Paragon Paths - What is our goal, here?

[Draven]

It's my opinion, after looking over a number of the changes that .9 has (including changes from earlier versions), that the system has utterly lost its focus.

Rules shouldn't change for the sake of changing. They should change for four reasons:

1) Clarify intent.

2) Social needs. <removal of Gypsies>

3) Simplify/balance existing portions or delete problematic ones.

4) Add new content.

The rule changes that have been previously introduced seemed to have the goal of limiting the impact of long-term power accumulation, while also encouraging a greater reliance on multiple class abilities. Examples of this would be the removal of Expanded Enchantment (encouraging a greater reliance on actual people, and not pocket healers), and the increased cost to unlimited-use static damage (Weapon Prof and Backstab).

Other power-removal changes are also listed; the removal of per-day power adding rituals, the Flurry rule, the removal of Burst Pool's Wand bonus, etc.

The system currently presented in .8 was not perfect, but it did appear to have a goal.

And now, .9.

The following observation is mine, and mine alone. I represent nobody but myself.

The Paragon Paths are a mess. It's not the wording I take issue with, but the concept. It's too deep, introduces too many mechanics, and, frankly, has no idea what the heck it's trying to accomplish.

Taking the overarching view, it feels like Paragon Paths are intended to shuffle a large amount of Build out of a character while giving them some nifty abilities to make it seem worth the cost, while the devs secretly believe that it absolutely isn't worth the cost, so the overall effect is a net drop in power, while the player feels like they got some cool shiny powers.

Even if that's true, even if that Build would have netted me more power using other methods, it's adding content when our book is already incredibly complex.

I also feel like it's tacticly admitting what nobody developing the rules wants to admit: There's too much Build in our game.

We try to sell people on hybrid classing because the inefficiency nets a deduction in Build effect. We have an increased cost on Profs/Backstabs because it creates a deduction in Build effect. We removed a lot of power-adding rituals for the same reason: it's adding Build effect to characters that we don't want.

We need a Build cap. I can't pick what Build cap is best, but I've been a fan of 25th or 30th.

But we need a cap.

 

[mythic]

Speak with your Chapter Owner. They could bring forth a proposal to limit or cap build for the Owners to then discuss.

 

[Ruki]

From my perspective, what they are trying to accomplish is: a) give shiny cool powers (because really, who doesn't like that) b) making classes feel different from one another c) give some sort of mid/end game for non-magic classes. Scholars have high magic and rituals....rogues and fighters have eviscerate/terminate.

Even from a min-maxing point of view...if it's not the most optimal choice, it's still really cool and adds more flavor to the game. As for the build cap...ehhh, I have no real opinion on that. I'm only level 12.

 

[Draven]

Speak with your Chapter Owner. They could bring forth a proposal to limit or cap build for the Owners to then discuss.

At least one chapter owner has seen my post.

 

[Avaran]

I agree that build is/can be an issue; I think the root of issue is magic items because they allow for, say, Fighters, to have per-day abilities that they normally wouldn't have access to. I think that Paragon Paths are reproducing that to some degree.

I found it relatively easy to scale for character-sheet characters. I can scale for a level 40 Fighter. What I can't scale for is a Level 40 Fighter with 6 columns of spells in their pocket, along with 20-30 cloaks/banes, Spell Parries, and whatever other tricks and one-shots they may have.

The same goes for Scholars and Rogues - it's fairly easy to scale for baseline classes, but throw in magic items, and stuff gets extremely difficult.

Magic Items also make combat more chaotic and cause holds (mini or otherwise) on a fairly consistent basis.

I have to wonder:

What was the take-away for the owners from the 9-Towers Campaign?!? I heard nothing but good things about that campaign, especially the smooth flow of combat without having to deal with magic items. Was anything learned? And were those lessons applied to these new rules?

Having played a Fighter for 6-7 years without magic items, I can tell you combat is significantly different than one with magic items.

All that said, though, I agree with your post, Evan. I don't know that I have any solutions at the moment; a build cap could be rough but if it helped to create a more cohesive and easily managed game, I'd be for it.

 

[Muir]

From my perspective, what they are trying to accomplish is: a) give shiny cool powers (because really, who doesn't like that)

It's me.

I'm the one that doesn't like that. Time to get a bit taboo. I came up through Kzoo, back in the early 2000's, where a lot of old NERO elements were still running around. I'm talking Transforms, MI's with 8.5x11" tags, and all sorts of things that really do not function within the spirit of the rules of Alliance.

While these things were cool for the player who had access to them, they absolutely did not add to the game as a whole, and massively widened the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots'. The same is true of the vast proliferation of magic items. One of the things I actually really liked about the new rules as represented in .08 is that they seemed to be moving steadily away from that and towards a rule system that accurately set bounds on the game experience so that the focus was more on the stories we tell with the characters, and less on the ways to get around the rules and get plot candy.

Paragon Paths, to me, feel like a huge step back towards the bad old days by explicitly creating ways for high-build characters to get powers otherwise outside the scope of the rules. Monster powers are not intended to be on PC cards, and the ability to get them was a huge part of what made Golems so contentious.

I think that, on a conceptual basis, we're trying to solve the wrong problem. The issue isn't 'how do we give high-build characters something interesting to buy', it's 'why are people still playing characters more than a decade old instead of finishing their story and coming up with a new character'. Trying to make scaling work for newbies when there are people with literal decades of xp on their characters showing up to the same event is, I believe, a scope problem that cannot be solved by a single ruleset without a hard cap on character advancement.

 

[Tantarus]

From my perspective, what they are trying to accomplish is: a) give shiny cool powers (because really, who doesn't like that)

Add me to the list of people that don't like it. For the record I have played for 20 years in Nero/Alliance and am closing in on level 40. These shiny new powers just seem like they will make scaling crazy hard. How do you make something that might h ave to deal with arcane attacks, elemental deaths, 10 min carriers yet still fight able to the average person without these. Feels like you just start stacking defenses vs everything again to make sure your bigger bads don't get randomly wrecked.

I honestly think 2.0 should be rolled out in parts. With all these changes it is really hard to tell what works and what doesn't. Nerfing melee scaling, and magic items, adding a combat change like flurry and paragon powers is just a mess of stuff and will be hard to sift through and see what is good.

Do paragon levels really need to be added right now? I feel like this just sets back the release date another year to test and tune paragons and likely something will get missed still, allowing something broken into the game.

Do we even know if we need melee scaling nerfs once magic items are nerfed? Or flurry is added to slow down melee? I think of it like a science experiment. If you make so many changes at once how do you know which one had the desired effects.

Also I feel like paragon powers add a ton of complexity to the rules. And I thought simplify the rules was part of the purpose of 2.0. So this seems counter productive. Giving players 10 min carriers, Arcane and Elemental attacks, and so on seem more game breaking/changing then magic items ever where.

 

[Muir]

I'd agree there. I'd really like to see some of the basics, like the new armor rules and racial changes, go in as soon as practical. They do good things for the game that don't hinge on adding new content, but making the current content more playable.

 

[Tantarus]

I would love to see magic item nerfs along with some quality of life changes like read/write change, some of the racial changes go in first.

The magic item nerfs alone could fix alot of the other precieved issues. I honestly think making melee abilities scale poorly while casters scale perfectly forever is pretty unfair. Adding in flurry as a further nerf to melee seems excessive when we dont even know if any of these steps alone will fix the issues.

 

[Saephis]

Speak with your Chapter Owner.

Frankly, its responses like this that are causing a deepening divide between "the powers that be" in ARC/Owners and the mass of players you're representing as a whole for Alliance.

This isn't the first time it been used, but every time it seems dismissive of an owner to say "Talk to your Owner". It comes across as "You're not my player, so you're not my problem". And, honestly, its insulting to be told as such.

The fact that several chapters *have* been telling their owners (including my own, and at least a few others in this and other threads in this cycle alone), and each revision has resulted in more questionable content has led to having to call out these questions on a public forum to desperately try to get the visibility from concerned players.

 

[Eldor]

0.9 lost the focus that 0.8 had. The rules change should be about balancing power to even scaling and simplify the system so there are less holds and confusion.

Magic items are the biggest problem by far, and getting rid of (Expand enchantment, Reavers, Slayers, and Damage Aura, etc.) make it so your class matters again, unlike now where your magic items can matter as much if not more than your class.

The streamlining of the racials and the effect groups of spells help make everything easier to learn and use. So long as the incants don't get dumbed down to much for the sake of efficiency. Flavor is still important.

If magic items get fixed, then the changes to profs don't need to happen, melee classes already have to deal with escalating costs that casters don't.

Also reflecting spells and abilities need to go away, all they add is more word salad in combats and more mini holds.

As to a build cap, if magic items get cut as they were planning in 0.8 then you likely wont see as much need for a cap.

And the Paragon stuff should all be shelved and not discussed at all until the core rules changes are completed, the only muddy the waters, and are WAY Over Powered in ways that make balanced scaling impossible.

 

[Polare]

Frankly, its responses like this that are causing a deepening divide between "the powers that be" in ARC/Owners and the mass of players you're representing as a whole for Alliance.

There's a lot of benefits in how the Alliance system is built and votes get passed. Unfortunately, this structure also comes with a few notable downsides.

At the end of the day, the Owners are the ones who hold votes and determine what does and what doesn't move forward. ARC doesn't have a vote, nor does the Playtest Community Manager, the Monster Committee head, the Alliance GM, or any other volunteer members of the Alliance. Technically, the head of the Alliance doesn't either, unless they happen to also be a Chapter Owner (as has generally been the case). It may sound like a broken record to say "Talk to your Chapter Owner" over and over again, but that really is the route by which players can get things to happen. If you feel that *your* Owner is getting involved, but *other* Owners aren't, talk to other players in other chapters and encourage them to bring things up to their Owners and get them more involved. This is a continent-wide organization with a lot of views, and unfortunately no single decision will be 100% agreed to by everyone in the Alliance; even among the Owners, very few major choices are universally loved or hated.

To tie this in with the original question of "what's the goal of Paragon Paths?", I can give a (simplified) version of how Paragon Paths came to be.

Last Symposium (May 2016), the Owners asked ARC to come up with new high-end "Capstone" abilities for characters. In the following months, ARC asked the Owners what they meant by this and gave some widely varying options - everything from "just make something new like Eviscerate and Terminate" to "some passive bonus per class" all the way up to what became the Paragon Paths. After much discussion among the Owners, ARC was asked to proceed with the Paragon Path concept and give more detail and examples to the Owners. Over the past year ARC continued to work on this proposal package, checking in with the Owners several times along the way to make sure this was the right direction to explore. Several Owners checked in with their Chapter staff along the way for comments.

The game gets built based on what the Owners want to do. They really are your best conduit for feedback, above and beyond any other channels. Where 2.0 is at now, including the inclusion of Paragon Paths in the latest playtest, is due to Owner response and voting over the last four years.

As with any change, Paragon Paths have some who really like the idea and some who really don't like the idea. There are those who think they should be put in at a later date, those who think they shouldn't be put in at all, and those who think they need to be put in as a core part of 2.0 from the beginning. The ones who will determine which of these actually happens are the Chapter Owners, and *only* the Chapter Owners. ARC, the GM, and all the other National Staff positions can advise and recommend, but they do not determine what does or doesn't go into the rules. As the ARC chair I can and will make recommendations that I believe are in the best interest of the game - but that's the limit of what I can do. Change starts and stops with the Owners, and they are the *only* ones who can represent you in terms of actual votes.

This all comes back around to "if you don't like something - or if you do really like something - talk to your Chapter Owner and talk to them about representing your viewpoint". Talk to other Chapter Owners, too! Talk to players in other chapters to talk to *their* Chapter Owners! They are the figures who can and will vote. If your Chapter Owner isn't getting involved, push them to do so - and to talk to and work with the other Chapter Owners.

For those who are worried about 2.0 "changing the game too much", I honestly believe that the Alliance system is fun because of the community, the plots, and the adventures we all run together. The rules can help or hinder that, but if something is fun to run in 1.3 it will probably be fun to run in 2.0 (and probably would have been fun to run back in 1997 under those rules, too). Yes, the rules make a big difference to how things run, but they're not the end-all and be-all of the game. I'd encourage people to approach them with an open mind, give them a shot, and see how they come out. Personally, I feel that the Playtest rules are a significantly stronger set of rules than what's currently being run in 1.3. Not everything I would personally have liked to see made it in, and there's several items I wouldn't have put in if it were up to me, but that's part of building things as part of a community, and that's OK. Yes, there will be a learning period when things change over, just as there has been in prior rules changes. That's OK too. It's part of an evolving game, and I really believe that no game can stay static for decades on end without starting to really lose interest and playerbase to others.

So far as I know, nobody has actually run a full-fledged playtest with 0.9 yet. The Owners asked for Paragon Paths to be in the playtest, and I'd encourage folks who are skeptical to give them a shot. Maybe you'll still not like them. Maybe you will. Maybe you'll decide they're pretty great *except* for these three things that are totally broken and need to be fixed (which is, after all, why we playtest in the first place).

-Bryan Gregory
ARC Chair

 

[Draven]

Capstone abilities are, inherently, powerful because they represent the finality of a character's growth.

These aren't capstone abilities. They're just new abilities.

Maybe they're designed in a way that is intended to have capstone flavor, but they aren't, and I can't take that descriptor seriously.

Additionally, every gaming system that uses capstone abilities has something in common; those abilities are used amongst characters of comparative power level. So Johnny McSuperPaladin might have an UltraMove, but he's rolling around with other people who also have UltraMoves. Sure, some level differences might exist within a party of high level characters, but those differences tend to be very small, negligible even.

Alliance isn't like that at all. One, we don't have a cap. People will continue to acquire more build, and more mechanics. Second, 40th level players may end up running around with 4th level players, so these new powers run the serious risk of making that difference even more noticeable, to the detriment of the lower level character.

As you mentioned, regarding owners, we players have zero say. Talking to our owner is excellent advice, but an owner who receives input and says "Talk to YOUR owner," is making a poor argument. Either they agree with the viewpoint presented and talk about it with fellow owners, or they don't.

While I'm generally of the opinion that players should discuss their viewpoints with their owners, the reality is that the release of the Paragon Paths represents a massive change of focus, and it's one that I have significant reservations about. I'm clearly not alone. I'm disappointed in the direction our rules seem to be taking, and I believe it's a conversation worth having publicly.

 

[Avaran]

This may sound sarcastic, but it is a genuine question.

Who is my chapter owner? What defines that?

Is it where my character is housed? Is it the chapter I play in the most? Is it the owner with whom I most closely identify with or am closest friends with?

If I house my character in, say, Denver, but never play there and just have my character transferred to Oregon or Seattle every time I play, is the Denver owner "My" owner? Or is Seattle if I play there the most? What about if I also go to Oregon?

I ask, in part, because sometimes when I have gone to talk to an owner, they tell me to talk to "my" owner, or seem put off or reluctant to talk about game-related things; I understand that it can get to a point where they are inundated with questions or comments or concerns from 20-30 or more people, and they only want to concern themselves with "their" players; but as a continent-wide organization, aren't ALL of the owners "mine"?


Preface: THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED. IT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE
What should I do if I talk to the HQ owner and they say, "go talk to your owner" because my character's home chapter is Oregon, but when I talk to Oregon's chapter owner, they say, "go talk to HQ because that is where you play."

When does/should an owner 'take possession' of a player? (Sounds bad, but ownership is implied by stating "go talk to YOUR chapter owner"

What if my character "lives" in the national character DB and has no "home chapter"?

Thank-you.

 

[Ruki]

I would say that if you play in more than one alliance game regularly you have the right to speak with both owners.

 

[Alavatar]

I have given feedback to owners not of the chapters I play in. Even if you are told to "talk to *your* owner" you have the option to bring it up with other owners as well.

They may not listen since they may think you are not part of their *constituents* (for lack of a better term), but good owners will at least hear you out realizing player feedback nation-wide is good. Players, on the other hand, must also realize their feedback may not be incorporated; owners are inundated with feedback and opinions and they cannot please everyone and some feedback may be contradictory so they need to pick and choose what they support and why.

 

[Draven]

I have given feedback to owners not of the chapters I play in. Even if you are told to "talk to *your* owner" you have the option to bring it up with other owners as well.

They may not listen since they may think you are not part of their *constituents* (for lack of a better term), but good owners will at least hear you out realizing player feedback nation-wide is good. Players, on the other hand, must also realize their feedback may not be incorporated; owners are inundated with feedback and opinions and they cannot please everyone and some feedback may be contradictory so they need to pick and choose what they support and why.

What defines a good owner or not is irrelevant. Players have no say over who is or is not an owner.

I reject the notion that an observation is invalid if it isn't presented privately to an owner. It may be the best method for most situations, but at a certain point, we need to accept that a lot of players feel ignored.

 

[Alavatar]

Part of players feeling ignored is players getting indignant that their feedback wasn't incorporated. People frequently say out one side of their mouth they understand not all feedback can be incorporated, but then out the other side of their mouth the get offended when their concerns were not addressed to their satisfaction.

Players need to get off their high horses and stop being two faced to the owners, and realize the owners also want what is best for the game. Owners need to not dismiss player feedback because they are not their constituents; as a national rule set for a national game every player is every owner's constituents.

 

[Avaran]

owners are inundated with feedback and opinions

I think one of the best ways to alleviate this issue - and I totally agree that it IS an issue - is to read/accept player feedback from other mediums other than:

1) At a game. Likely the most common. Depending on owner involvement, they are either just trying to play, or they are trying to get the event organized and up and running.
2) Email feedback. I don't personally know of an owner that does this, but that doesn't mean it isn't a thing.
3) DM/IM/TXT from various platforms/devices. Again, I don't know how often this happens, but often this is interrupting the owner's personal life which can cause resentment toward the player(s).

Seeing/acknowledging player feedback on these boards, and then talking about it among themselves in the Owners Section if a player from ANY chapter makes a good point or brings up a good subject/suggestion, could help to some degree; but that requires additional owner involvement on the boards and some just don't have the time or inclination to increase forum presence.

Do owners have say to themselves, "I should talk to my players about this!"? I've never seen this done publicly outside of a feedback form about a game, module, or play test.

 

[Draven]

Players were promised the opportunity to hear the Why behind the changes. We understand we won't necessarily get all the changes we want, but we want to know what constitutes as "what's best for the game," in the eyes of those making those decisions.

Why do players become frustrated and feel ignored? Because stuff like this was promised to happen and never did.

https://alliancelarp.com/forum/threads/v2-virtual-q-a.33951/#post-274748