TRPG General Chat

12:43 AM

What's really holding EvE back, and sandbox games in general, is that it takes a lot of work and effort to get into the game.

Not so much because the games are difficult to learn, but because the actual gameplay is simply difficult to access.

For example, say you want to fight in those epic fleet battles they show off all the time; first you need to spend some time getting the right skills, then saving up for the right ship, figuring out what the best fitting is, find a corp that is active in null space, be online at the specific time that their fleet ops are going on...

...do some research to learn how to accomplish your role, get on teamspeak so people take you even half seriously, convince the corp to trust that you are not a spy, figure out how this specific corp's hierarchy works so that you can actually do stuff with them, actually get to where the action is happening...you get the idea.

Once you get established, I'm sure the game can be tons of fun, often much more exciting and engaging than even the best theme-part MMOs. The problem is that it just takes so much time and effort to get there, that most never do, and it's arguable whether it's even worth it when you can just jump into WoW and start having fun right away.

People say that playing WoW is like having a second job, well playing EvE is like going through college, getting a masters degree, and having a second job as a neurosurgeon.

Shalvenay

1:09 AM

in some ways -- yes -- but finding an active corp first can help you with lots of other things

as 0.0 corps have doctrine fittings etal

AgentPaper

Helps, but not a ton, and that's assuming you can find a good 0.0 corp in the first place.

It's certainly not impossible, and many people do get there, but that combined with the fact that you need a certain "critical mass" of players for the sandbox to turn from a bunch of people running around on an empty map into a real game, is I think the main factor that's kept the sandbox game from growing.

Unfortunately, this is also something that I very rarely see sandbox games trying to address seriously. I think there's a massive amount of potential out there for a sandbox game that spends a lot of time and effort on making the game easy to access, without going full theme-park.

The best I've seen is Planetside 2, where you can get into the sandbox part of the game really well, forming or joining a more dedicated group of players, being a general and influencing the game, but you can also just jump in and start shooting things if that's what you want to do.

Shalvenay

1:44 AM

@AgentPaper -- EVE's NPE used to be far worse...it's made great strides in the past few years

AgentPaper

@Shalvenay How so?

I've heard that the tutorial has been made better, but that was never the real problem.

Shalvenay

1:59 AM

@AgentPaper -- tutorial improvements and lots of 'em, rebalances to early-game ships, UI tripup removal and general improvements to be more intuitive, the ingame corp finder tool (even if it is only a minor improvement), removal of several other early game obstacles (such as learning skills!)

AgentPaper

Yeah, been aware of all of those. So it's gone from "utterly terrible" to "just terrible".

Lord_Gareth

4:17 AM

@Magician Gaiden's boss fight has started in earnest

JohnP

4:42 AM

@Lord_Gareth - All hail. {Hail!}

Lord_Gareth

@JohnP Aye?

JohnP

Just...hail. As in hail fellow, well met.

Reading the chat from a highly offended person that objected to the edit of his post.

Lord_Gareth

Many people get that way about edits.

Part of the reason I try not to make any >.>

Miniman

@JohnP Link? I'm always interested to see how people misunderstand SE.

JohnP

Ah, he wasn't upset about the content per se, but the fact that someone needed to edit his highly educated, 40+ years of English talents.

Discussion between Adrian and SevenSi…

Imported from a comment discussion on rpg.stackexchange.com/qu...

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

4:58 AM

Quick sanity check, folks. For 5th ed, the only classes published have been PHB, right?

JohnP

AFAIK, yes.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

That's my problem. someone's asking me about a 5th ed Beguiler or Scout, and my brain's going "but... those... don't..."

JohnP

@BrianBallsun-Stanton - The wiki shows the last release of a book was Dec 9 for the DMG.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

right, okay. cool.

Now to try to figure out what game this person's actually talking about.

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Paranoia, obviously. You don't have clearance for that knowledge.

Shalvenay

5:01 AM

o/ @BrianBallsun-Stanton

Lord_Gareth

@BrianBallsun-Stanton They're probably wanting to re-create those classes in 5e. Both are found in 3.5. Beguilers are illusion-and-mind-control focused spellcasters who gain bonuses for casting against surprised opponents, wheras scouts are highly mobile skirmishers who master exotic terrain

JohnP

@BrianBallsun-Stanton - PHB II, so 3.5?

Lord_Gareth

@JohnP Scout is in Complete Adventurer

JohnP

@Lord_Gareth - Hadn't gotten that far, only looked at Beguiler.

How do people get away with posting PDF's of Paizo core books and modules?

Lord_Gareth

@JohnP Paizo lacks the cash to come after them.

JohnP

5:14 AM

@$F@!# bottom feeders...

Lord_Gareth

'm not the biggest fan of pirates myself but there's no need to get that worked up.

Zachiel

9:35 AM

Here I am, as it sometimes happen, with an awfully pedantic question.

...that should appear in that popup tab where new questions appear, if it hasn't already done so.

Zachiel

9:57 AM

Hey @Shalvenay, are you awake and can you talk now?

BESW

1:18 PM

Tonight, we threw a fight with crystal-skull-powered cultists in order to fake the defection of one of our agents... only for him to discover that the cult's leader was an old acquaintance tempting him to join the cult for real.

Also there was an espionage shoe, a disco gun, and a cannon made out of plant bits.

Next session: In space, no one can hear you concede.

Miniman

Apropos of nothing in particular, my week-long banishment to the desolate realms of phone-posting is over.

BESW

1:37 PM

Yey!

Miniman

2:06 PM

@BESW I honestly didn't know crystal skulls were a thing until I wikied just now.

BESW

Yeah, Indiana Jones didn't just make that up.

Crystal skulls have a long and shameful tradition as exploitative colonial hoaxes preying on indigenous stereotypes to bilk credulous archaeologists.

Our game's crystal skull has Unthinkably ancient psychic power, but we don't know where or when or why; I suspect it has nothing to do with indigenous American cultures at all.

I'm thinking aliens or Atlantis, but my group will probably have to do a brainstorm for it some time.

(Which puts the decision out of my hands.)

Miniman

@BESW @BESW Aah, I was just about to make a suggestion in the Spoil-Lair.

BESW

I welcome suggestions!

Thus far I've heavily implied that it was worshipped/feared by a Spanish cult in Nevada around 1800, but that it's much older than that.

Just because I probably can't codify suggestions doesn't mean I can't draw from them: most of the time I have an idea in mind that I act as if is true until the party tells me otherwise.

doppelgreener

2:43 PM

@BESW tonight was very fun.

Iron Heart

3:44 PM

allo

David Wilkins

4:00 PM

Well fudge :(

Looks like my DM is ragequitting.

Apparently, his expectation of us was to not be creative, not have foresight, follow all the plothooks, never question his decisions, and never look up rules.

Shalvenay

@DavidWilkins -- ouch

@Zachiel -- grr, you caught me while I was asleep I think

Iron Heart

4:56 PM

@DavidWilkins dang

SevenSidedDie

5:31 PM

Everything we thought we knew about archery is a lie:

nerdist.com/2015/01/…

2

The video is especially awesome.

►

6

(I think this is highly relevant to the fantasy side of our hobby.)

Shalvenay

5:42 PM

@SevenSidedDie -- STARRED! That is freaking awesome

David Wilkins

5:59 PM

@SevenSidedDie that is awesome

Shalvenay

in fact -- it's inspiring me to create a ranger as a backup char for the 2e game I'm at

Bankuei

8:12 PM

@DavidWilkins I remember a terrible Rifts game years back where the GM railroaded us constantly and hated the fact we'd actually use our powers in smart ways using teamwork. We ended up ragequitting him after a few sessions. guh.

David Wilkins

8:31 PM

@Bankuei thing is, none of the players is even close to being that frustrated, its all the DM, and he has only had two sessions....EVER

Bankuei

8:44 PM

@DavidWilkins Ah. I'd proably get together as a group and be supportive of him then. He doesn't know any better and a lot of the GM advice out there is quite terrible. "Hey, we know it's hard to run a game. Let's give you some ideas on how to improvise. Actually, you're lucky because learning these skills early means you'll be a pretty amazing DM in a few months."

David Wilkins

@Bankuei the problem with that is he has only shown his feelings to one member, another DM. He has told the group he doesn't want to DM anymore, but not why.

Now, the other DM is worried about having this guy as a player

Way too much drama for only two sessions

Bankuei

Yeah, this is where it's better to just get stuff out in the open. "We're here to have fun" != "let's keep secrets from each other and nurse bad feelings"

4

It also lets you know if there's room for reasonable discussion. If someone acts worse after you put stuff in the open, you also know they're probably not going to be a good player either.

David Wilkins

9:29 PM

Very true

Zachiel

10:52 PM

So, my second most popular question is for a game I never played. Wow.

Shalvenay

o/ @Zachiel

I was asleep when you pinged me last night, what did you want? :)

Zachiel

I think I have problems with players like you. Or maybe I have the same problems players who faced you felt.

So I wanted your opinion

But after thinking a lot about it, maybe it's not exactly the same situation so I don't really know anymore

Kaz_king

Hey I have two questions about ranger spells a. Do they get spells at level 1 b. How many spells do they get

Shalvenay

@Zachiel -- what is the problem you're running into?

Zachiel

@Kaz_king which edition?

@Kaz_king No, wait. First of all, which game?

Kaz_king

11:10 PM

D&D 3.5

Zachiel

I went questing with some people and we were faced with a monster we must not kill.
We need to convince him giving us a trinket he owns. So we talk to this elemental lord and the party diplomat rolls High, and I help by rolling high, but I say things taht the NPC does not like and I stay silent and let the diplomat go and take the prize. It's like it's estabilished she's our boss and I can't drive myself to do things in her stead because she would get angry if I did and I don't want to, but that means I could stay home and it'd be the same

So basically i feel like this player behavior hampers me

@Kaz_king as you can see here, they get spells from level 4 onwards. The spells they know is their whole list, the spells they can memorize is stated in the table but you need to add some according to his Wisdom score and this table

By the way, I'm answering you here because that would be a bad question for the main site, otherwise I'd tell you to ask there.

It'd be bad because it shows no research (a large part of the answer is right in the ranger description, so I assume you didn't read the book)

Kaz_king

I looked in the PHB and I could only find spells per day

Zachiel

look in the spells section of the text. There should be something like "a ranger knows all the spells in the ranger's list" The list itself is in the past chapter, expanded by other books

Zachiel

11:39 PM

@BESW!

BESW

Hmm?

Zachiel

No, wait, nevermind. Hello, and that's all.

I'm tired of bringing people to frustration-against-Zachiel levels, I'm gonna spare this chat.

And some others I've already estabilished I should not taint with my problems I can only solve with people who would get angry if I named them. So, I'll be very generic and vague when speaking about things, at least here.

BESW

[patpat]

David Wilkins

Looks like better odds for me DMing HotDQ
Our most experienced DM is giving me general pointers

Discussion between Adrian and SevenSi…

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