obcidian_bandit said:
We shouldn't. I was addressing your comment of "Perm cats only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years," which may have been a typo on your part, since it seems like what you may have meant was "Perm cats should only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years."
Yeah, you're right, for some reason I thought I typed out "should". Ug. :blink:
We put them out at all because of the expectation that they'll go out. People complain when they don't go out.
See, this to me is an example of piss-poor sportsmanship. I don't see how it is any player's business what goes out and what does not go out; the only people that should be a concern for are the plot team in general and head of plot specifically. I get the whole customer service side of it and the desire to keep as many players happy as possible, but I think there are times when the customer is
wrong and that's one of them.
I think with anything else, you'd see people telling players to piss off (not in so many words, but effectively).
Say players had an expectation that every monster they killed had to drop 5 gold (or more), and they got upset if it didn't. Would you seriously consider their complains about something like that?
If you run 6 events per year, and you drop 2 permanent catalysts in that time frame, that means that 1/3 of your events are seeing permanent catalyst drops. That, to me, is an absurdly high percentage. Once every 3 years drops it down to 1/18 events, or 5.6 percent of games, more reasonable but still too high (imho). I'd rather drop Preserves at a 33% rate than Permanence.
No one want's to drop 19 rituals and components on an item that will last for anything except the maximum possible duration. That's the problem with all solutions that revolve around "make the max level harder/cost more/whatever to get." You're not raising the maximum, you're raising the minimum. People will pay whatever it costs to get 'the big one.' Permanence is a fine example, but when was the last time you saw a Rit of WOE cast at anything except the D level (with the rare A 'just for the stake'). I've never seen a Rit of WOE B or C cast, ever, and I've only seen one A. Same goes for Golems. Has anyone ever seen a PC cast a golem at less than 45 points? There are 5 tiers to the Master Construct level, but people cast 45 point golems or 60 point golems. There's no such thing as a 55 point golem, a 30 point golem, or a 15 point golem. The 'minimum' is 45 because it doesn't require a catalyst, and 60 points if you happen to be able to come up with one.
There's no 'in between' levels for anything. Preserve is the closest thing we've got, but only because Permanence is so damn hard to get. Extend Duration was removed because no one would cast it, it was a worthless ritual. You could put in a 2 year extender right now, and no one would cast it, either. It's Preserve, Perm, or nothing. If you put a catalyst requirement on Preserve, it would go away too.
You're right, I certainly wouldn't want to have anything cast if it wasn't Preserved in the least; I think the lowest I'd go is 3 years, but I still might feel funny about it.
I think the only time you're likely to see something not cast at its full power is if there is no time to wait; like, "we have to go tonight because the moon is full and Count MuckWithThings only reveals his true self during this moon during this month..."
I think a better solution would be to put expiration dates on scrolls. Give them all 3-5 years of magic; after that, they go away and lose their power. Put a time constraint on them. Which is better: having an item to use (of any size), or not having an item to use? We do it with components, why not scrolls too?
Here are other changes I'd suggest:
Add a 3-year extender ritual. Works as-normal.
Change preserve and permanence so that they come with a mandatory spirit link (no item swapping). If they want to swap items around, they have to blow a Transfer ritual.
With existing items, I'd let players and teams get together and decide who gets what, then after a certain date, whomever is in possession of said item now as it Spirit Linked to them.
So there's a choice:
Make an item not last as long, but you can pass it around to your friends OR make an item last longer but take away the ability to swap items unless you want to blow a Transfer ritual. As was pointed out by RiddickDale (I think in the other thread), Permanence by itself isn't the problem, being able to load someone out with 60+ rituals worth of stuff is. I think limiting the total number of rits someone can carry should be an option that is on the table as well. I don't think that just changing Permanence and Preserve is going to fix anything as it pertains to MI bloat, there have to be other changes as well. Another alternative would be to put a cap on the number of rituals a Permanence and Preserve can do (like Paul suggested in the other thread), with the 3 year being a 20-rit cap.