|
|
Post by Deleted on May 20, 2019 2:36:01 GMT -4
So! Recently the staff have been asking for feedback regarding staff changes, rules, and most importantly for this thread, the system. Chary decided to tackle the subject of giving feedback and making giving suggestions more accessible for members, this inspired me to tackle the system itself both to help do my part and because I've had various problems and suggestions for the system I've been sitting on for a whole now, but either never felt like I had enough points or it never felt like a good time.
But since the staff is asking for as much feedback as they can I've decided to come forward to air me and multiple peoples various grievances with the system. Before I start however I'm going to set a few things straight and a few "rules".
A few things before hand
1. I didn't make this alone, before making this thread I invited anyone willing to talk about the system into VC to help come with the various points I'll be presenting here. I've also talked to many people before hand about the system, with many of those discussions helping me develop my points so I'd like to make sure to give credit where it's due. Shout outs to LB, Blender, Risaka, Kyou, Creepy, Perry and anyone else I've talked about this to before for helping me make this! If I left you out its probably because I wasn't sure how you'd feel about me adding you in without permission and if you want me to put you on the list dm me on discord.
2. This is not a personal attack on anyone from staff. Generally I have yet to have a problem with anyone from the staff as you guys are good people, and to make sure this doesn't end up getting heated or into a mud slinging I will refrain from naming specific staff members.
3. I don't expect the staff to completely rework the site on my own personal whims especially if certain things have a good reason for the way they are, even if just one or two of the things I list happen I'd be completely satisfied. I'm also fully cognizant that making suggestions is infinitely easier than implementing them, so take everything here with a grain of salt and be understanding if some things seem contradictory to each other.
I'm writing this under the reasonable assumption that either certain things are flat out too much work and that I might not get any thing changed and as such some things may end up seeming contradictory slightly, for example I'm against the current quirk system but I ask about what should constitute as abilities for a quirk, or similar things, so keep that in mind.
4. Another thing I'll mention ahead of time is certain staff may recognize themselves without me saying their names and so beforehand I'd like to say, I'm not under any idea you did this with some strange malicious intent as if there's like a secret conspiracy out to get me and you guys are still cool for working with me and helping me out.
Something I try to get across in this work is that I'll accept any decision the staff comes to and has made thus far, again suggestions and trying to expose what me and other people believe are the faults of the system.
5. The reason I made this as its own thread is because I feel as if it should be open, I want to start a discussion about balance with everyone throwing their two cents in. And if I had left it in the feedback thread I felt like it might be swept away and I wouldn't know if it was actually discussed. I also felt like this topic is big enough that it should have its own thread dedicated to it rather then be another comment on feedback.
So just to make it clear, I'm specifically aiming to cause a discussion and I'm prepared to defend any of my points, I made sure to not put a single thing here that I wouldn't feel comfortable with defending. Especially staff, I want them to give me reasons why x is the way it is so I can either get a better understanding or try to make a rebuttal. So again, please comment here.
Rules of Conduct
1. I'm going to try and come at this from an objective angle, meaning I'm going to try and steer away from opinionated pieces. Now mind you of course due to the nature of the topic one could aptly make the argument that everything here is "opinionated" and of course some of this is going to just be my opinion on certain manners since I'm human, but what I mean by that is before I made this I had a few more topics of discussion that I wanted to discuss but after the vc call I had before hand I decided against putting them in here since they were extremely debatable and I felt like it was more of my own opinion rather then anyone elses.
2. I'll also try to steer away from buzzwords or being accusatory towards staff as we're all people here and everyone deserves respect. And I do understand that this system is a work in progress, that's why this thread is made. I already touched on this a bit earlier but I'm restating, this is not an attack on staff.
3. If something doesn't work I want a concrete reason why; This is a human problem but people have this weird thing of if they can't defend a topic they just throw up their hands and give non-answers, now part of that is from the nature of talking since you don't always have time to go and grab facts etc. but since this is on a forum where you have time to post I want actual reasons and arguments.
Again, I'm not pointing any fingers here I just wanted to get that out of the way.
4. This is about the system for the most part, however a few things are in regards to the structure of the site but they are in regards to the system itself and the act of roleplaying the hopeful reason everyone is here and not Bakugou's hot bod. (I can pray) Also, for people who don't wanna read all my long-winded exposition, I put tldrs.
5. Small note: I'd prefer responses to this to be in thread, but if people don't have the time and want to make a counter point I'm completely fine with someone going to my dms or @'ing me only thing I'm sort of against is jumping in VC to debate me but like I doubt anyone here would do that but I felt like saying that.
Alright with that stuff handled, lets move on to the fun part!
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 20, 2019 4:09:05 GMT -4
1. Power levels, grading, and inconsistency
By far the biggest problem the site is facing is that depending on who grades your sheet means what exactly is approved, some quirks that seem okay to one mod another would deny.
A big example of this is on the subject of what constitutes as an ability, for example right now since recently emitters were changed to strictly two advantages it lead to a lot of members ask if range is considered one of the two abilities for your quirk with varying answers depending on who you ask with some saying yes and others saying no. This makes making characters a hassle since one mod could give you the green light while another wouldn't. Right now as it is there's a striking difference between characters solely based on who graded them.
This sounds to me like different staff have different visions on what exactly the power level the site takes on and I have a two suggestions.
One, would be a staff meeting to decide what exactly the site's power level is and what is considered too "unrealistic" or etc, because this is something I've personally had to deal on a few occasions and I'd rather have a character be denied from the outset rather then be greenlit only to completely my character later down the road. It's a hassle for everyone involved and the easiest way to avoid it is make sure everyone is on the same page of what exactly a quirk can and can't do, it's extremely confusing for one staff to tell you something wouldn't fly and another tell you they see no problems with it, especially if you have to make changes because of that.
Two, make a public google doc that can be edited by all of the staff and put in anything that was decided in ask-staff so it both makes it easier to navigate what is allowed and what isn't, but also maybe have some people take up the role as "chronicler" to put things in the google doc, I know I'd be willing to offer myself if it helped the site's health. As it is right now there's so much conflicting information on the site even between staff about the rules that this greatly impacted everything on this list going forward since there was just so much conflicting information that its made making this somewhat a struggle as we every topic I've brought up I had to triple check and even then I'm unsure. Also somethings I'll bring up later down the road may circle back to this topic as this is probably the biggest and most common complaint on the site.
To better shed light on why this is such a problem I'll supply a story from my creation of my most recent character, Zugaikotsu, a man who creates a dark thick gunpowder smoke that applies blindness and detonates from a flicker whenever he closes his mouth. Since everything on the site is extremely centric around abilities I wondered that since blindness only is applied while you are in the proximity of the smoke would his smoke be see through? So I put a question in ask staff, and I got two very different answers.
One staff came to me and told me that since I didn't list the word obscuring in the smoke that yes my smoke would be completely see through if they weren't standing directly in it, meanwhile two other staff in the ask-staff channel told me that my smoke due to being smoke would not be see through without at least having some form of enhanced perception. Another thing for Zugaikotsu is for the staff I was working with to make him I was told I had to list his flicker as one of his two quirk benefits, and had to take the blindness for his smoke as a combat ability. Meanwhile I've talked about it with other staff and they've told me no that wouldn't, I don't have a problem with either decision my problem is I keep getting two very different answers and it makes the whole process confusing.
Anyway that's enough of that onto the next point!
TLDR: I suggest making a google doc that all the staff can edit to add stuff from ask-staff as a sort of "living" document. And staff should have a meeting to decide the power level of the site and how strong quirks are allowed to be since who grades what decides how much one can do with their ability. 2. Freeform and quirks in regards to the ability systemOne of the things talked about on this site is the emphasis on free form vs hard stats and mechanics, but conversely the current systems in place limit the free form experience and stats have their roles filled in by combat abilities that operate basically as quasi-stats except a bit more vague but basically filling the same niche for all intents and purposes.
A good example of how the current system inhibits free form (and in my own personal opinion, fun) is how quirks are handled in regards TO abilities. Right now your quirk can only have two benefits, unless you are a transformation, and what qualifies as a benefit is so vague and up in the air that, range, is being debated to see if its still inherent to quirks and if range is no longer inherent to quirks it further diminishes what quirks do, since, if you'd want it to have any range beyond touch you'd have to basically dedicate half of your possible quirk advantages to being able to even use your ability at any sort of range which goes without saying just isn't fun or good for this site.
Remember through, this isn't the case right now but the fact that there's two says on the matter and people have to ask about it, its worth stating since its possible someone might accidentally make their ability with that in mind and limits what they can do with their power.
I have multiple examples I can bring up for this that, if asked for, I'll supply. However for this I'll use my own character, Zugaikotsu, since he's one of the main reasons I bring up this point up because while creating him under the new rules I felt incredibly constricted from a creative point of view. And, again, a large part of this comes back into to who grades your quirk which I've discussed but its also partially a fault of the system of advantages.
So, for Zugaikotsu, he has a cosmetic mutation in the form of a black skull and an emitter where he breathes a gunpowder smoke that he can ignite from a flicker from his teeth. I decided I wanted to make his two abilities blindness and the explosion, but I was told by one staff that making the smoke and detonating it both counted as abilities. That was in a vc and late at night, the next day I went to another staff to have them help me create my character and while I was making it I was told by this staff I found out while I was trying to make a stealth combat ability that the stealth combat ability wouldn't work since the smoke would not inhibit any vision unless it applied blindness.
So I asked then why is the smoke considered its own advantage when by itself it does nothing and I was told because that's not my second ability and that my second ability was the fact my teeth could make a small flicker that could operate a flint and steel. So I had to use my other quirk advantage on making lights with my mouth and I had to use a combat ability on blindness to have the option later to stealth in my smoke. This sort of gets into my point that the system right now, as it is, gets in the way of free form especially when small things that may seem like flavor can be argued as advantages. And that right now the more detail and flavor you add to your ability due to the rigid nature of the advantage system all you do is hinder yourself, going against one of the things advertised and encouraged on this site.
You're encouraged to go into detail on your quirk and ability, but since you can't have more then two advantages it ends up just hindering you in the long run and only adding drawbacks. I could also talk about the strange situation where technically since I don't have an ability for it my smoke it's breathable for everyone and other weird rule things this falls into, but what I want to talk about is thanks to the rules I had to ask if my smoke was see through from an outside perspective since blindness only applies to those inside of it.
All of this comes together to inhibit the free form the site, because as it is right now, you have to design your abilities around the set stats of the site since you can only have two advantages, basically making all emitters damage + range or damage + x. Effectively boiling them down to their barest element since, on paper, you don't get any other abilities besides two for your quirk. Now I could bring up how this also creates a power gap thanks to the system of grandfathering that makes all newer characters weaker than characters created prior but I'll come in with a suggestion now.
Let quirks be more free form and either increase the amount of advantages your quirk grants as a base, or allow minor advantages. To be honest I'd rather it be more free form especially in regards of emitters since there's so many logic holes that two advantages makes it makes the whole thing hard to wrap your head around.
And it, again, goes against everything this site stands for since we constantly talk about keeping the site free form and free of stats when combat abilities are literally stats that boil everything down to its barest form to some extent.
TLDR: Right now abilities basically function as stats and go against the philosophy of the site, that being free form. I'd like to see quirks become more freeform again, or at the very least a system of flavor/minor advantages be allowed so members can still be creative with their quirks and find ways to make them different. As it stands right now, with how restrictive the quirk and rank system is, if someone has a higher rank quirk than you they're just objectively better, because right now most quirks end up being the same thing except with a slightly different wording, this hurts combat and, in my opinion, fun. Also combat abilities are functionally just stats but I'll get into that in a later point.
Moving forward
3. Generalization vs Specialization, durability is broken, abilities water down quirks, and XP costs.
To my next points, right now this site encourages specialization but both deters it and makes incentives for generalization. An interesting example comes up in the form of durability which right now debatably (Again, conflicting information you can never be 100 percent sure.) Covers just about everything from resistances to physical damage to energy damage, with endurance, pain tolerance, and all other variations just being refluffs of durability (As its been explained to me by the staff I'VE went to, again you ask someone else they'll probably say something else)
The reason this is a problem is, outside of your own designated weaknesses, durability covers way too much and makes taking resistances pointless when you could just take durability instead and be fine. Another thing worth noting is the cost to have durability apply to one specific part of your body its the same as having durability apply to your entire body.
Now, we run into two problems, everyone takes durability since its sooo good, and for anyone trying to do something unique like saying their durability is restricted to certain parts of their body or are trying to take some sort of resistance whether that be some sort of elemental resistance or poison or what have you, why do that when you could just take durability. This gets further exacerbated since durability is probably the most common and easiest thing people make justifications for in regards to combat abilities which I'll start discussing now.
Combat abilities, as their implemented right now, not only act as stats but also water down the purpose of a quirk. If everyone can have superhuman strength what's the point of taking a quirk for it, if everyone can be as sturdy as a tank why would anyone take a durability quirk. Now there's a few responses I expect by saying this, the most common one I've heard is you need proper justification for a combat ability, which might be true, depending on who you go to, but I've also been told on several occasions you only need justifications if you plan to go above C-rank, I'll get into my problem with these in a moment I also want to address that right now abilities are on par with quirks but quirks are slightly better. By how much you may ask? We have no clue, and that's a big problem.
It creates the problem that superhumans aren't really super or special, technically even a quirkless person who just trained a lot can get C-rank and be on par with the Red horn only slightly being beaten out by an unknown amount, that depending on who you ask is a decent chunk or by the skin of her teeth. This doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense, I don't think a normal person can lift a hippo, not even the strongest person in the world could. So why is it that anyone here can and they either don't need justification or, my biggest problem, they need the vague and frankly idiotic justification of "oh i tRaIn aL0t". And sure you could argue that maybe you need more justification than that, but again it boils down to who you go to with your grading and even D rank is way too much, even if its only deadlift it doesn't make logical sense a 14 year old quirkless who just trained a lot, can deadlift a cow without proper justification. And what makes it worse, is a 38 year old super strong gorilla mutation who gets into a competition with him can only barely manage to beat him out by the skin of his teeth, again, depending on who you go to.
I think it goes without saying that something is off here. Especially when something some staff like to tell members is to try and be realistic with quirks or that magic isn't allowed, the system already is inherently magical and over the top so its strange to even remark that when the combat ability system is so wildly, in my opinion, broken.
This goes the same for a lot of abilities as well, if everyone is super human in every category then no one is super human and quirks don't really matter, especially physical ones and mutations, and everyone should just take emitters since they can justify being super humans by just saying you train a lot. And again, before you say you need better justification for that, you should! But you don't, at least depending on who approves your sheet, and if the cap of C-rank is true its way too high.
Also before I move onto my suggestions, what happened to combat abilities being... Well abilities? Right now combat abilities are stats and passives, nothing more, so when people come to me talking about how there's no stats in TP I get confused since combat abilities are literally stats. (A bit opinionated but I just wanted to get that off my chest)
I always assumed combat abilities as passives were made because of people like Stain, Endeavor, and Aizawa in the anime who could keep up with super humans but for someone like Stain he couldn't out box Deku even remotely since he didn't have super strength he just had superior agility, Endeavor didn't out box the Noumu he had enough strength to keep up with them and scorch them alive, Aizawa's scarf was what was able to disable his enemies and even then people were strong enough to deal with it, and even for Aizawa he was an A-rank who mostly fights E-ranks and also nullifies their abilities before hand.
But I never understood why combat abilities are never... Abilities or special moves/techniques, something extremely fun and iconic to the super hero and my hero academia setting. Why can't you have a combat ability that adds damage but applies exhaustion to you in turn, why can't we make our own special moves its not really that difficult and it can perhaps alleviate a problem I have but I won't get into in this post about how ramp/stockpile based powers don't work on this site thanks to the nature of the rank system.
Now its time for my suggestions, there really should be a separate sheet between combat abilities and quirks, maybe something where the C - rank of an ordinary combat ability is like the E - or D - rank of a quirk ability or a combat ability related to your quirk. I don't have a problem being some what unrealistically strong/fast/durable/ whatever in a superhero/anime setting, but I have a problem when its unearned especially when other people completely dedicate their abilities to being those special attributes. And if that's too big of a gap, can we at least have something like E rank quirk super speed is 50 kilometers per hour and E rank ordinary combat ability super speed is 45 kilometers per hour. So that way we at least know the difference even if its a small amount, and we get the idea that these people are still superhuman abhorrent abominations.
And either way make justifications for combat abilities stricter since right now the criteria is exceptionally too low for one, they're way too good for someone to just train a lot, at least past F-rank. This will give a reason for people not to be generalists and restrict them from just taking super strength on everything they do and in turn force them to take it to something that actually applies to their quirk.
Another suggestion is splitting up durability and making it clear it only applies to physical trauma while also having resistances be available as separate abilities, or if you're averse to ability bloat just have endurance act at the resistance stat.
But also I've had this idea for a while not but, why is everything the same XP cost, mundanes inherently do nothing even outside of flavor even if you make gadgets, but cost the same xp as combat abilities. That's ridiculous, also taking durability restricted to your jaws or horn is the same as having durability apply to the rest of your body, why not make things under certain circumstances cheaper especially when its taken me around 70ish posts to finally get my first earned 100 XP excluding the anniversary 250. This also helps to supply an incentive to specialization or flavor since it doesn't cost as much as an arm and a leg to take an objectively inferior version of the something.
You could also bundle certain abilities that under the current system take multiple to create, like firearms (which by the way I don't understand why people are so hung up about, most damage emitters blow guns away, Emi's salt is more dangerous than an AK-47 realistically if it can damage bronze and blow through stone. Not to mention we already have the rules that things can't be stronger than their ability rank) where firearms require 2-3 and I've even heard 4 combat abilities to create taking up precious slots, under this system it'd still roughly cost the same amount of XP except bundled together or maybe a little cheaper. Now I understand this would require an overhauling of the progression system but you could probably just make it multiplicative instead of hard numbers. It might end up making some things cheaper or expensive than before but that's sort of the point.
TLDR: Separate durability into only physical trauma and create resistance abilities, make a second sheet for quirk and normal combat abilities and either make them drastic or at least state the difference between a quirk and a combat ability. Not everything should be the same XP cost especially when it comes to taking small flavorful things, somethings should be cheaper depending on the circumstance and I can elaborate more if asked, also under this system some things could be bundled up into one ability that costs the same but don't take up as many ability slots.
Now to the next point and also remember, a lot of this depends on the grader again.
4. Faction mechanics, and restrictionsThese last two points will probably be the shortest, and this one specifically will probably be the one that sort of goes into outright opinion territory since I just never really got this. Basically I'll be tackling two issues, civilian quirk cap, and being "forced" into a faction namely a vigilante who kills or is excessively brutal being put in the villain role. We'll talk about civilians first.
So as I understand it and what everyone I've talked to has said to me, civilians have a quirk cap reaching about C-rank to which after they can no longer rank up their quirk. Besides, again, there not being a listed rule for it anywhere I've seen I have been told this by multiple staff, so I'd like to pose the question of well... Why? I've been told the reason mundanes cost 100 XP is because civilians can't max out their quirk but I just don't get why they can't, its such an arbitrary limitation.
I've been told its due to the fact that civilians aren't supposed to be using their quirks all that much or because civilian is just a waiting role you use while waiting to transition to either vig, hero, or villain but I just don't understand it. All it does is actively discourage anyone from taking that role since you basically have said they'll be penalized in it for no real reason, what if a civilian does use their quirk without being a hero, vigilante or a villain?
Maybe they have a paint quirk that lets their hand secrete a paint-like substance they use to paint their walls to create a beautiful living space, sure it might be technically illegal but that doesn't make them some kinda vigilante, villain, or hero. And why wouldn't they be able to max out their quirk to allow them to make multi-colored paints, because of some strange meta limitation?
Overall the quirk cap on civilian is basically just deterring people from a different venue of role-playing, one that in a super hero role-play where the wide majority of players are either students or villains and requires civilians to give both sides purpose.
I just don't get it and worse yet this quirk cap is what's keeping mundanes at the same cost as combat abilities because its quote "What civilians are supposed to level up" which if thats the case, and going by the same logic where civilians don't have enough time to practice their quirks then why can heroes or students have mundanes? They spend most of their time being heroes or in school they should be forced to cut down on their recreational activities to service the government, you know why? Because that's not fun, the point of all this, and even if it's realistic it is highly disputable since some students have in their backstories of being exceptionally talented.
There is literally zero point for the quirk cap on civilians and the xp cost of mundanes being justified by using civilians isn't even one that holds water. It goes hand in hand with my next point, arbitrary restrictions.
I'll just start it like this, unless you act exceptionally out of character for your faction it really shouldn't matter which faction you are placed in. The primary example of this is the strange thin-line there is when it regards to vigilantes, where if your vigilante acts, as I'VE been told, excessively brutal or, say, kills a villain they are automatically put into the villainous category.
When I've asked "why" I was told it's because they don't want a bunch of edgy "punisher" wannabes which is strange to say the least. A moral I've always followed is if it hurts nobody, and affects nobody but the person doing it, let people be. This kinda borders on fun-policing and I just straight up don't like it and don't get it, we're a roleplay community, just let people roleplay and develop their own plot lines, there's no need to stick you hands in for no reason because you see someone doing a plotline you think is overdone.
Every plot here is probably retread of some anime or comic plot but no one cares about that. The only thing faction effects right now is events and chats, both of which are tied in-universe and thus IC it makes no sense that some of these "punisher"-style characters would denied access unless IC they were kicked for let's say bad conduct.
Now, I'm going to ignore talking personal morals and side step all of the debate that comes with that, but, instead I'm just going to ask, what's the point of vigilantes when they are subject to the same rules as a hero basically except they don't report to the government? For some reason? Right now vigilante is like the current civilian of heroes in some respect, its a waiting line for people who want to be pro-heroes which doesn't make sense, vigilante isn't supposed to be good, it's righteous sure, but vigilantism is bad because it usually deals with excessive brutality irl and in most fiction.
That's the point of being a vigilante, the government would never sponsor it because it leads to cases of cruelty even if said person deserved some of it, vigilantism is supposed to be a grey topic but since they operate under the same rules as heroes meta wise it doesn't make sense why characters dislike vigilantes when they do the same thing a hero does except without a license, unless literally all of the drama of vigilantes is supposed to be caused because they're in a waiting line or are too afraid to go to the hero dmv and get a license.
All of this can be applied to anyone forced into a faction because X or Y, but now it's time for suggestions.
First off, I'd suggest removing the limitation on civilians, it does nothing, and all it does is get in the way of fun for little yield all in the name of "realism" which if this was consistent with everything else on the site I wouldn't mind it, but it isn't and I don't even understand the purpose of it.
In fact civilians could do so much to spice up the RP by giving characters with stakes attached to them or people un-involved with all the happenings of cape society, being the normal guy having to deal with the effects of hero society is an interesting plotline! And people who want to go down that shouldn't be penalized for it, it helps everyone in the end since civilians are a large part on why heroes matter in the first place, if everyone was a hero there wouldn't be villains. Not to mention it's an excuse to keep mundanes equal to combat abilities which is serves no purpose.
Second, telling people they can't do a certain thing because you've seen it a lot just isn't good for this site or really in the spirit of fun. Especially for something as small as a chat and what events you get into, again if someone is a bloody murderer who kills someone on the slightest provocation that's fine, but if someone wants to play someone morally grey and perhaps develop into a villain rather than start as one, let them me and anyone I've ever talked to about this never understood why it was either so if there's like some secret reason this is I'd like to know.
TLDR: Civilians shouldn't have quirk caps and don't work as an excuse to keep mundanes as full price, and ruling out certain types of play specifically in the vigilante section goes against the spirit of fun and even free form. It also doesn't make sense that vigilantes meta-wise are under the same rules as heroes as it kind of ruins the whole point of vigilantes. 5. Things I didn't know where to fit.This is for two things I didn't know where to put and that I'll try to cover briefly since this is already long enough and I want to try and cut down bloat somewhat.
1. Status Effects need to be looked at since right now they're vague and not that great, I still don't understand how or why blindness is the way it is seeing as most blinds in this are similar to flash bangs then smoke. Silence is a strange effect I don't know why it was put there besides maybe video game silences but it is worded more like dnd silence that I see no reason anyone here would use and if they did it'd probably be something they'd be better off covering it themselves since Silence doesn't really do much.
Exhaustion is inferior to damage, its bad enough that exhausting an opponent is already heavily rp reliant, but exhaustion affecting you as well is weird. I like fever but I don't understand why its worded as fever, and wouldn't nausea also be the one to reduce offensive capabilities? Also again its rp reliant. Burn needs some elaboration and how long does burn take to be equivalent to same-rank damage, to be honest most of the status effects feel like they're taken from dnd and feel out of place right now so if they could be looked at I'd be ecstatic since they seem fun to play around with but they're worded very oddly.
2. There's a mentality that counters are bad for this site which I don't get, counters help make not all fights be decided by who is the higher rank especially now since most powers are the same thing since how the system's gotten. Right now it doesn't work since durability covers way too much and you don't get all the properties of anything you make a quirk because you only get two things from your quirk. But counters would be a good way to help in the free form of the site, and they add drama and excitement! That's all I'll say on the matter for now. I hope this is good enough feedback and that staff consider my suggestion at the very least, even if one thing is done I'll be completely satisfied as I said before. Please comment in the thread if you can and I'll be going over this today and tomorrow to try and comb it down to make it easier to read/fix grammar mistakes.
|
|
403 Posts
2 EP
EXP
Total
19 Years
Female
"The Painter"
Bandit-Rank Quirk:
|
Post by Luzia Gottschalk on May 22, 2019 10:31:47 GMT -4
I'm not trying to take away from your position, nor am I trying to invalidate it - on the contrary, I believe you have a point - but I would like to point out, at least for myself, that the ability a quirkless to train strength alongside a strength quirk *does*, in fact, make some sort of sense. To me, it feels like the trope Charles Atlas Superpower, a trope very common in comic books, with My Hero Academia *thoroughly* inspired by manga/comics, even if presented in a more realistic light. An example of this trope is Saitama of One Punch Man, or, if I recall correctly, Superalloy Darkshine from the same, who I believe is similar in training and powerset, just at a lower level. As I said, I'm not trying to detract from your point or anything, I'm merely pointing out that, at least for me, it doesn't feel like it's some magic made exclusively for the site or anything. It's a familiar trope that makes sense and feels fitting to the setting, though I admit that you have a point regarding trained and quirked strength, making me wonder where the line is exactly. --- I agree fully on the mundane ability point; it feels like little more than aesthetics than anything else, flavor to make your character unique in social threads, which makes it baffling to me why it costs as much as combat abilities. I also agree with the very arbitrary limit on civilian quirks; I can see the logic in why they would do that; most civilians in the show would be more concerned about their finances than trying to be a hero or vigilante or anything. On the practical side, though, it feels like the limit is just there to discourage civilian characters. I kinda feel like the EP barrier between C and B is enough to discourage most civilian characters from power growth, and if not, then consideration should be given to changing their faction. I also agree with the vigilantism point. To be frank, I didn't realize that it happened because the staff were trying to 'discourage Punisher wannabes', which is... a sentence; I could see their logic in the sense that if a vigilante murders a villain, then they'd be labeled a villain, but, at the same time... with the political system in the story... they're kind of already a criminal, for the simple fact that they're doing hero work outside of the law, both the old one and the new one. It feels like it'd be fitting in MHA-era roleplay, but this story is set before that time, when the Pro Hero society is being formed. In my opinion, Pro Heroes vs. Vigilantes should feel more gray than the black-and-white it is now. Pro Heroes should represent essentially the law itself (with them in the MHA era relaxing and becoming less superpowered cops and more actual superheroes), while vigilantes should feel like the true sort of heroes, ones who do good for good itself, except put in a way that doesn't make pros look bad. Essentially, Pro Heroes should be lawful good, while vigilantes should feel like neutral or chaotic good, and yes, even a few lawful neutrals or something in there, because a group like vigilantes won't be uniform; each one will have a slightly different opinion on what heroes look and act like. That said, someone playing Punisher would be playing a very dangerous game, putting a target on himself not just from the pros, but potentially other vigilantes as well... but I feel like that's the point of it. There are some vigilantes, like Spiderman, who are unabashedly good, they just work outside of the law for not even necessarily moral reasons (Spiderman, after all, is usually a kid), and then there are vigilantes like the Punisher, who straddle the line between good and evil because the people they target consistently get away with their crimes, and killing them ends the threat they have over society permanently, thereby creating a debate of 'is murder okay if it's for the greater good?' which is always an interesting question. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 23, 2019 22:33:12 GMT -4
See the problem is this isn't OPM, in OPM powers can be gained by training a lot or turning into a monster due to your own obsession, my hero academia's powers are biological and there's a big deal about quirkless being unable to be heroes because well, they aren't super human plain and simple.
Sure they can train to the point of being peak-human, current Mirio, Stain ignoring his paralysis power, etc. So if this was a normal superhero site that embraced the tropes and just had fun with them I'd agree with you that you could just have your characters backstory be "He trained a lot" and embraced the meme, but this isn't that kind of site. This site likes some degree of realism which is where most of the systems in place come from so I'd disagree, it doesn't really fit this setting and fits something more akin to a mutant and masterminds game than my hero academia.
---
And for the rest we pretty much agree, I did address why I disagreed with the idea of arbitrary quirk limits for civilians since if that was the case then I could argue no body should have a mundane beyond C-level because their too engrossed in vigilantism/villainy/heroism etc. but yea. Thanks for the response Teki!
|
|
348 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
Male
Student-Rank Quirk:
|
Post by kouta on May 26, 2019 17:32:03 GMT -4
I do agree that the Combat Abilities should be an entirely different set of things from quirks. What I do think should happen, then, as a fair trade-off for those who will be nerfed by it, as well as a motivator for those who expand their quirk instead of just giving themselves statboosts should be as so:
-Keep quirk-based abilities at about the same level of strength currently available.
-Make non quirk-based abilities (like outright strength) much weaker than what it is now
-Expand the combat slots a bit
And a personal little wish of mine, a dream of sorts
Allow users to go into debt of a set amount of EXP, something small like 50 EXP or so, a small thread-worth to those users who are JUST short of an upgrade/new ability.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 27, 2019 5:43:04 GMT -4
While I'd have to think on the XP debt idea, the difference between quirk abilities and non-quirk based abilities was something I was trying to convey but I think due to the amount of bloat I didn't cover too well. I think there should be a distinction from abilities that have their justification rooted in their quirk and a justification in their training, and saying "My quirk is intensive on my body so I deserve super strength" of course doesn't count.
An idea would be like say, someone like Darren justifying temporary super strength during one of their kicks similar to Ilda. So when they fling themselves they get extra damage on the kick equal to quirk based strength, (This is already a thing because Darren has strength but if the changes went through he could make a case for it like this.)
This way he doesn't have constant super strength and only gets it in the momentum, mind you I'm a little tired and haven't read through Darren in a bit but I think this is a decent example. Its weaker than overall super strength, but that's what we're aiming for and it also adds flavor.
|
|
348 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
Male
Student-Rank Quirk:
|
Post by kouta on May 27, 2019 7:59:08 GMT -4
Or, for example, Bucket has strength ranks. Under this change you propose, I could instead justify his super-strength to be able to clash with folks like, as you exemplified, RedHorn by saying that he constantly launches the limb he wants to give super-strength in extremely short busts to give the illusion of beyond-human strength.
I can get behind that, totally.
|
|
1,835 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
26 Years
Female
"Miss-Many-Thread"
|
Post by Rosey on May 27, 2019 10:32:14 GMT -4
First of all I barely read the comments (sorry) but I decided to still jump in, though I want to say it's in general good what you do, we also need to give staff the time to readjust to what happened, that being said I believe they already pointed out that they are rewriting stuff after some questions such as the range and your quirk for your smoke-boy (right?) were brought up in ask staff, I am sure I read that somewhere that they also wanted to make sure the system was clearer and so on, but it can never be harmful to point it out. I am also not too familiar with google doc if it's able to be closed off for some people or not. Not saying that there are people out there that might edit the document while not being staff, but you might have an idiot that thinks its funny ;)
I would be more for open ideas of staff to give feedback on but since they are doing that, I do not think it's entirely necessary for the members to see a google doc where they would be able to get this things through, I believe, looking at the now feedback threads (obviously this topic was made before that was really active) will help us and staff sort a lot of those things out and with the schemes/rosters/tables whatever you want to call it that they are making it will not be necessary. To make the rules (as I believe Crim said in announcements) more clear to read would be more of a priority for me which if done right would also immediately fix the problem of staff mixing up different answers because the system is too open to avoid complete interpretation from yourself. Also another reason why I would be against a google doc is the whole reason why I am voting for rules in one topic: not having to look in different tabs, places, to find the information I need.
I will skip your second point as I basically already said that in the other topic about status effects but here is the spoiler with a tldr about that:
- I understand the issue but I also understand that staff tries to keep everything fair when it comes to quirks
- Your smoke quirk would have (if I get what you mean) 3, blindness and explosions, where staff added that making the smoke explode with your tongue would mean flint and steel would be a third but you also wanted to have it effect the ability to breathe. While other quirks would not have that many advantages thus the restriction is two, giving you still the option to create it by using abilities.
- Basically balance is my answer and staff can't do everything to keep that in mind for every element.
Only thing adding is that yes it might be considered as stats but there is still a lot possible if you talk with people, considering many on this website want to have a fun fight and not directly look at the abilities and their ranks. That being said, I am slightly biased with that as on another website it really was a salt fest when it came to fighting and that made it really, really, really no fun.
About durability I can see that it needs to be cleared up as your first argument is indeed different from what I heard and I was not allowed to use resistance into it. But only being able to withstand a few more hits than normal, albeit I always wonder how much is a few more.
Why I do not agree with your argument about the combat abilities and watering down the purpose of a quirk is because we have (albeit still one) quirkless people, so they could have strength based on something else. If we limit stuff to only using quirks for that, playing a quirkless can be rather unmotivating, now my character wouldn't fit such strength etc combat abilities, but you never know what the future holds. The quirkless however can't rank up past C-rank, meaning that people like RedHorn can still grow and become super strength, I wouldn't worry too much about this, yes it might be frustrating but again do you want to tell people in a specific role that they can't do something only because it makes the quirkers less interesting? The setting to me would explain this enough, quirkers are new, pro-heroes are new and thus they aren't that spectaculair yet, they are growing into it though, it just takes time. I think it would be bad if we halved combat abilities in their power only so quirks look better, especially if you just pointed out that it would be bad if there is a limit of the advantages 2-3 and we need the rest to be turned into abilities. Not saying I do not understand what you mean but balancing this is difficult.
(I mean I have kinda realized it must be frustrated for some pro-heroes that the new students are at the same level as they are... or higher...)
I do like the idea of making mundane abilities cost less experience I am however against the idea of being indept of experience because that defeats the purpose of the whole system. Here it's writing posts, something you do for fun already and keep the ball rolling, I have been on sites where you had to write literal jobs to get the experience, so this seems like a good fair deal to me.
I am kind of confused why you wonder why civilians have a quirk cap? Especially after saying that quirks will not look interesting if combat abilities can do the same? If we want people to focus on being the big bad or big good (whether legal or not) we want them to train, we want them to become better, civilians don't... because it's not their goal in general to learn and control much of their quirk, I don't see any problem with this, in case some civilians would either become a vigilante (who can't kill because that's still villain) or from my part a pro-hero, than they still can but that already changes their purpose of just being left alone in a world without having to incline in the matter of fighting the big bad or the big good, so they just want to go on with their normal lives and maybe you know, use their quirk to get that saltshaker that was just out of reach or whatever small quirks they have or however big it will be with C-rank, it's just not their priority. Also I do not agree with it being discouraging to make a civilian, I have seen enough and did not hear about them being complained, I like Hanako this way, which I do not intend to leave Civilian (albeit I can't but that's not the point right now), there are people out there that do not mind playing a civilian I would say.
Yes this is my opinion and mine only but I haven't heard anyone about it and with your reasoning on vigilantism I do understand the idea that they might be more about stepping over boundaries but I do agree killing should be discouraged, especially if they want to become a pro-hero or if they want to just do what's right without the limiting words of the government or the prying eyes of the government on their backs, discarding that the police keeps an eye on them. There are so many people here and all their plots and thoughts are different, it will be difficult to just make it that everyone sees fit. I think it's a limitation to think of the factions as such, even if you still would carry the villain title because you kill, doesn't mean you can't do good things in a vigilante style? That's again how I see it, which takes the limit of the titles away.
I do have the feeling I repeat a lot, so I am sorry for that as I tried to tackle it paragraph by paragraph and I do see where you come from, but I think sometimes you might think too strictly on words, if there are better solutions it would be nice but I can also see where staff is coming from, however they are changing things considering the announcement Crimson made:
With now the way of having thrown feedback down the line of everything they are adding or changing, makes it easier to give a point and discuss it when push comes to shove. Not that it's bad to already give them things to consider :)
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 27, 2019 19:16:53 GMT -4
Before I start, I'm incredibly thankful that you're responding to both my threads and doing it thoroughly! And even if we end up disagreeing I'm really thankful you took time out of your day to give me a response.
Now it's time to start my own response! To make this easier for others to read since this is going to be a lot of words I'm gonna number them.
1. Again it's been a while since I've used google doc, I'm pretty sure you can limit permissions on it but if you can't than definitely use something else. I don't get your point on the feedback threads, if anything right now Ask-Staff is where your supposed to look but staff inconsistency is still a thing with it.
And if you do make a living document I don't see the harm in letting people look at it, especially when right now so many things are "shadow" banned that you don't know what works and doesn't till you make your character, for example I didn't know 360 vision was banned till I made Hikaru. And yea I get that the system is very open to interpretation, but that's why we need a google doc or at least a locked-off chat where after a rule is cleared up in ask-staff its put there forever. Also, right now you still need multiple tabs of information to be honest but I kinda get what you are saying? Still a google doc isn't exactly a 100 extra tabs, it'd just be posted somewhere in the rules and you click on it whenever you're curious.
2. One of my primary arguments in this, and I believe I use that as an example of, is I want flavorful advantages to be added since being able to light a flame with my mouth really doesn't do much, it doesn't do damage I had to specify that, so in most threads I use it to light cigarettes. Also I find this argument weird since ability rule is both new, and hardly enforced, there's so many characters who have more than three abilities at this point that aren't even remotely close to broken.
And enforcing this rule makes waters down every character, again making them their barest element and kinda taking away the whole quirk part of quirks.
Something else I'll say, balance should never come at the detriment to fun, and right now with how the system works, it feels incredibly limiting and to be honest is something that if I knew about when I was first joining this site would have made me pass it by, all it does is deter people from coming up with creative fun quirks since you're basically punished for trying to think outside the box.
On a final note, how do I rank up making a flicker in my mouth when all I want it to do is be a flicker, I don't want a fire bite I just wanted a small flicker so again making it a mundane or something would be terrible, the thing I like to bring up is if I said that I spit explosions that leave a blinding gas afterward. I made the ability strictly because I thought it sounded cool, but because I thought something sounded cool I had to waste half my quirk on something that can never scale because that wasn't the point. Flavor should be a thing but right now it's all literal, what harm is there in letting me light a cigarette for free.
Also to add in, my quirk didn't give me blindness, I had to use a combat ability for that since half my quirk was used on the flicker and creating + detonating the smoke. Without the blindness ability the smoke did nothing and would be completely see through, so I had to take a combat ability because of that flicker, a flicker that doesn't scale, because I wanted to do something interesting instead of saying I spit out explosions that leave a blinding gas. Right now I only have half a quirk since one half doesn't scale, and the other is only the damage, I don't think that's fun for anybody.
You said that people on this site like fun fights, but its hard to make fights fun when every quirk is the same variation of each other due to how limited they are in advantages, it detracts from fun fights since most fights really are just who has the higher rank. I personally prefer to plot fights as I care about a story above all, but fights aren't fun when everyone is "I shoot x projectile" and "punch you hard" I mean those are going to be in any fight but what makes it more fun is "I turn my projectile mid air due to my fine manipulation" or "I smell where your hiding" kinda stuff.
3. On the subject of durability, yea we've heard differing things because I have heard that your allowed to take resistance they're just worse versions of existing durability.
4. I think you missed my point a little bit here, but part of that is my fault. I'm not targetting quirkless here specifically but basically anyone who's quirk doesn't give them super strength, I basically want two different combat ability sheets where it separates power that comes from quirks and power that comes from just training, with C rank strength from just training would be like the current E-rank for what would become the "quirk" list. I'm okay with anime logic strength, but it does really water down super strength users if everyone can be as strong as you and you are only vaguely stronger but not even by a lot, thus making strength quirks kind of pointless when you could take literally anything else and be a hundred times better since anyone can be super strong
So basically I just want a separate sheet for people who don't have SUPER abilities and are just PEAK human. Because it's still weird that people can just deadlift a cow at E-rank strength which is so easy to get 14 year old students have it, even if their quirk is just butter manipulation. And if you're arguing from the stance that quirks are still improving then we should nerf the combat abilities down tremendously anyway because the strongest man in the world couldn't deadlift more than 1,100 Ibs, meaning the strongest man in the world would only have E-rank Strength. Again, rule of fun takes precedence, I'm okay with people getting super human abilities but they are way too comparable to quirks, why would quirks be such a big deal if normal people can go blow to blow with most quirked individuals.
TLDR: I want two different sheets and better justifications for super strength and more flavorful super strength, I understand you didn't read the comments but we actually just talked about this somewhat and I think I gave a decent example of what I mean.
5. How does making somethings cheaper than others get rid of the point of the whole system? All it really does is let people have access to more tools and have more fun, I don't really see how making things cost less XP or bundling things up make this site more grindy. All it'd do is smooth out the grind and make certain character concepts viable and allow specialization to be more fun, I think you misinterpreted my idea for an XP shop, I just want stuff to be cheaper since not everything is equal and it can really come into play.
At least if I'm reading this correctly, overall I think there has been a small miscommunication here.
6. Again I listed a reason on why that's arbitrary, civilians can train their quirk, not all training is in regards to combat. And also you can have someone who's a master of self-defense and not be a vigilante, villain, or hero, there are tons of other examples like a quirk painter who emits paint, to a climbing mutation. Stuff that people can train without falling under any of the categories, and I find it a little strange you defend the quirk cap but than defend the combat abilities which act opposing to the quirk cap by making normal civilians incredibly overpowered for no reason but at the same time quirks are limited when you could definitely make a case that you could train your quirk and if you want to specify non-combat even through you can still justify it, go a head, the quirk cap either way still doesn't make sense and feels arbitrary.
For the discouraging civilian stand point its really opinion-based, some people definitely feel that way since this site is already so grindy limiting how far you could theoretically progress is a deterrent for them. Before I made this list I talked with a lot of people and a lot of people said they don't make civilians for that reason, and I have heard staff say that civilians are literally just a waiting room so again this kinda comes down to both opinion and clashing sources probably.
7. I agree wtih you that if a vigilante is a complete murder maniac that they should be put in villains, but it should be discouraged not outright forbidden, vigilantes go off different rules and if someone wants to say their vigilante kills it should be allowed, let them explore what plot they want. However I agree with you that if they wanna be a pro hero they shouldn't kill, that's a rule I'm okay with since it makes sense, but for people who just want to stick to vigilante and be morally grey they should have that option.
But again killing shouldn't automatically make you a villain who acts like a vigilante, it doesn't make sense since now you have a vigilante who is in the villain chat for no reason and takes place in villain events for no reason. When logically they would be in the vigilante chat and be in vigilante events unless every vigilante ever just told them to fuck off and branded them a villain, it just doesn't make sense.
On the closing note, I have been told by many staff that a lot of the changes I proposed were actually being worked on and debated and that the site might have a lot of systems changed up soon. I decided to give my feedback so I could bring issues to light that MANY players have, really in my opinion most of the people who don't have at least some of these problems are the ones who were grandfathered in.
------------------
Thanks for responding Rosey I really appreciate it! I hope none of this came off as aggressive or anything and I hope I was able to change your mind or at least better explain certain things.
|
|
