CL: The Portals and the FH: The Day After
Yor
As an AO who was directly involved in (and largely responsible for)
yesterday's events I thought I'd share my thoughts this day after on the
portals, the FH, how useful they were, and my motivations for using
them. I don't expect anything to change based on what I have to say but
I felt the need to offer my perspective on these things. (long post)
-WHY DID I DO IT?
I was content with ignoring the portals until, with the help of a few
clever exiles, ways to move them great distances in short amounts of
time were discovered. It was as simple as getting a few resourceful
exiles together, patiently banging our heads together and testing
theories for a substantial period of time, until we came up with
something. Frankly, I didn't expect to come up with anything but we did
and it was much too difficult to ignore.
Why too difficult to ignore? Because I don't have or are not part of,
a small, organized, committed, dependable, patient, disciplined, and
focused group ala PMF that have very little turnover and are by far the
best way to approach certain things and places in CL. The FH, and
particularly the WC and beyond, are custom made for groups like these.
We've seen PMF make claims about how fast they can go from the meadow to
the WC the "hard" way and personally I don't doubt those claims. In
fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they stroll through (quickly) places
like DP and the Orga Stronghold without much, if any, pausing or
communication between each other. This comes from doing those places
using a well-thought-out plan that they've done with mostly the same
people dozens of times.
This is unfortunately not how it works with other groups to different
degrees. There's alot of "re-inventing the wheel" that goes on each and
every trip with other groups. It is this "re-inventing the wheel" that
grows tiresome and is not particularly fun. It's exhausting for an AO
let me tell ya. =) Challenges that a group like PMF quickly stroll
through can become nightmares for other groups each and every time (and
the AOs leading them). So when in-game tools (like portals and strange
stones) that can help are introduced they are hard to ignore. If they
didn't exist perhaps things would evolve differently (not necessarily
for the better) but they DO exist. So as an AO of large,
different-sized and personel each time, groups when I have a choice of
"herding" such a group from the meadow to Camp Dred the hard way or with
some effort and legwork by myself and a few others, setting up a way to
instantly transfer said group there guess what I'm gonna choose? Now
it's still quite a job getting the same type of group from Camp Dred to
the WC and the WC itself gives groups like this lots of problems (I
don't think it's designed for groups like this), but at least it "evens
the playing field" a bit (but just a bit).
THE FH AND PORTALS
The big question is whether groups like this deserve to, with the
assistance of portals or whatever, get to "special" areas like the FH
easier? Or should they be restricted in so many ways that only PMF-like
groups can either get there, or at least have the best chance by far to
get there and succeed (mostly true already despite the portals)?
I respect PMF's position but where the FH are concerned I'd have to go
with the former rather than the latter. Here's the problem. The FH and
the stories associated with them (Orga, Catapult, PF books) are a VERY
important part of the world. The Orga invade us all the time. Recently
they invaded with a new type of Orga who chained exiles away. There's
even rumors of Bartok returning. That all being said, it's kind of
difficult to keep exiles from wanting to go out there. I mean wouldn't
it make IC sense that the population might be interested in striking
back at these foes that attack and pillage our town occasionally?
Wouldn't it make sense that the population might want their catapult
back to help defend the town? Therefore, wouldn't it make sense that a
way to quickly transport into the heart of Orga territory for sneak
attacks and quick strikes be desirable? And then there's the PF books.
These are "trainers" that are becoming more and more important yet they
are stuck way out there. I wonder how eager people would be to go way
out there if the PF books were brought back to the Marsh Hermit? I mean
they are books so it kind of makes no sense that somebody hasn't simply
picked them up, put them in their backpack, then taken them back by now
doesn't it? If that happened I wonder if that would help to solve this
problem at least somewhat?
HOW USEFUL WERE THE PORTALS?
After undoing Klur's handiwork (nice try) <g> the portals were VERY
useful transfering the huge "herd" from point A to point B, in this case
the Meadow to Camp Dred. Read my comments above for clarification on
why this was so useful with a group like this. However, dragging the
portal along with the group from Camp Dred to beyond turned out to be a
mistake. I was worried it might be. I was also worried it might not
function in certain places. But as the saying goes, "you don't know
until you try". The main drawback is it was just too much of a
distraction. As far as I know it wasn't used for healing badly fallens
in town or bringing library characters at all. The main, and only
thing, it was used for (after the initial use to Camp Dred) was to let
latecomers in and let those that wished to go or had to go leave. But
since it doesn't function in certain parts of the Malachite Lair it
evolved into a FMOCR-like situation where the group kept getting
split-up while some escorted people to and from the exit point. Very
distracting, plus frankly I'm not particularly keen on the idea of
giving latecomers a break and letting people leave the instant they get
bored. It completely messes up the focus of the situation. So I will
not be using the portal again in this particular manner unless something
changes.
BUT I may use it in other ways. I might not want to drag it around
the FH but I may bring it to a fixed point there for brief periods of
time. I'm not certain if the methods we used to move them were bugs or
not but that is for the GMs to decide. As long as usefull tools like
that exist I will use them, period. I'm sorry if the portals ruin the
game for some. Not being able to use them the way I'd like to ruins the
game for me. I hope there's a "middle ground" in this somewhere but I
don't see it right now. We borrowed the portals for merely eight hours
and even warned everybody well ahead of time of it yet Klur & company
still tried to stop it. That being said, there just doesn't seem to be
any hope for a "middle ground" among players. Perhaps the GMs will
decide for us (which at this point might be best I'm afraid)? I'd
rather have them tell me how I'm suppose to be playing rather than a
small group of players.
Yor
--
"Yor is a strapping caveman type who runs from adventure to
adventure, battling cool dinosaur puppets, desert zombie hordes,
sex hungry ape men and more." -Internet Movie Database
Maeght
Yor <pnat...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> BUT I may use it in other ways. I might not want to drag it around
> the FH but I may bring it to a fixed point there for brief periods of
> time. I'm not certain if the methods we used to move them were bugs or
> not but that is for the GMs to decide. As long as usefull tools like
> that exist I will use them, period. I'm sorry if the portals ruin the
> game for some. Not being able to use them the way I'd like to ruins the
> game for me. I hope there's a "middle ground" in this somewhere but I
> don't see it right now. We borrowed the portals for merely eight hours
> and even warned everybody well ahead of time of it yet Klur & company
> still tried to stop it. That being said, there just doesn't seem to be
> any hope for a "middle ground" among players. Perhaps the GMs will
> decide for us (which at this point might be best I'm afraid)? I'd
> rather have them tell me how I'm suppose to be playing rather than a
> small group of players.
Well done.
I'm just waiting for Klur and company to take credit for "motivating"
you.
- Maeght
Sabbit
I'd like to point out that one of the methods used by pmf to keep us from
protecting the portals was to have malkor make tons of EP portals all over
the place. I personaly landed in one and was very lucky to have time to
port myself out.
If spawning tons of EP portals all over the place to keep people from
entering/exiting snells isn't game abuse, I don't know what is.
-Sabbit
Hidden
Sabbit <sabbit...@SPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
> If spawning tons of EP portals all over the place to keep people from
> entering/exiting snells isn't game abuse, I don't know what is.
Good tactics?
--
HWC for Hidden <hid...@noDASHop.com> <http://www.oralse.cx/>
"Carpe diem via scrotum."
Phelps
Sabbit <sabbit...@SPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd like to point out that one of the methods used by pmf to keep us from
> protecting the portals was to have malkor make tons of EP portals all over
> the place. I personaly landed in one and was very lucky to have time to
> port myself out.
> If spawning tons of EP portals all over the place to keep people from
> entering/exiting snells isn't game abuse, I don't know what is.
What's funny is that I recall one of the reasons behind making
mystics so hard to become is because they could be given tools that were
more suited for abuse because the selection process would be more likely
to weed out snerts, and were more likely to handle them in a responsible
manner.
Oops.
HWC for Phelps
obPhelpses of the World
obBalanceTaxSDB
--
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually
idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of
us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched.
He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to
despair." -- H.L. Mencken
Cutlas
> If spawning tons of EP portals all over the place to keep people from
> entering/exiting snells isn't game abuse, I don't know what is.
> -Sabbit
Oh? What about attempting to load juries with you and your closest
rankwhore buddies' alts while suing over and over again with basically
the same charge? Is that game abuse too?
Sabbit making claims of game abuse is like Michael bitching at Mujin
for clanning too much.
Cutlas
Sabbit
Your clan left me no choice. Every time I sue, I honestly feel shitty OOC.
I really didn't want it to come to this.
But don't for one second think I won't use every resource available to
fight pmf.
My point was simple, pmf complains the portals are game abuse, yet they use
their own form of game abuse to fight it.
-Sabbit