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Post by k on May 11, 2006 4:45:39 GMT -5
But overall, the actual choices made by top players in any given situation are astoundingly identical, even among players who do not seem similar on the surface. Yep, that's basically what I said : the best tactics & combos in each situation are now well-known from the best players and playstyles tend to become similar. This is the result of stagnation, but not a stagnation from the players, but a stagnation of the game and it's rules. Almost everything that had to be discovered has been, that's what you call "small room". When was the game last updated ? I bet that when the ParaFC option was introduced, this was a kind of revolution to the game because it opened new perspectives of efficient playstyles, while forcing the old vets to adapt (something that old players won't accept sometimes, this is what I call conservatism). As top players you have a good perspective of what works and what doesn't work in this game. Removing / tweaking / modifying the existing spells is the best start imo. List all the spells that are worthless because of their poor effectiveness/gestures ratio, all the spells that you find perfectly balanced, spells/combinations that you find overpowered etc. Ultimately you may end on a refreshed spellbook with a lot of new perspectives and a game that got better again.
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Post by vilhazarog on May 11, 2006 16:53:03 GMT -5
But from Waving Hands to Warlocks has been accomplished a path that gave the game it's maturity, and you would just deny this if you were on starting something such radical : new classes, new themes etc. Veterans players should try to improve what we currently have, wich took so much time and experience to build, rather than basically trying to immediatly reach the "game of your dreams". New gestures, new spellbooks, new themes... How much time I've seen this in the past. Better try to give the existing game a direction, rather than starting the "perfect game" from scatch. Um... isn't their room for both? People that would like to discuss improvements to Warlocks can do that. You make it sound like coming up with variants to Warlocks means that we are abandoning the Warlocks version of the game entirely. On an unrelated note, have you guys been playing Talisen's new spellbook? How did it work out?
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taliesin
Ronin Warlock
Grand Master
Posts: 156
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Post by taliesin on May 12, 2006 4:48:43 GMT -5
I can't really agree with you here, Slarty. The level of research that's gone into Warlocks pales into insignificance compared to, say, chess or even bridge. One of the reasons I do play Warlocks over chess, which I've many more years of experience with, is that the barrier of entry for discovering effective new variations is that much lower. However, we tend at any time to have at most eight or nine players (at a generous estimate) capable of the analysis needed to hone a new tactical variation, so new tactics pop up only every few months or so.
However, as with chess, there are many positions where almost every master-level player is likely to play exactly the same thing, be he an offensive genius or an expert in the slow art of strangulation. This is in some cases because doing otherwise would be tactically naive, and in other cases because it is traditional; again as in chess, we copy from the strategy and tactics of those who came before and were successful.
Anyway, to get back to k's point: I would disagree that Warlocks needs an evolution any more than chess does. It's plentifully deep enough to hold people's interest for some time yet. Moreover, the main Warlocks community, RavenBlack's site, isn't going to be shifting variants any time soon.
With this in mind, trying to modify Warlocks directly is fairly counterproductive. Playing a barely modified version pollutes your understanding of the original game; mistakes creep in as you forget what variant you're playing. It's much like playing a kind of fairy chess with small changes - e.g. maybe pawns take forward instead of diagonally - it will in time come to damage your regular chess-playing ability. If everyone in the world simultaneously moved to new chess rules, then it wouldn't be such a problem, but as long as you're not in the majority it proves a big issue.
Hence the need to create a new game, with new gestures and new spells. The fairy chess I talked about probably will hurt your ability to discern patterns in regular chess play, but I don't think the same would be true if instead you learned Chinese chess, with its different pieces, different movements and different rules.
What we do here is unlikely ever to replace Warlocks in popularity. It's likely at best to provide a diversion for already skilled Warlocks players. Now, I've come across a relatively limited number of games of skill which have asymmetry much greater than that of chess (I've played a little hnefatafl back in the day, and found it interesting), and I'd like to experiment with this. It seems I'm not the only one. However, our asymmetry doesn't need to conflict with your desires at all, because you can simply play identical spellbook games and get your symmetry easily.
And sadly, no, vilhazarog, not yet, we've not really got organised on that. I'll shoot you a PM with my email in, if you'd like to play with the new spellbook...
Taliesin
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