Guided Discussion : Absence, Companions, Magic

Hello all! Your admin are working on revamping some things in the site, and we'd like your input!

Absences
Due to some confusion with Absences vs. Inactive, as well as the issue of players remaining Absent beyond the date listed in User CP, we'd like to ask you all:
When do we 'void' Absences?

Currently, the difference between Absent and Inactive is length of time: >4 weeks is Inactive. However, if an Absent lasts longer than the listed time, should the site automatically 'void' their Absent on the end date of their Absent? Or should their be a cushion of a few days?


Companions
With the arrival of some characters that have companions from Helovia and other sites, we are considering the option of those companions going 'wild' upon entering the Rift and may be re-earned with RF.

Do you like this idea? Dislike? Should it be the normal RF or less RF?


Magic
We know that our Magic Classification is far from perfect and could use some help! Do you have any ideas for improving the classification/restrictions to make them less confusing? Or do you have any ideas to entirely revamp the Magic? We're open to all ideas!


Please feel free to suggest any ideas you have (mild to wild). We want to know what our community is thinking!

Absences:
I don't know that I really have an opinion.

Companions
I take it this is trying to solve the problem of "what happens if I have a companion when I come here, what's the IC reason I suddenly stop having them? I totally like the idea of them going wild. Maybe you run around trying to find them or something (maybe special 'companion-regaining RF things', like xx number of threads trying to find them/lure them back with food/etc?). If not, I'd definitely say keep the RF the same. There shouldn't be any off-site things that earn you advantages here.

Magic
I LOVE IT SO MUCH. The only thing that could be beneficial is coding it so that the restrictions also show up in char profiles? It's only one additional step to look in the guidebook to see what a level 3 immortality restriction is, but it would be nice to have it handier.

EDIT: The only amendment I'd make to what I said, is that I know I'm still pretty stuck in Helovia-thinking when it comes to magic. So I just realized that when I said I wanted otem to 'make hallucinogenic potions' I always intended to 'upgrade' it so that she could control the hallucinations. I now realize that isn't how this magic works. So I guess a question is whether or not magic can change/shift/etc or if you just go up one magic 'tree' and that's what you're stuck with?

Absences

I really feel like they should be placed as inactive if they have been absent for over 30+ days and failed to update their date of return. There is really no penalty (that I know of) for putting your character as inactive, since you an remove them yourself without much hassle.

Companions
This sounds like a reasonable IC solution to an OOC problem. I think the RF is manageable for the second companions, if people are active enough.

Magic
I think the level restrictions are quite rough, to be honest, to the creative process at first. I understand the need to restrict these so harshly in challenges and what not, but I think just general IC posts should have more creative leeway in how much of your magic you can use. Of course, there should still be reasonable boundaries when you first start out - you can't throw massive fireballs or heal lethal wounds, but you should be able to bend more.

I agree with Odd that having it on our profiles would be nice. That way other people could quickly understand what limitations your character currently has, as well, just by looking at your profile.

I think fitting magic into the categories is a little hard when you have multifaceted abilities. Would there be a way to code cross between magics, for example: "offensive knowledge" (ex: absorbs energy from opponent and gains insight to their past) or "defensive healing" (ex: a shield which blocks damage and heals minor wounds)? That seems like the easiest solution to the conundrum, imo.

absences;
i like boom's suggestion of characters being "placed as inactive if they have been absent for over 30+ days and failed to update their date of return." I think it's very reasonable.

companions;
i don't have any characters with companions right now here, but i like the idea of them going wild. the RF is definitely manageable for those that are active enough. i think it should stay as-is. and anyways, it will drive people to be more active to earn back their companion! i feel like the only people who would disagree with this are people that have much lower activity? or maybe if they are really attached to their companions, but it's not like the companion is dead or anything, they just have to re-earn them!

magic;
i like odd's suggestion of displaying the levels on character's profile! i also think in addition to having vanity magic on the profile if we just have all magic on character's profiles? i dunno, it just feels like something is missing. i just dont understand how (for example) Taivas's glowing aura is mentioned in his profile, but aurelia's sparkles aren't? i put aurelia's magic in the miscellaneous category because i felt like it was an important thing to mention somewhere in her profile. im dumb and didn't understand that there were tabs lmfao. ;-;

i like the classifications you have set up (such as offensive/defensive/healing/immortality) i think that's all great and a fresh take on magic classifications!

the restrictions are pretty hefty, however. I'm going to bring up one specific kind of magic and just use that to explain what im trying to say:
For level 1 mental offensive magic, the effects only last 2 seconds. you can't really do anything with that- in a normal thread OR in a fight. and then when you work all the way up to level 10, you only get 7 seconds? i guess the addition of two more horses you can target is helpful, but the duration is so short that magic is almost not even worth earning. in helovia, the restrictions were rather lenient and it allowed the players to create so many unique situations with it. aurelia could completely combust for however long in normal threads, and she often did to stir drama. she tried to cause several wildfires. she tried to burn about 10 or so horses in the hidden falls one time. and so so much more. these events would never have happened under these restrictions. 7 seconds would never have been enough time for either of those events or any of the others to take place, which would have closed the door to such an important character arc for aurelia. for fighting, the restrictions are much more reasonable, but still rather strict. maybe if level 10 was ten seconds instead of seven.. if all the magics' restrictions were just loosened slightly (even just by three seconds) i think it would be so much more reasonable.

furthermore, i saw that for some categories of magic, leveling up doesn't even change your magic in any way? levels 3-5 restrictions for offensive mental and continuous magic are all the same- nothing changes when you level up.  level 6-9 restrictions for offensive mental and continuous magic also remain the same. levels 5-7 and then 8-10 for partial transformation restrictions also don't change. these are just the ones i found by skimming very quickly, but it's just kind of aggravating to know that if i work hard to level my magic that someone with a magic sevel levels under me has the same restrictions?

im sorry i had a lot to say about magic, but it's just because magic has become such a huge part of my characters and its such a fun aspect to writing ;-;

Regarding absences, this is what I understand?
* Even if you go past your return date, your absence is valid (which means the site will no longer de-absent people who are a few days past their return date)
* If you have been absent 30+ days (regardless of if it's scheduled for 30+ days or not) you'll be marked as inactive in the next activity check

The thing with the activity check right now is that it runs by "anyone who hasn't posted since midnight first day of last month", which.. consider it runs at 12:01 AM on the 1st of every new month, I just can't translate this into anything functioning because it's too late here. If someone who is smarter than me can tell me what is going on I'd appreciate it. I think that means "if you haven't posted the past ish 30 days on the 1st of every month you get marked down"? Am I right? xD /crawls away to bed

Re: companions
Those who have responded seem in favor of allowing outside characters to join with their companion/s, but have them "go wild" until they reach the normal RF requirement for bonding with their first companion. And/or perform specific tasks, but the base idea of not having to permanently lose your (probably off-site earned) companion when you join is approved of.

Keep the opinions and suggestions on magic coming <3

Here's a bunch of random Neo thoughts on magic:

1. Changing Vanity magic so it can has actual, lasting effects, and not simply be very believable 'illusions'. Vanity magic should still be harmless, and affect only the character who has the magic. Basically, this will allow us to toss more stuff that has no real use into Vanity, without sacrificing the magic's effect.

2. Adding the category "Passive" to magic. Passive magic can be anything, but it is not actively controlled. It can be harmless or harmful, affect only the character, or others as well. Passive magic would be exhaustible in real battles (whenever we have real battles again; we're trying to fix everything at the same time while also forgetting about everything all the time). For example, say that Waker automatically throws poison darts at you if you insult him - it could 'run out' in battle (say, x occurrences per fight).

Basically the difference between Vanity and Passive would be that Passive magic can be harmful and can affect others. You could, if you wanted, classify e.g. your appearance changing depending on the tides as Passive, but you could also just toss it in Vanity, and save a magic slot for yourself. tl;dr relaxing vanity rules and adding passive, which also allows for moving borderline-'real' vanity magics to real magic without having a real headache about where to put them. Offensive, defensive, I don't care, as long as it's not consciously triggered, it's passive. (Yay for dump categories!)

3. Screw the restrictions, mostly. Keep the size regulations/conversions, maybe? Keep how the levels relate to each other - for example, L6 offensive magic is 50% effective against L3 defensive magic, while L3 offensive magic is 100% ineffective against L6 defensive magic (current rules).
Basically, you can do whatever in terms of duration and targets and intensity, as long as it's outside of a fight, and no one thinks it's ridiculously over-powered. The level thing would apply in normal threads as well.

In battles, depending on your level, you would have x magic moves per battle, perhaps? What constitutes as a magic move, you ask, and I say, I have no idea. Activating your magic, and having an offensive passive triggered? That's when the duration comes in - say that, in order to keep your effect (e.g. being on fire) in the next post as well, you use a magic move up in post two to keep it going. That puts constant effect magics more on par with strike magics (like throwing magic poison darts). Plus, constant effect magics are usually not easy to target, so.. it might even out.

I thought about it some more, and here we are:

I've changed my mind, slightly, on #2. Instead of Passive being a category like Defensive, Offensive, etc, magic would have a status: Active, or Passive. Otherwise, how do you know if someone's "Passive Magic" is e.g. Defensive or not, when you're looking at how your magic levels interact? The definition simply being that Passive is either a constant effect, or triggered by something (not consciously activated), whereas Active is a choice. You can still have continuous effects from Active magic, just that you can consciously toggle the state of whatever it is.

Hrm.

1. I would think you're still absent until you come back and post, and if that's not before inactive kicks in then you roll into inactive.

2. Yeah companions going wild and using rift force to get them back sounds good!

3. I like the classification of magic being either Active or Passive, and that status being able to be applied to any magic category. I also like Neo saying making vanity less illusion based and more affects only your character fun stuff based.

I also agree with some people above that the limits on the magics are very strict for a lot of them. Some are only a few seconds long which is so hard to accomplish anything with. I agree with really just having limits in battle, but even those limits I think need to be expanded. If it's something that has a very definite end, like Neo's poison darts, then the limit should be can perform x times in battle. Where as when it's something like you "feel" this way or there's a storm, that should be framed more into lasts half a post or a whole post or 2 posts in battle etc.

FOR MAGIC! what if for categories you have two main categories and then subcategories within them that are more simple?

like conscious and subconscious?

conscious is when the character controls the magic! in this category, you could have all the categories like offensive/defensive magic, transformation magic, healing, crafting etc.

subconscious is when the character doesn't control the magic! in this category, you could have continuous and periodic? continuous being something that the character can't control like being constantly followed by fog or glowing dapples or sparkles or whatever that never turns off!  periodic would be something that is switched on/off by an outside element like having a character be set on fire when angry or their coat turning black when it gets wet or something like that

Examples: (using random magics from record pages)
- Amaris can summon fire-breathing dragon apparitions which would be classified by what ive suggested as conscious offensive magic.
- Oizys can transform into any creature by drinking its blood which would be conscious transformation magic
- Otem has golden dapples that glow faintly which would be a subconscious continuous magic.
- When Aurelia is angered her back hooves are set aflame with gold-edged, black flames that burn self and others which would be a subconscious periodic magic

with my system, however, conscious/subconscious can both be harmless or harmful so there would probably need to be some sort of restriction placed? like x amounts of conscious magic and x amounts of subconscious magic instead of just 8 max magics and unlimited vanity magics like we have now. I just think that using vanity magic vs magic is kind of confusing because it's hard to really understand where your magic would go but using conscious vs subconscious makes it very very clear. The subcategories periodic or continuous are also very self-explanatory and don't leave much to just guess about.

This is obviously just like a super rough idea about what direction we could go with magic, I don't expect y'all to be like wow bay amazing we use that! but i do think that simplifying everything into neater categories may really help. I've poured over the guidebook and I'm still not all that sure what the heck vanity magic is and why it's listed under items or not or why some stuff isn't really recorded and only shows up on profiles? i'm not sure, i just feel like things are indeed a touch confusing right now. (and i'm also not sure if you guys are open to completely revamping the magic system which is basically what i've suggested, but at least clearer categories would really help)

Active and passive could work but that system is very Helovian-like which may lead to confusion down the line if players from Helovia begin assuming what used to be passive on helovia would just be classified as passive here even though the way you've defined it is actually slightly different. I feel like we should steer clear of big helovian lingo like "active" and "passive" because it may literally just cause confusion, just my two cents.

ALSO SORRY THIS IS HELLA WORDY IM NOT GOOD AT CONDENSING MY THOUGHTS ;-;

Personally, I really love using subconscious/conscious (or similar words) instead of active and passive. :O And removing vanity magic, too - the reason vanity magic ended up outside of the system in the first place was to not hog people's magic slots with "useless" (vanity, lol) magic.

I AM NOT GOOD AT IT EITHER UR IN GOOD COMPANY BAYBAY <3