[Ckaleb]

Let’s uh not dismiss me on something more than month removed out of context, especially with red herrings, and have a productive discussion by responding to what’s being said with less victimization, please, regardless on how frustrated we are with the subject matter.

On that note, of making things relevant, after understanding invitation a little more as a means of how it allowed other characters to interact with mine, I’m really glad with how it operates, but also understand the fear it gives other players. I gave the system a chance and allowed players opportunity to effect me. It’s an awkward balance, and really tough generally, to allow other players to effect how you’re telling a story. But it’s also just core to any cooperative storytelling application.

Mind you, this was my decision to opt-in to content. I had the privilege of, er, being tortured in such a fantastic way and being given many story beats in lieu of it and it’s all in all been delightful. Something that couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t engaged in the system. In fact, all of my invitation at the time came from bargains I had made in the first two weeks of the game, and a flat +2 had been bugged onto me as a Fabled character.

Still. Bearing all of that in mind, what changes would you suggest to be made in light of what you know? I think we have a loose idea, each of us, what problems we might have with the system even if we disagree on the parts. I do think it would be more productive to try and impress some solutions to aid constructively in having the problem solved.

[Ckaleb]

Sounds like a character for the Hand, or even the Vigil? Are you referring to ‘Scientifically Augmented,’ the positive modifier that was changed from ‘Temple Augmented’ to be broader and less faction specific, and edited recently in the help files to account for this? Being righteous and moral is the defining feature (of few) that separates the Temple from The Vigil and shouldn’t be changed.

[Ckaleb]

Not incentivizing enough that it should matter? Having illusion Mancy at 1 is not drastically changing how I play. Having Soldiering from Temple wouldn’t either. It’s horizontal progression. Good, nice to have! But if I weren’t in the Order or better yet, had never gained the Award, it wouldn’t matter. Horses are 15% cheaper, cars are 15% more expensive. Melee damage is increased by 5%. These perks and abilities are meant to synergize and develop a roster of characters that are MORE their faction than they are not. So, you’ll see a lot of Order characters involved with horses, tooth and claw, slightly combative, etcetera because these mechanics encourage characters to act more in line with the future The Order wants to create.

They ‘highly’ incentivize you to homogenize with the faction you do join, as they also come with debuffs. These bonuses are not so strong that you’re going to overcome someone who isn’t making use of these systems at a relatively similar tier, especially as people start using the RP fight system more than the combat system. It’s min-maxing. I don’t think there’s something wrong with joining a faction, a society, and a cult, but Fear of Missing Out would be misplaced and unwarranted (often at the expense of your characterization, wherein you become a character with no values or principles tied to their organizations [This sort of a broader complaint to the community, tangential to the subject, forgive me]).

I do agree that T3s and really all of the higher archetypes aren’t nearly as strong as they were. Given their cost, they’ve been superseded by guest characters and monsters to fill the role of antag from what I can discern. I think I would like to see some encouragement/tools given to higher tiers in order to allow them to antagonize other players, so, I think what I’d like to do is offer Nova solutions depending what his goal might be? As it seems hard to discern what the goal is at the moment with the way systems are working.

If the goal is to make higher tiers get up off their butts and antag, I’d suggest returning them their focus points/giving them other tools in order to facilitate their evil ways. I think the idea here was that the more time you spend with players, the more invited to you they are, and the more you’re able to do/change them in order to fit your evil schemes, but in practice this also allows other players to course-correct your victims and step in.. And a tier 3 will never be able to make up for a bad night from a gank squad. They have to sleep, regardless of how powerful they are.

If the goal is to make higher tiers less significantly powerful, more social characters and have really eventful antag replaced mostly by guests and monsters, I’d say invitation levels should be adjusted in order to fit this nuance (And also communicated so that people playing these characters can adjust accordingly). There might be better changes for this, that other people can suggest as well.

[Ckaleb]

Correction to the above, The Conclave*, not the Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 2.

[Ckaleb]

The Temple and The Order are righteous factions and don’t allow tier 3s to have authority, yes. They wouldn’t be moral if they did. And.. Really, people shouldn’t be motivated/obligated to join a faction, a society, and a cult all at the same time. People get really obvious how highly they prioritize the mechanics of the game over their characterization/real belief in their faction/society when they do this. And if you wanna go that route of characterization, of having no values or principles beyond your own self-interest and accumulation for favor and relics, then one must capitulate to the status quo of each faction they join, or otherwise mold their actions to it in pursuit of power, no?

So, as an alternative: None of the societies are righteous, in comparison. The Conclave, The Vigil, and to a lesser degree the Court all encourage characters in them to be immoral. In The Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 6, as an example, meaning inevitably one must be tier 3 if they seek power in that society. The Iron Moon Lodge and The Sons of Olympia both have faction mechanics that encourage violence as well. One easy solution to this for any characters that want to spend time with a tier 3.. Is to become tier 3. The lure of corruption.

I think some things can be tuned back, but yeah. If you wanna RP with good people that want to remain good people, then it only makes sense to do so in moderation? Else, why play an antagonist? Why exactly SHOULDN’T being a horrible person not absolutely disrupt and destroy your social life with people, isolating you from those you care about as you mindlessly pursue power. The pursuit of power is designed to be a lonely one, and over time all you have are enemies as you grow further away… Or you can be redeemed. To be corrupted is to surround yourself with corruption and power. If you’ve stopped pursuing corruption and power, then the pursuit of humility in order to stay with those you love is a real, meaningful direction of character development.

I’d say, if any change could be made, would be to give lower tiers more incentive to be corrupted/receive invitation? Even the 63rd antagonists are relegated to some situational instances to get victims, as absurdly powerful as these new tools are, they’re actually easy to avoid. But maybe consent and opt-in strategies are more important to the health of the game in light of some of horror stories Haven’s had to deal with in the past, especially with problematic players.

To ask, in response to T3 feeling unrewarding, what is the ‘reward’ we are looking for?

[Ckaleb]

More or less agree with that. Using no examples, there were a lot of cases in H6 of people using high tiers strictly as a means of progression, like they were leveling a character, but not giving back to the grid? People who would isolate themselves on these incredibly mechanically strong characters but give no interaction, meaning whenever they actually engaged with anything happening on the grid you would end up less with story-beat villainy and more ‘I have come to combat/KO punch you into an anti-climax.’

That all leads into a tangent, so suffice to say the correction on higher tiers seems to be trying to remove that incentive to play a vastly more powerful character. The Wild Hunt takes them faster, it’s only 1 more focus point for a relatively high karmic cost, and they’re harder to be around (among other things).

Maybe in some edge cases there are points to be made, especially texts, for invitation increase to be diminished. But in general it’s important to consider both what it means for your character to not only be ‘evil,’ (tier 2s can also be evil, just not corrupted explicitly by the supernatural world- as stated in ‘help moral tier’) but someone who can never make the world better than they found it.

[Ckaleb]

From ‘help invitation’

“Invitation goes up as characters interact with those of a higher moral tier.
The more personal or focused the attention is the faster it increases, for example,
roleplaying one on one in a private setting. Invitation doesn’t go up if the characters
are engaged in some activity like they’re on a plot or in a fight. Invitation can
also be increased by making bargains with demons.”

[Ckaleb]

As the former leader of the Conclave, having captured two boroughs with a spread of only 10 players for all of that favor, I earned maybe 1k favor, or a little more, being very persistently active against most content(top 3 within my society), across the 7(5? I forget) weeks since capturing Highgate and 4 weeks since capturing Redstone.

I do think, just mathematically, if a group of less people bring the same level of achievement it takes another group 20 to do, that the favor dispersement should reward that group more. This, at some level, encourages players to create characters for more factions rather than dog-piling on one. Not everyone should be getting favor and there are a lot of factions/societies that could afford more participation. I still think merit should relate to reward. It’s more that, in my case in many others, merit doesn’t seem to be applicable. Or, there are other factors at play. As Maina speculated, schemes and raids might decimate your borough’s favor gain if they go unattended. Someone threw out that some people are earning 7000 favor? That seems absurd, as it’s written that boroughs produce 1000 favor a month.

But I mentioned this in a petition back when borough results were hidden and order file no longer showed percentile participation. A lot of our confusion is coming from a place of ignorance. Literally who knows what the problem is. It’s a huge missing equation and we’re just left with the results. Feedback is important, and there are a lot of parts of Haven that are veiled by design so that people don’t ‘game’ it, and it’s having an expected adverse effect. Who knows how much you’re participating in these big groups? You might not have access to ‘faction report,’ and if you do, you’ll only know the top 3 earners in very specific instances of information. Your options therefore, if you want to set earning favor as a goal for yourself, are to tirelessly engage in content without much creative backbone (hunting, patrols, schemes, events, all the content for favor’s sake instead of RP/story’s sake), or to move on. The middle ground is just a practice in frustration until we have information.

And, if we move on and stop prioritizing favor personally to stop feeling frustrated, ultimately, FOMO hits and the people that do mindlessly engage ‘enjoy’ the relics, charms, etcetera, while you ‘miss out.’ Anyway. TLDR, frustration makes sense, Haven’s just a teeny-bit built that way. I decided to stop participating in the game’s reward cycle and just RP with another character, and it’s helped me quite a bit.

[Ckaleb]

Feel you. Personally, having run the Hollow Conclave and having not really received anything meaningful for the effort, I lost motivation with the society/faction system and just decided to play a character with less stress.

It’s a shame, because the new stuff looks cool. Loved the concept of relics and charms and all that, but having ‘succeeded’ as a society with such low members and getting nothing for the effort? Oh well.

[Ckaleb]

I’ve been ruthlessly removing myself from the room when tier 3s are around, and am probably one of the most active players on the grid. I don’t do Fabled quests either. Truly, there’s something missing in the feedback with the system.

[Author]

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