Voidal Opinions

[PhilosopherBear 397]

 

Discussion: The Current State of Voidal Magic

Hello everyone!
 

This is a bit unusual for me, as I don’t typically post questions like this—I tend to keep my opinions to myself. However, I’m genuinely curious about how the community views the current state of Voidal magic.

 

I’d love to hear perspectives from all sides—whether you’ve played a Voidal mage in the past, never played one, or are currently involved with Voidal magic.

Having been part of this community for five years, I’ve always found Voidal magic fascinating. The concept of the Void captivated me when I first joined, and for nearly 3-4 of those years, I’ve actively played as a Voidal mage.

 

I plan to engage with everyone who shares their thoughts here and will also put together a more structured post after this discussion has run its course. Looking forward to hearing your insights!

[wowj 9747]

people need to play wizard wizards who wear wizard robes and have wizard hats and big staffs, though few can do that RP well

[Luxury 1082]

I am tired of reading about the crp meta across the various discords.

[Hom 1987]

generally i like the lore where it’s at, and i agree with wowj in the general sense that i’d love to see people diversify how they play their mages. voidal magic is a very neutral flexible magic, and i love when i see people use that to craft unique aesthetics instead of falling into the vaguely default voidal vibe, not that there’s anything wrong with it. does this make sense??

[McSteve 131]

All void rp is the same and when I tell people Im gonna be swapping out translocation as a scion they shit on me cuz meta.

[z3m0s 1957]

More creation, more flavor, less CRP.

[Laeonathan 5889]

artificery is fun rp

[PhilosopherBear 397]

2 hours ago, wowj said:

people need to play wizard wizards who wear wizard robes and have wizard hats and big staffs, though few can do that RP well

I understand where you coming from and there is a good amount of diffetent ways to play a mage, personally I do choose a more goofy aproach. Also a magic hat can go a LONG way and are a must accessory in my eyes!!

1 hour ago, Luxury said:

I am tired of reading about the crp meta across the various discords.

One of main concerns and biggest issues, thus why I make this post (and will make another like I said). The minmaxing is a bad stain, however bad apples will always exists and punishing your avarage mage for picking what they like is just sad

 

1 hour ago, McSteve said:

All void rp is the same and when I tell people Im gonna be swapping out translocation as a scion they shit on me cuz meta.

Kinda falls in the statement I made above, you cant force people to act differently, but Id rather have less magics (like I do now) rather than pick one up for the soul purpose of having it or because its "meta" or because its the new hip rework, same goes for dropping magics for the same purpose.

[PhilosopherBear 397]

1 hour ago, Hom said:

generally i like the lore where it’s at, and i agree with wowj in the general sense that i’d love to see people diversify how they play their mages. voidal magic is a very neutral flexible magic, and i love when i see people use that to craft unique aesthetics instead of falling into the vaguely default voidal vibe, not that there’s anything wrong with it. does this make sense??

The lore itself is good. With some plotholes I admit but I do not think its anything to worry over (though I will talk about the 'balancing' later on for sure) 

On the second part I LOVED it when we were more united and I could just see all the different interpratations of all of the other mages, from fashion sense, to manurisms and of course spell cosmetics and its something Id like to add on in the future as I have an idea I might drop in the next post.

1 hour ago, z3m0s said:

More creation, more flavor, less CRP.

It bothers me that it has come to this tbh, Its supposed to be a magic to be EXPLORED and right now it feels caged and only pushed backwards because a majority focuses on CRP and even when the community stirs away from it we still end up getting a stray nerf or rewrite that focuses on nothinf but nerfing CRP and completely ignoring any new potential flavouring it could have had.

[Samler 1564]

I lowkey miss the entirely free-form aspect of the olden days, but knowing the server culture these days I know why we can't have it back. :(

But I enjoy it as my weird paranoid masked mage, once in a while having a Gandalf moment as he lesser enchants something for a kiddo or talks about old stuff, but I guess that is more tied to 'old elf character' and less 'old mage' ^^

[mika1278 3213]

remove the crp meta by buffing all other voidal magics :)

[PhilosopherBear 397]

5 minutes ago, Samler said:

I lowkey miss the entirely free-form aspect of the olden days, but knowing the server culture these days I know why we can't have it back. :(

But I enjoy it as my weird paranoid masked mage, once in a while having a Gandalf moment as he lesser enchants something for a kiddo or talks about old stuff, but I guess that is more tied to 'old elf character' and less 'old mage' ^^

It is understandable why we cant have the old voidal magic, but allowing an extent of freeform to a magic that is all about imaginatination should be the default. I am not saying to let it go wild, but mages being clones in moveset and in general lacking any seperate direction and identity is just didapointing and I hope more people understand and feel the same.

 

That aside, creating a spark like that for someone, especially someone new is something that all of us should strive for and its appreciated when do e right!

[Morigung-oog 5697]

Hello hello, void mage player since 2018 here. 

 

Voidal magic sits in a tricky place as being the 'default' magic. It is the most easily accessible magic on the server bar perhaps bardmancy and housemagery and thus is the most susceptible to powergaming, misinterpretation and generally poor representation. It makes it generally hard to establish any sort of eventlines for voidal playerbases as a result.

 

I really enjoyed the Book of Metis eventline though again this is a prime example of the void mage playerbase being given an in to something really awesome [in this instance, a balanced approach and path to void magic usage on the material plane and a REALLY awesome CART from a flavor standpoint] but nothing was done with it. I was so excited to get mages together to explore Metis's lore and potentially revive some mage culture but it was like getting blood from a stone when it came to getting a response from other mages.

 

Void magic is supposed to be versatile, though we have seen both an increase and decrease in that over the past few years. The voidal feats; scion, eminence, voidstalking and artificery allow for mage archetypes previously impossible to achieve. I generally believe these to be a good addition though I dislike how a few bad players ruin the experience for others and the feats are nerfed to punish not only the offending players but the rest of the base [some of us play these right, I swear.]  Unfortunately, due to a few bad players, some of the more combat-leaning feats [namely scion, eminent and voidstalker] receive a bad rep.  I'd like to see the roleplay standard on these upped and for ST to punish individual players over the entire playerbase for misuse.

 

I'm personally a huge fan of the spellblade vibe. I love being able to have my character swing a sword [with echoknight soul lag aesthetics] while being generally limited in her voidal capabilities. It makes sense, especially since she prefers to fight voidal horrors and the concept of voidal tearing wherever possible. What I wish I saw more of was people taking these feats for more story-based purposes rather than 'hurr durr i want to be more powerful' from an ooc standpoint that generally does nothing to progress the story. Valindra took arcane scion when her two closest friends were killed in the Almaris hollow and she became disgusted with the void itself. It feels like I'm contradicting myself a bit, I know, but I'd like to see the feats be utilized more but also not generally and for more story-based purposes.

 

After some time mulling this over, I also generally oppose the Magnum Opus system. I don't think it has been used in the right sense. It creates new spells but in a playerbase like this they are only really used to one up one another in terms of spell power and gatekeep individual spells rather than introduce diverse mage lineages or similar.

 

As much as I appreciate void magic as a concept, I do genuinely think half of the problem is the playerbase rather than the system itself.

 

[Benleft 2580]

VVizard hats

[xo31 3979]

I think voidal magic is evil and while people can rp "good" mages it should be out of irp ignorance and they need to reconcile oocly with the fact that is is evil to use.