Balancing Light & Dark Magics

[Babehab 386]

9 minutes ago, Farryn said:

 

The good vs evil dynamic is inherently flawed since dark creatures or mages have a habit of not wanting to be antagonists at all, and those that do are doing it for the majority of the server (Players with mundane characters) as opposed to just holies. Though I completely agree that instead of bitching about a magic being OP, one should use their brain and try to find out how they can combat it. This doesn't mean write yourself to be more powerful, and this doesn't apply to just one side of the argument.

[Eurielle 1189]

2 minutes ago, Babehab said:

The good vs evil dynamic is inherently flawed since dark creatures or mages have a habit of not wanting to be antagonists at all

This, my Paleknight is rather peaceful

[Killmatronix 103]

@Farryn

Why would you become a soldier of good if not to protect others from evil? I know I became a holy mage because that aspect appealed to me, being a soldier of good. But that concept is stupid too, since this isn't an MMO, meaning no side should be forced to lose because of some alignment antics. Everyone can be argued to be a hero, but I'm going off of what I wanted to say. Why else would you become a soldier of good if not to be a hero? And, just for the sake of repetition, I'm not saying one side should have an inherent edge over the other in the grand scale of things. (Even though holy magic was made just to counter spooks.) But it's been said that magics need a closer look, too. In the end, some holies may not care about fighting spooks and some spooks may not care about fighting holies, and that is perfectly fine, since as I said, people can RP whatever they want. But I am speaking of majority here.

[HurferDurfer1 2978]

there is no such thing as a tier four lich, we dont get stronger in time, they stay in one static state, its hard to tier creatures like that id think, as most dark or light creatures dont change, its the magic they may or may not use that is the deciding factor

[Leric 1097]

The issue with this is all literally all lies within the fault of nearly every lore piece for dark magic. This is honestly nobodies fault but the writers of the lore for every piece of dark magic.  Look at the comparisons in offensives when it comes to a dark mage and holy mage. Sorry not sorry. 

Look at your lore. A large majority of spook magic is not even primarily offensive, it relies 80% upon the creation of other beings to do dirty work for them. Sure you have some little abilities here and there scattered throughout the various pieces of lore that can be used offensively, but in reality most of them rely entirely upon voidal magic. Shade magic is really the only purely offensive dark magic (I don't really consider Fi to be 'offensive')  out of everything. Mysticism, necromancy, perrins new demon inferis stuff, are mostly based upon creations with little pure offensive spells.   

Then you take a gander a holy magic which for all intensive purposes is solely designated to obliterating all forms of dark magic. When it really comes down to it - its a fault in the writers of the lore for not creating a purely offensive based magic that can be used to counter holy magic and also harm them. Imagine a sort of  reverse ascended 'spook' magic that greatly harms people with any form of a deific connection and call it 'blackfire' (xd).  The fault is in the lore, holy magic is created for the sole purpose of tearing apart dark magic - whereas there isn't really any dark magic thats created to do a similar thing to holy.   

[Aelu / Rel (Combustionary) 1540]

Tiers really only exist as a guideline for teaching, at this point. They aren't formally kept track of, outside of between teacher and student.

 

Really, I just think that the solution is to simply categorize which holy magics hurt which spooks (i.e. Thalassians are only hurt by clerics), and go from there. Too much quantification makes things too messy. Shouldn't need to bring out a calculator and rulebook to settle every fight.

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

General guidelines would be nice but not set rules with numeric values imo 

[Wyvernbane 252]

Over all, I honestly think this is a terrible, terrible idea. The main problem I have with all of this is the relying on all these combined tier numbers. It over complicates simple interactions that occur between dark and holy users daily; it takes away from RP rather than increases it (there are enough OOC arguments over fights as is without tossing this mess of OOC rules into the fray); tiers are currently not tracked by the MT, and seeing as how they don't "officially" exist or have specific times to reach said tiers anymore, this idea is completely impractical. 

 

Id also finally like to add the note that magic does not have to be perfectly balanced all the time. I would also argue that holy magic does not give a massive advantage to the user: I have seen fights go both ways on a consistent basis, this coming from a holy user. Our magic, in my experience, does not have huge advantages over dark users. Is it effective? Yes. But dark users win over us consistently. Don't try to fix something that isn't broken: holy magic and dark magic are not broken.

[monkeypoacher 8055]

why do you need to obsessively "balance" lore and rewrite it again and again until it stops making sense

 

just roleplay your abilities in the interest of fairness and good storytelling, 

 

be a good sport, and let other people have fun.

 

it really doesn't require this much thought.

[BonesOfTheEarth 2252]

This has so, so so many holes in it in many ways. Sounds to me as though an OOC barrier stopping something that could be deemed logical. It's very possible for 1 spook to fight 2 t5 holy mages, and as well vice versa with 1 holy and a group of spooks. I've seen it both ways, and forcing it to be even through OOC is a bad idea. If anything, I'd leave it as it is and allow holy mages to learn voidal as well - as that is what causes the massive gap between any two groups from what I've seen(I.e. it's common to see spooks who can cast magic besting holy mages, but not spooks who cant such as paleknights or ghouls).

[ski_king3 0]

This post is going to be lazily written. I am sorry in advance.

 

 

For one, this thread greatly overstates the ability differences between holy magic users and dark magic users. It's not an accurate representation.

 

Secondly, it doesn't really take into account how these magics actually function. 99% of the time, dark vs. holy magic isn't about who can throw more of one at the other and see which dominates the other. It is holy folk casting spells to try and hurt the dark folks, which are more affected by them based on what exactly they are, and dark folks trying to cast spells in return.

 

But most importantly, dark folks tend to beat out holy folks, particularly lately, because these magics do not exist in a vacuum. Yes, holy magic should win in a head to head fight, but that isn't how most combative interactions work. I will copy/paste something I put in LM Chat about this thread.

 

 

Holy magic folks:

>have strict moral code that they are not meant to break

>opponents are secretive about their practices

>cannot just stab suspected spooks unless absolutely sure

>generally required to follow local authorities rules, which often protect spooks

>basically perpetually wearing signs that say "come stab me spooks"

 

Dark magic folks:

>no moral compass unless self-imposed

>opponents open about their practices

>can and routinely do surprise stab holy folks and other enemies

>not required to follow any laws

>hide what they are from the world unless utterly inept or outed by trusted individuals

 

 

Being a holy magic user has its advantages. It's also super restrictive on what you can do unless you break the rules of you god, in which case you can get slapped the **** out and disconnected. And even if you break the rules of your god, you're still bound to get fucked up.

[BonesOfTheEarth 2252]

2 minutes ago, ski_king3 said:

utterly inept or outed

Hm which are you?

 

 

Love you dad <3

[Blundermore 2741]

you could start by trimming the fat on the 20-30 different kinds of dark magic and dark creatures... or at least allowing holy magic to be a bit more interesting than it is at the moment. Lore team denys us from expanding into more creative ideas because either the dark magic lot already have it or the idea is apparently unworkable. We're kinda in a corner here and not by our own actions, staff has purposefully written us into a corner and won't let us do anything interesting with what we have.  

 

I mean people say holy magic is boring an unimaginative because all it comes down to is: HOLY FLAMES STRIKE OUT AGAINST THE DARKNESS, BLWAAARGH! But the thing is whenever we try to do anything else we're simply told no. Not through lack of trying either, I've submitted about 20 different ideas to the lore team in the past and all have been denied on account of either being already done by a dark magic or because the idea is unworkable or apparently doesn't make sense in their mind etc. 

On the note of Holy orders doing more when it comes to other things, the Ascended is already doing so, it may not seem like it because you personally aren't witnessing it but we are developing our own culture and method in RP again and have grown to the point now where we rival some nation's active playerbases. 

[Abyssus 487]

do you want to know how to properly fix dark/holy interaction
eliminating it
make all magic neutral
you don't get these problems with voidal magic

[SodaiKamikaze 652]

17 minutes ago, Abyssus said:

do you want to know how to properly fix dark/holy interaction
eliminating it
make all magic neutral
you don't get these problems with voidal magic

0

 

He's got a point you know.