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Re: Bloodloch's government system is unfair and doesn't make sense
So I know I said the last post was the last, but after a day of doing other things I decided to make one more.
I accept the points brought up and discussed at length in this thread. I don't agree with all of them, but I accept them, and I accept they are made from a place of sincerely wanting to improve Bloodloch and Aetolia as a whole, of which I appreciate. Having a better game is better for everyone, regardless of org or roleplay.
So, @Tetchta, @Borminchia, and others contributing, thank you for that passion.
I'll keep watching to see what comes for Bloodloch.
I accept the points brought up and discussed at length in this thread. I don't agree with all of them, but I accept them, and I accept they are made from a place of sincerely wanting to improve Bloodloch and Aetolia as a whole, of which I appreciate. Having a better game is better for everyone, regardless of org or roleplay.
So, @Tetchta, @Borminchia, and others contributing, thank you for that passion.
I'll keep watching to see what comes for Bloodloch.
Saidenn
6
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
As someone who was one of the few cursed in Enorian at first, I had a BLAST. It caused me to jump out of my comfort zone and talk to/rp with people I normally wouldn't and I found new and creative ways to actually pass along this curse. I appreciate everything the volunteers and everyone involved taking the time to interact with us/craft this. While there were some bugs and things that could have been changed, most of which are labeled, I think it was a cool way to go about it especially since I had been sick for the first week it was going on and suspected nothing.
The fact that this brought so many people together to try and coordinate their next cursed target was incredible: at a lesser? In the mines, in phase.
So, thanks to everyone who put their hard work into this to try and give us some levity during stressful times.
The fact that this brought so many people together to try and coordinate their next cursed target was incredible: at a lesser? In the mines, in phase.
So, thanks to everyone who put their hard work into this to try and give us some levity during stressful times.
Eoros
9
Re: Bloodloch's government system is unfair and doesn't make sense
I’m still incredibly confused as to why there are people fighting both the suggestion of a Warlord system, as well as the idea that what was provided is in any way an equitable system. It’s not. No amount of dictionary copy-pasting can change the core point; the current political system favours the Dominion. A Speaker-sequence system would alleviate these concerns while providing the Dominion (and all guilds) a way to ensure they stay relevant on the Bloodloch playing field, with far less of the conflict we are seeing now. I’m fact, I would argue that a Warlord themed system would actually be a better fit for Bloodloch than the normal political scheme we see in Aetolia. It checks all the boxes that the administration have historically set, especially the more purist ideology that lead to guilds more or less remaining locked to a specific city (envoys being an appropriate outlier.
Refusal to budge on this topic, as well as any meaningful explanation, screams of both an almost unreasonable stubbornness on the Administrations part, as well as an unfortunate ode to a legacy that has not been crucial to Bloodloch in actual, real-life years.
That said, this is no longer an issue between Carnifex and Dominion, but something mandated and enforced from on-high. I have extreme doubts that should Callidora actually make in-character moves to relinquish this Dominion controlled seat, that she would be allowed to do so.
As a side note, stop being dicks to each other in game. That log was a mess of passive-aggressive (and not so passively phrased) jabs at one another.
Naos
8
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
Nothing to do with Covid. It is a piece of soul from a long dead person being spread by intentional touch. It has no bad effects beyond occasionally having an in room tic. It was a game of mafia where no one knew they were playing until they switched teams.
Tiur
11
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
That's an uncharitable and reductive take, Nisa, and you're essentially falling for the "the complainers ruined your fun" narrative that was backed into this post when it didn't have to be.Saidenn was one of the first people cursed, outside those who were at the tomb-opening event, and have listened and watched how people reacted to this event. @Nisavi perspective is not wrong, especially given the length and breadth of complaints that were voiced, especially if some of them decided to go to corporate about the event and how it ended up being.
There were several things that could have been handled better, I agree completely. Cursed chat was often a mess, true, and some people took the trolling far too far. I don't honestly believe removing anonymity would have helped due to the nature of the event, but I do think it may have possibly lead to some different RP or opportunities for PK interaction depending on the nature of the discussion.
Here is the thing, though, and I'll second what was said above. Events are going to have different flavors and not all of them will be everyone's favorite. This is the first and only IC world event that allowed players a choice to opt-out. Yes, you may have missed out on a reward, but if you chose not to participate, why should you also be rewarded for not participating at all? I appreciate @Tiur stating that those who avoided the Curse would also receive a reward, but I assumed that everyone who -attempted- to play along in some form would, but I do agree it may have been spelled out more plainly somewhere. Not sure how, but it could have been.
And as listed above, this is being cut short likely due to a Corporate big-boss directive. T already had a meeting with those who had complaints and spoke to them about improvements, but it seems those complaints were escalated above his head when he didn't stop the event or make the changes some people wanted right away. The Pools were attempting to give us an event that was serious (minus curse chat), suspenseful, filled with intrigue, mystery, and had dark elements with being a curse/plague that was spread through RP interaction. Isn't that what we were complaining about having the ability to handle removed from our hands by T due to complaints he received? Then he holds such an event and corporate is dragged into the mix with complaints?
Let me reiterate: Not 100% of all events will work in the way people want them. Things that are intended one way go another, and the Pools (hopefully) learn and correct for the next or, if too egregious, in the moment. This event was clearly not for everyone. Some had issues with the misdirection and dishonesty. Some took issue to the godmod-esque flavor of the cursemote forcing a touch. Those are valid critiques and something to be taken into account for the future should an event like this take place again. But here is the thing. Just as it is with large companies it is with smaller companies. Corporate complaints take power out of T's hands to fix things or shape things, and we're left with what we have now: The event just abruptly ending in a less than spectacular way.
So What do we want? Do we want more events? Do we want more engagement? Do we want our volunteers and admin feel able to take risks without getting blasted and have players go over their head?
@Tiur, @Keroc, @Razmael and all of the Celani. Thank you for attempting to bring some fun into the game for Halloween. Thank you for taking a risk. Not all of it panned out as hoped, and there are areas to improve, but thank you for trying something new. Hopefully this will not be the last time you decide to take a risk, and hopefully the next one will be better received.
Saidenn
18
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
Just want to say that while I'll be the first to admit that I have a few major problems with how the event was run I do think the concept had a lot of potential and hope the complaints don't discourage you from innovating for future events.
Czcienn
23
Re: Volunteer AMA!
Do you have a favorite person to stalk via COMMANDS and other methods?Yes.
Yes I do.
How often do you find yourself following people around and just seeing what they get up to?Pretty often! Players are fascinating creatures and I like to study them and how they behave.
If you could create one prog or mob or what have you with absolutely no oversight, automatically approved, what would it be?flatulence-based pseudoskillset with exactly six kill progressions.
This is kind of a serious one, and it's something I've struggled with since coming back, but it's something I think about a lot: what is the best way for people who pay for a product to criticize the product without crapping on the unpaid labor that is used to make that product?Hey! So a lot of people are frustrated right now, and it seems like a timely occasion to address this question. This may be the bulk of my post.
So... before I even begin to approach this, I want to talk about some of the factors shaping peoples' experience that, in my view, often get overlooked when we're discussing Aetolia - or, really, IRE games more generally.
- Context: Players, volunteers, and administrators have very different takes on the game, and are motivated by different incentives. The oversight and general knowledge of the game we obtain as volunteers, as well as our admin/mod duties, lead us to examine the game in a fundamentally different way. It becomes very easy for volunteers - to say nothing of the paid staff - to lose touch with what it's like to be a player, especially as the game changes and the player experience shifts with it. Our frames become increasingly outdated the longer we're upstairs, and we begin to see a different side of the playerbase, not least of all the ugly things that some players will say about us because we're considered customer service. Every group of people in this game has their own context, their own set of takes, and their own set of shared norms and language, which can diverge a lot.
- Empathy: Following from the above point, I think that these fundamental differences of context - which I observe as occurring between different player in-groups - make empathizing across these divisions more difficult. Our NDAs isolate us from other players with whom we used to discuss the game in-depth, and cause us to form an in-group in which our assumptions, and our discussions, create a cohesive model of the game which makes sense to us. What I think we can sometimes forget, upstairs, is that all groups of players have these models. Sometimes they're based on outdated lore, sometimes they're based on lore we've forgotten about, and a lot of the time, when good-faith interpretations of the game conflict or some seemingly nonsense point arises, we're quick to assume that there's no merit to it. We can also assume the worst of someone's tone, particularly if it seems blunt and sharp, which leads me into issues that impact how we read people...
- ESL (or ETL, or EFL...) people: Not everyone is a native English speaker, and this can cause quite a bit of confusion all by itself! They might not parse a sentence the same way, or phrase themself the same way, as a native speaker might. This isn't just a language issue, either. It can easily be a dialectal one, between speakers of the same language.
- Mental Illness: I don't have statistics on mental illness vis a vis IRE, but I think most of us can agree that a disproportionate amount of us are, in some way, faced with mental obstacles that make our worlds more difficult to navigate on a day-by-day basis. My impression is that 2020 and COVID-19 have heightened this issue beyond its usual background levels, and that it is an issue that people upstairs and downstairs both struggle with. Two garden-variety mental issues I deal with are depression and anxiety, and the impact that these can have on my day is sometimes debilitating. A lot of our players have clear manifestations of these symptoms OOC, for all that it gets joked about.
- Neurodivergence: Some people's brains are just different. There may be nuances and aspects of conversation that they are not only misunderstanding, but missing - completely. This is only worsened by the fact that text, a medium in which styles of writing can range quite subjectively, is often limited in its ability to communicate tone and ideas unambiguously, a realm in which many neurodivergent people already suffer. This might, for example, produce what seems like a non sequitur in response to what you might think is a reasonable point.
- Values: We all play (or volunteer for, or work for) this game for different reasons, and these different reasons lead us to emphasize different values in our playing experience. One person might prioritize fairness, another consistent lore and narrative, and yet another might prioritize player agency. Some people might regard rules with greater or lesser value...
If I had to boil it down to something? Show care, even if you think someone is being ridiculous or obnoxious; even if there's some fact you feel they're missing or ignoring; even if their tone seems blunt and careless. They've arrived at where they're at for reasons (or feelings) which seem valid to them, and that's a fact that needs to be appreciated, if not necessarily respected, in approaching them.
As for criticizing volunteers, I really can't put it better than Brax has. This piece is a companion to his, with regard to criticism - and I hope it inspires an interest in clear, constructive, focused criticism and Aetolia's overall improvement.
Further questions to be answered, but this post has gotten long enough for my standards.
Raah
5
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
I am super bummed that this event is getting the axe prematurely due to negative feedback.
Just going to go out and say this from an uncursed person's perspective - it really sucks not being able to go out and do milestones for fear that someone may be lurking in phase or come wandering by to clap Sryaen on the shoulder and say, "Hey, long time no see!" while passing on the curse. It's anxiety-inducing. The paranoia is real and it's maddening that I can really only rely on my own intel I've gathered on y'all and to keep an accurate headcount of who is showing symptoms and who is suspected. But you know what? I'm having an absolute blast with this event. I love that I was able to provide some thrill of the hunt for some of y'all that were chasing down Sryaen (mad props at @Fezzix who got me with a touch but the curse didn't take).
So while the majority of the playerbase has this 'curse' and they're able to be out and about, bashing, doing PVP, literally being out in the open; I, on the other hand, have taken a vastly different approach in that Sryaen really hasn't left his house for longer than 5-10 min the past almost real-life week. There is a way to opt out of this event, but why would I? These volunteers and staff members create events for us, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna be along for the ENTIRE ride. I'm not saying things are perfect - I have some of my own gripes and issues with certain things not being addressed, but this post is specifically about the curse event and my feedback on it.
Pros:
- Love the way this event has made me work on my spying tactics more. There's way more relics and means of detection nowadays than there ever used to be, so I had to be VERY careful sometimes in the early days of this curse.
- The sheer unknowns were great. I shadowed Valeria for over an hour before she showed a symptom tick, so it really ramped up the internal question of: "Do I wait a little longer to make sure they're clear or should I just call it?" Had I left 10 min earlier like I'd planned to, she would've had at least another 1-2 RL days before Sryaen caught wind of her actually being cursed.
- The level of organization the cursed people came to display was really fantastic. I applaud you guys. Some of the traps y'all set for Valorie were just downright diabolical - trapping her in the mines? Oof. After I heard about that, I was determined that if I ever got caught while doing my mine daily, I'd necrosis in there before I ever let y'all get a touch off on me.
- The level of hush-hush displayed in the early and middle days of this curse event. Y'all really remembered the first rule of Fight Club and I am so proud to say I have never seen such secrecy in all the years I've been playing Aetolia, especially when it came to both tethers coming together for a common goal.
- Gonna give a big shoutout here to @Saltz for really sticking with this curse RP, because I know he is still going through the growing pains of finding his feet as a city leader but he's poured himself into the role of a Vanguard who got got early on. He made some unpopular decisions and we'll see where the fallout from that lands, but I just want to say I appreciate you sticking with it and I have absolutely no hard feelings towards you from one player to another.
- This has really solidified some friendships ICly in some ways. I can only speak from the perspective of an uncursed person, but those few of us that are still healthy have really been leaning heavily on one another to keep us sane while staying locked inside.
Cons:
- I wish CURSEWHO was not a thing because I would have loved the challenge of being able to masquerade and lie my way to survival by trying to fool the cursed people into thinking I was with them.
- From the beginning this seemed like the narrative was to get as many people as cursed as possible. Like, obviously, now we know that's the case because of this announce post was meant to directly influence the mob strength. However, the uncursed people were left with very little to do except just.. avoid being touched. So that's why I decided to start keeping a list of people who had started to show the symptoms - and this list was admittedly TINY at first. Maybe 5-8 people. At one point near the end (I haven't updated this list in days because there's really no point now), the number of names on my list went from 39 confirmed/suspected to 62 practically overnight. So, glad that I was able to give myself something to do during this because I seemed to be getting dead-ended with trying to talk to Shahina or Lord Sammonward.
- This has been mentioned before, but I disliked the idea of cursemotes being unavoidable and they seemed to promote godmodding. Literally, someone could walk in and go "cursemote runs up and drags his/her hands all over $Sryaen's face and then runs away before $Sryaen_he has a chance to react." like.. bro, really? That's just really scummy and I'm glad that the cursemotes went to the pools for review, but this event really should have never boiled down to some of the crappier tactics I heard about some people using.
- The idea that killing people was meant to remove curse levels. While this might be good in theory because the XP loss from player deaths was completely nixed, it became an impossible task because since the curse has a chance to be spread via PVP, why would the healthy even risk it if being cured wasn't a guaranteed thing? Also, near the middle and end of this event, the amount of cursed people vastly outnumbered the healthy so even if we put together a Cure Goon Squad to go around the realm icing people left and right, I doubt we'd get far before the Cursed wisened up and got organized to retaliate. Which also begs the other question - since people aren't supposed to be booted from orgs for stuff they do, how would say.. Sryaen justify himself to the city for walking in and murdering the Vanguard in cold blood? Since the Cursed are supposed to deny the existence of the curse, wouldn't they just assume that Sry had gone totally psycho and kick him out/enemy him to the city? Again, in theory it was a good idea and if I had enough time and interest from other parties, I would have loved the idea of assembling a group of resistance fighters who planned to pick off the Cursed one by one, maybe do some torture/interrogation RP. There was just so much potential here and I'm sad to see it cut short.
BUT let me end this huge post with the following: I loved what part I was able to be involved in this and I hope this doesn't deter the volunteers from trying to run events in the future. You'll never be able to please your fans or playerbase 100%, but I appreciated the effort put into this so, so much. Thank you for taking the time out of your lives to brighten ours, you magnificent kings and queens.
Just going to go out and say this from an uncursed person's perspective - it really sucks not being able to go out and do milestones for fear that someone may be lurking in phase or come wandering by to clap Sryaen on the shoulder and say, "Hey, long time no see!" while passing on the curse. It's anxiety-inducing. The paranoia is real and it's maddening that I can really only rely on my own intel I've gathered on y'all and to keep an accurate headcount of who is showing symptoms and who is suspected. But you know what? I'm having an absolute blast with this event. I love that I was able to provide some thrill of the hunt for some of y'all that were chasing down Sryaen (mad props at @Fezzix who got me with a touch but the curse didn't take).
So while the majority of the playerbase has this 'curse' and they're able to be out and about, bashing, doing PVP, literally being out in the open; I, on the other hand, have taken a vastly different approach in that Sryaen really hasn't left his house for longer than 5-10 min the past almost real-life week. There is a way to opt out of this event, but why would I? These volunteers and staff members create events for us, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna be along for the ENTIRE ride. I'm not saying things are perfect - I have some of my own gripes and issues with certain things not being addressed, but this post is specifically about the curse event and my feedback on it.
Pros:
- Love the way this event has made me work on my spying tactics more. There's way more relics and means of detection nowadays than there ever used to be, so I had to be VERY careful sometimes in the early days of this curse.
- The sheer unknowns were great. I shadowed Valeria for over an hour before she showed a symptom tick, so it really ramped up the internal question of: "Do I wait a little longer to make sure they're clear or should I just call it?" Had I left 10 min earlier like I'd planned to, she would've had at least another 1-2 RL days before Sryaen caught wind of her actually being cursed.
- The level of organization the cursed people came to display was really fantastic. I applaud you guys. Some of the traps y'all set for Valorie were just downright diabolical - trapping her in the mines? Oof. After I heard about that, I was determined that if I ever got caught while doing my mine daily, I'd necrosis in there before I ever let y'all get a touch off on me.
- The level of hush-hush displayed in the early and middle days of this curse event. Y'all really remembered the first rule of Fight Club and I am so proud to say I have never seen such secrecy in all the years I've been playing Aetolia, especially when it came to both tethers coming together for a common goal.
- Gonna give a big shoutout here to @Saltz for really sticking with this curse RP, because I know he is still going through the growing pains of finding his feet as a city leader but he's poured himself into the role of a Vanguard who got got early on. He made some unpopular decisions and we'll see where the fallout from that lands, but I just want to say I appreciate you sticking with it and I have absolutely no hard feelings towards you from one player to another.
- This has really solidified some friendships ICly in some ways. I can only speak from the perspective of an uncursed person, but those few of us that are still healthy have really been leaning heavily on one another to keep us sane while staying locked inside.
Cons:
- I wish CURSEWHO was not a thing because I would have loved the challenge of being able to masquerade and lie my way to survival by trying to fool the cursed people into thinking I was with them.
- From the beginning this seemed like the narrative was to get as many people as cursed as possible. Like, obviously, now we know that's the case because of this announce post was meant to directly influence the mob strength. However, the uncursed people were left with very little to do except just.. avoid being touched. So that's why I decided to start keeping a list of people who had started to show the symptoms - and this list was admittedly TINY at first. Maybe 5-8 people. At one point near the end (I haven't updated this list in days because there's really no point now), the number of names on my list went from 39 confirmed/suspected to 62 practically overnight. So, glad that I was able to give myself something to do during this because I seemed to be getting dead-ended with trying to talk to Shahina or Lord Sammonward.
- This has been mentioned before, but I disliked the idea of cursemotes being unavoidable and they seemed to promote godmodding. Literally, someone could walk in and go "cursemote runs up and drags his/her hands all over $Sryaen's face and then runs away before $Sryaen_he has a chance to react." like.. bro, really? That's just really scummy and I'm glad that the cursemotes went to the pools for review, but this event really should have never boiled down to some of the crappier tactics I heard about some people using.
- The idea that killing people was meant to remove curse levels. While this might be good in theory because the XP loss from player deaths was completely nixed, it became an impossible task because since the curse has a chance to be spread via PVP, why would the healthy even risk it if being cured wasn't a guaranteed thing? Also, near the middle and end of this event, the amount of cursed people vastly outnumbered the healthy so even if we put together a Cure Goon Squad to go around the realm icing people left and right, I doubt we'd get far before the Cursed wisened up and got organized to retaliate. Which also begs the other question - since people aren't supposed to be booted from orgs for stuff they do, how would say.. Sryaen justify himself to the city for walking in and murdering the Vanguard in cold blood? Since the Cursed are supposed to deny the existence of the curse, wouldn't they just assume that Sry had gone totally psycho and kick him out/enemy him to the city? Again, in theory it was a good idea and if I had enough time and interest from other parties, I would have loved the idea of assembling a group of resistance fighters who planned to pick off the Cursed one by one, maybe do some torture/interrogation RP. There was just so much potential here and I'm sad to see it cut short.
BUT let me end this huge post with the following: I loved what part I was able to be involved in this and I hope this doesn't deter the volunteers from trying to run events in the future. You'll never be able to please your fans or playerbase 100%, but I appreciated the effort put into this so, so much. Thank you for taking the time out of your lives to brighten ours, you magnificent kings and queens.
Sryaen
16
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
I'm fully aware that I might catch some flak for this, but I feel like it's important to add another perspective here that wouldn't otherwise be seen. I'm going to.. try and pull this in as much as I can so that I don't get in trouble myself, but we do a lot of self-censoring and taking these kinds of things on the chin with no real ability to make our feelings known, and this one is hitting me hard for some reason. Here's a volunteer perspective that's not in any way officially echoed or condoned by the rest of the team:
This is a bummer.
I was having so much fun watching this event from the very beginning. We have logs of everything curse-related recorded, and I found myself logging in while working to read the logs and see what sneaky ways players were using to curse their friends and enemies.
I was watching Tiur in real time code in new ways to make this event more fun for players when it became clear that certain elements were being enjoyed. Every time one of us would pitch a new idea that could add some intrigue (extra powers, new directions, etc.) Tiur would gleefully hop in and start adding in the next bits to add some twists and turns. Volunteers wanted a way to send a message to all the cursed people on a whim? Tiur added it in right away. This was a daily pattern.
I was watching players that normally wouldn't interact with each other outside of their usual bubbles plotting and scheming together on curse chat, and it was glorious.
I got a message on Discord when I wasn't logged into Aetolia and let out a genuine audible, "NOOOOOOOO" when I heard somebody had the nerve to cursemote Didi - with a HUG no less. Treachery!
Esteems started popping in as more and more people started getting pulled into the event. Considering all players would see is a seemingly innocuous, normal-looking emote, there'd be no way to tell an event was even happening unless you got pulled in, or somebody talked about it. I got to watch as the curse list continued to grow, and it was exciting and fun to see happening.
Then we got a few complaints along the lines that this was too close to COVID, and that this was the worst event in the history of Aetolia.
Just a few weeks ago we had a thread on the forums where Tiur was lambasted for saying that he'd wanted to be careful with certain subjects, just in case. Replies and upvotes seemed to rally around the idea of "How dare you insinuate that we can't separate between real life and what happens in the game." So, we go ahead and do an event.
That same thread (and Discord) was full of requests for events and activities. We try to do exactly that.
..And then this happened.
I appreciate that there are some things that could have been done differently, I really do. It wasn't by any means a perfect implementation, and we've learned a lot from it. But I'm really bummed that this was the result. If people issued themselves with concerns they had, we'd have happily worked with them. There was care to add an opt out option for those that didn't want to participate. The rewards were going to be little flavor-y things that'd only even be relevant to those that participated anyway, so you weren't truly missing out on much if you opted out.
But all of these precautions and considerations still weren't enough.
This is yet another case where it feels like no matter what it is we try to do, we just can't win.
This is a bummer.
I was having so much fun watching this event from the very beginning. We have logs of everything curse-related recorded, and I found myself logging in while working to read the logs and see what sneaky ways players were using to curse their friends and enemies.
I was watching Tiur in real time code in new ways to make this event more fun for players when it became clear that certain elements were being enjoyed. Every time one of us would pitch a new idea that could add some intrigue (extra powers, new directions, etc.) Tiur would gleefully hop in and start adding in the next bits to add some twists and turns. Volunteers wanted a way to send a message to all the cursed people on a whim? Tiur added it in right away. This was a daily pattern.
I was watching players that normally wouldn't interact with each other outside of their usual bubbles plotting and scheming together on curse chat, and it was glorious.
I got a message on Discord when I wasn't logged into Aetolia and let out a genuine audible, "NOOOOOOOO" when I heard somebody had the nerve to cursemote Didi - with a HUG no less. Treachery!
Esteems started popping in as more and more people started getting pulled into the event. Considering all players would see is a seemingly innocuous, normal-looking emote, there'd be no way to tell an event was even happening unless you got pulled in, or somebody talked about it. I got to watch as the curse list continued to grow, and it was exciting and fun to see happening.
Then we got a few complaints along the lines that this was too close to COVID, and that this was the worst event in the history of Aetolia.
Just a few weeks ago we had a thread on the forums where Tiur was lambasted for saying that he'd wanted to be careful with certain subjects, just in case. Replies and upvotes seemed to rally around the idea of "How dare you insinuate that we can't separate between real life and what happens in the game." So, we go ahead and do an event.
That same thread (and Discord) was full of requests for events and activities. We try to do exactly that.
..And then this happened.
I appreciate that there are some things that could have been done differently, I really do. It wasn't by any means a perfect implementation, and we've learned a lot from it. But I'm really bummed that this was the result. If people issued themselves with concerns they had, we'd have happily worked with them. There was care to add an opt out option for those that didn't want to participate. The rewards were going to be little flavor-y things that'd only even be relevant to those that participated anyway, so you weren't truly missing out on much if you opted out.
But all of these precautions and considerations still weren't enough.
This is yet another case where it feels like no matter what it is we try to do, we just can't win.
Brax
28
Re: Announce post #3143: Cursed Event
I'm so sorry that you feel this way and I know it can be depressing. I hope the overwhelmingly positive likes that you've got en masse demonstrate that the bulk majority of us appreciated and liked it, aside in my case from a few minor nit-picky things with curse channel.
This is yet another case where it feels like no matter what it is we try to do, we just can't win.
It was enjoyable, it was creative, and I hope you guys do more like it in the future. I've had relatives and close friends get COVID, and while this is anecdotal, I didn't really see the correlation between this event and COVID. I hope you realize that those opinions were likely loud and in the minority. Please don't lose that creative spark and drive and know that I, and many others I'm sure, appreciate you and the work you did.
To everyone else: please remember that the Celani do this as volunteers. View them as dungeon masters trying to come up with an enjoyable playing experience for us player characters. Not all "tables" will be up to everyone's satisfaction or personal taste, but that doesn't mean you flip the table over to end the game for everyone. Rather, you had the opportunity to opt out in this event, and walk away from the table to do something else. Moving forward, please employ this option. Otherwise, it sets a bad tone for us as players and it makes us look ungrateful.
Nisavi
7