no more dragons or rakshasa?

[Rivace_Silver]

Subject: Arelith Updates!

We've done some messing about with subraces.

Effective next reset:
- Dragons and Rakshasa will no longer be available - and as of immediately, we won't be approving any custom race requests on major awards (keep reading...)
- Forest Gnomes are now available as a Gnome subrace for people spending a Normal award. Forest Gnomes are just like Rock Gnomes, except that they speak Animal, don't leave tracks, can -track, and have Bard as a favoured class.
- Aasimar and Tieflings are back, requiring a Major award.

We know there will be a lot of strong feelings about this one, so a note on reasoning. Essentially, there are too many weird characters around right now (especially dragons), so we need to do some population control. We're thinking a lot about how we want to handle this going forwards, but one of the leading ideas is to regularly change the list of special races that are available.

Short term, we have a couple of other changes planned which I'll get done when I have time, so watch this space...

So, Heres what i dont understand. Ive heard of some players having up to 3 dragon characters, which is retarded given its only supposed to be a 5% chance to get it on a epic sac. Instead of killing any possibility for new players to be able to play a dragon or Rakshasa, etc... how about we limit it to one per race per account??

Im a new player .. i have been in love with fantasy and Forgotten Realms nearly my whole life, and you are essentially saying that because people over used the service (obviously breaking one of your rules to Absurdly grind character levels just to roll them....), i cannot play what nearly EVERYONE has. Ill never get the opportunity to play a dragon or rakshasa. That is truly unfair. I hope you seriously reconsider this decision. A One race per account limitation seems more fitting of a change so that at least those newer players who choose to spend their time on your server and possibly even help keep the server running, could have the "one day i want to kill my character i have invested nearly a thousand hours on to play an epic race like a dragon" Taking this service away from the new players while allowing all of the other members to continue to flaunt their dragons etc.. is a very horrible thing to do.

I understand you need to do population control, and i see the logic that a shutdown of the service might be a short term solution. however, I am suggesting that a One per race per account for epic/custom races would be a more long term fix to this issue. (or even more drastically, One Custom race per account, thus having to pick between rakshasa or dragon or ... etc. ) so that even if i get 5 5% rolls .. i can only pick one of the custom/epic races on my account. The players still deserve to be rewarded through the long term loyalty and contribution to the RP on the server, that is probably THE MOST anticipated reward people look forward to and motivates people to try hard to contribute as bet they can....

... and you just took it away from all the new players who never got a chance to experience it.

[Ellaari]

There's been people who have been playing for years and haven't gotten a 5% so I don't know how it really only affects new people. On top of that I think this is honestly a bit of a knee jerk reaction. They said they were toying about rotating races so dragons could potentially be something you can do in the future whenever they feel it's appropriate to switch it up. I'd honestly be surprised if there are people with like 3 dragon characters per account but hey truth is stranger than fiction. More likely than not though there's just a lot of players who currently have it and it is a good thing to cut back on it. The few dragons I've seen have been decent enough but the fact that there's so many of them is immersion breaking.

Either way it doesn't sound like you have a 5% so I honestly wouldn't worry about that sort of thing until you get it because who knows, maybe when that rolls around dragons will be back and we'll have too many genasi or something.

[Lorkas]

They didn't say they are taking it away forever--just putting the major reward races on a rotation. Maybe by the time you succeed on an epic sacrifice, dragons will be available again. You can always hope

[Cortex]

To be fair you first you need to get the 5%... I've played for near a decade and I've yet to get a 5% ever.

[Cuchilla]

Can only ditto the above. Been playing for almosts 10 years, and sacrificed as many chars. No succesful 5% rolls. Chance is 1 out of 20, so I'm only halfway through. (Not that I play to get the chance to get a 5% roll. I just like to wipe my vault from time to time).

[Trunx]

i cannot play what nearly EVERYONE has.

Nearly everyone has a 5% character? No, obviously not.

Ill never get the opportunity to play a dragon or rakshasa.

With this update or not, it's very likely you would never have gotten the opportunity anyway. You do realize you need a level 26 character, and it's a 1 in 20 chance? Extremely unlikely you'd make the roll before 2030.

A One race per account limitation seems more fitting of a change

People can (and do) have multiple accounts and CD keys. Wouldn't help.

[Rivace_Silver]

you know its funny how you all harp on the unlikelyhood of me getting a 5% roll. and thats a perspective you can take. yet the devs/dms think there are .. too many .. such that they need to shut down the availability? Hmm .. Must not be as rare as you guys think it is no? You can preach all you want but the fact is that Several people HAVE gotten them to an extent that its being taken away for now.

And besides your you folks obviously here, the general consensus IG is that .. yea .. nearly everyone has a dragon ... and someone has confirmed that there is a few with 2 or 3 dragons on their accounts. Sure they could have been lying, but what a stupid thing to casually lie about.

2030? actually there is a Highly LIKELY chance ill get one before then .. Hypothetically if it takes 1 year to get a character to 26, which is does not, i could probably have 2 or 3 characters to 26 in a year. but lets say 1 character in 12 months to 26. that 15 lv 26 characters i have to roll, rolling a D20 15 times yields a slightly higher then 75% chance to get a desired or otherwise predetermined face. Statistically anyways.

THATS NOT THE POINT! ..

Point is .. i, being a new member to arelith, was really hoping to have a chance at playing a fantastical race one day. sure it wont be this month.. maybe not in 2015 .. but at least the hope was there .. which now .. it is not .. That is my point, and no amount of downplaying of the system, which is a statistical system that im very familiar with, would dishearten me one bit. I know people who got a 5% roll first try.. I myself have failed at a 19 in 20 chance to succeed at the enchanting pools .. that 5% chance is very possible given enough iterations, and my dream of playing a dragon was hanging on that statistical possibility. All im saying, is i do hope they consider allowing more rolls in the future.

[Trunx]

you know its funny how you all harp on the unlikelyhood of me getting a 5% roll. and thats a perspective you can take. yet the devs/dms think there are .. too many .. such that they need to shut down the availability? Hmm .. Must not be as rare as you guys think it is no? You can preach all you want but the fact is that Several people HAVE gotten them to an extent that its being taken away for now.

It is unlikely for you to ever win the Powerball lottery. It is likely that someone will win it quickly enough. A lot of people have won the Powerball lottery. Is there a contradiction here? No.

And besides your you folks obviously here, the general consensus IG is that .. yea .. nearly everyone has a dragon ... and someone has confirmed that there is a few with 2 or 3 dragons on their accounts. Sure they could have been lying, but what a stupid thing to casually lie about.

I highly doubt that is the general consensus. If it is, it's wrong. Someone having two dragons is different from nearly everyone having a dragon.

2030? actually there is a Highly LIKELY chance ill get one before then .. Hypothetically if it takes 1 year to get a character to 26, which is does not, i could probably have 2 or 3 characters to 26 in a year. but lets say 1 character in 12 months to 26. that 15 lv 26 characters i have to roll, rolling a D20 15 times yields a slightly higher then 75% chance to get a desired or otherwise predetermined face. Statistically anyways.

2030 was obviously not meant as the definite tipping point year of probability. Even though it is more likely than your speculation that you're going to be grinding out level 26s for 15 years like a factory assembly line, just in hopes of a 3/4 chance of getting a 5%.

You being a new player really has nothing to do with it. The vast, vast majority of old players haven't had the chance either.

[Lorkas]

Rolling a 5% 15 times gives you only a 53.67% chance to succeed at least once.

You have to roll 28 times to pass 75% (it will be 76.22% chance to have success at least once in 28 rolls). At 3 level 26 characters per year, you're looking at 5 years before you get a better-than-50:50 chance to have succeeded and 6.67 years on average before you succeed.

The point people are making is that it will take you a long time, and there is no possible way to predict right now whether or not dragons will be available when you succeed. They aren't available now, but we don't know when(if) you will succeed at a roll, and we also don't know when dragons will be available again, so there is still hope for you to get your dragon one day, if that's what you want.

[Seekeepeek]

Even if you do win the 5% roll and get to play a Dragon or Rakshasa, I think the Devs can decide to take it from you if it's not played properly after some warnings.

I did like to point out that having a mechanical strong toon isn't all ways fun. Plowing weaker chars down without a challenge is awful boring. Having a weakness or two you manage to overcome is so much more rewarding. Do mind this is what i personally think and not something i expect other players to share.

I admit I was captivated with the same frenzy about playing a Rakshasa as you Rivace_Silver, since when i asked Jjj about it in the past, it was not mechanical possible at the time (to much scripting). so i kinda speculated in making builds that could get to lvl 26 as fast as possible and made one to test it... Then i realized grinding all day long was to frustrating in the long run and stopped at mid levels. I personally didn't want to waste my life clicking on monsters all day long, life is simply to short for such practice. Beside if you do get to play a dragon or Rakshasa... don't expect people to be stuck in awe over it if there is to many.

Before the whole automated 5% rolls, people had picked special skins in forever. Most of them never reached epics. if i speculate in why.. i realized that when you dream about how it is to play this race, and how the world should react to it, and how awesome it would be. Fact is reality is very far from your dream. People will pester you with OOC questions every time you show up, you will be met with jealousy more often the awe.

i did also like to point out that a totem dragon shape druid monk is more powerfull then your 5% dragon and that bat totem give permanent true seeing.

sorry if this post seams a little aggressive, i often end up over analyzing things. no personal attacks intended.

[Rivace_Silver]

I absolutely appreciate your over analytical post. and i am aware of the "you only want it because others have it and you dont" concept. I'm pretty sure i don't see myself getting a dragon race and then being fully satisfied with my life forever and always.

Lorkas: You need to revisit your math sir. rolling a d20 15 times yields a few points higher then 75% chance to get any particular face. I could post the math, or you can look up a statistical mechanics text book. Look for and read about Binomial Distributions. since a roll of a dice seeking one particular number is a pass/fail condition p = 1/20 q = 19/20 go from there.... Edit: OH! Also check out the average # rolls to get a particular face. that equation is small enough for me to post here:
n_bar = SUM{n=1:inf}(n*p*q^(n-1))
n_bar is: average number of rolls to get a particular face
p would again be 1/20
q would again be 19/20

Could you tell me more about the totem druid? that just might be my solution as opposed to putting all my eggs into the dragon race basket.

[The Rambling Midget]

http://wiki.arelith.com/Druid#Totemic_Druid

[CragOrion]

This may have been answered somewhere else already, but, by "dragon," do we mean dragon desciples, or just people wanting to say that they're actually full blooded dragons?

[P Three]

This may have been answered somewhere else already, but, by "dragon," do we mean dragon desciples, or just people wanting to say that they're actually full blooded dragons?

Full actual dragons.

[Dalenger]

A few issues:

how about we limit it to one per race per account??

That doesn't solve anything. If 100 people each have 1 dragon, then we'd have 100 dragons running about (100% of PCs are dragons). If 1 person has 100 dragons, then at max there will only be 1 dragon on the server (1% of PCs are dragons). See where I'm going? If someone is lucky enough to have two (or three?) major awards and decides to spend them all on dragons, that doesn't put any more dragons on this island.

Im a new player .. i have been in love with fantasy and Forgotten Realms nearly my whole life, and you are essentially saying that because people over used the service (obviously breaking one of your rules to Absurdly grind character levels just to roll them....), i cannot play what nearly EVERYONE has.

I love seeing new players, and welcome you to the server... so please don't take this the wrong way when I say: if you hate playing standard races, this may not be the server for you.

Arelith is a relatively low magic server compared to other servers, and tries to stick true to FR lore in that 99% of who you encounter is going to be a standard race. If non-standard races were made available to everyone or much easier to get, then there would be nothing special in playing them.
Note, this doesn't say you have to play your stereotype! By all means, play your pacifist gnoll or drunken elf (though there is a point when something becomes too silly and immersion breaking).

As a final note on this subject, don't hold your breath waiting for a major award. You joined the forums little more than a month ago, so I'm guessing you haven't spent much more time than that on the server. I've been on the server for almost a year now and never even gotten a char high enough to 5% roll for a major. I know people who have been on the server for YEARS who have never gotten a major award.

Don't devote all your energy to daydreaming about how amazing it'll be if you got a dragon. Sure, its fun to think about.... butjust because you play a dragon doesn't mean that your roleplay is going to be so much better. Often I find that taking a more mundane and stereotypical approach can be quite a bit of fun, simply because there is so much already going for you.

Ive heard of some players having up to 3 dragon characters, which is retarded

Some people get lucky. Some people get ~really~ lucky. Lucky does not equal retarded. Try not to take it personally. Someone else's fortune is not an personal insult to you.


As a final note... I've always wanted to play an imp, and I'm sure that if I got a major award I'd special request for an imp PC. I'm a little bit bummed that they've removed special request characters... but in the end, its not something I need to worry about right now, because I don't even have a major award (and probably never will, as the math above demonstrates). If in a month or two I do magically receive a major award, I'll worry about my imp then. I suggest you do the same.

[Lorkas]

The probability of succeeding at least once on a 5% roll in a certain number of trials is not as complicated as you seem to think. It's equal to the probability that you didn't fail all n tries, which is simply 0.95^n (where n is the number of trials).

For 15 trials, the probability of failing all 15 tries is 0.95^15, which is 0.4633 or 46.33%, so the probability that succeed at least once in those trials is 53.67%.

Sorry, but I have studied statistics, and that's how the probability is calculated for succeeding at least once in n trials. You can easily confirm it empirically with a random number generator is you don't believe me.

[Cortex]

god damn i hate when the statisticians step in and make everything look complicated

[P Three]

god damn i hate when the statisticians step in and make everything look complicated

+1. Numbers are hard.

[Durvayas]

With all these dragons that are already around, how about opening up RDD tokens to a reward? It never made sense that there were so many actual dragons, but now that they're here, opening up RDDs would allow the draconic faction some longevity(Its here, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon, especially not with kobolds flocking to its banner) as well as show how when dragons settle an area they tend to breed with the locals.

IE: fewer actual dragons, but allow them to have descendants, which makes more sense.

[roy rutan]

wow such a whine fest. I dont recall it being this bad when they took Asimar and other planar races away. alas for the days when you had to petition JJJerm for a special race or item for the 5% roll. rather then let the computer roll it he would roll it on a die on his desk and soooooo few got things and even the ones that did get the 5% roll had to wait. atleast mith didnt just do away with the 5% roll all togather and say hey only basic races and classes.

[Cortex]

The whine from aasimars and tieflings being removed was worse.

[Rispek]

I love seeing new players, and welcome you to the server... so please don't take this the wrong way when I say: if you hate playing standard races, this may not be the server for you.

+1

5% roll characters don't automatically make the coolest characters.

I have been here a very short time as well and one thing I have learned is that a very basic character mechanically can be an incredibly interesting character through role play. The movers and shakers on Arelith are often not who you would expect (at least that's what I am beginning to notice).

[Arther Goodmane]

Statistics and management of awards aside, I personally am not all that sold on players being able to role play actual dragons. The idea was novel and they are special characters (capable of assuming Human forms). But to me, dragons are immortal...they can be closely related in terms of role play to Elves, but even Elves are mortals. As in, beings we can understand. The mind of a dragon is...to me, a bit alien. It's kinda like wanting to play a Reaper in Mass Effect. Just my opinion though.

PS: Not to imply players should acknowledge their character's age if they don't want to.

[dirza]

When there are dragons in each city on the server and they do enforce their policy on all others onthe server, even in large bunchs attack Cordor, you wonder its removed?

How about dragon hunters for 5% roll, designed to hunt and slay dragons. Cause every time they appear, bunch of heroes go out and slay them in amost any game and world (they wanna treasure or get rid of terrible evil monster).

[Cortex]

(dragons are actually mortal and die of old age)