Armor

[mythic]

Hey folks. The Owners have no intention of reviewing the Armour Policy again for 2.0 ruleset. It took us a lot of time debating these merits 2 Symposiums ago and we are content with the Policy as written. You can bring it up to your Owner if you wish as we always have stated and they can bring it forward, but it is not something that we are looking to revamp.

 

[Templarmkiii]

Just to clarify, when you say "content... as written" you mean as written in the current live version or play test version? I'm guessing the latter.

 

[mythic]

The playtest

 

[Templarmkiii]

Thanks for the info! On to making a cool set of foam armor

 

[Gilwing]

Hey folks. The Owners have no intention of reviewing the Armour Policy again for 2.0 ruleset. It took us a lot of time debating these merits 2 Symposiums ago and we are content with the Policy as written. You can bring it up to your Owner if you wish as we always have stated and they can bring it forward, but it is not something that we are looking to revamp.

So should we not discuss anything since the owners have voted? Thissis twice that you have ended a discussion because you feel that it's over, set in stone, nuff said. Corey I think you need to understand that things can still change.

 

[mythic]

When it just goes in tangents and back and forth arguments (for lack of a better word) which is not on the radar of the Owners, yes. I watch these just go on and on with no end in site. So I let you know what we are not working on. There are things we need to focus on (incants, MIs, Shield sizes, 1 swing attacks with meditate) etc. for this playtest.

If someone wants to bring a revamp to their Owner, and work on an actual proposal, please do so. If you want to continue to talk about armour, cool, just know that it is not on the Owner's plates currently (we do have other things we are working on) and it may end up going no where.

 

[Draven]

So should we not discuss anything since the owners have voted? Thissis twice that you have ended a discussion because you feel that it's over, set in stone, nuff said. Corey I think you need to understand that things can still change.

No offense, but I consider an Owner perspective considerably more valuable than a non-Owner's perspective, as far as viability of a rules-change idea is, because they've ultimately signed up and paid significant amounts of money for the right to have an authoring impact on our rules system.

If the Owners aren't looking to do a change on a thing, and we want to discuss it anyways, we're walking down that path that got rules-theorizing threads kicked off the forums, and I'm not particularly interested in returning to those times.

Tl;dr, Please don't lecture an Owner on whether they should give Owner perspective on change viability, because it's rude.

 

[Durnic]

One thing that is almost never brought up by people when they talk about the new armor rules is that the class maximums are not changing. I, personally, plan on dumping over two levels (27 build), as a fighter, into being able to wear the maximum amount of armor possible. I already wear a lot of plate and chain but technically my armor comes from 30-pt AA because AA is just better. I wear the armor because I think it looks neat and it fits my character concept.

If your character concept is to be a plate-wearing scholar Battlemage and you want to wear full 62-point suit, you're going to be spending almost two columns worth of build to do so. These rules are not going to make it so that suddenly everyone is in 40+ points of armor, as you will still have to be paying the build cost to do so.

Remember also that Shatter immediately brings any armor down to 0, even if it is a full 62-point suit Empowered up to 124-points. Gone in one shot.

Your chapter marshals should also not be giving out large armor values to sub-par looking foam armor.

 

[Gilwing]

No offense, but I consider an Owner perspective considerably more valuable than a non-Owner's perspective, as far as viability of a rules-change idea is, because they've ultimately signed up and paid significant amounts of money for the right to have an authoring impact on our rules system.

If the Owners aren't looking to do a change on a thing, and we want to discuss it anyways, we're walking down that path that got rules-theorizing threads kicked off the forums, and I'm not particularly interested in returning to those times.

Tl;dr, Please don't lecture an Owner on whether they should give Owner perspective on change viability, because it's rude.

When I'm asked for my opinion (As a Playtester) I am giving it. So yes I am offended that you don't value my opinion if you are an owner but then again it doesn't matter if you value my input or not, its the owners that need to value it for the Playtest.
It's crazy how you think that I am lecturing an Owner because he gave his perspective of it, that is not what I was doing. As I mentioned before to Corey, I think you need to understand that things can still change, this is not set in stone. That's why we are playtesting these, to make sure they work. I think its rude to tell your volunteer playtesters that "yup. We (the owners) made up our minds."

 

[Tevas]

I have seen far too many instances of playtesters being stifled or their thoughts and ideas marginalized in these forums. Individuals who are crowd sourcing potential solutions or offering ideas for peer review are constantly hammered with "send it to an owner, don't discuss it here." This behavior of creative suppression is not conducive to an innovative environment, and drives away potentially constructive feedback and creates a culture of disengagement. Furthermore, such responses are themselves counterproductive, as an idea presented to an owner without first being submitting for feedback and peer review can be potentially incomplete or not fully rounded out, and may result in an inefficient use of both the submitting party's and the owner's time.

To date, there are very few unique profiles who have posted in regards to the v2 rule set when compared to the overall user base as a whole. Given this already limited pool of contributors, it is highly advisable to ensure that ideas and feedback are encouraged, as opposed to marginalized. The purpose of playtesting is to help shape the game that we are all invested in, and as such everyone involved shares an equal stake in the outcome. No one individual is necessarily any more "correct" than another, and minimizing our options for creative feedback only serves to undermine the potential quality of our desired product.

An idea, especially and innovative one, can come from the most unlikeky of places. We need to ensure that we are doing our best to cultivate an environment in which innovation and creativity are encouraged and welcomed. It would be greatly appreciated if we could all focus on this moving forward.


Thank you

Chris Fernandez
Alliance San Francisco Playtest Coordinator
Alliance LARP Playtest Community Manager

 

[Thorgrim]

I would go a step further and say that player feedback is even more important during this phase of play testing than owner feedback. I think it's pretty safe to assume that the owners have already formed opinions and provided feedback on the new rules, as they have been involved since before public play testing began. The entire point of having the player base play test is to open up the new rules to a wider audience, and use this larger testing group to find previously unseen flaws, challenge preconceived notions, and find things that do not work as well in practice as they did in theory. If owner and ARC perspective trumps or trivializes player feedback then why even have us play test? If the owners have already decided why waste our time?

 

[Draven]

I would go a step further and say that player feedback is even more important during this phase of play testing than owner feedback. I think it's pretty safe to assume that the owners have already formed opinions and provided feedback on the new rules, as they have been involved since before public play testing began. The entire point of having the player base play test is to open up the new rules to a wider audience, and use this larger testing group to find previously unseen flaws, challenge preconceived notions, and find things that do not work as well in practice as they did in theory. If owner and ARC perspective trumps or trivializes player feedback then why even have us play test? If the owners have already decided why waste our time?

Not all changes that are being implemented are open to modification. I will agree that it would be useful for the playtest packets to specify which changes are up for discussion, and which are not. I also believe that it's entirely the right of the authors to state that some changes -aren't- up for discussion. Example: Golems are going away. The intent of the playtest, truly, is to get feedback on some things that are, such as spell verbals, Powerful Blows/Flurry, build pre-requisites, impact of Hearty, impact of Healing changes, etc, etc, etc. There's plenty of things in there that are -totally- up for discussion, from what I've seen.

If you don't think you're going to have an impact on the rules that matter to you, I don't know what to tell you. The Owners have always been the authors of our ruleset, this has never been a democracy, or presented as one. The Owners seem to be working as best they can to provide a ruleset that works for everyone, and -that's not an easy task-. They are gathering data, and player participation is important for that, but there are things -they don't want in their game, for whatever reason, and they have the right to make that call-.

The Playtest packets have already changed from the original launch to the 0.8, as a result of player feedback; implying that player feedback has had zero effect on this is simply wrong. You're taking "player feedback does not have omnipotent impact" and translating it to "player feedback has no impact." You and I both know that's extremely erroneous, even disingenuous.

 

[Polare]

Folks, I'm going to ask that things get kept on topic. There's already another thread for discussing what the focus of the playtests is on. Please keep that discussion there.

Thanks,
Bryan Gregory

 

[Thorgrim]

Not all changes that are being implemented are open to modification. I will agree that it would be useful for the playtest packets to specify which changes are up for discussion, and which are not. I also believe that it's entirely the right of the authors to state that some changes -aren't- up for discussion. Example: Golems are going away. The intent of the playtest, truly, is to get feedback on some things that are, such as spell verbals, Powerful Blows/Flurry, build pre-requisites, impact of Hearty, impact of Healing changes, etc, etc, etc. There's plenty of things in there that are -totally- up for discussion, from what I've seen.

If you don't think you're going to have an impact on the rules that matter to you, I don't know what to tell you. The Owners have always been the authors of our ruleset, this has never been a democracy, or presented as one. The Owners seem to be working as best they can to provide a ruleset that works for everyone, and -that's not an easy task-. They are gathering data, and player participation is important for that, but there are things -they don't want in their game, for whatever reason, and they have the right to make that call-.

The Playtest packets have already changed from the original launch to the 0.8, as a result of player feedback; implying that player feedback has had zero effect on this is simply wrong. You're taking "player feedback does not have omnipotent impact" and translating it to "player feedback has no impact." You and I both know that's extremely erroneous, even disingenuous.

This is the first time that I have heard that the intent of the playtest is to only get feedback on certain changes but not all of them. If that is indeed the intent it should have been made clear to us as playtest coordinators from the outset that there are certain changes that ARC/owners want feedback on and to focus our testing on them, while other changes are set in stone and not open for testing, feedback, or criticism.

 

[Thorgrim]

Folks, I'm going to ask that things get kept on topic. There's already another thread for discussing what the focus of the playtests is on. Please keep that discussion there.

Thanks,
Bryan Gregory

Polare I think this is very relevant and on topic to this post. If owners and ARC are not taking any feedback to armor changes at this point then we need to know that and we can close this thread down, along with any other threads on changes that are not open to modification. There's no point in us debating something that has already been decided.

 

[Durnic]

The armor changes as a whole, unless some gross problem is found, are unlikely to change.

Note that things like armor rituals are completely up for discussion. From playtester and player feedback we have already nerfed Empowered Armor very heavily because (and as someone who wears real heavy armor and was looking forward to it) it was too ridiculously good.

I am fully aware that I am heavily bias about this topic as having physical armor be worth the cost of actually wearing it (and buying or making it) has always been something I didn't like about the current system and was pleased to see looked at in 2.0.

 

[Thorgrim]

The armor changes as a whole, unless some gross problem is found, are unlikely to change.

Note that things like armor rituals are completely up for discussion. From playtester and player feedback we have already nerfed Empowered Armor very heavily because (and as someone who wears real heavy armor and was looking forward to it) it was too ridiculously good.

I am fully aware that I am heavily bias about this topic as having physical armor be worth the cost of actually wearing it (and buying or making it) has always been something I didn't like about the current system and was pleased to see looked at in 2.0.

The problem is that you can't look at these changes individually, they are all intrinsically tied to each other. Armor values, skills that alter refit time, rituals that enhance armor, spells like shatter that affect armor values, and damage values all must be weighed against one another. When I want to give feedback on powerful blows for instance that feedback may be different based on armor maximums. With current armor values and empowered armor, armor totals are so high that the only way for a melee character to effectively breach said armor is powerful blows or stacked crit attacks. Therefore armor values are going to influence how I look at powerful blows. The lessened damage from slays/assassinates might be perfectly fine with 40 point maximum armor values, but not for 62 point suits + empowered armor. Shatter might be a reasonably balanced spell with lower armor values, but it becomes too powerful when it will take out a 100+ point suit of empowered armor. You can't simply say armor values are fine, now lets move on to rituals that enhance armor. You have to look at everything and be willing to adjust any and all complimentary skills if you truly want balance.

 

[Gilwing]

The problem is that you can't look at these changes individually, they are all intrinsically tied to each other. Armor values, skills that alter refit time, rituals that enhance armor, spells like shatter that affect armor values, and damage values all must be weighed against one another. When I want to give feedback on powerful blows for instance that feedback may be different based on armor maximums. With current armor values and empowered armor, armor totals are so high that the only way for a melee character to effectively breach said armor is powerful blows or stacked crit attacks. Therefore armor values are going to influence how I look at powerful blows. The lessened damage from slays/assassinates might be perfectly fine with 40 point maximum armor values, but not for 62 point suits + empowered armor. Shatter might be a reasonably balanced spell with lower armor values, but it becomes too powerful when it will take out a 100+ point suit of empowered armor. You can't simply say armor values are fine, now lets move on to rituals that enhance armor. You have to look at everything and be willing to adjust any and all complimentary skills if you truly want balance.

If I could like a post 100 times, I would to this one. With most rules changes, there is a domino effect (including removal of the Gift school, see CSS). Changing one thing will have an effect on other things (changed or not).

 

[Durnic]

I'm aware of the domino effect, I have even posted about it in other threads.

The combination of Mystic (Spiritual?) Smith and Empowered Armor is an excellent point brought up by a couple of people of this forum and at least one other person in a private message and is great feedback.

 

[Dan Nickname Beshers]

Please understand that I say this as respectfully as possible: it is the owners that vote, and to produce a change in the rules you must convince 75% of the owners to vote for it. 100 people cannot write a Larp. I assure you it is difficult enough with the ~12 of us who are involved. If we as owners seem protective of our opinions it is because, when it comes to actually passing these changes, nobody's opinion counts but ours. Again, I swear I mean no disrespect. When we say that we've looked at the armor values you have to have a certain amount of trust that we aren't BSing you.

A fighter has to invest close to 30 build to take advantage of the full armor maximum. That puts them significantly behind their fellows in the ability to do damage, and that is by design. Same too with Hearty. Build spent on defensive and survival skills cuts down on offensive output, and we want those options to be very attractive. Frankly, fighters should be able to be better defensive bulwarks than they are offensive juggernauts because all classes can be big damage machines but only fighters can be huge damage sponges. All that armor is very vulnerable to packet damage and take out spells, and that too is intended, because you shouldn't be the best at everything. If enemies with huge stacks of armor are difficult for your character to defeat, your character needs to make a friend that can help with that. It's supposed to be a community-based game.