Messages

331

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 07, 2015, 04:42:01 PM »

My oldest character, Regstav, was born over 9 years ago.  That's 91 years old in the game's relative age calculation.  He's been a hero since at least 2010 and has for that entire time charged into battle at the head of a phalanx of cavalry.  Against Daimons in Beluaterra.  He has personally charged undead and monster populations that have more CS than he did.  Without backup.  He has believed most of his life that it is his duty to fight the destroyers of humanity, and that death in battle is ticket to the next world as one of the most honored warriors of the gods.  And he still roleplays that he wields the fiery dragon sword he wielded in Beluaterra.  The one with the teeth of every greater Daimon he helped kill bolted into it.  He's up to 340 honor and 38 prestige. That puts him in the top 10 percent or so of the nobility of Atamara.  And his death in battle might just put my family on the list of most famous families in the game.

I do not shelter him behind a wall.  And for at least five years as a hero, in command of cavalry, every foe he has fought has kept on missing the opportunity to kill him.  I'm not saying he's lived a charmed life or anything.  But seriously.  How does EVERYBODY miss a guy with a target that big painted all over him?  Wielding a flaming fracking sword that says "I'm the leader.  Take me if you dare."  Granted, the last bit's RP, but...HOW does everybody miss him?

Not that I actually WANT him to die...but...He did come into this world kicking, screaming, and covered in someone else's blood.  It only seems poetic that a hero check out the same way...

As for the class issue.
You do realize there four standard classes people can play?
And that of them, the warrior class is by far the most common?  Because it happens to be most fun for most people?

If you lower people to one character per continent, without any option for playing a second character in one of the other three classes, you are going to end up with a whole lot of warrior chiefs and not very many support indians to help out the realms.  And that, in my opinion, will very badly hurt this game and the realms that fill it.

332

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 06, 2015, 04:16:33 PM »

If the Devs think that having two identical characters with one droning on is a problem then why not combat that?

Require that people have two different TYPES of characters so they can't play them the same way?

If you think that people having two warriors to boost national army size is bad, then say people can't have two warriors.

There are four main classes we can be right now.
Warrior
Courtier
Priest
Adventurer

If people want two people on the same island, require that they be separate classes.  Bam.  No more duplicate drones only there to boost army strength and not doing anything else.

Also, it would encourage people to try out the other classes if they've never done that before.

333

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 05, 2015, 02:33:03 AM »

And in our view it will do more harm than good.

334

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 04, 2015, 09:19:17 AM »

It would also strongly encourage exactly the behaviour we are seeking to eliminate: having a second character be nothing but a drone, contributing nothing of real meaning. Players who didn't want to lose their second character would keep them safe behind walls, never putting them in a situation where they could be captured and executed.

If they never leave the walls, they will never boost the army's might and make the nation more powerful, which as I understand it is what is claimed as the reason for getting rid of dual characters.

As for multi-dukes, you could merely say that it is no longer allowed and anyone caught doing it will have their character banned.

335

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 03, 2015, 09:16:19 PM »

If this is the same as having a character executed, why not simply allow such executions?

If you want to limit people to one character per island, allow nations to execute multi-characters.

Or stop people from being able to create second characters, allow executions, and wait for the players to thin out the ranks on their own.

That would certainly be less disruptive than suddenly forcing so many nobles to move or pause on some random day...

336

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: November 03, 2015, 09:46:16 AM »

I play on the Continents I find fun and interesting.

I have played on the others and did not care for them.

Being forced to remove one character from a continent will not cause me to move a character to a continent I found boring in the past.

It will cause me to pause that character and not play the game as much.

337

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 31, 2015, 11:02:03 PM »

I've said my piece on the point of dual characters.

Blaming them for issues caused by entirely different things is wrong.

Changing the rules to take gameplay options away from the players is wrong.

This is a game.  It should be fun.

And this change will greatly affect the fun I can have in the game.

I can't say I will leave over this.  But the more options are taken away from me as a player, the less reasons I will have to play, and the more reasons I will have to leave.

338

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 30, 2015, 07:17:01 PM »

You want a reason nothing has changed over the last few years?

One reason?  I wasn't around.

Now I'm not taking credit.  Lots of people have been pushing to do this for a while now.

But I've been...rather inactive for a while.  I had dropped into a very low level of activity in BattleMaster.

When the previous Tyrant left, I decided to go for the Tyrancy.  And ever since I've been Tyrant I've been...pushing Tara to go outside the League.  Straining relations...and now thanks to the actions of Strombran those relations have snapped.

I don't know if I would have done anything like this if I'd been Tyrant earlier...but from the moment I became Tyrant and looked around...I realized one very interesting fact.  The League was a...straightjacket for those IN the League...and an insurmountable wall for those OUTSIDE the League.  From the moment I got my legs under me until now, I've been straining that straightjacket and that wall as much as I could.  And i think the leaders of Strombran realized I was doing that (without contacting me OOC by the way) and started pushing right back in ways that would force me to strain things further.

We've basically been fighting each other for months, doing a steady drum beat of ratcheting up pressure to see who would blink first.  And neither one us were blinking.  And now we are in open war.

The Minas Leon/Rieleston Federation is gone.
The Cagil/Strombran/Tara Federation is minus Tara.
And most of the other alliances are in flux with major fighting gearing up.

It took us a while to roll things up.  Should it have been done earlier?  Yeah.  As a player, I agree that it should have been done long ago.  As the character of Regstav absolutely not.  Regstav wanted strength for Tara.  Most of you probably have no idea how hard it was for me as a player to get things into a position where Regstav would finally take the step he did.  He's a bloody stubborn character...  But yeah.  I think it should have been done earlier.

Now we have a crop of new rulers in almost every member nation of the League, and we are all willing to as players burn down what has taken years to build.  Because we want to make things more fun for everyone.  We've been working towards this for months.  We almost had it a year ago when I first became Tyrant.  But...I was still in Regstav player mode.  I could not imagine Tara without Cagil back then so I did everything it took to rebuild the alliance.  It wasn't until I was done that I looked at Atamara as a ruler who was supposed to make things exciting for my players that I realized the trap of the situation.  I just didn't see what was going on out there in the rest of the continent until then.  That was my error as a player.  I fully recognize that.

I had two choices.  From a ruler player perspective devoted to making things more exciting for the continent, I should have picked option number 2.  Of course, at that time Tara probably would have died if I'd picked Option 2.  But it certainly would have made things exciting for the continent.  I did the right thing by my character.  As Regstav I rebuilt the alliance that he could not imagine being without.  The only thing I can say in my defense is that I didn't know how badly things were locked in by the League at that time.  I didn't have enough experience.  This is not my first time being a ruler.  This IS the first time I've been a LONG time ruler though.  Looking at it now, I realize that a good ruler SHOULD look at things just a little bit OOC.  Your job as a ruler is to make sure your players have fun.  And part of that is making sure OTHER players have fun as well.  I didn't have that point of view when I first became Tyrant.

After months of working all this up though, I can say that all of us new rulers are looking at the continent with those just slightly OOC eyes.  It's time to make a change.  Past time really, but...well...there's nothing we can do about the past.  So we've been working for months to destabilize things in ways that work IC and now...well...it's done gone unstable now and there's nowhere to go but down...or...up...or whatever...

I'm sure our characters will be broken hearted.

And as a player I'll be giggling all the way to the bloodbath. 

339

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 30, 2015, 05:06:27 PM »

Oh, it does absolutely help a war machine to have two characters.  That's common sense.

But that's not what turned the tide on Atamara.  It MAY have helped during the initial fighting when I showed up.  But I mostly remember that we were stretching the ability of Foda to support the army.  Even though we had lots of nobles, we couldn't effectively recruit up to what we could lead because Foda didn't make enough money.  So we were limited by the economy on how much we could field.  What I remember making the difference in that war was Cagil.  They showed up at every big battle and turned the tide in our favor.

And after that, Tara and Cagil have been absolutely linked at the hip and have not fought each other.  Ever.  And every time someone threatened either of us, we helped each other take them out.  And most of the time Cagil talked someone else into fighting on our side using diplomatic footwork that was amazing to watch.  Or got someone else to agree to stand out of the fight.  Or started another war up to get their attention.  It's always been something.

You can try to hang the blame on dual characters all you want, but that's not what's made the difference in Atamara.

It's Cagilan diplomacy that did it.  In every single war that has happened in the entire time I've played the game, the Cagilans have bought, cajoled, or negotiated just enough nations over to our side that we've won.  Every single time.  And each time we take over a city or two.  And when you add that up in years, you get the situation we are in now, where that boughten and cajoled alliance of nations on top of the Taran/Cagilan alliance is just plain dominant over everything else.

Which did bring stagnation to Atamara.  Which is why we decided to break things up before this "fix" was suggested.  We came up with the conclusion that only two things could break the dominance we'd forged.  Tom or the Devs coming in and breaking things up.  Or we players agreeing to break things up.  Because we'd pushed things to the point that no alliance of nations outside our alliance could ever again threaten us.  We'd won.  And that's no fun for people in other nations.  So we agreed to break things up, and then came up with a real good IC reason, built on a very long IC history, to do it.

We've got the same minds that have spent the better part of a decade turning the Taran/Cagilan brotherhood into the dominant powerbloc of an entire continent now devoted to tearing it back down.

Atamara is in for some exciting times.  And I can't wait to see what the other players do with that.

340

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 30, 2015, 03:15:38 PM »

It wasn't dual characters that won Atamara.  If it was that powerful someone else would have done it.

Superior strategy turned the tide.

I was there, many many moons ago when Tara was down to a single city and two other regions.  I and a bunch of friends who play BattleTech were looking to play an internet computer game together and one of us suggested we come play BattleMaster.  He told us about a nation on the verge of collapse that we could help save and we decided to try it out.

A whole bunch of us joined Tara at once and we did turn the tide.  That and the fact that Cagil fought with us in almost every battle.  Regstav was one of those first two characters.  Yao Ling was the other.  Yao Ling is now High Priestess of the largest religion on Beluaterra.  And after going to Beluaterra and being deported by Daimons, Regstav came back to Tara...and was just recently elected to the Tyrancy of Tara.

Saying that dual characters won Atamara is just wrong.  If it was that easy, anyone would have done it.  What won Atamara is Cagil and Tara.  After that fight for survival I took part in, Tara has been utterly and completely loyal to Cagil.  Tara owed its life to Cagil, and every character I've ever had that played in Tara has always reminded every new generation of Taran of that debt.  We owe them our life.  They stood with us and so we stand with them.  Period.  End of Line.

That made a core of two realms that would never fight each other right in the heart of Atamara.  And then Cagilan diplomacy brought in a series of other nations to support that core alliance in war after war until we slowly just marched across the entire continent.  One diplomatic alliance after another, each predicated on the fact that everybody knew that Tara would never abandon Cagil, and that the two of us would fight like demons to protect the other.

That is what won Atamara.  An alliance between nations based on a literal life debt that nothing would shake.  And an amazing series of diplomatic successes by Cagil.  I have watched them for years, and I've been amazed by what they have managed to pull off time and again over the years.

Diplomacy and loyalty were what did it.

Dual characters didn't do that.  *snort*  Like I said, if dual characters could do something like that, everybody would be doing it on every continent.  And they aren't.

341

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 30, 2015, 09:03:39 AM »

I have four characters in two realms on two continents.

My first character fought when his realm had been reduced to a single city and helped reverse the long slide into oblivion.  He has been a ruler on both Beluaterra and Atamara.  And a general and a duke as well.

My second character has been a proud warrior.  She has killed a king in battle.  And now she is the high priestess of the largest religion on her continent.

My third character has been a ruler, a general, a banker, and a judge.  He has been a priest in the largest religion on Dwilight.  He has seen realms die, he has seen them rebuild, and he has seen war.  Now he has returned to his homeland where he fights.

My fourth character is downright boring next to them.  But he is a banker now and he rather enjoys going out and breaking stuff a lot.  It is his great hope to soon be striking down an enemy capital.  And he loves commanding rank upon rank of archers.  Massed arrow fire can bring down anything.

I have played on the Colonies, Dwilight, the war islands, Atamara, and Beluaterra.  In the end, I preferred the experience of playing on Atamara and Beluaterra and have left the other continents as I found them...less enjoyable.  I do not feel guilty about this choice.  There is nothing for me to feel guilty about.  I am playing this game in the way I enjoy it, and I am seeking to make the game more enjoyable for others by tearing down the old alliances.

The League of the Eagle on Atamara for instance has won.  In a game designed to have no winners we have fought for years and years through careful planning and politics to defeat all comers and now rule the continent.  We recently had a discussion about that and decided it was time to mix things up.  To scramble the continent up a lot.  We've broken up two federations with only one more to go.  And the wars and rumors of wars have already commenced.  And something that has been building for months has finally boiled over into open conflict.  I'm rather looking forward to seeing how it turns out myself as it promises to be one almighty shakeup.  All aimed with the purpose of making things more exciting for every player on the continent.

Some people here seem to act as if having two characters is a sin or something.  I take the opportunity to play two different game styles and rather enjoy it.  It is fun.  This is a game after all.  Fun is the whole idea, yes?

342

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 29, 2015, 07:50:08 AM »

There has been a drive of late to revitalize Atamara.  I have been driving towards it for a while, and now am very happy to be pushing it. 

As for me, I have two characters in Tara.  One is the ruler.  The other is...not.  He recently joined an allied realm to help them out, but is coming back home now due to...well...the coming excitement...  In general the second character has been a second character.  He actually blossomed a lot when he joined the other realm.  But when he's part of Tara I don't do a lot of role playing with him.  I've played the game the way the game is played and used him mostly as a way of helping make Tara stronger.  If it is the choice of the devs to disallow this, I understand.  I don't think it is the right decision, especially when we are already running low on nobles.  Further reducing the noble count will just break the game down quicker.  But if that is what they want then that is what they want.  *shrugs*

I also have two characters on Beluaterra.  My situation there is completely and totally different though.  My one character is the High Priestess of the dominant religion of the continent.  AKA EVERY region has believers, and MOST regions have a majority of believers in that religion.  This is after the Daimons missed ONE temple during the Third (I think) invasion.  From that, the religion has grown to...well...everywhere.  Nobles from most of the nations are in the religion.  And she is...well...she has a very defined character.  She is a peacenik.  She is a tree hugger.  She is a priest.  She is an ambassador.  And until an assassin at war with her realm stabbed her, she was a banker, getting food to the people.  She is a member of a realm because you really can't do much as a rogue.  But her loyalties are...not to her realm.  Her stated and acted on goal is to unite humanity in preparation for another Daimon assault.  Which means in her mind being loyal to all humans not just to the realm she happens to live in.

My other character on that continent is a warrior.  Pure and simple.  The best use of trees is making bows and arrows.  Or shields if you do the infantry thing.  Siege engines are good too.  Poles for banners.  Kindling for use against enemy towns.  You know.  Fighting for his nation and happily slinging insults and such at the enemy.

The point is that I have two entirely different games going on in Beluaterra.  One is Priestly.  And for those who have never played priests, they play much more like adventurers.  No troops to fight with.  No scouts.  No nothing that would let them see what is going on.  You spend most of your time blind to what is going on around you as you spend most of your time preaching and talking to commoners.  For a long time I only had the priest in Beluaterra and as a player I didn't know much about what was going on with the wars and such.  Most priests in the game that I know of are played by people who also have a normal noble on the same continent.  Once I brought my second character in to play as a warrior, I know my enjoyment of the game went up a lot.

If people are forced to choose between having a priest and a normal noble, I think I know what most people are going to choose.  And after this game has spent so many years pushing the religion angle of the game, that is going to be very sad.  Because most people are not going to pick the priest.  And the religions are going to drop like flies when they run out of priests.

As I said above, I am against lowering the 2 character limit to a 1 character limit.  I think it will only hurt the game.  I could see a one character per realm limit.  Or a one character of each type per realm limit.  But a hard 1 character limit is just going to cause a general collapse of the game in my opinion.

And I can say without reservation that it will greatly affect my ability to play the game at all due to the choices I'm going to have make if I wish to continue playing at all.

343

BM General Discussion / Re: Character limit changes

« on: October 28, 2015, 12:03:04 PM »

It seems to me that this will just further reduce the number of nobles in each realm and make it even harder to do anything on any of the continents.