Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I just want more build diversity because that means more character diversity which means more roleplay diversity.

I don't really care about ECL. It's marginal.

Gifts do walk back on the idea of build diversity, but we've seen how there needs to be some shake up. I don't really think going after Gifts was the right way, but, you know, whatever.

Unfettered, mechanical character sheet power really is just the only thing we obsess about because it's the only thing we're really allowed to talk about (we can't talk about roleplay without hurt feelings and cries of elitism), and the mantra of "so much of PvP is situational" just wades into the chasm of PvP conversations in general.

I do think we want humans to be the #1 demographic on the server. I think this change might undermine that. We already see enough willful ignoring of racial lore for the sake of mechanical convenience, I hope this doesn't spur more of that.

(I do think Arelith needs to invent its on canon, as a sidenote, because it's been 15 years or whatever since 3.5e and we're struggling how to advance the overall lore-narrative and to make it not-confusing to new players)

[fading]

I fundamentally disagree with making humans +1 ECL. I say this as someone who gravitates towards non-human races.

As has been pointed out ad nauseam, humans are supposed to be the most populous race, this creates a good atmosphere for racial RP, for both humans and non-humans. Their previous flexibility when it came to classes, ensured that this would be the case from a mechanical standpoint. It was fine as it was. They weren't the strongest race at every build, they could be good at all of them, and now they're at a pretty huge disadvantage when it comes to many of these builds.

I don't understand the reason for this change. Humans were not overpowered, they didn't need this huge nerf, and it's just sad to see. I don't want to see less human battle-clerics, spellswords, assassins, barbarians, paladins and other divine warriors. I don't think anyone wants to see less humans, they make the environment of Arelith what it is.

They're unreasonably weak now, in comparison to other races, they cannot stand on-par with other races on any multi-attribute build. And they level slower too? This just doesn't make any sense. I really hope these changes are reverted.

[deserk]

I hope that the staff come to see that a complete reversal of these latest updates would be the best thing. I don't think anyone is remotely enthusiastic for this update.

[gesseritt]

I hope that the staff come to see that a complete reversal of these latest updates would be the best thing. I don't think anyone is remotely enthusiastic for this update.

As a long-time Drow-only player, I am somewhat excited to see the spike in activity among the race and in Andunor.

[TimeAdept]

I hope that the staff come to see that a complete reversal of these latest updates would be the best thing. I don't think anyone is remotely enthusiastic for this update.

Don't hold out hope for this one.

[Aftond]

I'm mostly curious on how RP will be impacted with the lack of humans to bridge the gap between very culturally different races.

Just have to wait and see.

Edit: If you are a minmaxer you werent picking human in the first place so if thats the aim of the nerf then its a miss.

[mourisson1]

A new chat command will allow these drow to choose new Gifts from those available.

May this command be extended also to the other drow so that they too can choose gifts?

I just want to say that i second this, as i feel badly about buffing something for the half of player base, and actually "nerfing" (in a sense that they didnt receive the buff) players who want to stick with their characters.

[Nobs]

I hope that the staff come to see that a complete reversal of these latest updates would be the best thing. I don't think anyone is remotely enthusiastic for this update.

As a long-time Drow-only player, I am somewhat excited to see the spike in activity among the race and in Andunor.

They rolled drow for the wrong reasons though.

The need to be OP is strong here on Arelith haha

[Irongron]

Whilst this update certainly could have gone better, let me at least clarify a few points.

First, the gift change grew out of a proposal to grant a gift to ECL 2 races, so as to allow greater customizations. It was entirely my own doing that this was accompanied by removing one from ECL 0 races, and instead allowing an extra flavour choice of a minor instead.

I felt, and still do, that compensating for race balance with differing amount of major gifts is a mistake, that it is an unnecessary layer of complication, and races should speak for themselves.

Majors should be uniform across all races (aside from the truly exotic +4s) and that the number should be 1.

I understand that races will not be balanced, which is why we have ECL, and that some people feel that we should make all races a purely generic RP choice, with equal stat spreads (nothing wrong with that, it's just not a game I wish to develop).

The partial rollback of this update was based on one area of feedback I believed had merit (that drow were too strong) and one I did not (that ECL 0 races were too weak).

In both cases though, I am entirely responsible (to blame if one is so inclined) for both approving the initial update, and its partial reversal.

As an admittedly old school player I find it pretty astonishing that gifts have somehow become 'essential' for something originally conceived as an optional perk.

Three last things then.

First, humans. Witn a free feat, extra skills? No negative stat adjustments and an rp setting that very much favours them (try being a dwarf and walking into Andunor) I don't for a moment believe that one left gift is crippling to them, and there is zero harm in letting this stand. It should also help reduce human UD outcasts a little now those gates have been opened again.

Secondly, while we have been trialling almost everything on PGCC lately, in area of gift changes this is not viable. Had we said we were reducing gifts on humans everyone would have filled their vaults (see drow yesterday) while had we said another would get more gifts, nobody would have made one until that was live.

Lastly then; 'grandfathering" or rather the oft repeated phrase "now all grandfathered are OP! BAD DESIGN!!"

We have changed Arelith so many times over the years, and with every adjustment an older character's strength is altered when compared to a new. This is absolutely normal, and without allowing people to remake at any time, unavoidable. Here is the thing though; anyone that has been around 15 years or so will likely have their vault filled with chronically underpowered characters. The overall trend, aside from a few blips, is that grandfathered characters are weaker, not stronger.

If an update is so upending to the status quo then forced/optional remakes happen. This is not such a time.

Will human number of majors go up again? Very unlikely to happen I'm afraid. Will other races be adjusted? Probably not for now, I think the code team had enough stress with these last 24 hours. I'm putting this whole area to bed for a while.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I like that drow got a boost, they obviously needed it as the gifts made their bonuses just on par with everyone else when they should be stronger with a starting ECL. I do think that new human characters will be non existent to the point that you will eventually have to revert the decision to make them ECL 1, since I think you underestimate the feeling of "why do I want to be weaker then the humans that already exist" and overestimate humans strength over other races. The ability to boost a key stat at the price of another stat, a feat, and skill points was already a fine trade. This "solution" eliminates the price of another stat and makes humans slower to level, which totally makes playing other races far more appealing from a mechanical standpoint, and seems to totally contradict the reasoning that makes me like the drow change. So, yeah, I'm a bit confused about this one, but if it works out the way you think it will I will happily admit I am wrong. I won't be wasting any time playing a human in the mean time unless they already exist in my vault as a level 30 though.

[Shadowy Reality]

Human population will barely take a hit.

People forget that humans are far more than their stats, humans' roleplay is far more versatile than any other race as there are no stereotypes to follow or expectations of you, you can literally do whatever. This is not true for other races, there is some real lore baggage that you must take care when you play one them.

That freedom and versatility in roleplay are important. That they were pretty much the optimal choice very many builds, or the sole enablers of other builds (on the back of the free feat and skill) was only the icing on the cake. When was the last time you had a Halfling Chancellor in Cordor, or a Gnome Guard Commander?

You can roll one of the other races and play as a Human, but you will never get anywhere roleplay-wise, and your RPR will likely suffer too.

[Gouge Away]

There's absolutely zero reason a hin couldn't be chancellor or gnome couldn't captain the guard and it wouldn't be poor RP to try. I expect we'll be seeing more of that kind of thing actually, and if you look at lore there's plenty of examples of non-human races mixing with humans in stuff like city politics, a lot more than we as players seem to want to support.

[Hazard]

Put Drow behind 20 RPR?

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Classes have been literally designed around gift limits. Like the barb needing base 18 con.

[Shadowy Reality]

Classes have been literally designed around gift limits. Like the barb needing base 18 con.

Barbarian doesn't need 18 base Con. They get a bonus if they reach 18 base Con, which is very different and was likely an incentive for people making barbarians that reach EDR.

You either lose 1ab, 1 damage and 5% DI immunity during rage and 30 HP, or you lose 1ab outside of rage, it is not the end of the world, barbarians don't cease to function due to not having 18 base con, it is a minor thing.

[The Rambling Midget]

You either lose 1ab, 1 damage and 5% DI immunity during rage and 30 HP, or you lose 1ab outside of rage, it is not the end of the world, barbarians don't cease to function due to not having 18 base con, it is a minor thing.

The loss of a point of something combat related can't be viewed in a vacuum. You're losing effectiveness compared to the baseline, leaving you at a lower maximum potential, and that's a much bigger hit than you'd like to admit. It doesn't cease to function, no, but it becomes far less competitive.

[kinginyellow]

I posted this on the discord before, but I'll post it here as well. Incoming wall of Text.

I'll preface this with saying that I don't really care either way for this update. I don't know what the best way forward is, although I do think it's funny humans are +1 ECL now.

If you want to continue playing a "human", you now have the option of Human+. The request people are making of having a gift that reduces a stat by 2 and adds to another is called taking a Planetouched Race. You have the same ECL adjustment as base humans do now, you get a stat buff and a stat penalty, you keep your extra feat, you keep your extra skill points -and- depending on the planetouched race you pick, you get bonus resistances and immunities, or spell like abilities.

Now you could say "yeah but planetouched are not normal humans they have nuance" to which I'll agree that they do. You're gonna have issues going somewhere as an Aasimar, but then again, Aasimar are actually pretty subtle in 3.5 compared to a Tiefling. You could easily disguise yourself as just a human and you'd have better stats than one if you want to hide your heritage. Tiefling does get discriminated against easily, but then you have Genasi.

Genasi get a weird elemental trait, and their behavior is influenced by the element they were affected by from birth, but besides a DM controlling a NPC to discriminate against you, no PC, I feel, is going to care that you're a Genasi, and you're going to be just as versatile as a human to go into Andunor or stick around the Surface depending on your RP. Some could argue that PCs should RP the fact that Genasi are weird, but I don't feel like that's going to happen.

I might be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if people making new human characters kept rolling them for a greater reward in attempts to just play Genasi for the power boost on the character archetype they were planning on playing.

Not all Genasi races are incredible, but for a -2 hit to Wisdom, which often is a dump stat in certain div dip builds, as an Earth Genasi you get to keep your +2 bonus to strength you'd take from a gift, you get to still invest your +2 gift into charisma, you keep the same ECL, you keep the Extra Feat, you keep the Skill Points, and you also get Acid DR and Acid Immunity, which is actually a pretty good deal. The only time this isn't good is if you're trying to make a paladin that actually uses its class spells, and the -1 to will saves is pretty negligible considering your div dip is going to give your cha to saving throws. Remember, you have the SAME ECL as a base human, since humans are +1 ECL now, unless something's been changed so that a Human Genasi had a ECL of 2.

I also wonder if the change to the Drow racial gifts also applies to the bloodline gifts that planetouched characters get.

Either way, Humans are still versatile, but just like with powerbuilders in PnP I'm expecting a surge of Human, but with X template applied, and a reduction of the actual ammount of regular human player population going forward, or just a lot more half elves. I guess that Elf RP really paid off in the end. Anyone that does need to roll their current human due to a change to the meta in the future that hurts their build to the point where rolling is a better option, is likely going to make a character with the meta in mind (since even if you are focusing on RP first and foremost, mechanical power is still good to have for when you're forced into PVP) and is more likely to take the path that is optimal.

Alternatively, just make Deep Gnomes. They're pretty good now.

Edit: I also need clarification on if Deep Imaskari are +0 ECL or +1. They have a human chassis, so they get human bonus feat and skills, and +2 to Int and -2 to Dex. you still get your 2 gifts, so you can always just spend one to save your dex at which point you're a 0 ECL human with +2 INT and 1 more gift to spend. Let me remind you, that Spellsword Deep Imaskari are pretty good, since their racial ability lets you refresh all the extra true strikes you're going to slot in as spells.

[gesseritt]

Is it just me, or has the Arelith community become increasingly obsessed with mechanics and builds over the years? I know I have.

[Nitro]

Is it just me, or has the Arelith community become increasingly obsessed with mechanics and builds over the years? I know I have.

The bar for entry has lowered. A long time ago mechanics was something mythical only the most hardcore sat down to number crunch and theorycraft, but over the years as information previously known only to a few has become widespread, and general mechanical knowledge has increased. It's only natural that more people concern themselves with mechanics and builds.

[Aradin]

I've noticed that too. The min-maxing uberbuild mentality has always seemed a little peculiar to me given that we play on a server so dedicated to RP and not powergrinding. Granted, I don't pay much attention to mechanics and would play a wet sock if it had the RP potential I wanted. I guess it speaks to the quality of Arelith that players like me and powergamers can both enjoy this world

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Human population will barely take a hit.

People forget that humans are far more than their stats, humans' roleplay is far more versatile than any other race as there are no stereotypes to follow or expectations of you, you can literally do whatever. This is not true for other races, there is some real lore baggage that you must take care when you play one them.

That freedom and versatility in roleplay are important. That they were pretty much the optimal choice very many builds, or the sole enablers of other builds (on the back of the free feat and skill) was only the icing on the cake. When was the last time you had a Halfling Chancellor in Cordor, or a Gnome Guard Commander?

You can roll one of the other races and play as a Human, but you will never get anywhere roleplay-wise, and your RPR will likely suffer too.

Short of the first line of your post, I agree with everything you said. But that first line is a big one. I don't think that people will start playing elves that are basically humans with pointy ears, I think they will take this time frame between now and when this mistake is fixed* to finally get around to playing that dwarf they had in mind, or that elf, or half orc, or hin...whatever. I also think that you will find humans sticking around long after the player normally would have because people don't want to roll to make another human if they are only into humans.

*Just to focus for a second on what I consider the mistake, it looks like based on what was written about it this was originally designed to make drow more appealing. Lets face it, they had a +2 ecl and with the exception of the drow specific gifts that tweaked them a little you were your bonuses were forced. So, slower to level and short of a few bonuses that don't have a huge impact in a save heavy meta compared to any other race, they were really inferior to a vast majority of the other races. By giving them a gift that makes them far more appealing.

But, and this is me getting to the mistake, by giving humans +1 ECL and one less gift then the rest of the races you have basically created a world where the human is now what the drow was when the idea started. Sure, humans were slightly better then the other races mechanically, the extra feat and the skill points were nice, but there wasn't a shortage of elves, dwarves, and hin as a result. Could it have been tweaked to balance it out? Sure, but this just shifts the balance the complete other way.

And before someone says (again) that mechanics shouldn't matter, understand that that would take a world where pvp wasn't the king cheese of power. That's just not Arelith as it stands right now, and while I would love to see sweeping changes and experiments to shift that I don't see how anything here works toward that goal.

[Ork]

I think that a lot of y'all have been preached a mantra that isn't true: humans aren't powerful. They're versatile and could have been really any build. However, if you're analyzing what was powerful and what is not- humans fall to like #6 on race. Now? They're really lower than that.

I believe we'll see fewer new humans and this change damaged something integral to our community. But, that's happened before. We'll keep playing, and I hope to see a halfling chancellor- which would make sense. They are the #1 race after all.

[kinginyellow]

Is it just me, or has the Arelith community become increasingly obsessed with mechanics and builds over the years? I know I have.

For the most part I blame the nature of the game. You might not be a player that naturally seeks out conflict, but part of the nature of Arelith's world is that factions and settlements, and even sometimes just individual players, will clash whenever they don't see eye to eye. And from my experience in the past year since I've come back to Arelith is that the conflict will largely be resolved through a mix of both PVP and RP, sometimes one more than the other. It really depends on the people involved, but most of the time at least some form of PVP will happen, especially in large scale events with a lot of people. Edit: See the Assault on Spellhold during the Twisted Rune line of events

Given that is the case, even if you're a player who focuses more on RP than anything else, you're well served by making a character you want to play, with the race you want to play, but also do both in a way that you're not mechanically weak. Personally when I make a character I plan out what I want to do with him and what I want him to be like, his backstory etc, but I do that to fit the kind of character I also want to play mechanically, and after I've drafted a full 1 to 30 build where I try to maximize the character's power. This is not out of a need to win, it's out of a need to remain competitive. I could make a RP loremaster build, or I could make the staple Conlock build, with maybe 1 feat swapped for something that can be used for flavor in RP, but that doesn't hurt the overall build. Spoiler alert, my Warlock might not be a loremaster, but he can read 9th level scrolls without having lost anything that makes his build a staple.

I've historically played mostly humans on the server, and that's mostly because I'm not attracted to racial RP at all, and my human characters tend to be more of a representation of the FR culture they've come from. Right now I have two in my vault to move to once I retire my current character that I made before this ECL gift change happened. But if I ever get rid of those two, you can bet that, dependant on what kind of character I want to play, template-less human is going to be last in the choice of races I could take.

[Definately Not A Mimic]

Nothing about any of these changes will alter the choices I make when creating a character to play. I make what I want to play, it honestly takes me weeks, and once I have exactly what I want with race and class and skills selected, feats in certain cases, I work at making it be the strongest it can without ruining everything I want it able to do.

People are going to react strongly to any change because, lets face it, many hate change. This update is not going to ruin the server. It isn't going to ruin your fun of roleplaying unless you find the need to altar what you want over the numbers something else can give you. Will those that resort to pvp have an advantage, maybe, but there is more to that also than just numbers. Knowing how, knowing tricks, staying calm I'd say are all huge in this.

I appreciate what the devs are doing to keep things to try and keep the server healthy, exciting, and fun. Coming from a wild elf, I would gladly give up one of my awards, still lose the 1 AC, to see those pale skinned non-wild wild elves rp cracked down on. I hate to be judgemental but watching it said all wild elves are played badly sucks when you try to play your race even though there are at least ten more floating around that ignore it.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

I'm a lot less likely to make new characters and more likely to keep playing the characters I have now. That's about the only part of my decision making process that has changed. When I eventually do break down and make a new character it will be the same usual routine, trying to make them fit the concept I had for the character while also making them mechanically strong as possible so I don't get my RP railroaded into the fugue by other players in PVP. I would have preferred we stuck with 1 major reward for all 0 ECL races and keep humans at 0 ECL. But I am fine with the changes either way. And even though I am guilty of having a pale skinned wild elf meme build character myself I am happy it was nerfed and hope people stop taking it over other subraces purely for mechanical strength.