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Re: Why People are leaving the game

For what it's worth, I think Lusternia is relatively good about dealing with explicit abuse of other players where it happens. For my part and for others, frustration comes from more insidious things: the refusal to address game balance: re Glomdoring, people arguing in bad faith, and people who stand to benefit from the status quo dismissing others as just lazy or bad at the game. Just because it doesn't involve swearing or personal attacks doesn't mean it isn't incredibly damaging to other players' enjoyment of the game and their motivation to continue playing. Tone is not the same as content.

If it's one or two people who have a problem with an org, then it might just be them. If it's the majority of people who have to interact with them, then there's a problem. No one in this thread from the "losing" side has encouraged people to stop playing, and I think it's a shame that some are.

Aramel

Re: Absence Thread

Portius said:

Well, that Gala was a delightful way to end my time in Lusternia, but I think it is time to move on. Lots of reasons for that. Some burning out, mostly objecting to policy. Not just in the library, either, but in many areas of the game. I'm sure that half of you have heard me whining about it already. I can't actually retire Portius because of the credit threshold, so I guess there's the option of coming back if those policies change. But I wouldn't be leaving if I expected that to happen. If you're sticking around, I hope you still get joy out of Lusternia. If not, I wish you well wherever you go.

For what it's worth, I had a good time in Lusternia and met a lot of people that I like. If you feel a burning need to contact me, you can just send a forum message and it'll email me. Or Discord me if that's easier.

Vale, Magister.

Vatul

Re: Why People are leaving the game

inb4 we're all negative toxics and we should leave the game so it can go back to being Glomdoring: Age of Ascension

Anaklusmos

Re: Why People are leaving the game

Yeah I left for a year, maybe more. Complete cut, didn't even speak to people from the game.

We don't -want- people to feel they have to completely abandon the game, that is the WHOLE point. It's not one or two negative nancy's rage-quitting, there has been a pretty mass exodus honestly from some point after I left (which was well before the last ascension) so shouldn't we address the why, rather than keep pointing fingers at those who left for being the problem in the first place? We don't want people to get to the point that their only option is to completely quit.

Lavinya

Re: Why People are leaving the game

I am going to leave here a post made by @Enya on the other thread, which I think is important to keep in mind before we start telling people who are unhappy with the state of the game that the problem is their attitude.

Enya said:
Mag HAD good synergy, not so much now. Note that the big org synergies are outside of the aff system. That's important~

------------------------------------------------------

I'm going to try and summarize my opinion on this, we had a long talk on the discord on the subject and I don't necessarily want to fully rehash without a chance to sit down and plan - but who knows when this will get locked so here we goooooooo.

When I say "Glomdoring" I mean exactly that, the organization as an institution. I do not mean "all of the players in Glom" or "Some notable players who play Glom". Not just to try and skirt forum rules or whatever, really: Glomdoring as a stand in for a culture exemplified there. I will specify when I'm talking about specific people or "those people" in a general sense, as culture is like the wind in that you can only see its effects as expressed by how it moves.

Glom has a culture that promotes certain types of rhetoric from its prominent players, that has spread through the Glom diaspora via players who would still be identified primarily as "Gloms" even after leaving to allied nations. It's one that ultimately is in ascendancy overall in the Real World as well, and has to do (I won't go into too much detail because it's long) with forced optimism and positivity as a moral stance.

Read the forums and you see prominent Gloms using rhetoric espousing this philosophy. In short I will try to sum it up:

-Remain positive
-Even if you are presenting critique
-Even if you are being attacked, take the high road
-Success comes if you are positive, success in gameplay and in balance changes.
-If you are failing therefore,it is (at least in part) because you were insufficiently positive

With the exception of the final point, these are all reasonable sounding axioms, and in general can be taken as a good ethos. The problem is that speech is not inherently neutral, it is an ACT embedded in context and inextricable with it. In other words: while possibly correct, bringing up an argument about the tone in which a position is being presented has a purpose, and that purpose in Lusternia is inevitably to pull the conversation away from the meat of the discussion at hand. An argument about pointing out the positivity or lack thereof of an argument is tone policing, a form of ad hominem... but ad hominems aren't bad per se.

Gasp, you read that correctly: Ad hominem's aren't necessarily bad... in fact, I think that they're necessary to some degree for a useful discussion! This is the case will all of the related fallacies, actually. A blind appeal to authority is bad, but at the end of the day it's not reasonable to explain to the degree of educating all participants to the same level, it's okay to have experts weigh in and appeal to their authority. Likewise, it's okay - necessary even - to invoke a genetic fallacy or two! In the thread about artifacts @Shaddusbegan interjecting with what (by their own account) were non-serious statements. From then out, it's probably safe to discount their statements: someone just wanting to stir the pot will say anything. The point of this digression is that you have to look at the impact of speech with an eye towards its utility, not just its form.

Back to Glomdoring. Part of what riles people up so much are statements to the effect of: "Your points didn't have impact because they were so negative; don't resort to personal attacks." Which is an ad hominem tone policing argument against said points in practical terms, while at the very same time asserting avoiding ad hominem attacks as an absolute good. What is the utility of this rhetoric? Well, in a niche community with a statistically super high population of relatively outcast people, it's to jam a massive thumb in everyone else's eye, even while the last point on my bullet points slaps everyone around. We can see pretty categorically that the majority of threads that get closed, the beginning of the end starts when this rhetoric is trotted out, and ends with it from administration.

Which comes to administration. There IS a "Glom bias". What I do not think there is, is a system of "I like Glomdoring's lore/players/admins/skills/design/npcs, and this player is from Glom and so I will listen to them". Possibly in very isolated situations, but come on. What I think is a better lens with which to view this is to take the (shoddy) rhetorical analysis above and think about what its ultimate effects are. Basically, Glom players philosophical rhetoric ingratiates them (or better put, ingratiated) them with administration by aligning their goals with those of the admin team. Some mistake is made with the release of a thing, there is player outcry, some players come in and say something to the effect of "Well we should critique this, but why can't we be more positive and friendly about it". This does two things: A) has the effect of shutting down the content argument, shifting the conversation to a form argument, and mollifies the sensibilities of administration. After all, they aren't 'shutting down discussion', they're insisting on "doing it the right way", even if the net effect is still for the discussion to end.

How do we get from there to a systemic Glom bias instead of just a bias towards "some glom players"? Players with this sort of attitude pass through the ephemeral process more easily, while others become increasingly frustrated with the inherent contradiction even if, or especially if, they can't put their finger on why it bothers them so much. This, the makeup of the administrative team shifts. Just as players clearly self-segregate over time and form pretty resilient org philosophies, regardless of the generally shifting populations, the admin team too forms a general culture that persists and self-selects. That culture and Glom's align, thus the "Glom ethos" tends to 'catch more flies'. This isn't a natural and inviolate law of the universe, it's the direct result of choices made by individuals, and shaped by the constraints/policies provided. It's fixable, but you have to want to fix it.

PS:
Positivity culture and corporate optimism overall is very bad and highly ascendant IRL too, which is part of why it's so dominant here. Google for articles or I can add them tomorrow, have a dinner date to go to.

For me personally, Esoneyuna, I did what you suggested. I moved on from Lusternia and spent my time on other games. So did many players who retired. The problem here is that Lusternia, as a community, would prefer not to lose its players to other games, and this thread is, directly or indirectly, an attempt for players to give voice to why this is happening. And speaking about why you leave a game that you once loved is, by definition, negative. Policing and gaslighting people for being "negative" when they have very real frustrations accumulated over months and years is not a good way to have an honest conversation, which this game must do if there is to be a turnaround.

Aramel

Re: Let's talk about Glomdoring.

@Xenthos I like the idea, but I do think that a skillflex available to all orgs is better than it coming in pairs, for the sole reason that a lot of people are very committed to their orgs and would be averse to moving orgs even within their alliance just to try out a skill. For example, Serenwilde right now has almost no active combatants at all who would be able to make use of what you suggested, and I think that telling people to move to Seren if they want access to <x> skillset is fundamentally no different from telling people to just go to Glom.

What I do think could work would be a "generic" or neutral version of each skill - potentially with player submitted lines if it's too much work otherwise - which you'd get if you aren't in the org. So for someone from Mag who takes Moon and uses succumb, their lines won't reference Moon but will have "a flickering light passes over x's face" (instead of a silver light) etc. In most cases it would be a change of one or two words. Eventually we might end up having enough player submitted lines to skin it thematically for all orgs (like goop arties), but it would be a stopgap measure till then.

OR, your idea could work if we could remove the nexus power alignment requirement entirely and allow skillflexing across orgs. So the idea could be that Glom stole Moon secrets from Seren and now can share it to their allies etc. Or, hell, do it the old fashioned way and have a player infiltrate another org and learn their skills and then quit with it and be able to teach it to other people - a lot of great RP back in the day came from people quitting an org and refusing to give up the skills.

Aramel

Re: Why People are leaving the game

Esoneyuna said:

Dys said:

I don't think that's true.

I work with Glomdoring because I like them. They're fair, they don't throw their fighting weight around in the alliance. They offer combat advice when asked.

This, and the fact the alliance with Magnagora we had before was not like that. Gaudi is a small org compared to both Glom and Magnagora and so it is logical for it to chose the one that does not throw its weight around whenever it is time to divide the spoils. It is no secret that my character hates Magnagora, however it also doesn't like Glomdoring all that much. If a Celest-Serenwilde-Gaudiguch alliance was viable I would have pushed for that ages ago. But its not

Magnagora has a small population that still actually cares about combat. And therefore, there are only so many people who can encourage this desire to fight against very heavy odds. We have with Serenwilde and Hallifax tried to encourage them, and they us when it comes to combat as a whole. Magnagora has assisted Hallifax and Serenwilde when their populations were low when claiming things have been difficult. Again, Mag now has only a small population that cares about ALL -conquest- mechanics, that includes pvp events.

The rest will not respond to a lot of initiation on the opposing side, simply because of a sense of hopelessness and other things listed on the forums. You would consider them 'non-coms' and opposing sides will label them whatever they like, because they no longer run to the call of a demon attacked on Nil, or an Aspect struck. It depends on who you ask as to how they feel about this. This conversation as you've seen no doubt are cyclical.

Before when we were allied it was even smaller, Magnagora was even less populated. Our population grew, but that didn't change anything about our combat mechanics, or how people felt. There were a bunch of new people we tried to encourage, but they didn't stay. We can't force them to make a choice to step up for pvp, especially in this climate.

One person disrupted the alliance, and it led to this reputation of Mag not treating their alliances properly. This has been mentioned before.

We have never thrown our weight around for as long as I've been playing to my knowledge. Whatever you call it, there's no big bad wolf energy in Magnagora, and there hasn't been for years IRL.

Our relationship with Glomdoring before that pivotal moment seemed cordial, but there were a lot of OOC factors that broke the RP involvement which seems pretty common nowadays.

Vatul

Re: Why People are leaving the game

One of the big reasons I burned out was also that it felt like playing the game wasn't as important as winning the envoy/forums war. And that's hard for me to contribute to, because I am a conflict-averse person and it's mentally exhausting for me to argue with someone, particularly in a situation where there's one of me and five of them, and where they don't seem to be arguing for balance but rather to preserve their own advantages.

I don't think I'm the only person who has experienced this, and I know for a fact that people have given up being envoys before because it is an extraordinary drain to have to argue with the smooth, seamless stone wall that is Glomdoring deflection.

Aramel

Re: Why People are leaving the game

Here's the thing about Glomdoring.

Their superior skillsets and group synergy is just one part of why they're unbearable to play with, as an org.

It's that they also deflect and deny this mechanical superiority. Check out the other thread and see this: bleed synergy was the topic, and it was immediately diverted to how other orgs have a similar synergy, too. Dustaffs, lol. It's the same with the IllusorySelf and feathercharm threads: "oh but NOSES, let's talk about that instead". Remember the old "fear is OP, nerf wolf" debacle? This is that, writ large.

And on top of that, they have the gall to say that Glomdoring is amazing because they have such positive attitudes, not because of any mechanical advantage that they have. That the snowball effect is just myth, and that power does not breed power, and being on top makes it exponentially easier to keep being on top. That all other orgs MUST be bad and MUST be toxic to be losing their players in large numbers. "If only you were as positive as we were!". Give me a break.

I'm going to call out Glomdoring as a whole here, without regret. While I will concede that not every Glomdoring player is equally accountable, each one of them enables the worst of their playerbase. By not acknowledging the faults in your own organization and the way some of your members speak with dripping condescension, you are, in fact, part of the problem, and must be held accountable to change, as well.

Anaklusmos

Re: Why People are leaving the game

Tarken said:

Genuine question here, because something @Shaddus said caught my interest.

Glomdoring has dominated the game for the last ~1.5 years, undeniable fact. You say the organisation won't allow other people to have a turn - how would you propose Glomdoring goes about doing that? Short of simply not playing, I am not actually sure how this would look. Perhaps that is the solution some people would like to see, but I think most people can acknowledge that its both unlikely and unreasonable to expect that of people.

I'm asking this from the perspective of someone who both had a fondness for several of the people that retired and as someone who does not have the time to play very much anymore, but when I do am a fairly significant asset to my organisation in the pk department. I log in to play with friends and to help them succeed, not for any particular desire to shake people down for their lunch money. Perhaps there is context here I'm unaware of due to that reduced presence, but I'd be interested if you can see a reasonable way forward that I have missed.

Less clamoring to nerf everyone else the instant they get something functional....less attempting to block all attempts to improve skills in general...less crying foul when Glom skills are called into question as overtuned....less attempting to subvert honest discourse about unrelated things like artifacts into something else as an undercurrented means to still hold advantage/derail the thread. These would make for a good start. No you haven't engaged in such yourself, Tarken, so I don't point a finger at you in this, merely state what would make for a good start.

Otherwise, dominating because of good group tactics and cohesion, and well designed synergy is fine. It's just that the rest of the efforts to prevent anyone else getting much the same, or immediately trying to argue 'balancing' any fixes or improvements to keep everyone else right about where they currently are (looking at every damned Warrior report ever, there, despite Glom benefiting JUST as much as anyone else, more with Pureblade bleed working quite well with the general mechanics of Glomdoring)...THAT is what is asked of when calls are made to give others a turn.

No one wants a handout where any Org on top quits for a bit...and I've actually seen that in action, one org in another game absolutely dominated all the others, members intentionally went dormant, alted, or jumped ship to help other orgs...every damned thing fell apart for the original org and the game in general for a while. So no, none of that. Just less of the metagaming, false/mistaken statistics, trolling, etc and we'd all be much better off.

Shango