Re: (CONT) Reckoning: an accounting, as for things received or done

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: You know, I have to admit, I have never really perceived this Mercy bias. I hate to say it, but it always seemed to me that the bias, if any, was in favor of Zeal. Too many characters with too many guns and no personality or conscience worth mentioning. : Essentially, I think that the problem you have is an endemic problem, and not one of bias. No, the problem is not a bias in favor of the Mercy creeds, but people with cardboard NPCs. It doesn't matter whether it's Zeal or Mercy or Vision, when people have monsters that just happen to become friends are never stories well told. : I think that your problem is that the stories with fleshed out monster NPCs tend to be Mercy-type games. Moreover, of the high-profile "good" stories, more seem to be Mercy than Zeal. : What this means, I don't care to guess. But, there is certainly more of a bias towards Zeal than towards Mercy. It's just that fewer Zealots are memorable or interesting. That is the problem that needs correction. Not an overwhelming amount of monster-hugging, just the fact that those are easier to remember than the wide variety of DOOM clones we've had. : The problem is not mercy-twinking, though we do get that. It's more along the lines of Zealots who want a new weapon in the form of a convenient werewolf. Eleven dice of aggravated damage, don't you know? And, if they feel like they can justify it to themselves by giving their character a couple dots of Mercy (and the commensurate edges, of course), so much the worse. But that's Zealot-twinking, not Mercy-twinking. : And, of course, I should point out that the best my long-term, Mercy-creed character had in terms of alliances was, as a strict matter of fact, a short-term alliance of convenience. And not without cost, and without revealing spoiler information. : Like I said before, it's all in the execution. : : (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.

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