarding Altalar:
- Ring of Ulley Mind control break completely removed and replaced with the old rosary beads ability of the Unionist protection, which creates a personal impenetrable shield.
- With the nerfing of mind control, there is no need for a ring that breaks situational abilities.
- Ring of Vallea now allows a character to break the racial Body Stat Limitations
- The Stone throwing and lifting is super situational and almost progression oriented. The Body Stat break allows some more creative freedom.
- Ring of Asc'tea swapped out complete mind control with Sensation Surge ability from the Slizzar
- Falls in line with some of the Slizzar deep lore, and also fixes the mind control being too overbearing. Sensation Surge is far less intrusive and can also be more creatively fun in roleplay.
- Ring of Ulley Mind control break completely removed and replaced with the old rosary beads ability of the Unionist protection, which creates a personal impenetrable shield.
- Regarding Vampires:
- Changed forcible Feeding Pheromones from "Like me" to an escape mechanic that should give a window of freedom to disengage during a feeding session.
- "rape" pheros were making players really uncomfortble, both the users and receivers. This new spell reduces the "OP" value of Alais a bit (which is like 7/10 Vampires you meet nowadays), while still being useful in certain scenarios.
- Enchanted Kiss Mind control changed from explicit mind control to single order time based control.
- Can do it to an infinite amount of people infinite amount of times, but the mind control is like a sleeper agent now, only a single order, and only active for 48 hours. This trait needed to be nerfed because Mind control is super contentious in the community, it robs the players of their own character freedom, and was frequently abused without any good counters being available.
- Alais who use the Feeding Pheros Trait can cause those they have fed on to forget they were fed on, by who, where, when or why.
- This is to re-implement some stealth without giving them complete mind control, because otherwise the Vampire would just get thotcrushed the moment they fed on a noble.
- Removed Mind Control from the Doughal Bloodline and replaced it with Stone Feeding, which makes their skin impenetrable with weapons, while they are feeding.
- Adds to the whole mountain mechanic and removes mind control.
- Removed All Arcana Vampirica/Vitalica/Phantasma, and combined them into one trait. Clarified the use of the trait and also limited the weakness (much like the Witchblood) to 1 hour, not days. Also gave it a cool ranged aesthetic.
- These traits were super confusing. Combining them into one and making it easily explained on the Wiki makes it so much easier and less of a point drain.
- Added a new Mutation for the Zikiel Bloodline: A tracker ward that allows the Vampire to sense a person's direction and location at all times until broken by ritualism.
- Needed to fill a new blank spot, aided in the aesthetic of the Mage Vampire.
- Added a new Mutation for the Zikiel Bloodline: The freedom to learn any single Parlor Magic spell (and be able to cast it despite being a Vampire) but it costing no Proficiency points in the sheet.
- Needed to fill a new blank spot, aided in the aesthetic of the Mage Vampire.
- Changed forcible Feeding Pheromones from "Like me" to an escape mechanic that should give a window of freedom to disengage during a feeding session.
- Regarding Slizzar:
- Gave the Slizzar the ability to detect any kind of mind control on another individual, not being able to tell by who or in what form, but they can tell that someone is under someone else's influence.
- This should hopefully avoid awkward "seduces u" -Oh wait you're already bonded, #oops #bye-, and rather make it obvious. It also adds as an additional control mechanic for Slizzar to detect those under influence.
- Removed any form of Mind Control break on Slizzar Bonding aside from the will of the Slizzar. This empowers Slizzar (while breaking it should still be possible for third parties to capture the slizzar and beat it out of them).
- Essentially, with all the strict mind slavery spells in lore, it became obvious that Slizzar were like second rate seducers. Even the bonded sensation surge weren't as powerful as mind control powers of Silven and Vampires, so essentially since Slizzar could be neither Silven or Vampire, they just ended up being more underpowered seducers. Slizzar should hopefully now be once more the top tier seducer in lore with the only real "control over" powers, that are very flexible and can be argued against if they lead into roleplay that players aren't comfortable with.
- Slizzar are immune to any kind of Mind Control
- It makes little sense that Snake people who were raised to become controllers of the masses and the powerful should be subject to such weak and feemble attempts at imitating their control.
- Gave the Slizzar the ability to detect any kind of mind control on another individual, not being able to tell by who or in what form, but they can tell that someone is under someone else's influence.
- Regarding Silven:
- Nerfed the Beastlord Muter down from Cro-Allar strenght to Strongman Ailor.
- It was simply too OP and circumvented the whole Hellion Court mechanic.
- Buffed the Dragon Muter to have the same strenght and speed mechanics as the above.
- It was just "scalie" aesthetic before, it needed some more oompf to feel like a worthwhile tree ender.
- Mindlock muter was changed from explicit mind control to single use single order for 48 hours max.
- Can do it to an infinite amount of people infinite amount of times, but the mind control is like a sleeper agent now, only a single order, and only active for 48 hours. This trait needed to be nerfed because Mind control is super contentious in the community, it robs the players of their own character freedom, and was frequently abused without any good counters being available.
- First Middlegod Muter (Can't remember the name) changed into the Divine Bond which allows the Silven to weave two identical cloths, and when wearing one (and another person wears the other) they can see through their eyes at will.
- New ability, new aesthetic. Got rid of the cleanse mind control ability because it was no longer pertinent due to the nerfing of Mind Control.
- Removed the Dwarven Muter because it was pointless and changed it into the Divine bond which grants 10 of any proficiency from a person bonded with, but they also feel any physical pain experienced by the Silven.
- Needed a better use trait that actually had a consistent value use. The Dwarf muter was just generally pointless.
- Nerfed the Beastlord Muter down from Cro-Allar strenght to Strongman Ailor.
We hope that these changes are to the liking of the community and that they quell any kind of negative energy that keeps arising from some of these control spells. We flirted with the idea of allowing third party control, but after the amount of complaints received over the past months, it became obvious that it is too contentious of an ability to keep around so wholesale, and that we would rather tone it all down to a more acceptable Vitkaar base core (for those who remember the one time use mind control scorpion). The Slizzar suffered as a racial design to be moved further and further into the background because of all the mind control capacities in all other forms of abilities, and so we hope that with this buff, they become far more relevant again.
If because of the lore change you need to change any muters or swap Estel faith, please simply tag your reviewer for a re-approval. None of these changes require you to file for a complete re-review. Re-tagging the thread should be good enough.
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