The Chat Thread

[+Ark1002]

1 minute ago, Ookla the [REDACTED] said:

 

Honestly I have very hard time seeing how anyone with a nahel bond can get along with Hemalurgists and Ghostbloods. Like these are people who are essentially paid to break the first oath, Life before Death.

Hellbent interprets it as his own life, and it more of "My own life is prioritized over others deaths".

[+Sorana she/her]

4 hours ago, Ookla the [REDACTED] said:

Even a tin misting can be over powered if you RP it a certain way.

I think this is a really important point to keep in mind. We can reduce powers, but as long as we don't play the characters weaker, we will end up with the same situation again.

[Voidus]

Poll related to whether or not we should allow time travel is up, please keep discussions on the topic here now so that we don't explode other threads with quoteboxes.
Names are public at the moment, if anyone would prefer that they can vote anonymously please let myself or another Alleyverse mod know.

Summary of my reasons against time travel:
1. I don't think it adds anything to the story that couldn't be accomplished using other means, and personally don't find the concept particularly interesting. (I also realize that that is a personal opinion not an argument but just to explain my views)
2. I think it's going to cause a whole mess of headaches, at some point we're going to have to start retconning things no matter how careful we are.
3. If changing the past is impossible then there's not really any point to time travel.
4. Foresight or prophecy could be used in replacement of time travel for any plotline featuring time travelers from the future. I don't think we'd lose anything out storywise by doing this and we'd save ourselves some headaches.
5. I think that any way we try to include time travel is going to necessitate handwaving to a degree that I'll struggle to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

Also, if changing the past is possible, it is the ultimate god mod.

[Snipexe he/him]

I have to agree with Voidus here, simply for the reason that no matter how much you handwave, time travel is fundamentally impossible in Cosmere, the basis for most of the Alleyverse. Time travel is incredibly messy, and it leads to continuity errors left and right. If you are using time travel to change the past, then you are essentially Godmodding every character that would be affected by the change. This isn't fair and takes away the essential part of Rp

Ninja'd by darth who makes essentially the same point

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ookla the Skeptical

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

My point exactly. That's what we get fro posting at the same time.

[Snipexe he/him]

yup. Timetravel is essentially impossible to control.

The only time travel I have loved is Primer, simply because it was executed brilliantly, and the concept was very well thought through

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

Dr. Who. Makes no sense, but doesn't screw with the timeline.

Can I get a recap of the era 3 op guidelines?

Edited November 29, 2018 by Darth Ookla

[Voidus]

2 minutes ago, Darth Ookla said:

Can I get a recap of the era 3 op guidelines?

They aren't settled yet I don't think, that's probably going to be the next poll.

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

I get wanting to make an era that is less op, but for the next era, I would like it if the op guidelines were made a lot more lenient. 

[Voidus]

4 minutes ago, Darth Ookla said:

I get wanting to make an era that is less op, but for the next era, I would like it if the op guidelines were made a lot more lenient. 

The problem with letting everyone have an OP character is that it basically defeats the purpose of having an OP character.
Taken to the extreme we could just let everyone have a character that is basically a god. And sure that might be amusing for a little while but eventually it just becomes the norm, is no longer interesting or challenging and becomes boring. And you also wouldn't enjoy playing it as much because there's a bunch of other gods who could just instantly counter anything you do.

I think we might want to consider giving a few people who haven't had the opportunity to play an OP character, probably as a villain role.
But on the whole I think most people want to tone it down a bit.

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

Yeah, I meant guild power levels, and upgradeable power levels.

[Voidus]

I tried to pitch this for era 2 as well but I think guilds as a whole could probably stay the same, but PCs are more minor members in the guilds instead of the leaders / old guard.

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

I think that really powerful people are problems, and guilds should have more stated limits, but I don't see why we have to just wipe out all of their power. The  only problem I see is, and no offense, the fact that the DA has limitless power. That should be gimped, and people should be made less powerful, as a whole, such as Mac.

[Voidus]

None taken that's a completely accurate statement, the DA does have pretty much limitless power. The DA existed before all of this so it already had an established history, and unfortunately it wasn't written just by me so I'm not getting rid of a bunch of RP and worldbuilding from other people or retconning anything.
The trade off for this is that the DA doesn't interfere with anyone else, it's why the DA is one of the least active guilds in the RP, why we don't start any guild wars, why we didn't retaliate for the sdw, etc.

So I completely agree, but that's also not going to change. I couldn't speak for what Mac wants to do with Mac but I imagine the same thing is going to apply.

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

Yeah, I know that it isn't going to change, but they should have some form of counter balance because and, I'm a member of this guild so this isn't meant in a mean way, TUBA isn't doing a very good job. Perhaps a god entity that acts as a devil against Voidis Primes god?

Also, I would actually like an era of less powerful characters, that could be an aftermath era of sorts, where we would rebuild the reputation of the old guilds with the populace, but I don't want the powerful items just destroyed. So, my main point is, if your going to do something, make sure that their is a way to make these items, and perhaps characters survive. Ark and I have actually thought of a way to do this, but I will go in more depth as the actually calamity is finalized. 

An idea, would be, and I was already going to do this as a side plot, but it could work, Dusk could accidentally create an investiture vampire that would gain power of investiture. It would make the more powerful characters cannon fodder, but the weaker characters could have a chance. Again, i this is gone with, I will go in more depth.

[Voidus]

3 minutes ago, Darth Ookla said:

Yeah, I know that it isn't going to change, but they should have some form of counter balance because and, I'm a member of this guild so this isn't meant in a mean way, TUBA isn't doing a very good job. Perhaps a god entity that acts as a devil against Voidis Primes god?

Also, I would actually like an era of less powerful characters, that could be an aftermath era of sorts, where we would rebuild the reputation of the old guilds with the populace, but I don't want the powerful items just destroyed. So, my main point is, if your going to do something, make sure that their is a way to make these items, and perhaps characters survive. Ark and I have actually thought of a way to do this, but I will go in more depth as the actually calamity is finalized. 

An idea, would be, and I was already going to do this as a side plot, but it could work, Dusk could accidentally create an investiture vampire that would gain power of investiture. It would make the more powerful characters cannon fodder, but the weaker characters could have a chance. Again, i this is gone with, I will go in more depth.

If he ever gets out of the barrier I'll make sure there's always a reason Voidus can't interfere with other stuff. (Barring people attacking him directly or trying to get to the worldspike)
He's pretty non-interventionist by nature anyway but I understand that there's a bit more comfort in having a mechanical reason he can't intervene.

I think we have enough era-ending plots for era 2 to come to a close safely, but might be an idea for end of era 3. Or even the first villain of era 3.

[+Sorana she/her]

1) I completely agree with what was said about time travel. We don't need it, and it always makes things messy.

2) I am in favour of weaker characters, always was, always will be. You have a lot more chance for rp, if you need others to help you. If you can't do anything on your own. And I know this was stated several times, but in the end it depends on the player if a character is op or not.

3) I think we have more people who want to play a villain atm then those who don't want to.

4) I'm not sure if I like the idea of another world-erasing ending of era two. I can see why it might be neccessary, especially if we want to lower the powerlevel, but I'm not really happy with that at the moment. The moment some keep their characters we end up with the same situation we have now. And, only my personal opinion, the whole one calamity after the next part simply isn't appealing to me. I would prefer if we found another solution.

 

EDIT: for got one point:

6) Lower powered characters are useless, if there are artifacts around which up their powerlevels again. It won't work if we allow all items and then create weak characters. Because we will end up with op characters again.

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ookla the Clueless

[I think I am here. he/him]

Another idea: What if the end of the Era wasn’t signalled by something terrible happening. What if it was signalled by something really good? Like... I’m not sure, but something good happening. The happiness could set the tone of the next Era, which would have Villains to break the status quo. Just an interesting thematic choice I was wondering about.

[+Sorana she/her]

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Guacless said:

Another idea: What if the end of the Era wasn’t signalled by something terrible happening. What if it was signalled by something really good? Like... I’m not sure, but something good happening. The happiness could set the tone of the next Era, which would have Villains to break the status quo. Just an interesting thematic choice I was wondering about.

I support that idea.

[Voidus]

More than anything i don't want to force an ending. So while I'd definitely support that kind of ending, it doesn't seem likely given the way things have been going.

[MetaTerminal he/him]

I think that eras (especially late-level eras) will always be based around some sort of large-scale conflict, since that’s how we as a species create stories. So the end of an era will usually be the conclusion of that conflict; in some cases it could be the introduction of a conflict, perhaps after a long period of inactivity, or the creation of a new ruleset that requires a new wave of characters. In most cases, however, we will see a conflict-related ending. That means sacrifice, loss, death and general destruction, unless we make a concerted move away from PvP combat. Right now I would expect a similar ending to Era 2 than Era 1; a bittersweet ending that brings peace following a great turmoil. The ending of Era 1 was not necessarily unhappy - the SYP was the opposite, I’d argue, although largely skipped over to focus on the conflict beforehand. So something similar will happen at around Boxing Day.

[Silva]

7 hours ago, Darth Ookla said:

TUBA isn't doing a very good job

Just a comment on this:

DAs got Mac and Voidus

GBs have Solace

TUBA has Mace, but he isn't used main plot as OP (far as I've seen)

[Archer he/him]

The theory of fictional time travel I subscribe to is that when someone hops in their time machine and turns it on, they create a split in the timeline. The universe they leave from continues to exist, unimpacted by anything the time traveller does, but a duplicate universe is created that is impacted by the actions of the protagonist. This way of thinking of it eliminates a lot of paradoxes. For example, if you kill your grandfather in the second universe, you still exist, because your grandfather in the first universe is your real ancestor. And if you meet yourself in the second universe, it's no big deal, because you're different people. The timeline there that has you invent the time machine can be messed with to your heart's content because you invented the machine in the first universe. 

When the traveller returns to the original universe, that still get to share what they've learned, but they've had no impact any events of the past or future there. Our there's an alternative ending to the theory that says you can never get back, and are stuck either trading places with your duplicate when they get into a time machine, or perpetually travelling, while in the original universe, you've ceased to exist. 

Either way, time travel is complicated, and introduce a lot of elements I'd prefer not to have to get into. So I'll vote against it. 

Moving on, Darth made a comment about wanting to rp an OP character. I still like the plan to power down in E3, and think having an OP villain wouldn't be beneficial. And for this era, until I hear otherwise, I'm going to continue trying to keep characters at a similar level of power, to ensure fairish interactions. But I think if someone wanted to make a powerful secondary character and rp with them, assuming they recognized that it wouldn't be fair for that character to use their power on normal characters, that could be arranged. Like that non cannon monster duel we had a while ago. Maybe not now, but if at the end of the era we all just want to let loose, that'd be the fair thing to do. 

Edit: Mace had a lot of potential. If I chose to, I could cause a lot of problems with him. He's been using his powers pretty liberally this era, but I'm consciously keeping him out of fights. So as far as interactions with other characters goes, I like to think that he's on par with Mac. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing much more. But that does't excuse his OPness. By the next era, he'll be dead. For real this time. 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ookla the Paragon

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I think that there are places where time travel can prove useful, even if you can't change the past. I do need some element of time travel to wrap up Nogard's arc, probably, unless we completely avoid any more time jumps. Nekorb could be changed to foresight, but the whole point of him having intense spiritual damage was because he time traveled, so I would have to come up for a different reason for that.

If it is allowed (and it looks like it won't) it would have to be pretty much banned anyways, for the points above.