- Joined
- Jun 29, 2012
- Messages
- 4,464
- Reaction score
- 34,675
- Points
- 663
- Age
- 33
What is happening?
As part of a bigger project to make Massive Roleplay more palatable to new players, we are simplifying a lot of experience cornerstones of Massive. While other Lore Staff are working on the new player experience, some of us were beginning to combat the Ability bloat. Ability bloat occurs when we have a "fine" ability such as Red Eyes 1, but need it to do something slightly different, so you get Red Eyes 2. And then Red Eyes 3 and 4 and so on. This bloat occurs because the system was not capable of tackling small variance without whole new Abilities being added.
Additionally, the strictness of converting vague abilities into written Abilities was that it converted a whole bunch of what basically comes down to non-competitive aesthetics to Abilities. The Ability List page exists so that players can consult what is being used against or at them, but it was never truly necessary to write abilities on there that only modify the player's own Character app by say, 5 Physical stat. As such, we are implementing two new functions:
Qadir
Altalar
What do players need to do?
Update your Racial Abilities if you want to (you do not need to include Racial Specials), but this is all optional. You should update your new Physical Stat, as 80% of the above (sub)races had their Physical Stat numbers changed. This does not need a re-review, unless you are drastically changing your Proficiency spread.
Help my Character was ruined by this Update! I can no longer use ability X!
Please make a ticket on the Roleplay Com Discord Bot. We will try to guide you to an alternate design path, or discuss other options, but please do not come expecting an exception to the changes. We are ready to help you otherwise.
As part of a bigger project to make Massive Roleplay more palatable to new players, we are simplifying a lot of experience cornerstones of Massive. While other Lore Staff are working on the new player experience, some of us were beginning to combat the Ability bloat. Ability bloat occurs when we have a "fine" ability such as Red Eyes 1, but need it to do something slightly different, so you get Red Eyes 2. And then Red Eyes 3 and 4 and so on. This bloat occurs because the system was not capable of tackling small variance without whole new Abilities being added.
Additionally, the strictness of converting vague abilities into written Abilities was that it converted a whole bunch of what basically comes down to non-competitive aesthetics to Abilities. The Ability List page exists so that players can consult what is being used against or at them, but it was never truly necessary to write abilities on there that only modify the player's own Character app by say, 5 Physical stat. As such, we are implementing two new functions:
- Modifiers to Abilities, which allow small changes per race/affliction. For example, the Minoor have a generic healing Ability, but their Modification allows them to heal two characters at once, which makes them more unique. Now we don't have to write Healing Light 1 and Healing Light 2, and only need to put Healing Light onto the Ability List once.
- Specials, which are non-competitive Abilities for aesthetic flair and roleplay fun. These are technically Abilities, but do not warrant taking up space on the ability list, because a player will never need to consult them to understand what is being used against or on them. They just exist to give players more freedom to flair up their emotes and character designs, and as such can be looked at more freely than other Abilities.
- All Races will be updated without exception. Some may have to wait longer however. Sihai and Avanthar are undergoing a rewrite right now, so they have to wait. Ailor, Qadir and Altalar are done right now, and others will be updated in the coming weeks in batches. These updates are ostensibly aimed at reducing the number of Abilities, while also introducing new flair specials to races for more rp flexibility and emote creativity.
- It should be noted, some races will continue to gain identical abilities, but with different modifiers. This is simply because we don't want every race to introduce 7 new unique abilities and then end up with 70+ new abilities on the Ability List. Most of the unique variance between Races should come from the Specials, not the actual Abilities.
- When we are done with Race updates, we're going to run through Afflictions. Overall we want to re-tool practically every kit with the new Abilities-Specials duality, while reducing Ability clutter from duplicate Abilities.
- Not all Races will receive strict boosts. Some updates may be experienced as small nerfs, but the players may find in the long run that nerfs only occur to wildly unpopular abilities.
- Soul Bond 1 = This Ability was fine, it just lacked customizability. The new Soul Bond allows a much wider range of domestic pets. The only thing that was really removed was the 1 Mundane attack intercept, it felt tone-deaf and weird to process initiative on crp towards Ailors.
- Shrewd Insight 1 = This Ability was neat, but super niche and blunted by its cooldown and built-in counter. It was added into Dark Empath while removing its cooldown and built-in counter, but still alerting Ailor so there is room for competition.
- Rogue Gift 2 = This Ability was problematic in the sense that most roll based mechanics are designed out-of-the-box, and if there is an ability that suddenly allows for perfect rolling on failed rolls, this should be factored into the writing for other Abilities. As such, we will phase out this Ability altogether.
- Honed Skill 1 & Honed Skill 2 = These are fine Abilities, but somewhat limited. As such, they were sort of combined, and now allow investment in Combat Proficiencies as well. The idea was basically that we originally blocked Combat investments, but this happened "anyway", due to the nature of players freeing up points from Hobby/Skill they were going to spend otherwise, making it a redundant limitation.
- Empath Sense 7 Neat Ability, but rarely got chosen. As such it was combined with Shrewd Insight 1 for a more complete picture.
- Wall Climb 1 Regalia has less and less walls. Walls are being phased out mostly and so the Ability became kind of pointless. It was also super un-immersive as you cannot wall-climb in minecraft and a player had to just awkwardly walk around, enderpearl or use elytra.
- Omniaware 1 We don't believe this Ability gets much use since surprise attack rp rarely happens from behind or the side, and players will mostly respect the logic dictated from surprise attacks.
- Destined Body 1 Fine Ability. Kept.
- Destined Body 2 Fine Ability. Kept.
- Destined Body 3 This Ability was fine on paper, but clunky in roleplay and rarely if ever used. Attention at an event or instance should rely on the skill of the roleplayer, not on an ability forcing everyone to watch.
- To increase the number of Specials, Ailor now gain +1 Language for free.
Qadir
- The Qadir were a duct-taped mess as they weren't really properly updated to a useful unique form, we just gave them a bunch of free stuff and then called it due to lack of inspiration and lack of feeling where the race should go. To combat this, we just embraced the Engineering side completely, as if anyone wanted to play an Arabesque character who does not do engineering, they could just play an Ailor with Arabic features.
- Sariyd Gift 1 was a weird counter Ability that did not see much use, so it was scrapped.
- Sariyd Gift 2 didn't work because there are only 2 Qadir Characters actively played. It was scrapped.
- Sariyd Gift 3 worked, but the Ability needed to be made not Qadir unique, so they kept that Ability.
- Sariyd Gift 4 had too much clunky language, so it was just simplified and then added.
- Sariyd Gift 5 was fine. It was kept. To make the update better, this Ability can stack on top of the Engineering one, allowing the player 2 Familiars.
- All Home Enchants sucked. The theory behind Home Enchants was neat, but the reality is that house-rp does not happen often, and most people apply Enchants without ever getting use from them. In the future we will try out district based Abilities, but until that time, these Abilities had to go because they were basically just hot air.
- Honed Skill 1 was always a tack-on for the Qadir and didn't make much sense. We moved Bronze Family Metallurgy onto another Ability which was usually a no-brain buy for Qadir anyway.
- Honed Skill 3 was super super niche and barely saw use so it was scrapped.
- Advanced Golem is a new Ability that allows Golem using Qadir to do some more funky stuff with friends. They also gain a ton of Metallurgy and Engineering packs for free, which is their niche.
Altalar
- This is a long one, so we'll make the explanations short and you'll just have to trust us.
- Age Control 1 is fine and kept.
- Arken Speculate 1 kind of sucks in a vacuum. It's a neat Ability but it needs to be moved to Demonology which is still in development.
- Arcane Mastery 1 is fine and kept.
- Memory Sense 1 sucks because memory rp sucks. It's gone.
- Exorcism 2 felt weirdly out of place for Teledden so it's gone.
- Servile Collar 1 is still a bit up in the air. It might come back in the common pack for the Altalar, but for now it's gone. It saw non use in the 0 Teledden players.
- Shrewd Insight 1 is a distinctly Ailor Ability in our eyes and should stay there.
- Altalar Master 1 is just a no-rp Ability so it's gone.
- Keen Mind 1 was super situational so it's gone.
(note, it's fine for an Ability to be situational, it just can't be super situational). - Morrlond Gift 1,2,3 were neat, thematically but they didn't need to be so many different Abilities. As such they were (mostly) kept and shortened.
- Skin Purge 1 serves no purpose IRP.
- Dravinda Gift 1 was a meme Ability and it's gone.
- Dravinda Gift 2 was an okay Ability but weirdly specific and unsable as a result. It was buffed to be stronger.
- Dravinda Gift 3 was an over-written and over-specific piece of junk with too much text. As much as the flaming lash aesthetic was good for the 3 active Suvial Characters, one can still keep that with the new weapon summon Ability.
- Battle Sense 1 was neat but kind of a cuck ability in that it didn't allow the user to play too. The new one does.
- Inth Gift 1 & 2 were neat and kept. Two even was buffed with additional function.
- Inth Gift 3 sucks because most players keep logs of their rp in MC anyway.
- Control Counter 1 is fine, but it didn't really belong on the Lesarra so it's gone.
- Battle Dress 1 is super specific and most players ignored it beyond superficial aesthetics so it's gone.
- Weapon Song 1 was neat in concept, but it was hard to rp out in practice for those who wanted to play fair so it's gone.
- Peace Reign 1 is an okay Ability but out of place among Altalar so it's gone.
- Sollerian Mist 1 was /really/ good aesthetic wise, but it was absolutely awful to rp out because the mist would not appear in-game and the boundaries were not clearly set. It pained us to remove this one, though we kept the aesthetic alive in the two new Abilities.
- Minoor Abilities were just a tack-on frankly and so it doesn't even warrant a point-by review of their Abilities. The "Communist Healer" vibe is kept in the new Abilities.
- Half Altalar simply inherit the exact Ability spread of their parent, this was the cleanest way to deal with them. And we think it makes Half-Altalar better overall.
- Talea's Blessings were removed. To our knowledge the player PuffyPigeon was the only one actively using them on a frequent basis, because most of the players who play Altalar either focused on the Unspoken Gods, or were Unionist. We kept Sca'Elle and Sei-Maan's Abilities and moved them into Altalar Specials for all, but otherwise, all of these optional Abilities were removed.
- Elder Voice was a newly added "shouting in your mind" kind of deal that is supposed to make the Altalar appear more venerable, and because their specials felt a bit short.
What do players need to do?
Update your Racial Abilities if you want to (you do not need to include Racial Specials), but this is all optional. You should update your new Physical Stat, as 80% of the above (sub)races had their Physical Stat numbers changed. This does not need a re-review, unless you are drastically changing your Proficiency spread.
Help my Character was ruined by this Update! I can no longer use ability X!
Please make a ticket on the Roleplay Com Discord Bot. We will try to guide you to an alternate design path, or discuss other options, but please do not come expecting an exception to the changes. We are ready to help you otherwise.
