IGN: Chevyboys
Tl;dr: If I were to summarize my general experience with ice: You can’t do things with ice magic. It’s really cool, but you can’t use it for anything. This is of course engaging somewhat in hyperbole, but... it sadly isn’t much hyperbole
Magic is an incredible and fun way to interact with the server, and I've enjoyed so much of it. Staff seems to do a fantastic job with 99% of magical interactions, and many staff members have illustrated a lot of cool things that magics can do. It seems though, that ice magic has been left behind.
Staff, you are all incredible. The amount of time you spend is honestly a little mind boggling, and you should all feel proud of the work you do. The frustrations expressed here aren’t a reflection on how my general experience has been, only the things isolated to this specific issue.
Many of the contributing portions to this larger problem have already been partially addressed by staff, and those efforts are appreciated, however they are included to help give context to the issue and illustrate why partial fixes haven't fixed the wider issue.
The problem:
So, Ice magic seems to be pretty poorly defined compared to other magics. This is pretty frustrating to try to engage with as a player, especially when answers to questions have had wildly contradictory answers from staff members, that unfortunately leave players stuck in the middle of staff communication gaps.
As an example:
Feeble spells:
Wind: Lifts several feathers into the air
Lightning: Coin sized lightning
Ice: Do small manipulations of snow.
What is considered to be a small manipulation? throwing a snowball? making snow fall off a roof? it isn't specified at all. I suspect this is supposed to actually mean you can’t do anything with actual ice yet, rather than tell you something you can do, which is a theme going through. When I submitted an advanced crafting request asking about this, I unfortunately didn't hear back. Imagine learning you have strawberry magic! It’s so cool! There’s some specific things it can do that staff seem genuinely excited about, and that's incredibly exciting for you, even if you don’t know what those specific things are! It will be fun! You can use it to do something vaguely, and specifically ripe strawberry related. What does that mean? Unfortunately, it’s never clarified.
Moderate spells:
Wind: Create a breeze able to shift 10Lbs (Fantastic, gives a specific measurement, that allows for improvisation, but also has clear definition so someone doesn't run the risk of upsetting a staff member. S tier magic description)
Lightning: Miniature electricity bolts (Less well defined, but presumably useful in combat), and running a current through metal.
Ice magic: Do something with ice. (Not really at all helpful)Experimentation with help ops has revealed a lot of things that ice mages can't do, but unfortunately not much of what they can do. Furthermore, things that one staff member has explicitly approved, other staff members are highly opposed to, compounded by very few ice mages being available for IC conversations, and the inaccessibility of books on the subject. This seems in contrast to the amazing experiences that seem common in other magics. Lightning magic has books giving examples that are hugely helpful, even when the online resources fall short. Vel managed to learn things about wind magic his very first day, and it was fun!What can ice actually do? You would hope a strong ice mage would be able to figure that out.What it seems ice magic can do, from my experimentation.
Weak:
When existing ice is around, slightly chill a glass of liquid.
Feeble:
N/A (Would love to know what ice can do at this level, but I honestly haven't yet successfully found a spell I can consistently use here)
Moderate:
Manipulate armor specially designed for the purpose very slightly
Move an ice cube five feet
Turn a small patch of snow into ice
Medium:
Creation of ice and snow from moisture in the air (But actually not any moisture, only applicable when it is raining or snowing. Moisture in the air directly after a storm, or from sea spray is not applicable)
Convert a small area of rain drops into snow. Instantaneous duration
Freeze small bodies of water with time. (Small bodies of water defined as a hand held water bottle, or, depending on who is answering the helpop, sometimes a bucket).
Reshape existing ice slowly
Reshape armor specifically made for the purpose
Strong
Do something with ice, more than moderate
Do something with things being colder
Change the color of ice. (Sometimes this is only something that can be done by alteration mages though, unless one sites discord messages)
Do something to small fog and snowstorms. Small seems to be ambiguous
Unknown effect levels:
Somehow improve holy magic spells?
Let the user breath out prestigitation levels of fog (Best guess, moderate)
Create a 10ft radius cloud of fog (best guess powerful, but likely higher for some staff members)
Turn a rainstorm into a blizzard (Best guess, divine)
Put out a campfire (Best guess, wonderous)
Ice magic is generally not really able to do much of doing anything beneath medium unless the temperature is already freezing or there is unmelting ice present. This would be an interesting and fun restriction, if it didn’t feel like ice magic’s payoff in roleplay and combat both before divine felt... virtually non-existent.
The desire to leave magic as flexible and interesting by not nailing it down too hard is a laudable one, and one I support, however The descriptions of strong ice magic, feeble ice magic, and moderate ice magic miss the mark, and are so vague as to frustrate attempts at creativity and experimentation, apparently give contradictory impressions even to staff, and generally feel difficult to engage with.
Much of this will probably be a find out IC and submit advanced crafting requests, however my success at getting responses that aren't contradicted is sadly less than stellar, and it leaves me feeling almost like I've done something wrong in trying to play an ice mage, and that there isn't a anything interesting to do with ice magic.
Responses I have gotten that are not helpful: - "Find out IC" I'm playing a strong ice mage, I don't think getting clarification on what a feeble ice spell can do is unreasonable. and this response doesn't address the problems with staff providing contradictory information IC. There have been some fantastic examples of what a find out IC could mean, such as when Pru told me to find out IC about lightning magic, then helped me set up a roleplay with Nemi so I could. Facilitating the in game experience, and a ton of great roleplay! It was great. Unfortunately, most of the time people say find out IC, I'm left with little guidance on where to find that in character, and it feels like more of a hard shutdown on trying to understand how anything works enough to roleplay.
"Submit an advanced crafting request": Results with crafting requests have been.... spotty, and I honestly feel kind of bad submitting them. A few staff members seem too busy to answer many questions, even when they take up the crafting request, and seem deeply exhausted, or have taken advanced crafting requests and then just... never responded, even with followup bumps. Having IRL things come up is of course, completely understandable, but it contributes to the frustrations of trying to interact with the game.
"Find a teacher, we want players to interact": This would be fantastic, except: ice mages are few and far between, and the reaching out I have done hasn't met any success.
“At divine level, it can-” Divine level is not relevant to most casters because of the rarity of divine trinkets, and I don’t currently anticipate having a divine trinket ever. Furthermore, if a magic is only useful to the one mage who has a divine trinket and training in a magic, then it isn’t really a useful magic to most of the players who might want to interact with it.
“Ice magic is great as a part of X mixed magic:” Mixed magics aren’t ice magic, and they don’t resolve the underlying concerns and difficulties by existing, even if they are a cool way to interact with the magic.
Submit a /helpop request: Staff is justified in saying this, however, if this is the route staff wants to go, I don't see a better option than sending in helpop requests and gm requests as part of every daily practice session until I feel like I have an expert level grasp on ice magic, which seems like an extra burden on staff, and one not likely to go anywhere when my schedule so rarely directly aligns with that of staff.
Suggested solutions: - A review of the more vague descriptions of ice spells to add a rough scale of effects. As a rough example of what might be more helpful, even if the specifics need to be adjusted to be in line with desired power levels:
Weak:
Able to chill a glass of liquid enough to cause condensation on the glass
create small hand sized semi transparent bursts of fog
Feeble:
- move an amount of snow roughly the size of a human's fist slowly
Moderate:
Turn half meter radius circle of snow into ice, that could cause someone to slip if they aren't paying attention to their footing
Medium:
- Turn a fist sized amount of room temperature water to ice
- Able to convert falling rain to snow in an area the size of a cart
- Create enough fog quickly to hide a hand
Strong:
- Turn the surface of snow into ice in a meter radius (Obviously, this is not balanced at all, this is merely meant to be illustrative of the kind of description that might be more helpful)
- Decrease the temperature of a liquid to -5 C
- Create enough fog to hide most of a person
Powerful:
- Able to create sheets of ice to walk on water with some effort
- Manipulate snowstorms the size of a city block and fog banks around twice that size
Wondrous:
- Create snowstorms over an area the size of a small town
- Move person sized icicles around fast enough to injure someone
Divine:
- Reduce the temperature to dangerous levels in an area the size of a house
These don't even need to be public, so long as staff has a consensus and seem interested in providing payoff to players on the implicit promises of having a magic in game
Other suggested solutions:
Add a few weird things ice magic can do, codified somewhere (maybe even a non-public space if staff want to leave it up to player experimentation). Some ideas that could be fun: Extend the duration, but reduce the effects of other spells in an area, reduce vibrations in certain materials (lightning can make vibrations, it seems like some other magic could easily do the opposite), slow the movement of animals and plants for a bit, specifics on creating fog, making ice that melts more slowly than natural ice, cause numbness, preserve things, cause condensation on metallic or glass objects
Incentivize the creation of books on even a few specific things that can be done at low levels. I'll help write them! But they need to have accurate information that won't be vetod by a staff member
Have a staff document with more details on what ice magic can do, that includes specific examples of spells people at each level that people have cast at each level, that can be fallen back on so players don't get caught between staff member disagreements.
Thanks for reading all this way, here is a picture of a baby sloth
I would also like to add on to this!
While reading through the illusion magic examples I found some discrepancies that make me question the intention of the effect and its power level.
For example, at Weak Illusion it mentions you can “Speak without using your mouth”. Now, the question this brings up, is this just covering the movements of your mouth or are you producing the sound of your voice?
Why is this a question? Because at the same level it mentions you can create vague unclear images you are familiar with. Does that imply that you are only producing the sound of your voice and not covering the movement of your mouth since the image might be fuzzy?
It is also mentioned in later levels that you can “create phantom smells or sounds” that I would assume implies the sound of rustling leaves, a distant cough, maybe a small scratching noise. Passing sounds that are small in effect. Now, does that imply the sound of your own voice is easier to produce and throw around than the sound of a pen falling or a book page being flipped, therefore insinuating that the task of recreating your voice to be heard from a small distance is easier than an unclear “phantom” sound?
Anyway, just things that I noticed but aren’t the biggest deal but something that I felt was relevant to this topic.
My two cents! It seems like the examples of ice magic are needlessly vague, or potentially even misleading. I've copied them below with some of my thoughts, which are notated in [brackets]. In short, most of my thoughts come down to saving staff from having to answer the same questions over and over again and giving a general ballpark idea of the ranges, durations, and power levels of these effects. Just food for thought!
Weak:
- Able to chill a glass of liquid [Wonderfully straight forward!]
[Could use another example if there really even is anything else it can do.]
Feeble:
- Small manipulations of snow [How?]
[Again, could use another example if there really even is anything else it can do.]
Moderate:
- Small manipulations of ice [Again, how? A little example goes a long way]
[Once again, could really use another example. I think it's especially important to have examples at lower levels to inspire new mages to try different things, and wouldn't simple/lower level uses of magic be some of the most well known uses too?]
Medium:
- Creation of ice and snow from moisture in the air [This seems straight forward, but according to this post this is in fact quite misleading. Perhaps this can be worded better?]
- Able to convert falling rain to snow [Again, seems pretty straight forward. It would be even better if there was any kind of area of effect or duration attributed to this so staff doesn't have to clarify this with every single ice mage that reaches this level.]
- Freeze small bodies of water with time ["Small bodies of water" is incredibly vague. A pond? A pool? A bathtub? According to the post, it's a small container, not a body of water.]
Strong:
- Greater manipulation of ice [Still no examples of what manipulating ice is.]
- Increase how cold something is ["Something" is about as vague as you can get. Does this work on objects? Creatures? The air?]
- Manipulate small snowstorms and fog covers [Could perhaps benefit from some kind of range and/or duration. Again, many of these additions would save staff having to answer the same questions over and over, and potentially even avoid the issue of gm's ruling things different ways.]
Powerful:
- Able to create sheets of ice to walk on water with some effort [Range and duration? What does "some effort" mean?]
- Manipulate medium snowstorms and greater fog banks [Same comment as the Strong version.]
- Ability to freeze over most mundane materials [LOVE this!]
Wondrous:
- Create snowstorms in a given area [Based upon questions raised in this post, it may help to add details of the environment where this is actually possible. Also, "a given area" means nothing. Around a person? A building? A town square? More?]
- Massive manipulation of ice and snow in an area [So needlessly vague. This is just asking for people to ask repetitious questions.]
Divine:
- Diminish forest fires [I love this. An implied power level and range of effect goes a long way.]
- Drastically reduce the area temperature to dangerous levels [An implied power level, but how big is "an area"?]
The actual ice examples may be found on the magic examples chart, it is quite handy to review rather than the reworded one here. As you know a number of the staff members offline I have assembled a team of them to speak with you and get down as much as they can while helping you at the same time. They will then put the discussion or response here on the website. The examples have quite frankly been more than enough for most, with none struggling in this manner with ice to anywhere near this level.
Thus, the problem lies with a need for greater clarification than others had required. That is absolutely fine and why I wish to have the team speak with you so they make sure they get as much of the answer down as is possible. That said, this system is designed to be much more free form in some regards. We will never set voltages or the PSI of ice in a mug or anything of the sort. But there is nothing wrong with reviewing the examples and modernizing them. The goal should be to have it approachable by many, and when a new practitioner finds it difficult we will do our best to poke and prod it. So expect to be contacted; ice is pretty legendary for the many things it has done and I fear Find Out IC is not a roadblock, it is the only road. To expand on that, find out ic is not a roadblock here. It informs that you truly must experience and approach it with a character because answering out of character will be actively detrimental to the progress of the mage. That is the paradigm here, we are an RP first server. The team will assist you in trying to understand the paradigm and perhaps poke the examples to be even more informative.
Clarity on some magic and how they scale would be great for some of the magics... Like earth magic isn't set to a specific amount of stone for each level of casting. It's just known to work with manipulating either more or less... Could measure that out in cubic meters for each level, though. It'd allow for more flexibility with with certain actions and spells, keep track of how things work. For instance medium earth could dig an x amount of meters, and move an x amount of rock. For that specifically I've always imagine digging easier than just lifting boulders but idk. Similar could be said in regard to other magics too, like the voltage of lightning, temperature of fire, and even kilometers/meters per hour/sec for wind. They wouldn't ultimately /change/ how the magic functions or anything but it'd allow more creativity and frame of reference with the mages that use them without contradicting existing ideas and concepts amongst staff Though that's not entirely related to things since this is a talk on ice magic's clarity and what not, of course... I just found it interesting since it's always been something I've thought on when playing a mage