Posted by The_Meehan on May 15, 2002 at 20:10:59:
In Reply to: Reckoning: an accounting, as for things received or done posted by The_Meehan on May 14, 2002 at 22:32:14:
(Continued...)
That's fine. If it hasn't been apparent by now, I, personally, prefer (and find more enjoyable) the
Zeal-based creeds. So do others. Some (like you, Lex) prefer the Mercy creeds. Others, Vision. It's all cool, and they all have their place in Hunter.
Hunter is, in many senses, a game about *balance*, and disturbing that balance, in *any* direction, is Bad. When the list first began (in the WAY Back When), there was a *strong* tendency to Zeal-twinking (silver katanas and all that). The List shouted them down (heck, I even helped once or twice), and offered up inspirational Mercy-based stories (like Accord) to counteract the trend. And it worked. The list did become more balanced, which is a Good Thing.
The problem is, the corrective forces are *still* being applied, at far above maintenance levels. Which is, IMO, forcing us to the other extreme, and now we're seeing Mercy-twinking. (No, I have no concrete idea of what Vision-twinking would look like.) The worst part is, it's more subtle than the Zeal-twinking, and slips under the radar, so it doesn't get shouted down as much.
There's a balance between the three Virtues in Hunter, and the game is (IMO again) at it's best when they're all in balance. And right now, I don't think they are.
As for the list population issue, from our current vantage point, we can't distinguish whether the bias is in the posters or our sample; maybe the Zeal-posters go elsewhere, artifically slanting us towards Mercy.
And all of this is peripheral to the key objection :
The problem isn't that alliances or friendships were impossible between Hunters and Monsters, just that overall, such are *overwhelmlingly* likely to be short-term alliances of convience, which is *not* how *most* people play these alliances.