I Got 99 Problems...

[Tary]

Note: I am not posting this on behalf of Koi, neither the dev team nor the GM team. I am simply posting this as a way of gathering feedback. I guess it doesn't necessarily hurt that I'm on the dev team, but I'm posting this as myself, not as a representative of Koi.

Underlight is a really old game. It might be over 20 years old at this point which is pretty remarkable. Unfortunately, its age has started to show. I don't mean in the graphics: the graphics have always been crappy, but these days I don't think it matters so much. We're never going to be on the next id engine, or on CryTek or anything like that. And, in fact, I don't think it would matter if we did: you'd be putting a prettier face on the game but it wouldn't change the fact that the game itself is old. The gameplay mechanics, the fundamental ideas behind the game are dated. And I'd like to start thinking about sweeping, massive changes. Let's assume that the graphics will remain the same: it would be great if we could update them, but it's not actually the engine that's the problem. It's redoing the textures, the levels, the models and everything else that's hugely time consuming. The levels won't just "convert." The models won't either. You need brand new everything, and for that you need a huge time investment, not to mention a major infusion of capital. Let's assume that's off the table.

Here are some of the problems I see with the current gameplay. I will also try to introduce solutions, because I think listing problems isn't useful if you can't offer some solution, even if it's a terrible solution.

Reliance on GMs
This falls, broadly, into two categories:

• Reliance on GMs for RPs
• Reliance on GMs for character advancement

For the former, we typically need GMs to do all sorts of in-game magic, like raw emotes and the like. For the latter, we need GM uber-teachers so that you can plat your train, learn Sphere, plat various arts to really high levels, etc.

My solution to the former -- and, incidentally, to the latter -- is to create a StackOverflow-like reputation system. Either we let players perform raw emotes at a cost of X RP Points, or we grant certain players the ability to perform raw emotes full stop, or to perform them for some limited period of time. This makes normal PCs "mini GMs", thus allowing them to drive the plot of the game along without requiring GM involvement. Obviously raw emotes would have to be pored over meticulously by the team to ensure that they were driving the story of Underlight forward and not being abused, but I think that that can be done at the GM and the community level.

Also, players can be given the ability to modify a room's description thus effecting change upon a level without requiring level changes. Alternatively the ability to dynamically alter levels in some very limited scope would be really nice, but I think that might be quite difficult. That being said it's certainly something that can be explored.

Similarly, for advancement, I think player teachers -- maybe uber-master teachers, or a very select few selected as representatives to the conclave -- should be granted the ability to plat Train (but not grant it), and to train teachers in Sphere. This would create a relatively self-sufficient community, thus broadening the number of those who can plat train.

Top-Heavy Playerbase
There are a significant number of very high-leveled dreamers. In fact I'd say the overwhelming majority of the active playerbase is orbit 50 or above, thus putting them in the "top half" of the advancement scale.

At first I wondered if this was really a problem, but I think that it is. If you're a real, true, new player and you start playing and everyone around you is a tank it becomes really discouraging. I'm not sure what to do about that here, though. On the one hand there's very little incentive to advance past 7th sphere: I mean, sure, you get more dreamsoul and such, but there's no new arts past orbit 70, and certainly by then it's slim pickins anyway. There is the dual focus rest at orbit 89, which temporarily drops you back to orbit 1. That being said it's very temporary. I'm not really sure what to do about this one. Certainly I don't want quotas or anything like that. I think we might need some more original content at lower levels and loads more at upper levels to pique interest and motivate people to advance.

Guild Motivation
Outside of roleplayed beliefs there's no incentive for guilds to battle and nothing to gain by winning a war -- or losing it. Similarly, despite the PT cost to forge, there's not enough motivation for players to join houses, and not enough motivation for a house to actively recruit freespirits (or poach players from other houses).

Here a lot can be done. I wrote up a whole proposal for how war can be made more systematic and fun in Underlight. It boiled down to the following points:

• War has a cost: it costs X strength / day to be in a war. (Actually it costs X strength / day to be a house, and that amount is multiplied during a war)
• The first to run out of strength loses the war.
• You gain/lose strength as a function of being in the war and also as a function of being collapsed by your enemy faction while at war. That is: if it's DoL vs HC and they start at 30K and 50K strength respectively, they'll both lose, say, 5% strength a day just by being in the war, but then they'll lose, say, 500 strength for each ruler collapsed, 250 for each guardian and 100 for each initiate collapsed by their enemy.
• Spheres can only be lost by a player in a warring faction.
• Players in a warring faction gain 2x the amount of XP per nightmare collapsed.
• Losing a war some number of times enables the victor to self-knight into the loser's house and/or ascend from knight to ruler.

The proposal is much more detailed, but probably still needs fleshing out.

I think if you incentivize war but make it so that it's hard for you, as a controller, to lose a huge amount of XP as a result (thus the nightmare buffs), and also if you make it so it's only possible for war to last so long you can create an environment where you have a mixture of roleplay and battle.

I've got more -- lots more -- but as I was typing this I got lazy, so I'm posting this. This is a work in progress so I'll post replies with more thoughts. I hope you all will do the same.

[Malarky]

Note: I am not posting this on behalf of Koi, neither the dev team nor the GM team. I am simply posting this as a way of gathering feedback. I guess it doesn't necessarily hurt that I'm on the dev team, but I'm posting this as myself, not as a representative of Koi.

Underlight is a really old game. It might be over 20 years old at this point which is pretty remarkable. Unfortunately, its age has started to show. I don't mean in the graphics: the graphics have always been crappy, but these days I don't think it matters so much. We're never going to be on the next id engine, or on CryTek or anything like that. And, in fact, I don't think it would matter if we did: you'd be putting a prettier face on the game but it wouldn't change the fact that the game itself is old. The gameplay mechanics, the fundamental ideas behind the game are dated. And I'd like to start thinking about sweeping, massive changes. Let's assume that the graphics will remain the same: it would be great if we could update them, but it's not actually the engine that's the problem. It's redoing the textures, the levels, the models and everything else that's hugely time consuming. The levels won't just "convert." The models won't either. You need brand new everything, and for that you need a huge time investment, not to mention a major infusion of capital. Let's assume that's off the table.

Here are some of the problems I see with the current gameplay. I will also try to introduce solutions, because I think listing problems isn't useful if you can't offer some solution, even if it's a terrible solution.

Reliance on GMs
This falls, broadly, into two categories:

• Reliance on GMs for RPs
• Reliance on GMs for character advancement

For the former, we typically need GMs to do all sorts of in-game magic, like raw emotes and the like. For the latter, we need GM uber-teachers so that you can plat your train, learn Sphere, plat various arts to really high levels, etc.

My solution to the former -- and, incidentally, to the latter -- is to create a StackOverflow-like reputation system. Either we let players perform raw emotes at a cost of X RP Points, or we grant certain players the ability to perform raw emotes full stop, or to perform them for some limited period of time. This makes normal PCs "mini GMs", thus allowing them to drive the plot of the game along without requiring GM involvement. Obviously raw emotes would have to be pored over meticulously by the team to ensure that they were driving the story of Underlight forward and not being abused, but I think that that can be done at the GM and the community level.

Also, players can be given the ability to modify a room's description thus effecting change upon a level without requiring level changes. Alternatively the ability to dynamically alter levels in some very limited scope would be really nice, but I think that might be quite difficult. That being said it's certainly something that can be explored.

Similarly, for advancement, I think player teachers -- maybe uber-master teachers, or a very select few selected as representatives to the conclave -- should be granted the ability to plat Train (but not grant it), and to train teachers in Sphere. This would create a relatively self-sufficient community, thus broadening the number of those who can plat train.

Top-Heavy Playerbase
There are a significant number of very high-leveled dreamers. In fact I'd say the overwhelming majority of the active playerbase is orbit 50 or above, thus putting them in the "top half" of the advancement scale.

At first I wondered if this was really a problem, but I think that it is. If you're a real, true, new player and you start playing and everyone around you is a tank it becomes really discouraging. I'm not sure what to do about that here, though. On the one hand there's very little incentive to advance past 7th sphere: I mean, sure, you get more dreamsoul and such, but there's no new arts past orbit 70, and certainly by then it's slim pickins anyway. There is the dual focus rest at orbit 89, which temporarily drops you back to orbit 1. That being said it's very temporary. I'm not really sure what to do about this one. Certainly I don't want quotas or anything like that. I think we might need some more original content at lower levels and loads more at upper levels to pique interest and motivate people to advance.

Guild Motivation
Outside of roleplayed beliefs there's no incentive for guilds to battle and nothing to gain by winning a war -- or losing it. Similarly, despite the PT cost to forge, there's not enough motivation for players to join houses, and not enough motivation for a house to actively recruit freespirits (or poach players from other houses).

Here a lot can be done. I wrote up a whole proposal for how war can be made more systematic and fun in Underlight. It boiled down to the following points:

• War has a cost: it costs X strength / day to be in a war. (Actually it costs X strength / day to be a house, and that amount is multiplied during a war)
• The first to run out of strength loses the war.
• You gain/lose strength as a function of being in the war and also as a function of being collapsed by your enemy faction while at war. That is: if it's DoL vs HC and they start at 30K and 50K strength respectively, they'll both lose, say, 5% strength a day just by being in the war, but then they'll lose, say, 500 strength for each ruler collapsed, 250 for each guardian and 100 for each initiate collapsed by their enemy.
• Spheres can only be lost by a player in a warring faction.
• Players in a warring faction gain 2x the amount of XP per nightmare collapsed.
• Losing a war some number of times enables the victor to self-knight into the loser's house and/or ascend from knight to ruler.

The proposal is much more detailed, but probably still needs fleshing out.

I think if you incentivize war but make it so that it's hard for you, as a controller, to lose a huge amount of XP as a result (thus the nightmare buffs), and also if you make it so it's only possible for war to last so long you can create an environment where you have a mixture of roleplay and battle.

I've got more -- lots more -- but as I was typing this I got lazy, so I'm posting this. This is a work in progress so I'll post replies with more thoughts. I hope you all will do the same.

I agree with making it so players can perform raw emotes. Wordsmiths might make a good target for giving this ability out. I was thinking it might be a nifty idea to create dual-dreamer arts that require more than one person to evoke. An example might be a raw emote from a wordsmith requiring a dreamsmith support token created by another dreamer to cast. Like Support Train but dreamsmiths that make the tokens and wordsmiths that use them resulting in an ability that tickles the ethereal force used by a planesmith.

Advancement is top heavy. As a player that has always been below the top-heavy side, I learned a long time ago there's a really deep sociopolitical system driving advancement after you advance beyond third sphere and this is made more convoluted with players working harder than others to advance that don't get to advance as a result of obstacles created by the sociopolitical system. This has the added disadvantage of creating less desire to work with players and instead reliance on GM for advancement.

My suggestion to address advancement would contain multiple stages and reward houses for training outside of their ranks with greater access to GM for advancement purposes. Obviously a dreamer isn't likely to target their enemies directly to get these perks but they may target the fringe members and free spirits to justify their receiving the perk.

Just my two cents...and definitely a system that requires more overhead than it's probably worth.

[Arnaya]

From top to bottom on the topics list:

1) GM Support: There's already an option for this. I was kinda told not to use it, so I havn't been. But, Multi-line chat option. I won't reveal the exact method here, but it would be a good compromise solution that doesn't require any extra coding work. It even takes on the type that's selected as the chat type. So, whispers, normal, or shouts. I havn't played with the outright E-motes on that. It also doesn't completely hide the fact that its a player doing it, so we won't have the issue of players trying to confusing things that the GM's are doing.

2) Teaching: Best suggestion would be to allow Regular teachers to write quests under specific MT's, and for MT's to write quests (and hear reports) under specific GM MT's. This would mean that the MT basically "mentors" a couple of regular teachers and will honor their quests, while a GM MT "Mentors" or "Sponsors" an MT or two that they can trust. Sort of how a couple of player MT's right now can quest for Train plats. Then, the "Mentor" or "Sponsor" simply takes a quick review of the quest and completion codex, grants and we move on.

3) Top Heavy Playerbase: This one, yeah. I know that one. There's a reason I pushed Arnaya to advance kinda fast. The problem comes when the arts don't come near the characters sphere when you do that. I had to slow down Arnaya's advancement just for that reason. Unfortunately, even at 5th sphere... she's below the power level of most of her adversaries in game. This one, there isn't really a fix to except a massive influx of new players or a complete reset of the game. The latter, which is the most feasible, comes with its own BOATLOAD of problems. The New content thing isn't really a fix either, since the real problem here is the raw power differential. Characters like Lu Chaos, Bladeslayer, Thunderman, Black Cloud, etc... can literally wipe out any 3 more moderate level players on their own.

4) Guild Activity: Hard fix. Largely player apathy based. Like the cost per day and war cost thing. The war one is limited unless war declaration gives damage and art bonuses to declaring the house. Would suggest allowing crested members to self plat arts with PT's and RP point combo. Further suggestion would be to allow an "Ally" designation, which would enhance XP gain from partying, and a small art effect bonus for restore and similar arts between the allied houses.

~ Jan

[Magnum425]

sounds like some great ideas to me !

[Uthanatos]

I think the top heaviness is one of those unavoidable things, and really, it's been around as long as MUDs. Generally it tends to be cyclic though. Players reach a point where there is no longer a challenge, then go about wholloping things and folks for no real reason, then take more of a back seat, and work on a new toon. Even early on (before third sphere), Uthy made his way actively into the political arena, since it has little to do with strength of arms. I will admit though, I pushed hard to get him to 5th so that he could truly be a factor in combat, and as Arnaya said, that comes with drawbacks and underleveled arts.

[Tary]

This was my declare war proposal I wrote up a few years ago.
Link to Google Doc

[Cherokee]

This was my declare war proposal I wrote up a few years ago.
Link to Google Doc

I really like this, GMs should make that happen!

I had an idea awhile back to make wars more interesting, but wasn't anywhere near elaborate as that. It was a "king of the hill" method, where a certain amount of the opposing house's essence would have to be collected, then a special art would be cast on their land. If you're successful in gaining the amount of essences and completing the (longgg) evoke without interruption, it creates an unmovable flag with your house's symbol on it.

This would continue on for a preset number of rooms on the plane, until one house eventually completes them all and can declare victory. At the end of the war, a certain amount of strength would be drained from the defeated house and into the winners. As a way of retaliation, not only can the opposing house possibly stop them from completing their mission from simply not collapsing or collapsing them while they evoke the art, but there would also be a flag removal art that would cost another set amount of essences.

Though, I understand that would take a lot of coding to make new arts, but it would be fun!

[Tember]

This was my declare war proposal I wrote up a few years ago.
Link to Google Doc

I really like this, GMs should make that happen!

I had an idea awhile back to make wars more interesting, but wasn't anywhere near elaborate as that. It was a "king of the hill" method, where a certain amount of the opposing house's essence would have to be collected, then a special art would be cast on their land. If you're successful in gaining the amount of essences and completing the (longgg) evoke without interruption, it creates an unmovable flag with your house's symbol on it.

This would continue on for a preset number of rooms on the plane, until one house eventually completes them all and can declare victory. At the end of the war, a certain amount of strength would be drained from the defeated house and into the winners. As a way of retaliation, not only can the opposing house possibly stop them from completing their mission from simply not collapsing or collapsing them while they evoke the art, but there would also be a flag removal art that would cost another set amount of essences.

Though, I understand that would take a lot of coding to make new arts, but it would be fun!

Awesome idea, Jade

[Cherokee]

Thanks!

[Magnum425]

I really like this lots of thought went into this !!

[Arnaya]

Finally got a chance to read through it lol. Nicely done, the principles sound pretty good... but it would require that the players keep an eye on themselves for power balancing. The way things are right now, there's too often where there's 3 fighters dreaming on one side and 1 or 2 non-fighters on the other that get ambushed. I think if we had a larger population, the ideas would be fantastic. I'm just not sure if it would work with what we've got.

Is that a valid concern, or am I looking waay too deep into things?

[Inzoum]

I have a few issues with the basic notion that conflict is needed to get people to interact, or that it should be at the center of all meaningful interactions. But that's up for debate...

Regarding the more practical aspects of the "cost of war" system you're suggesting, Trap Mare introduces a HUGE imbalance in the Houses' ability to compensate loss in strength due to war state. The Alliance of the Eclipse doesn't currently have anyone able to trap for them, and Sacrifice barely makes up for it. Regardless of whether they would participate in a war or not, just being involved in one as a defending party would be enough to crush them.

[Sidas]

I have a few issues with the basic notion that conflict is needed to get people to interact, or that it should be at the center of all meaningful interactions. But that's up for debate...

Regarding the more practical aspects of the "cost of war" system you're suggesting, Trap Mare introduces a HUGE imbalance in the Houses' ability to compensate loss in strength due to war state. The Alliance of the Eclipse doesn't currently have anyone able to trap for them, and Sacrifice barely makes up for it. Regardless of whether they would participate in a war or not, just being involved in one as a defending party would be enough to crush them.

They should probably seek someone that can trap for them, then.

[Dina]

I agree with Sidas!

There is no imbalance with trap. Better start reqruiting an SM with it!

[Tary]

I have a few issues with the basic notion that conflict is needed to get people to interact, or that it should be at the center of all meaningful interactions. But that's up for debate...

Regarding the more practical aspects of the "cost of war" system you're suggesting, Trap Mare introduces a HUGE imbalance in the Houses' ability to compensate loss in strength due to war state. The Alliance of the Eclipse doesn't currently have anyone able to trap for them, and Sacrifice barely makes up for it. Regardless of whether they would participate in a war or not, just being involved in one as a defending party would be enough to crush them.

Trap doesn't help you during a war. Once the war begins primes are frozen and all war costs are charged as a function of the original prime starting strength. That is, I believe I tried to express all costs as a percentage rather than as a flat cost. That being said: coming from a 'weaker' house from a combat perspective means you're at a disadvantage. To steal a quote: "never get involved in a land war in Asia," i.e. don't get involved in a losing battle.

But I do want to address the point you made at the beginning of your post, because it's one I fundamentally disagree with both from an Underlight perspective. Conflict is the essence of Underlight. It's what Underlight was designed for. One of my huge complaints with Underlight in its current form is that there's no motivation to do anything but sit around and chat. And you can say, "But I enjoy chatting!" And that's great: but that's not playing the game, that's chatting, and you can chat anywhere. If you want to chat in the context of the framework that Underlight has presented then conflict is a necessary part. In fact, conflict is a necessary part of every single game that has ever existed -- from Space Invaders to RC Pro Am to Zelda to Warcraft to Halo -- because it forces you into action. The huge problem Underlight has is that it's maddeningly boring. And this isn't some opinion either: if it weren't maddeningly boring you'd have a bigger crowd of people playing because it'd be fun to play.

Underlight is centered around divisiveness. It's why there are focuses and houses. Those things are there to divide the community and make people fight and argue.. As soon as you make an arbitrary division between people they will fight. You see it with countries and religions and neighborhoods and states. It's why Texans are so damn insufferable (I kid, I kid. Not really. ) and why New Yorkers are amazing. It's why Underlight employs twitch-based combat as opposed to turn-based combat. Does this mean that there should be a constant barrage of chakrams? No, not at all. There are plenty of other kinds of conflict -- it's just that lesser forms of conflict are like foreplay before the actual act of war. Sure, they matter, just not as much as war matters (you can tell I'm really popular with the ladies ). And since, ultimately, war is the most damaging sort of conflict it should come with a cost and a reward.

My primary contention with how Underlight is played currently is that people don't actually play the game. They chat and emote but the game itself is ancillary to the Underlight experience. And some of that is because the game itself is still unfinished. Houses need to be there for a reason. Currently they are there to foster conflict but they don't do it systematically enough. Adding rewards to wars is only the beginning in my opinion. I think houses need to come with extra incentives -- incentives baked into the code and DNA of the game, not just emoted incentives -- as well, and those incentives can grow as the player-base grows. House arts are a start. Mission boards are as well. But what if you had a personal item locker at houses? What if you could get art tasks via the house mission boards? What if you could complete art tasks via the mission boards without needing to report directly while a teacher is online? What if, what if, what if. There are all sorts of incentives that can be built into the guild system that would incentivize joining a house and that would make a house want to expand its borders and take over other houses. And that's what I'm trying to build to.

[Inzoum]

Well, Tary, you argue some good points. Perhaps my problem with conflict is elsewhere... I'd say right now, there's not much interest in engaging in wars because they're mostly wasteful. The carrot is really irrelevant but that stick is a whopping piece of skull-cracking lumber. Rather than having wars that mostly cause neutral or negative outcomes, shifting that fork towards neutral to positive outcomes would definitely promote wars into happening.

What I mean by that is that currently, winners barely win anything while losers lose A LOT. Having a situation where winners actually get something tangible out of a victory while losers end with a status quo or moderate loss would go a long way in making these wars fun to engage in. Shifting the focus from "I have too much to lose..." to "It's worth a try!". I'm not saying there shouldn't be any consequences to losing, I'm saying that right now, that's the ONLY thing happening in wars, everyone loses something. The winners waste away their resources, the losers waste away their resources, and in the end, everyone has to spend considerable amount of time grinding their way back up.

I'd think that if new systems should be added to promote war, it should be done with a reward and incentive orientation rather than a focus on cost and consequence. The game's already consequence-heavy enough.

[Arnaya]

Both Inzoum and Tary make a lot of sense, and hit more firmly on the small population bit I mentioned earlier. With the population the size it is, and the power differential being SO huge... lets face it, going to war with OoL is outright suicide for example. Bladeslayer on his own can pretty much decimate most attackers. The Peace Corpse's strike force can likewise pretty much wipe out most other forces as well. That's been the state of things since I started playing anyway.

Most of the big antagonists for different houses all lump together, forming a massive power blok and everyone else gets stomped on. With the small population in game, there isn't really a way to balance that out. There isn't anything really that AoE could offer (For example) as incentives to get say... Dreiko and Black Cloud... to join them so they'd have a reasonably powered fighting force. So, power differential, coupled with small population means that nearly All "battles" are two to three people on a side (in the larger fights) and most engagements are just individual hitters from each side going after weaker solo members from the other side.

Every War I've seen in game since I started playing, just resulted in players leaving because they were getting stomped into oblivion on a multiple times a day basis... or had to basically sit in sanctuary the entire day where heckling, insults, and routine abuse get heaped on them. I do agree that there needs to be conflict (Though Arnaya would slap the hell out of me for saying that ) but we need to figure out a way to have it not be a constant harassment type roleplay. We simply don't have the population to sustain that, as we've seen repeatedly.

Maybe sponsored battles, large scale engagements where both parties can gather their main forces and go at it full out or something once a week (Would also make hiring Mercenaries a much more viable practice)? Houses that don't field their "Army" at the battle time Lose that fight and maybe 30 percent of their remaining strength? 3 no shows or losses equals a lost war? Increasing the number of decent combat items that spawn from mares and gens would probably help a bit too. Especially since a single good battle now means about two weeks of several hours a day, hunting and genning to recover the items (on average). Forge doesn't help there either, since you have to have it at around level 70 to be able to make usable level 40 combat items.

The other problem I've seen, is that isn't really anything to prevent the "losers" of a war from simply ignoring the results of the war and keeping going with whatever they were doing before that resulted in War being joined. Maybe an automatic demotion of all crested Rulers and Guardians down to Initiates? The idea of the Winning house being able to crest their own guardians would be a pretty good one too... or allow the winners to designate current Initiate members (Of the losing house) to ascend to vacated Guardian and Ruler positions? Just a couple of thoughts

[Malarky]

I have a few issues with the basic notion that conflict is needed to get people to interact, or that it should be at the center of all meaningful interactions. But that's up for debate...

Regarding the more practical aspects of the "cost of war" system you're suggesting, Trap Mare introduces a HUGE imbalance in the Houses' ability to compensate loss in strength due to war state. The Alliance of the Eclipse doesn't currently have anyone able to trap for them, and Sacrifice barely makes up for it. Regardless of whether they would participate in a war or not, just being involved in one as a defending party would be enough to crush them.

Trap doesn't help you during a war. Once the war begins primes are frozen and all war costs are charged as a function of the original prime starting strength. That is, I believe I tried to express all costs as a percentage rather than as a flat cost. That being said: coming from a 'weaker' house from a combat perspective means you're at a disadvantage. To steal a quote: "never get involved in a land war in Asia," i.e. don't get involved in a losing battle.

But I do want to address the point you made at the beginning of your post, because it's one I fundamentally disagree with both from an Underlight perspective. Conflict is the essence of Underlight. It's what Underlight was designed for. One of my huge complaints with Underlight in its current form is that there's no motivation to do anything but sit around and chat. And you can say, "But I enjoy chatting!" And that's great: but that's not playing the game, that's chatting, and you can chat anywhere. If you want to chat in the context of the framework that Underlight has presented then conflict is a necessary part. In fact, conflict is a necessary part of every single game that has ever existed -- from Space Invaders to RC Pro Am to Zelda to Warcraft to Halo -- because it forces you into action. The huge problem Underlight has is that it's maddeningly boring. And this isn't some opinion either: if it weren't maddeningly boring you'd have a bigger crowd of people playing because it'd be fun to play.

Underlight is centered around divisiveness. It's why there are focuses and houses. Those things are there to divide the community and make people fight and argue.. As soon as you make an arbitrary division between people they will fight. You see it with countries and religions and neighborhoods and states. It's why Texans are so damn insufferable (I kid, I kid. Not really. ) and why New Yorkers are amazing. It's why Underlight employs twitch-based combat as opposed to turn-based combat. Does this mean that there should be a constant barrage of chakrams? No, not at all. There are plenty of other kinds of conflict -- it's just that lesser forms of conflict are like foreplay before the actual act of war. Sure, they matter, just not as much as war matters (you can tell I'm really popular with the ladies ). And since, ultimately, war is the most damaging sort of conflict it should come with a cost and a reward.

My primary contention with how Underlight is played currently is that people don't actually play the game. They chat and emote but the game itself is ancillary to the Underlight experience. And some of that is because the game itself is still unfinished. Houses need to be there for a reason. Currently they are there to foster conflict but they don't do it systematically enough. Adding rewards to wars is only the beginning in my opinion. I think houses need to come with extra incentives -- incentives baked into the code and DNA of the game, not just emoted incentives -- as well, and those incentives can grow as the player-base grows. House arts are a start. Mission boards are as well. But what if you had a personal item locker at houses? What if you could get art tasks via the house mission boards? What if you could complete art tasks via the mission boards without needing to report directly while a teacher is online? What if, what if, what if. There are all sorts of incentives that can be built into the guild system that would incentivize joining a house and that would make a house want to expand its borders and take over other houses. And that's what I'm trying to build to.

On my function of layers post I touched base on this incentivizing conflict. Having layered motivations for RP through stories with depth instead of just plots, people develop their own incentives to conflict naturally. Conflict isn't necessarily throwing punches and for those that don't enjoy throwing chaks, it should be made clear it also includes stories in which the game plot is progressed along. Conflict is necessary to push a plot forward and often times people forget that conflicts can't always be resolved by throwing chaks...which may ultimately result in taking a step back in plot development instead of forward for the purpose of conflict resolution. I believe this is where the confusion is for most people on the subject matter: "What is conflict?".

[Arnaya]

Further thoughts for the Incentive for Houses thing. Allow the Senechals and Rulers to access a new art. "Prime Forge". Basically grants them access to a limited form of the GM forging. Let them make a Return Alteror, or an Invis alt... or higher level chakrams.

Base cost of 5000 Strength, plus say 50 or 100 per charge. So, making a level 60 chakram with 50 charges would cost 10k energy. The numbers could be tweaked easily, and have all the talisman take the form of the forging houses crest with a set title based on what the item is. "HC SM Chakram" or "DoL Vision", "Shield of the Alliance", that sort of thing. So HUGE trading benefits for people, and Massive aid during war times or after those Big fights that wipe out the main fighters packs (A certain Darkmare assault on HC comes to mind there )

Further, alter PT's to empower the next art evoked once the PT is triggered. Maybe each house PT has its own effect? Or defensive/scholar houses boost Defensive and Protective Arts by 50%, while Offensive/Warrior houses boost Hostile Effects by 50%. Maybe both make that one evoke bypass reflect? Or allow a 30 second "Unreflectable" quality to the evokers arts?

Perhaps every hour or 5 hours of logged in time for crested characters gives them a flat .5% XP grant? Suspended or increased during "War time"?

Just a couple of idea's, some of its from things that I've talked to people about in game