DoM Newbie Friendliness?

[Vanion Shadowcast]

Yes, I know I bring this up every 6 months or so, but bear with me;

A lot of young duelists may play DoM, but howmany duelists are truly successful at achieving the Mage Rank in DoM? Indeed, many more duelists become Keepers than become Mages. At a recent peak at the DoM histories, I found something pretty humorous.

The end of the list of the Parade of Mages:

69. Vanion Shadowcast Active
70. Tasslehofl Momus Active


If I'm not mistaken, Vanion became a Mage almost two years ago. It took almost two years for someone new to hit Mage rank? Doesn't that say something about the changed matrix? In theory, the boosting of FF and FT to go through certain defenses was meant to break the Perfect Defense Basic 8 Matrix that existed in order to shorten DoM duels amongst a few other things I've heard argued...

However, DoM duels still take longer than the other sports (not that I mind, I actually quite like it). And low-ranked DoM duelists have been consistently unsuccessful in reaching higher ranks. I understand that the duels are going through a lull in new members right now, and that DoM has a smaller playerbase than the other two sports, but there's more going on than just that - and I really think that the changes made a couple of years back to the Matrix, while good in intention, actually made the Matrix so random that it is difficult to be a consistent duelist in DoM nowadays.

Case in point - when I reached Mage rank, DoM was not really any busier than it is now per se. However, before I was the last to hit Mage rank before the matrix change went in, other duelists (such as Farek) were still able to reach Mage, because the Matrix was a lot more strategic.

I'd really like to open this topic up for discussion again.

[Deluthan]

... I really think that the changes made a couple of years back to the Matrix, while good in intention, actually made the Matrix so random that it is difficult to be a consistent duelist in DoM nowadays.

... the Matrix was a lot more strategic.

Are you suggesting we look at alternative proposals to change the Basic-8 matrix than what was implemented, in order to make it more, say, intuitive and strategic-minded?

If that's the case, I'd be curious to see some alternative proposals. Just quick-scanning the threads regarding the last change, it looks as though only one proposal was discussed on the board.

It might also be helpful to go into detail what specifically about the last change, and perhaps the Basic-8 matrix overall, may be causing the "random" quality.

[Farek]

I'm not so sure there's any fix that will lessen the disparity between the higher ranks and the lower ranks in DoM. There's really no reason a Mage should ever lose to anything lower than a Wizard, which is what you get when you give extra spells to higher ranks. However, the one good thing the matrix change did was to disallow mages from stonewalling apprentices with cheese tactics.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

I'll try to keep my points brief but clear. The matrix changes strengthened Foul Fog and Fear Touch as Basic spells, allowing them to hold advantages over certain defensive moves in order to break the Basic 8 "Perfect Defense". However, what the strengthening of these two spells has done is to make the Mage Spell, "Nether Ray" more powerful, as well as cause decision-making within the DoM matrix to be incredibly focused around FF/FT. Because of this, there is a lot of random guesswork, and less strategy. What is worse, NR is now an even greater newbie-killer than it was before. The fact that it's taken two years for a duelist to hit the Mage rank shows me a couple of things;

A) The matrix is not working as well as it should. If it were, it would be easier to reach Mage rank for the best of the lower-ranked duelists. The fact that the lower-ranks see-saw in rank so much is nearly proof enough that the current matrix is incredibly random, and more luck-oriented than the other matrices.

B) There may not be enough of an incentive to reach Mage rank. The only way to become Archmage is through the AMT, and then a successful challenge to the current Archmage. Of course I would not suggest changing this age-old tradition, even if I'm not particularly in love with it. However, compare how difficult becoming Archmage is when compared to how easy it is to become a Keeper of another Tower. In less than two years, I have held 5-6(I believe) Towers between my alts, and other low-ranked duelists who have yet to reach the Mage rank are able to hold Towers incredibly easy (you only need to duel twice ever to hold a Tower, I proved this with Jonothan Slava). Artemus gained his recent Tower without fighting in a challenge at all. I could name many more examples of similar things. If it were required that you be a Mage before you challenge for a Tower(like the other sports), more duelists would push themselves to reach the higher ranks. However, the random, FF/FT oriented matrix would still be in their way.

I think I've presented a pretty strong case - I believe that reducing the Mage rank to 15 WoL, getting rid of another rank, and giving all new duelists one advanced spell (either of their choice, or defaulted to "Arctic Blast") would be a great enough improvement that we could return to the old matrix (FF doesn't beat Displace, FT doesn't beat Armor, Displace doesn't beat Shield), and would make it significantly more possible for duelists to reach Mage rank. Then, in what would be another great move in my opinion, making 15 WoL be a pre-requisite for challenging for a Tower would give duelists the incentive to improve and duel more often and more seriously.

I know that these ideas have been pushed around before - but when you take a look at just how unsuccessful lower-ranked duelists have been at achieving Mage, I think you can see that the changed matrix had some negative side-effects, and that another route may be the way to go.

So much for short and simple - I suck at that.

[Bran Bale]

I have a few comments( and these are just my opinions):

Personally, I haven't seen anyone that is *striving* to make Mage. Most
of the duelers that I've seen (and I'm rarely there on Tuesdays, so
pardon me if I'm mistaken) only duel maybe once or twice a week, and
it is mostly recreational dueling. That to me is where the "we need more
duelers" aspect comes in. And its not just new duelers, but Swords and
Fists regulars that could be dueling as well. How many current duelers
are actually looking to advance?

Another thing . . . How many storylines revolving around Duel of Magic
are going on right now? Not many. I think that if there were storylines
to get gamers interested then more people would come, and stay, and
therefore duel. We have Anushka/Syous that is being posted, and
the Vanion/Brigath "grudge match", but what else is there? That's
something we all can work on, myself included.

Point Number 3 . . . I think it's great that Enchanters can duel for the
Towers. At this point in time in ROH, 99 percent of the dueling body is
made up of veterans. It's hard for new gamers to break in when they
are dealing with people that have years of ROH experience. From my
perspective, when I was getting pasted in DoS and DoF, I had DoM to
look forward too. I was just trying to finish my first cycle with 2 WoL,
because I knew I could challenge for a Tower if I did. It gave me
an acheivable goal to reach, and the "newbies" will appreciate that.

My two cents.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

I think that if we worked on making the Matrix less FF/FT focused and made attaining Mage rank a more realistic goal, then you'd find that lower ranked duelists would work harder towards becoming Mage. As it stands, despite a lull in crowds in all of the dueling Arenas, new Warlords and Emeralds have been popping up in the past two years. Again, in Magic, Tasslehofl is the first new Mage since I achieved the rank about two years ago.

I agree with the things that Bran has said about SLs and getting more of a crowd into DoM (which I think taking it to crowded Dragonsmark RDI nights is a good thing to do, I'd consider doing it even once a week or every two weeks). However, if achieving Mage is nearly impossible for newer duelists, and achieving a Tower is ridiculously easy for newer duelists, then where is the incentive to duel a lot in order to reach Mage rank? Where is the competitive spirit? These are important things to keep DoM healthy, and I really do feel like they've largely disappeared within the past two years of DoM. AMTs are the same tiny group of Mages every time.

I think that we can do better than that.

[MurOllavan]

I haven't currently had time to visit in some time but I always found this recurring discussion interesting. The current implemented change makes app v app matches easier for newcomers, but not high-ranks against low ranks. That would only change if Vanion's arguement for 15wol and the 8+AB matrix were implemented. I note that skill/cleverness would still be demanded quite a bit for a win on the part of the low rank, though.

This all depends on whether or not new players would actually be more interested if it were easier to face high ranks, and that the distribution of ranks would stay the same. I see that the distribution has remained the same, but I do recall some players from other venues stating that their interest in DoM wouldn't change even if it were easier to match up with higher ranks. Also, storylines and rp facets come into play. For example, some characters will never mix well on the isle or as the second to last person stated there may not be enough storyline material to hold interest at the time. Though I doubt the universality of those statements, as my interest in fists came from the fact that a low rank was quite able to beat up a few emeralds, sometimes by surprising margins. This is especially true for jades because of the stretch to 2 fancies. I doubt I would have been so interested if the rank path was as slow as I found it in DoM. Just my recurring 2 cents.