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[Your View] Your thoughts/hot takes on Elementalism/Shamanism. Hand em over.


SlitheryC1
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What the title says lads. I think this would be most useful to help out people who may try to rewrite the magic.
I've been fascinated by it the moment I learnt of it, and honestly quite saddened when I realized it was shelved.
 I do hope to see it come back someday, but for that to happen there will need to be fixes. What changes/rewrites do you think would be needed?

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Shamanism is one of the server's oldest magics. I've been around since 2011 and It's always been a part of my experience since I've primarily been an orc player.  It's hard for me to not to  spazz out about how many times the race or the magic has been shafted over the years, but one thing I can admit begrudgingly is the amount of time it takes for shamanism to "catch up" with the magic meta and context of the server. 

 

A lot of Staff are afraid of shamanism and rightfully so for all of the unhindered destructive stuff it can do to the server's cannon, nations and groups, and other magics/factions.  Spirits have been around a lot longer then the reformatting of aengudaemons in Athera but their overall place in the world hasn't changed or been effected by such beyond Ixli/Ikuras/Orgon.  It's also hard to weave narratives and events into server history/lore because of not only how fractured the shaman community is, but the ideas of spirits and the magic as a whole. 

 

People are divisive about how spirits should be roleplayed and act both IRP and OOCly, myself included. I've been working on a rewrite of elementalism for the last few months now, and it prefaces like this:

 

Elementalism suffered from its lack of interactivity beyond combat spells and proper interaction with the Spirits. In the past, many problematic shamans ignored the process of worshiping and interacting with the spirits all-together, while gaining all the benefits of the magic.  The purpose of this magic is to reward collaboration and interaction with the spirits, while preserving interaction with the elemental spirits. 

 

Rather than having freeform elemental (THINK AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER) bending, spells are reserved to ritual magics/casters having to think more about when and where they cast their spells, while cantrip/normal casting spells are purely defensive.  
 

 

Elemental Spirits are the strongest spirits by orders of magnitude compared to their Immortal or Ancestral Counterparts, and so the manipulation/interaction of such needs to be strictly regulated and understood by magic user and staff.  That requires more active shamans and more staff willing to learn/interact with the magic. 

 

If you're interested in reviving the shaman community hit me up.

 

Edited by Panashea
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37 minutes ago, Panashea said:

Shamanism is one of the server's oldest magics. I've been around since 2011 and It's always been a part of my experience since I've primarily been an orc player.  It's hard for me to not to  spazz out about how many times the race or the magic has been shafted over the years, but one thing I can admit begrudgingly is the amount of time it takes for shamanism to "catch up" with the magic meta and context of the server. 

 

A lot of Staff are afraid of shamanism and rightfully so for all of the unhindered destructive stuff it can do to the server's cannon, nations and groups, and other magics/factions.  Spirits have been around a lot longer then the reformatting of aengudaemons in Athera but their overall place in the world hasn't changed or been effected by such beyond Ixli/Ikuras/Orgon.  It's also hard to weave narratives and events into server history/lore because of not only how fractured the shaman community is, but the ideas of spirits and the magic as a whole. 

 

People are divisive about how spirits should be roleplayed and act both IRP and OOCly, myself included. I've been working on a rewrite of elementalism for the last few months now, and it prefaces like this:

 

Elementalism suffered from its lack of interactivity beyond combat spells and proper interaction with the Spirits. In the past, many problematic shamans ignored the process of worshiping and interacting with the spirits all-together, while gaining all the benefits of the magic.  The purpose of this magic is to reward collaboration and interaction with the spirits, while preserving interaction with the elemental spirits. 

 

Rather than having freeform elemental (THINK AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER) bending, spells are reserved to ritual magics/casters having to think more about when and where they cast their spells, while cantrip/normal casting spells are purely defensive.  
 

 

Elemental Spirits are the strongest spirits by orders of magnitude compared to their Immortal or Ancestral Counterparts, and so the manipulation/interaction of such needs to be strictly regulated and understood by magic user and staff.  That requires more active shamans and more staff willing to learn/interact with the magic. 

 

If you're interested in reviving the shaman community hit me up.

 


I do think that it is a very interesting take on it and thank you for the insight, I'll dm you on discord when/if I feel like I've gathered enough info and when I am confident enough to take on the challenge (simply because I'm quite new to this and feel pretty uneducated).

It's a pretty gnarly task from what I've seen, and I thank you for putting in the effort.

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Elementalism ended up getting shot because not many ended up teaching it in its last run. At least in a way that proved it could exist without needing injections. I personally don’t think it would be terrible having it rewritten, it’s just that in the recent run it did not go well.

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Shamanism community is a lot stronger than people think in my opinion. Main thing that people take issue of is that most shamans set out on their own rather than forming communities. I personally find magic communities short-lived most of the time, other magics included.

 

My main gripe is, as Panashea said, and the reason most shamans quit the magic as I have seen, that Shamanism is VERY misunderstood by ST, causing most of the magic to be not that that powerful as it used to be. For example, Farseers are extremely limited when it comes to spells. Although I am one who despises power grabbing via magic, I do find the magic very weak other than spirit walking, which is to this day my favorite part of Shamanism.

 

When it comes to elementalism, I really doubt that it will ever come back as it used to be due to it's freeform style which encouraged powergaming. Unless heavy reforms are set in place with drawbacks, it's not coming back (as many wish it could).

 

To even begin fixing shamanism we need to realize that the community is not the problem it's the education of those who do not understand or are afraid of the magic.

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Idk if this exists but honestly I’d love to see the creation of trinkets, effigies, more conflict between shamans and a list of spirits that don’t necessarily get along. 
 

Some sort of corruption path for shamanism that serves as a flavourful debuff if shamans fall out of line.

 

More spirit lore. I’d personally love more detail on each individual spirit.

 

Maybe an optional aesthetic mutation system depending on which spirit the shaman is more drawn towards.

 

I’ve not read the lore much because I want to keep shamanism shit mostly a surprise to me so I’m sorry if I’m repeating  anything that already exists.

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Throwing in my own two cents on the matter, being a writer of sorts. On the topic of elementalism and shamanism as a whole was a can of worms gets easily misunderstood.

When It came to the last injection and prior to it for elementalism, what @Astrophysical isnt wrong. The magic felt freeform and to some, whilst they knew their own limits, there will always be those who try to throw it off the deep end. Balancing things such as that without one saying "To op plz nerf." Is honestly a statement for any element based magic. As for the last Injection itself, I recall those who were GFed it, sometimes werent even on. some not actively seeking student. On top of the time the orcish or spiritualist player base wasn't all to good either. So in my opinion, it was given at a bad time, whilst i love to see a rewrite or another attempt at an injection, those chances are slimmer then the debate if boomsteel could be affected by metal elementalists.

For the whole concept of shamanism, If you arent a witch doctor, it is VERY limiting. Especially in farseers case when i had spoken to each Farseer player that was active at the time. And all had the similar effect of more then half of the spells being useless to even the point that they are bad for story telling, and that the walks are the only good things. Hence why i attempt to rewrite the spells for a more balance, but useful aspect. Shamanism gets heavily underrated, misunderstood and mostly boiled down to stereotypes as "Ooga spooky spirit stuff". So yea, TL dr. Buff attempt woo, Cause whilst the magic is assumed to be freeformed. Its quite limiting.

Also Lutas should be able to do more ghost smiting stuff :)  & add spirit smithing, that is all.

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When shit gets rewritten. It gets handed out to the writer and people the writer prefer to give it to. Sometimes. It's circle jerked. And it gets messed up because of it. Teachers should never removed individuals magic applications because they disagree oocly. This is a roleplay server. 

 

But in the end. Staff don't understand shamanism. They've never wanted to work along with shamanism and spiritualism. Constantly portions of orc lore have been stolen and rewritten to fit whatever the lore team wants to work with. A popular example of this is inferni. Completely removed from the spiritualism lore and made its own stuff because lore team never cared. Staff have also retconned important portions of orc/spiritualism/shamanism lore without a care about the repercussions because the people who vote on these things aren't members of the community. They lack a critical portion of the decision process. Magic and lore on lotc is all about who you know and who your friends are. 

 

All this aside. I'll give @ScreamingDingocredit, he's tried to fix this problem. As much as I hate him, elementalism shouldn't come back at the moment. Farseer and lutaumancy have been nuked into the ground and need to get helped first. 

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1 hour ago, L0rdLawyer said:

When shit gets rewritten. It gets handed out to the writer and people the writer prefer to give it to. Sometimes. It's circle jerked. And it gets messed up because of it. Teachers should never removed individuals magic applications because they disagree oocly. This is a roleplay server. 

 

But in the end. Staff don't understand shamanism. They've never wanted to work along with shamanism and spiritualism. Constantly portions of orc lore have been stolen and rewritten to fit whatever the lore team wants to work with. A popular example of this is inferni. Completely removed from the spiritualism lore and made its own stuff because lore team never cared. Staff have also retconned important portions of orc/spiritualism/shamanism lore without a care about the repercussions because the people who vote on these things aren't members of the community. They lack a critical portion of the decision process. Magic and lore on lotc is all about who you know and who your friends are. 

 

All this aside. I'll give @ScreamingDingocredit, he's tried to fix this problem. As much as I hate him, elementalism shouldn't come back at the moment. Farseer and lutaumancy have been nuked into the ground and need to get helped first. 


Oh, I didn't realize Farseer and Lutamancy were screwed over as well, thank you for bringing that to my attention.
I'll be silently taking notes on the other stuff ye and others have said as well, thank you for the input.

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5 hours ago, RaiderBlue said:

Elementalism ended up getting shot because not many ended up teaching it in its last run. At least in a way that proved it could exist without needing injections. I personally don’t think it would be terrible having it rewritten, it’s just that in the recent run it did not go well.

Very true lots of the intended starting teachers gave up / quit the server and their TA's were shuffled around to where you ended up with someone like me who had like 3-4 of the T5's + TA's and it just wasn't enough to teach everyone. However it getting shelved allowed me to teach my other TA's out which I believe is the main reason as to why the Farseer line of shamans was so successful as I was able to teach some great people which carried it on from there!
 

That being said, I think that when it's rewritten in should include all of the different elements in the same lore piece and MA. I'm always available to help with lore pieces if anyone ever wants to try and rewrite it.

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just providing clarification

 

Shamanism was a powerful magic in it's most recent write when it was accepted. It was given to both Orcs and Darkelves as to have 2 grandfathers for each subtype would be more than the orcish playerbase at the time. Aswell, it was a majority-"dark elf player" made-rewrite, and thus, roughly half or less of the grandfathers went to darkelves. I won't argue semantics, but by example, earth elementalism with four guys could create 402,000 blocks of dirt/cobblestone out of completely thin air. Sure it was noncombat, but there is nothing today with the potential to perform like this. Might nitpick a bit, but Storm and Metal elementalism were frequently brought to the st as powergaming by both players and moderation- but it wasn't. It was just written that way. And we were alright with that. Strength was a problem with it, sure, but it's not like it's an st-sin to have strong magics or CAs.

 

We'll move onto the reason why it was shelved. Shamanism went through a ~6-8 month activity trial period, as with every magic. As with every magic, the trial expected there to be an equal number of TAs from non-grandfathers as there were to grandfathers. Example, you make "magic", and you, and one other, are grandfathered. Between you two you have ten slots to teach. That is expecting, in 6-8 months time, to have two students who make a TA. It is the bare minimum requirement. 

 

No shamanism sect met that except Witch Doctory. Of all shamanism sects (Elementalism of Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, Storm, Farseer, Witch Doctory, and Lutaumancy), only three of these sects (Witch Doctory, Farseer, and Earth Elementalism) ever had a student progress past Tier 3. 

 

Tier 3 took just under a month to reach.

 

Of thirty-five people connected to Shamanism in the activity monitor period, only three MAs ever made it past tier 3, after 6-8 months.

 

Now it might be teachers fault, indeed; but the teachers aswell had grandfathers reallocated 10(+, I stopped logging after the tenth as Management's mind was practically made) times, which indicated that in ten individual instances, people holding shamanism could not hold a TA. On average, a new person was being grandfathered into Shamanism every 18 days, and the activity of the magic did not change whatsoever. 

 

Now moving on, maybe it's the activity system's fault. Maybe we shouldn't measure activity of a magic. Maybe even if it's only four or five people who don't teach others, we should still have it on the server. It's there that the ST fundamentally disagrees. 

A magic held by four or five people who are unmoved in any effort to share it or use it outside of personal advantage/gain (as we singlehandedly saw) does not add to the server. There is no mysticism to it, there is no specialness to one guy having the power to move mountains (literally) and only he has the ability to do it. You can too, maybe. 

 

I'll admit it was a bad time for shamanism. The orcish playerbase was a nightmare and as always the darkelves were in a state of limbo. There were a few players permanently banned and/or TOSd who happened to carry Shamanism apps/TAs. However, it is unmistakeable, that the ST had tried every exhaustive method to get any life out of this magic. The entire thing should have been shelved except Witch Doctory, as only it was able to get two TAs after 6-8 months. 

 

But we didn't do that. We knew it'd be unfair, and it'd be a spit in the face to all the effort those who really tried to put in that work to go to nothing. So we kept the three supportive types of Farseer, Witch Doctor, and Lutaumancy, made even more grandfathers/fast-track learning, and amended every issue in the lore which might've potentially hindered the activity, working with the shaman community that remained to fix the problems. 

 

 

Just wanted to clarify that the shelving prior and all the backend-effort that went with it was with merit, and reason as to why it was shelved. While I won't say no, I do discourage a (elementalism) rewrite as I cannot see a rewrite progressing or working on a fundamental ground. Harsupexy is incredibly well made, and while Farseer and WD do hold some issues, are both well written magics aswell that can be amended/added to in fixes. Lutau's pretty good too, and it's aesthetic is what's kept it alive.

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7 hours ago, L0rdLawyer said:

 Constantly portions of orc lore have been stolen and rewritten to fit whatever the lore team wants to work with. A popular example of this is inferni.

 

ignore opinion they spelt inferi wrong

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12 hours ago, SquakHawk said:

 

 

We'll move onto the reason why it was shelved. Shamanism went through a ~6-8 month activity trial period, as with every magic. As with every magic, the trial expected there to be an equal number of TAs from non-grandfathers as there were to grandfathers. Example, you make "magic", and you, and one other, are grandfathered. Between you two you have ten slots to teach. That is expecting, in 6-8 months time, to have two students who make a TA. It is the bare minimum requirement. 

 

I feel like this mentality is part of what is wrong with LotC. Magic shouldn't have to be spread super far. If people don't want to take a student they shouldn't have to. Its why I argued for the lore change to Paladinism, to remove the TA requirements to progress from t4 to t5. You just add a lot of bloat in the player base by forcing the magic to grow in players. 

 

Though, I'm not saying people should pull a dragonroost and write magics to make their characters more powerful, but making it so you have to have x people with a TA after y months isn't it imo.

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Lore literally doesn't matter.

 

You can write a hundred thousand words of Tolkienesque prose about a magic, the inner workings of the void, the intrigues of the aengudaemons, etc., and it may never matter. There is a small, self-limiting group of people who will ever read it (in all likelihood, people who are learning the magic)

 

It all comes down to the person using the magic, how well they convey the impression of the magic in the moment through minecraft emotes. If the lore is good, and the people using it suck at roleplay, the lore is bad. If the lore isn't taught to people AND ROLEPLAYED it might as well not exist.

 

This is the folly of the Lore Auteur and Story Team Member. The constant insistence for substance over style in a medium which severely limits substance. The craving to make FromSoft-esque allusions to lore that no one cares about in the first place, because unlike in their games, LoTC does not convey an atmosphere of mystery, and has nothing to explore.

 

Anyways my advice for Elementalism/Shamanism is this; Shamanism has immense potential - Minecraft is a visual medium. Have a magic about contacting an otherworldly spirit realm? Build parts of the spirit realm. Have people walk through them. Create a visual and gameplay experience that establishes the vibe. If anyone tries to stop you, ignore them. 

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