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This is why I stopped playing. Talking about how denying the enemy a win *is* the point of competition is a really telling mask off moment. It reveals that the drive to punish other players is behind [at least some of] rhetoric about the value of competition here.
Idea reliant on honour system and open communication (even if it's IC yells). Goal: Allow people to participate when timequake occurs for them.
Somehow allow people to join in after initial organising window. Combat window might need max minutes in case of heavy prolonged fighting and alternate team doesn't get to tag in based on anomaly release.
'Roughly equal' is pretty subjective, but I think any sort of solution that asks people to consider balance of teams may take some patience to figure out? Going purely off numbers might discourage people just starting in combat from participating, although a headcount's easier to measure.
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So if you're relying on an honour system, it's still not exactly going to be fair because pure numbers don't count when 80% of the peope on one side do not have the artifacts, experience, or coding that the other do. Again, because I feel like I need to keep saying this, this is NOT saying IHC needs to feel responsible, guilty, etc for this. It's just a statement of fact. Something being worked on slowly, but it does mean there is a delay between intent and result on that front.
This is not to say that everyone does this, but it's a trend in a lot of games that I've seen over a great many years of playing MUDs.
This partially means that one of the ways balance can be affected in a non-mechanical manner is through encouraging greater RP in the organizations that are limited. Even players can manage this, it isn't limited to our admin! Showing the Basin activity in an org will always spark some interest and increase the number of people who come join you.
So yeah. There's that, at least.
The first being that we didn't immediately interfere in the 4v2 situation and directly try to resolve/change/interfere with it.
The second one being the Ascension decision.
Because we made what players feel like were the wrong decisions, they've stopped playing and think things like 'conflict is dead' etc.
Those players that stopped playing have left a void and the players currently playing are having a hard time filling it and trying to step in, which results in frustration on their end?
Does that sum it up?
If so, then the question is - what can we do to reverse this situation and move forward? We can hold a townhall, let people air their complaints, sure, but at some point, we need to stop discussing what happened and start discussing where we go from here.
I'm not sure why looking at Ascension is a bad thing, we said it's something we would look at. I particularly feel much more strongly that it needs changing since apparently it's become more important for the other side to lose than it is for your side to win.
We can also make adjustments to timequakes, make them shorter etc. That's all relatively easy to do. Would it change things though? A lot of the other suggestions just are not possible at the moment, as they would be too much of a time investment.
This politics-level animosity for the "other team" is gross, especially considering how niche a community we already are.
(Delete ascension, descend everyone, VAs only!)
But I will rephrase my statement and say that the current situation isn't really because of mechanical issues even though there may be some.
I can only based things on what I have been told myself when I have asked people and my posts reflect these ideas that I have been told (which I make no claim of being a majority).
Also more admin involvement into making Celest a fun place to play. Some of our issue I think is retainment in the past because people say it's boring. While I am aware we can ask patron requests, when I've tried to spitball ideas I'm told I'm thinking too big/small because we don't know that the changes are on board with what the admin are thinking too. The current rebuilding is -amazing- (and I apologise to TLC that I seem to be dragging it out, I have... so much going on IRL right now so I'm finding it hard to get my stuff together IG, I promise I am not complaining about how things are going) but I am also concerned that once this is complete we might not get that level of consistency going forward unless I'm pushing other people in the org.
I also think some admin feedback on ideas proposed such as whether the idea of whether we can stop people from losing all villages in their org/alliance etc to a more significant degree than 'it can be looked at as part of the economy overhaul' would help.
Edit: Also, realistically, forcing alliance changes isn't a solution cause it's just going to piss people off and cause them to switch sides again, or quit.
For the record, I've seen that Trasto post and I think it makes a valid point and I can't fault anyone on SL side who feels the same way. But as far as I know it was only addressing the current imbalance, and seemed to be motivated from the same frustrations that made me create this thread.
The following is just from my perspective, so maybe be a little easy on me this go round?
Yes, a lot of our combat leaders threw the towel in. All at once. I agree that it did fall on the rest of us to "make up" for their absence. I for one, am not one of those who can so easily fill it. I'm not a Ixion or Xenthos or Snald, and I'm proab not ever going to be.
Personally, I haven't felt the ability to "air out" everything that happened with Ascension and the fall out from it without repercussions. Reading through some of the stuff about the topic has made me as a player feel I don't have the right to have an opinion on it. Either speak up, be viewed as negative while having your views skewed into somehow being toxic or just try to deal with the situation and not complain too often.
Now, as it happened. Glom had a bit of an RP event too, right as the dust was settling from the previously mentioned event. It was a good event, don't get me wrong. It needed to be out in the open. But, seemingly, it hit a community that was already hurting hard. From there and looking onwards, we haven't exactly had a whole lot to build us back up, have we?
Where do you start.
Mechanically speaking, raids while "conflict-type" events are happening need to be disabled or stopped. I remember being shoo'd out of Serenwilde Forest during "New Glom" because it seemed we'd outstayed our welcome by Admin, but yet this doesn't seem frowned upon.
Rp wise, we need something to help bring us back together. Please. As far as people feeling burned out from just the sheer weight of everything seeming to ride on their shoulders. I'm not sure what I can say to help besides, hang in there. I'm right there with ya.
I don't think it's the job of the administration to police alliances and make the excessively vocal minority happy when people are making choices for roleplay purposes. I think it is grossly inconsiderate that players make the administration feel like it is their job to police alliances instead of letting the players handle political things.
Ways we can mitigate this in the future, however, involve immutable alliances (like the ones in Aetolia and Imperian, that never change) or a universal no-alliance (like Achaea, where every city is out for themselves). Would this be effective here? Probably not! Once you're prone to making alliances, you're likely to try and make them again.
We could whittle down the organizations and merge them into larger super-organizations, eliminating the issue of having so many people spread across six cities/communes. This brings its own issues because there is a specific theme to each organization that might not sit well with people who like their org and are sad to see it dissolved.
I'm not sure what other methods we could have. There has to be some way to create healthy competition that fosters inter-organizational conflict without this Team Player vibe where you have to be loyal to your org all the way to out-of-character activities. Otherwise, the toxicity is going to keep spreading, especially if the excessively vocal minority continues to rehash things like petulant children.
And, to preempt it, no, not all viewpoints should be encouraged or respected. In fact, there are viewpoints that should be explicitly and actively eradicated, in game and in real life.
Explorer (80%), Achiever (53%), Socializer (53%), Killer (13%)
Bartle Taxonomy
(test yourself)
2. You could have sent an email/issue instead or
3. Not participated.
What it comes down to is that you only want to air the opinions you like. I'd call that toxic.