Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

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Siro
Posts: 501
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2019 3:38 pm

Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Siro » Tue Feb 02, 2021 4:24 am

I'm looking for feedback as to how we might think about breathing some life into Seanchan. In short - what would help you want to play?

Things that aren't helpful:
1. No, the race will not be deleted.
2. I know about mobs in FD aggroing despite warrants. I know this makes north pk harder. It's a coding problem and it may or may not change.
3. Globals. Again, coding. Another channel cannot be added. Narrates and/or chats can either be shared or not. It may or may not change.
4. Adding clans/zones is unlikely given current player numbers.

I'm looking forward to reading people's ideas. I won't have time to necessarily respond. Thanks in advance.

Carinya
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2020 4:37 pm

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Carinya » Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:04 am

Well I guess the best option is off the table :)

Making the zones south and west of 4k significantly more compact might help. West of Lugard and Emonds field proper are a couple examples of zone bloat that really stood out to me when I came back.

Splitting narrates would help, I'd imagine.

---

I can't help but predict a big problem with this that you might or might not be interested in proactively addressing. LS Smobbers are already the lowest of the low on the food chain and get picked off every day by Razhak, and recently even newbie DS like Stronk/Monsoon. Breathing life into Seanchan right now would mean another class of rank racing raiders deleting human smobbers and then running/ways-ing/portal stoning back home. This isn't actually fun for anyone (except maybe the guy getting 5-10 smobber scalps a day and seeing his qps shoot up, if he/she is the type to enjoy that).

Once answer could be to make Seanchan a pure RP race that caters to that segment of the population. 0 qps for scalps. Just an idea.

stringer
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:43 pm

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by stringer » Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:04 am

Moving the TD or Tear outpost somewhere closer to Northern PK would help. Going Blight wg is a nightmare and going south/west takes forever. If the outpost was up there there would be somewhere to run to. A small patrol really wouldn't do much but something with multiple exits and decent mob support would go a long way. Nothing else I can really thing of, honestly even if more people go to SS it sucks #'s away from either ls or ds.

Mhaliah
Posts: 873
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:48 am

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Mhaliah » Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:46 am

It would be nice to see SS have something similar to Blodfest for DS. That can be moved to where SS want it. (If i recall right certain DS can move Blodfest using the rod that SK loads?). I think stringer suggested something similar to this already.

A "no quit" fast travel option. That can't be used as a PK loss prevention parachute.

Kryzen
Posts: 131
Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:58 am

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Kryzen » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:00 pm

Seanchan need a purpose. We can't war southern clans and we're not borderguards.
Communication is horrible. A raiding side that HAS to use VOIP to regroup and hit quickly is a massive turn off for me.
Give me back my sword.
Make damane appealing? As I think they are closed currently. I don't like this but many would.
Another Blod-like camp is an awful idea. Blodfest and Tarendrelle is some of the most cancerous pk there is.
Actual mob support. If I want to raid I either need to kill CTF's in abs or the whole pk is "get low, run to Tarendrelle or all the way to EF. TD turns into a deathtrap either way
I don't like being on who with everyone else. If I gather some friends for fun time big smobbing then all it takes is someone to type who, then within 5 minutes they have our exact location and numbers.
People get turned off when our side gets farmed and there's zero we can do about it. This I think has been somewhat fixed but lord knows I'm never going to defend a city head on any side again.
Smobs? I don't know about this, we can hit smobs like anyone else but it's just safer to do it from LS, It's not even worth me waiting 5minutes to get on SS to hit Brigs/Rosande, I can do it on my LS faster than I can change characters and back.
The Seanchan continent zones are fairly awful for pk but they can work I guess.

All in all, it's just not rewarding to play Seanchan. I enjoyed it when I was going for Sei 1 and raiding/smobbing with some people, but may as well just be a Child of Light, at least then you have _some_ neutral/friendly places.

barb
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2020 4:41 pm

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by barb » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:04 pm

Open damane back up! or let seanchan stat channelers, at the moment they are stuck without any channeling support except for the few people that were clanned a long time ago. Balanced weave support means that a group of 3 or 4 could be really effective and get more people alting to their seanchan and grouping up.

While i agree that more fast travel would make easier to go around ganking smobbers, I think a lot of the reason people dont play it now is that the current dynamic is already geared towards cheap kills and opportunistic strikes. If that is the long term goal for what a seanchans role is then a bit more fast travel would be good, especially with no-quit. but if the goal is to make slightly smaller but equal sides I would think making it easier to join clans would be the key. I know of a group of people that have been trying to clan but unable to find anyone to let them in and I have been trying to clan damane for months and dont really play this character anymore cause I was getting nowhere with it.

Fully agree with balanced mob support though, the few places they have is crazy mob support with OP channeling mobs, and everywhere else has nothing to fall back on.

Ibzon
Posts: 128
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2015 12:22 am

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Ibzon » Tue Feb 02, 2021 6:08 pm

Seems like the Seanchan have three problems.

1. Purpose
Like Kryzen said, what is the purpose of being Seanchan? In other words, why would someone log on to SS instead of DS or LS? Southwest pk is gone, Seanchan going all the way to Fal Dara to pk against Shadowspawn seems silly - easier and more rewarding to do that on LS. There are some interesting race perks with raken, etc, but I don't know if these are still available or sufficient to make SS interesting. If there was something else other than just PK it would help a great deal - RP? More CTF cities with QP awards? I’m not sure what the answer here might be.

2. Function
This category includes items like separate globals, better mob support, reenabling damane, etc. Some of these require coding, sure, but I’m doubtful that any of them make enough of a difference without addressing #1 above.

3. Player Pool
Gone are the days of 100+ people online at once. Naturally, some contraction takes place here, and it’s more fun to play with other people, whatever you enjoy doing on the mud. SS is isolating. Even if SS became attractive again and had lots of players, it would be drawing people from LS or DS with negative effects for those sides. Again, not sure how to address this without more players.

Sorry to point out problems without solutions; hopefully someone else can provide those.

In the end, for anyone to play Seanchan, it has to be (sometimes) more fun than being lightside or darkside.

Akzak
Posts: 44
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:45 pm

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Akzak » Tue Feb 02, 2021 6:11 pm

Personally, the reason I don't play my seanchan (unclanned characters) are the following:

1) No one else is ever online when I log on and so clanning or raiding as a group is difficult.
2) With many of the south clans inactive I need to move a long way for pk.
3) I don't like the shared narrates with LS.

While I think there are more pressing issues to be worked on right now. I would change two things.
1) Give Seanchan their own channel again
2) Create portals for them to move to outposts quickly. In my mind this works the same as the flame for DS (time lag between players to avoid groups spaming through and you can't use it with noquit). I would add one to west WB and another near FD probably just south of Sward. I would also give them some mob support there to allow a fall back position against DS and LS.

If you make those two changes I would personally play again and I am sure others would too. I also think it will generate more pk and more north pk a little more interesting.

Detritus
Posts: 282
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2020 8:22 am

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Detritus » Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:01 pm

nothing to progress towards, chicken and egg on activity, can't clan unless bribe inactive seanchan who should have no say in people actually playing.

Taziar
Posts: 926
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2015 10:28 pm
Location: !Discord

Re: Discussion Topic: Seanchan Race

Post by Taziar » Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:42 pm

Seanchan is an invading army, in the books they were never solo. Let all rank 5 Seanchan lead up to 3 "eager" strength mobs (i'd say let all CoL do the same, they never went anywhere without a group). These mobs are not that strong, but could give the bookish feeling of leading an army (or gang of zealots).

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