Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[Klaus]

Cai is actually put at a significant disadvantage by having us vote on her first. We aren't selecting from a panel of choices all at the same time, we are voting yes/no on them in sequence.

Suppose voters are divided between three options, A, B and C.

40% support A
30% support B
30% support C

If they vote yes/no on A first, then 60% of the voters will vote 'No', and the winner will come down to B or C, despite A being more popular than either of them. By going first, A not only needs to be the most popular option, it needs to be more popular than every other option combined. And the more options there are the bigger a handicap this becomes.

Our options include:
Ministry
Military
Gu Tai
Sect
Travel outside the empire
Bai
Cai

And anything I may have forgotten.

Far from being unfair in Cai's favor, the quest format actually forces her to fight an uphill battle.

 

[tricholysis]

What do you think a lack of choice is?

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A lack of choice is different from railroading. A lack of choice is a lack of choice, intentional or not, but railroading is an intentional action of leading and an intentional destruction of other options. But that's a mostly petty semantic argument.

Like, remove the specifics of which choice is which and a better possible structure can be suggested (with the benefit of hindsight).

If there was some prior investment in the weakest option, then it would have a reason to be chosen. Meizhen has the ugliest option by far for that reason. Otherwise people would instapick it because she's the first character with the most investment.

Similarly, if the political marriage prospect were already a character that people were interested in, like Xuan Shi or Han Jian or something (disregarding the politics preventing those specific options) then it would be feasible to present it after the materially strongest offer. Heck, people are happy to suggest a marriage with Gan Guangli. Because as far as 'political marriage' goes, having it be someone you know isn't so poisonous. If there were some more forethought...

But there wasn't. So now there's an imbalance that strangled at least one option, and that, that's a thing that people can be annoyed by and rightfully complain about.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Tradition, first off, works against the assumption. In the past 40 weeks we have gathered 48 more sect points then we have spent. To say that in the next 12 we will spend at least 40 more sect points than we earn in the weight of that history needs to be supported with reasons.

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That reasoning does not hold. It might hold if spending sect points and earning them was symmetric, but it isn't; you can have a positive store of sect points but not a negative one.

I mean, imagine what would have happened if we got 100 sect points for breaking through to Yellow/Silver. I guarantee that we would be below our starting point right now; there were multiple occasions where we absolutely could have spent sect points and would have wanted to, but couldn't afford it.

The biggest use of our sect points would be to get a level 3 library pass in order to acquire an art from there.

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The biggest use by far is Tutoring, not a library pass. Even if we don't go into the uncharted territory of renting multiple tutors per week, a single tutor costs 30 sect points, which is more than we are likely to earn in any given week. Furthermore, we currently have 4 pills which would significantly benefit from tutoring, and are likely to be able to acquire more.

 

[Klaus]

Like, I get that "Suddenly, CAI!" into our schedule every week would have probably driven people up the wall and into the hills, but we're still the one who had to start every conversation with her. We had the Law Lessons which were nice and we had Cai talk which, uh, happened.

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I think that's because yrsillar is bending over backwards to give the other options a chance. If CRX mas making an active effort to win us over she would probably have succeeded simply because she has so much to offer right now. He just recently mentioned that she offered " absolute material superiority" but we still don't know what support Cai might provide to our cultivation, despite that being a one of our biggest topics of discussion.

 

[George]

Yeah, you'll notice that I never actually accused yrsillar of railroading. That word was introduced by @TehChron; the closest I came was 'close to a total nonchoice'. Though I'll acknowledge that they're similar meanings, there's quite a bit more allowance for choice within the area 'close' to a nonchoice.

There's definitely a scale from 'literally only one option allowed' up to 'btw these are all equal'. Unfair is fine, but the degree of unbalance between some sets of options is a hair too much to only be unfair by my judgement. And that's a matter of subjective judgement affected to some degree by my 'alignment' with these options—@Alectai apparently feels the other way, though I think that his judgement is less about the quest text itself persecuting his favored option and more about how the thread reacts to Cai.


I think rather than the mechanical sort of 'how do you want to do a thing' choice more important is the 'what things do you want to do' choice, or if we're sticking to game-y stuff like RPGs, then the common 'which faction do you help out' choice would be a closer analogy.

Those choices are almost always introduced fairly early on, because once the player spends a few missions investing into a faction they don't want to switch to another unless new information comes to light about their current faction. In cases where a faction is 'late', the early factions need to have been lying to the player or something like that for late factions to be considered.


Yeah, when we met her she or Xiulan said she was preparing for the Core Sect test or something like that.

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My philosophy on questing doesn't recognize any room between railroading and a legitimate amount of choice. I have a somewhat broader view of railroading than you, and a much broader view of what level of choice is legitimate. I think it jumps straight from 'flawed but ultimately legitimate' to 'illegitimate railroading' and that this quest is degrees short even of the first of those two.

I don't think votes should be consistently simple and obvious, but I hardly think it's fair to call the Cai vote simple and obvious. I think there are areas that the other routes are stronger than the Cai route in and it's a legitimate position to care about those a great deal and therefore be willing to let them outweigh the 'absolute material advantage' of the Cai route in your decision making. Certainly, if yrsillar told me that a close relationship with Zeqing where we could be best buddies, bind her, and go on adventures was on the table, I would happily choose that over a route that he told me would leave Ling Qi two realms higher at the end of it which did not have strong narrative appeal to me.

Further, I think the Cai route's so-called unfair supremacy is in line with the themes of this work in regard to the conflict between xianxia and western fantasy character motivations and serves to highlight those cultural differences in a way unique to the quest genre. Perhaps the xianxia part having a single champion pitted against several other options which partly represent more western priorities serves to balance out the strong western leanings of the audience.

Ultimately, I think there's a lot of value to be found in how things have been done if your perspective is to look for that value and engage with it rather than to look for faults and engage with those.

 

[Yun]

I'd like to point out that even Ling Qi being a personal disciple to Elder Jiao by no means make her unable to participate in any hypothetical civil war it simply changes her reason for doing so from fighting for Cai to whatever personal motivation she'd have after 200+* years of training under Jiao. In a lot of ways while it limits her resources she can bring into play it maximizes her personal ability due to Jiao being a director of a ministry whose members kick far above their cultivation level.

*For CRX, BM, or LQ to matter at all in a such a war they need to be at least two realms higher in cultivation, and that takes a considerable amount of time to do unless you're a freak of nature.

 

[Wiggin42]

I think that's because yrsillar is bending over backwards to give the other options a chance. If CRX mas making an active effort to win us over she would probably have succeeded simply because she has so much to offer right now. He just recently mentioned that she offered " absolute material superiority" but we still don't know what support Cai might provide to our cultivation, despite that being a one of our biggest topics of discussion.

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I disagree that Cai would be able to win us over. Her method of gaining loyalty seems to be inspirational, or drawing others to her through her actions, ie. Gan's belief that she is Justice. As Ling Qi hasn't bitten at that, I don't think Cai has the interpersonal skills to draw her in. Just look at the tea time talk. She seems spec-ed to cowing nobles; as an elevated commoner, we fall outside her comfort zone. At best, I can see her throwing resources at Ling Qi and somehow I don't see her gaining personal loyalty that way. Bai gave us cool stuff, but more importantly she was there to offer help, advice, and experienced some crazy sidequests with us.

 

[Thor's Twin]

That reasoning does not hold. It might hold if spending sect points and earning them was symmetric, but it isn't; you can have a positive store of sect points but not a negative one.

I mean, imagine what would have happened if we got 100 sect points for breaking through to Yellow/Silver. I guarantee that we would be below our starting point right now; there were multiple occasions where we absolutely could have spent sect points and would have wanted to, but couldn't afford it.

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On the contrary, the reasoning does hold as it points to general thread behavior. We were saving up the sect points for something important a specific reason, and that was a 3rd level library pass. We were saving them with the assumption that we would be getting more sect points for tutoring if we planned on having tutoring. As the reason diminishes for saving them, so too does the need to save them. I agree that you can't have a negative store of sect points, but that does not mean that we can't spend points that we do not have a reason to save anymore. Storing them for a rainy day that may come, while we gather more, is not an efficient use of the points.

As for the multiple occasions that we would have used them had we had them? I don't particularly remember a time. I remember a couple times when a couple people pushed for tutoring only to not succeed because the tutoring could be used at a later date for a better purpose. But I have no recollection of any time where we wished we had tutoring (other than before the Thunderdome perhaps) and we didn't have the points for it.

As for the biggest use of sect points? A third level library pass costs 50 sect points while tutoring costs 30. The 3rd level library access definitely costs more. That being said, we will certainly use tutoring more than 3rd level library access, if we use 3rd level library access at all.

As for the repeated inferences to the pills that use tutoring well, they certainly exist and it is 2 sables and 2 argent pills. However, we only have, and will only have, 3 argent arts that we can cultivate at a time. A tutor is not likely to be essential for that. Sure, it would give us another action during the week and 15 more dice for the pills to work on, but the assumption that we will use a tutor every time we use an argent pill is sketchy. What is more likely, is that we will simply cultivate the 3 arts without a tutor, if we use them at all.

The two sable pills would certainly benefit from a tutor, but we will be gathering enough points in the upcoming weeks to cover those two, and probably still yet another tutoring action. 30 point mission, two 25 point missions, and you have, with the stores we currently possess, enough for four tutoring missions.

Unless you are saying that in the next 12 weeks we will only do 3 missions we will have plenty of sect points to cover all the critical junctions that we needed tutoring for.

 

[Nervaqus987]

I think that's because yrsillar is bending over backwards to give the other options a chance. If CRX mas making an active effort to win us over she would probably have succeeded simply because she has so much to offer right now. He just recently mentioned that she offered " absolute material superiority" but we still don't know what support Cai might provide to our cultivation, despite that being a one of our biggest topics of discussion.

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Yeah, see that's my problem.

It's been clear since the very beginning that Cai is best for resources. We've known that since we got the offer in the first place.

Sect Apprenticeship was an up in the air type of thing that we didn't get any concrete evidence of even existing until Xin dropped a couple hints and we brokethrough to Green. The Gu Marriage offer was practically never in the cards. Most of our discussion on it has been of "How do we say no politely?" and "Oh come on, aren't we even going to give him a chance?"

And with all of that, she hasn't even made the most token of efforts towards us. Every interaction we've had with her has been the result of us going to her. Like, I don't expect her to just smack us in the face with a Green Stone or kick down our door and go "LING QI! Let us go shopping! Or hunting! Whichever!"

I'd just like something from her that actually involves her trying to win Ling Qi's loyalty. As is, you could just replace "I am capable of earning such loyalty with time, if you would grant me the opportunity," with "I am capable of buying such loyalty with time, if you would grant me the opportunity,"

Fuck's sake, I'd honestly take something that shows her as something other than a Satsuki expy at this point.

 

[SynchronizedWritersBlock]

We need about ~8 weeks of tutoring, by my estimation, presuming we get EPC successes for the missions we do to get those points. For every 2 weeks (approximated) we don't gain the extra tutor action and EPC successes, pick an art level to sacrifice.

 

[George]

I disagree that Cai would be able to win us over. Her method of gaining loyalty seems to be inspirational, or drawing others to her through her actions, ie. Gan's belief that she is Justice. As Ling Qi hasn't bitten at that, I don't think Cai has the interpersonal skills to draw her in. Just look at the tea time talk. She seems spec-ed to cowing nobles; as an elevated commoner, we fall outside her comfort zone. At best, I can see her throwing resources at Ling Qi and somehow I don't see her gaining personal loyalty that way. Bai gave us cool stuff, but more importantly she was there to offer help, advice, and experienced some crazy sidequests with us.

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I think there's potential for her to earn our loyalty by backing us up when we fuck up in some major way. Whether she would I'm not sure.

Yeah, see that's my problem.

It's been clear since the very beginning that Cai is best for resources. We've known that since we got the offer in the first place.

Sect Apprenticeship was an up in the air type of thing that we didn't get any concrete evidence of even existing until Xin dropped a couple hints and we brokethrough to Green. The Gu Marriage offer was practically never in the cards. Most of our discussion on it has been of "How do we say no politely?" and "Oh come on, aren't we even going to give him a chance?"

And with all of that, she hasn't even made the most token of efforts towards us. Every interaction we've had with her has been the result of us going to her. Like, I don't expect her to just smack us in the face with a Green Stone or kick down our door and go "LING QI! Let us go shopping! Or hunting! Whichever!"

I'd just like something from her that actually involves her trying to win Ling Qi's loyalty. As is, you could just replace "I am capable of earning such loyalty with time, if you would grant me the opportunity," with "I am capable of buying such loyalty with time, if you would grant me the opportunity,"

Fuck's sake, I'd honestly take something that shows her as something other than a Satsuki expy at this point.

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I don't particularly agree with the assumption I've seen several people making that she at all intends to win our loyalty before we agree. I think that she wants us to agree first and will proceed to attempt to earn our loyalty in the years after we agree.

 

[Andelevion]

That's because "它" pretty much means "it". It's not about being genderneutral it's about not being recognized as human. So using it as a pronoun for people is just rude no matter what your stance and views are.

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well yeah. You do note that I left it out of the pronouns list for a reason lol. I did not include that in the discussion for a reason. I mean, there's other pronouns, but they weren't really relevant to my point about gendered pronouns.

As for all the pronouns sounding the same, Mandarin is full of homonyms. Even with the tones factored in it has fewer distinct sounds than something like English. It's part of the language's "charm". It's just full of pitfalls and being able to insult someone while sounding like you are saying something neutral or even complementary is considered a sign of cleverness and learning.

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....yes. that is true.

I am Chinese-American, I do know some stuff about Mandarin Chinese. I'm Technically fluent in talking it, if not reading/writing it.

I'm not just speaking out of my ass here, my dude~

 

[query]

I wonder how many new disciples die on this mountain during their first two years?

Ling Qi winced as she made her way outside, noting the emptiness of the street and… yes, there was a crying first realm girl being consoled by a friend.

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"Y-You said t-this was a good n-n-neighborhood."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't know!"

 

[George]

well yeah. You do note that I left it out of the pronouns list for a reason lol. I did not include that in the discussion for a reason. I mean, there's other pronouns, but they weren't really relevant to my point about gendered pronouns.


....yes. that is true.

I am Chinese-American, I do know some stuff about Mandarin Chinese. I'm Technically fluent in talking it, if not reading/writing it.

I'm not just speaking out of my ass here, my dude~

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I think he just wanted to put the information out there and wasn't graceful about it, not that he meant to insult your knowledge.

 

[Erebeal]

Alright, here's Ling Qi's new look. About what you were aiming for @yrsillar? Anything to tweak? I can make her more sparkly

Spoiler: 3rd Realm Ling Qi

 

[Neshuakadal]

Alright, here's Ling Qi's new look. About what you were aiming for @yrsillar? Anything to tweak? I can make her more sparkly

Spoiler: 3rd Realm Ling Qi

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Her shoulders are bare! how scandalous!
I do like it though. very pretty.

 

[George]

Her shoulders are bare! how scandalous!
I do like it though. very pretty.

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Presumably this is her looking at herself after she hit Bronze, before she got dressed.

 

[PrimalShadow]

On the contrary, the reasoning does hold as it points to general thread behavior. We were saving up the sect points for something important a specific reason, and that was a 3rd level library pass.

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I disagree. Not only did we never actually make it to the 50 sect points required there, but we didn't even have the 30 sect points that would have let us buy tutoring until the Yan Renshu raid (where we got +25 sect points), and after that we've been doing breakthrough- and mission-heavy weeks where we never actually had a chance to use tutoring (unless we wanted to pair EPC with something, and until just this turn there hasn't been anything to pair it with). I think it is farcical to take the fact that we've managed to "stockpile" a single tutoring action as a sign that we earn sect points faster than we spend them - especially since we've also stockpiled four pills which each benefit from taking a tutoring action.

As for the multiple occasions that we would have used them had we had them? I don't particularly remember a time. I remember a couple times when a couple people pushed for tutoring only to not succeed because the tutoring could be used at a later date for a better purpose. But I have no recollection of any time where we wished we had tutoring (other than before the Thunderdome perhaps) and we didn't have the points for it.

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I don't remember exactly, but one unambiguous example is on week 30, when we ended up using the Sable Light Pill but couldn't take an extra action because we didn't have the sect points. I'm sure there are other examples, though I can't say I'm willing to scroll through hundreds of pages of discussion to seek them out.

 

[Andelevion]

I think he just wanted to put the information out there and wasn't graceful about it, not that he meant to insult your knowledge.

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To be honest, I sorta figured maybe that was possible, but uh, a lot of tone isn't easily conveyed over the internet, and the phrasing sounded like he was explaining stuff to me in particular. "That's because...." in response to the quote of my post and all that~

Was maybe a tiny bit too frustrated about someone making some assumptions about my personal knowledge, but it is as it is.

If my reply was a little brusque, I'll apologize for exacerbating the situation.

 

[Wang and HuHu]

well yeah. You do note that I left it out of the pronouns list for a reason lol. I did not include that in the discussion for a reason. I mean, there's other pronouns, but they weren't really relevant to my point about gendered pronouns.

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Ah that's what you meant. It was actually a bit of reduction going too far on my part. That's why I brought up "它". My mistake. It does seem a bit silly in hindsight.

 

[yrsillar]

Alright, here's Ling Qi's new look. About what you were aiming for @yrsillar? Anything to tweak? I can make her more sparkly

Spoiler: 3rd Realm Ling Qi

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No I think you got it pretty well. Very nice as always @Erebeal

 

[Thor's Twin]

I don't remember exactly, but one unambiguous example is on week 30, when we ended up using the Sable Light Pill but couldn't take an extra action because we didn't have the sect points. I'm sure there are other examples, though I can't say I'm willing to scroll through hundreds of pages of discussion to seek them out.

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I mean, I'm certainly not going to ask you to trawl through those 100's of pages to find specific examples of when that had occurred, but I will tell you that the week 30 example you gave is a terrible one. We certainly did use a sable pill that week, but we had Elder tutoring which would have meant that taking a regular tutoring on top of that would have left us with 2 minors, total. We didn't have the 2nd attachable one yet it seems. I highly doubted that people would have been alright with only two minors in that instance.

I disagree. Not only did we never actually make it to the 50 sect points required there, but we didn't even have the 30 sect points that would have let us buy tutoring until the Yan Renshu raid (where we got +25 sect points), and after that we've been doing breakthrough- and mission-heavy weeks where we never actually had a chance to use tutoring (unless we wanted to pair EPC with something, and until just this turn there hasn't been anything to pair it with). I think it is farcical to take the fact that we've managed to "stockpile" a single tutoring action as a sign that we earn sect points faster than we spend them - especially since we've also stockpiled four pills which each benefit from taking a tutoring action.

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I will concede the point that we have only had the opportunity to hire a tutor from the points gathered with Yan Renshu's raid since Week 37. That does not, however, dismiss the fact that we spent 60 points before then on tutors weeks 33 and 35. Nor does it dismiss the fact that before Yan Renshu's raid we still had 23 sect points stockpiled up, after spending 60 of them on tutors. Tutors that we did not use valuable pills with either, might I add because the tutors saved us time and gave immediate benefits.

If my example that we have been able to stockpile sect points is farcical, then the insistence that the best use of tutors we buy from the sect is with valuable pills is equally, if not more, farcical. The two tutors that I gave as examples we did not use valuable pills with, I have no recollection that we used valuable pills with the tutor we bought for music, and I can't remember another tutor outside of Elder Jiao, who we did not spend sect points to get but did use valuable pills when training with him.

The four pills that seem to form the benchmark of your argument against why we should use sect points for tutoring in the incredibly near future, don't need to have tutors to get great effects from them. In fact, we have used a chunk of the Sable light pills without a tutor (2/5) and only 1 with a tutor (1/5). It is even questionable if we want to use the Argent pills before we get into the inner sect as their use is entirely dependent on a desire to level up to Green 2 as well as make significant progress on the argent arts before the tournament.

The pills would benefit from tutors, but we don't need to hire tutors to use them. And as I explained previously, only 2 (the sable light pills) would see an actual benefit. The argent pills we can just as easily train without tutors. There is only 3 of them, and dedicating three actions to cultivation is a fairly simple thing. And without knowledge of whether a tutor would save an action in cultivating the argent arts, there is simply no real purpose in using a tutor for them other than to save an action in a difficult week, but if it is a difficult week then the chances we would be dedicating 3 actions to the argent arts are already slim to none.

Your insistence that our ability to stockpile 4 pills that benefit from tutors demonstrates the ridiculousness of my claim that we will gain more sect points then we spend is unsupported by the facts and unsupported by reason. Form my recollection, and the examples I provided, we have not purchased tutors to use valuable pills with. To say that we will is to take a leap of faith without the support of evidence from the past use of tutors. We had 2 of those pills then, and we could have saved the sect points for what is upcoming, but we decided that spending those sect points then outweighed saving them for a rainy day.

 

[tricholysis]

yeah I'd rather just use the points on meeting Ruan Shen again? show off the new music specialty and new songs and all~~

and new people too I guess.

 

[PrimalShadow]

We certainly did use a sable pill that week, but we had Elder tutoring which would have meant that taking a regular tutoring on top of that would have left us with 2 minors, total. We didn't have the 2nd attachable one yet it seems. I highly doubted that people would have been alright with only two minors in that instance.

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We could easily have given up the LI Suyin action that week; we had only spent one turn without talking to her at that point, and the subject wasn't anything especially urgent.

I will concede the point that we have only had the opportunity to hire a tutor from the points gathered with Yan Renshu's raid since Week 37. That does not, however, dismiss the fact that we spent 60 points before then on tutors weeks 33 and 35. Nor does it dismiss the fact that before Yan Renshu's raid we still had 23 sect points stockpiled up, after spending 60 of them on tutors. Tutors that we did not use valuable pills with either, might I add because the tutors saved us time and gave immediate benefits.

If my example that we have been able to stockpile sect points is farcical, then the insistence that the best use of tutors we buy from the sect is with valuable pills is equally, if not more, farcical.

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You previously claimed that our historic state of having accumulated 48 sect points is somehow evidence that we can't or don't want to spend said points as fast as we want to. You've conceded against my argument here, but then gone to attack my position from a completely different front. When you say you concede the point, does that mean you are withdrawing the entire argument? If not, I contest that changing topics like this is moving the goalposts.

The front you changed towards is also tearing down a strawman. I did not argue that we should never use tutoring without pills or similar concerns. Obviously if we earn tutoring faster than we can spend it on pills, we should be using the remainder, not letting it go to waste. However, it is be ill-advised to do so now, given that we already have multiple pills worth of "backlog" that we want to commit sect points to, and because there is currently little premium on actions (having an action a week or three earlier is unlikely to make a difference in our current circumstances).



Also, FYI, after this I am preemptively yielding the last word on the topic to you. I am not deriving enjoyment from this particular back-and-forth and will not be continuing it further.

 

[veekie]

Cai is actually put at a significant disadvantage by having us vote on her first. We aren't selecting from a panel of choices all at the same time, we are voting yes/no on them in sequence.

Suppose voters are divided between three options, A, B and C.

40% support A
30% support B
30% support C

If they vote yes/no on A first, then 60% of the voters will vote 'No', and the winner will come down to B or C, despite A being more popular than either of them. By going first, A not only needs to be the most popular option, it needs to be more popular than every other option combined. And the more options there are the bigger a handicap this becomes.

Our options include:
Ministry
Military
Gu Tai
Sect
Travel outside the empire
Bai
Cai

And anything I may have forgotten.

Far from being unfair in Cai's favor, the quest format actually forces her to fight an uphill battle.

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Pretty much. She STARTS at high appeal and...steadily drops in appeal over time, as events that poison the well, and the distinct lack of personal interests manifesting.

For instance, as far as I'm concerned we've broken the link, despite being one of the strongest initial supporters for her offer and actually being interested in the Cai route plot.

She had FAR more time to ruin her player rep than the sect route. Though the Gu route was toast from the start due to a total lack of interest, it had more to do with the inherent nature of the offer than anything else.

Even the sunk costs argument is weak, seeing as we've gotten well paid in favors and assets each time. Absolute material superiority made it easier and easier to give up on over time.