Best Of

I think it's less that tethers are dictating player behavior as much as it is city culture. As someone who pushed hard for Spines to take a stance in this event, the reasoning was literally never once 'fear of retaliation' from Bloodloch or blind tether allegiance, but a decision to stick to the theme of Spinesreach. To quote our own HELP file:

Looking at this, and looking at the offer from Bloodloch for research into what was essentially a new field of magic, it made sense to be like "No, we should help them, not because they're our allies or because of the treaties or because ShAdOw-whatever, but because we stand to learn some new cool stuff from it, and that is, on paper, our schtick." Unfortunately, that's just really not what the city is. Spines doesn't have an identity right now strong enough to push us towards a singular goal. We're basically the Hufflepuff of Aetolian cities where "all the rest" go, and that makes it really difficult to involve ourselves in any sort of meaningful way in events.

I guess the whole point I'm mentioning it is that the decision wasn't being made at a tether-based "SHADOW GOOD, MUST SUPPORT SHADOW" sort of level, but one from a city culture angle...and I think city culture is what makes the in-game world interesting rather than simply ShadowxSpirit, because that makes it four separate entities, rather than only two. I don't think tethers are an issue when those four cultures get their chance to do things uniquely them and shine for it. Double points if/when those things cause conflict on one side of the tether, like when Syssin and Consanguine were at war over the whole Ati situation.

Undeath and blood and shouting strength? Go go gadget Bloodloch.
Trees and Dendara and Spirits? Do ya thang, Duiran
Light and Spirit and Truth? Praise it, Enorian.
Spinesreach?...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: I want to add one thing- I play a Spirit char and a Shadow char with about equal investment, and I noticed very strongly that as soon as it became known that I had a Shadow char, the Spirit community started treating me with a measure of paranoia that has been honestly really hurtful. As if that made me sus as a person. Deny it or not, but there /is/ an OOC bias across tethers- especially spirit to shadow- and I truly think that, too, plays a part in the desire to find reasons to stand together as a tether against them IC. Please, don't take this as an attack. I love my Spirit friends to pieces. But I need to speak what I see, and I'm not the only one who has experienced that.

Anyone treating you this way is unicornsing stupid, fwiw.

Destroying the idea of tethers.. I'm not 100% opposed to the idea, but I am in agreement it would take a MASSIVE amount of lore to really make something like this work so that each city stands by itself on a narrative level. However, if you do this, you really run the risk of people feeling like they've lost their entire character identity that they've spend so much time and effort in trying to cultivate. In addition, I'll echo the sentiments that Spirit side has put a LOT of work into the level of cooperation, coordination and camaraderie that we share today. For a little while there, Spirit side didn't have the numbers and it was very demoralizing to go to lessers and just get utterly stomped. Aisling and Benedicto were so great about giving praise, even in defeat, to our fighters on Front Line.

"Great job, team. We'll get them next time!"

"So-and-so, you did a great job calling."
or
"You came in with that clutch defend, you really turned the tide of that fight!"

I think this is one of the reasons why people tend to stick around on the Spirit tether, and if people have differing experiences, I am truly sorry that this didn't work for you. I always try to be as approachable as possible (despite my char's RP dictating otherwise), because player leaders have more of a responsibility when it comes to setting the tone and atmosphere of their corner of the game. And when it comes to people abandoning an org or a tether, for whatever reason really, I try to find out why and what I could've done better for next time. Because if someone's gaming experience is negative to the point where they want to switch sides out of frustration, there's always something that can be improved upon.

I would love for cities to have their own narrative that sets them apart from others in a more drastic way. Inter-tether conflict can be fun, if done right. I think @Iesid is a fantastic example of someone who constantly pushes the envelope and lives ICly by the words of "We can be allies, but we don't need to be friends". He's incredibly frustrating to deal with ICly, as far as his views go. Sryaen is not a fan of the Seer, but he respects what he brings to the table and recognizes that he makes a better ally than an enemy. So I think that the idea that Duiran and Enorian are all buddy-buddy isn't 100% accurate. It's more like.. 75%/25%, that we, for the most part, accept our roles as mutual allies but there are some fundamental differences between us. I will, however, respond to the mention that Eno should take issue with Duiran's savagery, cruelty of nature belief - I think most of Enorian is rather okay with the fact that nature happens. It's unnecessary bloodshed that they take issue with. If Duiran was hunting down their enemies and flaying the flesh from their bodies while they were still alive, we might have more of an issue with that. In terms of Spinesreach's identity, I wish they would be more vocal about their role in the game. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that Spines is supposed to protect against the Shadow Plane and Ohlsana or w/e. Admittedly, this is a relatively new direction that previously I'd had no knowledge of back when Sryaen was Spirean (I hope?), so I was a bit taken aback when Saidenn shared this snippet with me. So if Enorian and Spinesreach's goals align of not having more Shadow spread uncontrolled , that'd be interesting to explore. But I think it would make people from both sides concerned that they were committing treason, and that is a mentality that I have really tried to squash, especially in my dealings with the Gray Accords (which I LOVED).

PK-wise, I would also LOVE to get away from these massive battles. I would advocate for more Twin Foci, add 2's and 3's arenas for Sect so that people learn to handle stuff in smaller, tight-knit groups rather than just a massive deathball. Foci Battles are a great start to try these mechanics out in, so it would be nice to have Tether Foci or something where the ley energy is locked to a certain tether and they can fight over it or not. XP loss is disabled with ylem aura anyways, so who really cares about dying? Or even give cities a reason to want the ylem to themselves rather than share. Major gateways give the option to open for both cities or just the one, so why not make the incentive better? A city who solo-opens the major for their city will get, I dunno, 4 ylem cores instead of 1. Or a different type of ylem core that is more potent, lasting a RL week instead of just 3 days.

Sorry, it's late and I would love to respond more to this but my brain has been slowly turning to mush during the 2 hours I've been writing and re-writing this post. Will check back in the morning when I'm more coherent.

I'm going to go in reverse order, because I don't agree that deleting tethers is the right solution but I do think that Whirran's initial post (and some posts in support of his) all have valid problems or points that could be answered differently.

Yes, I wrote an essay. Sue me.

The Mechanics

Alright, now lets break into the pk discussion. I expect this is where things may get somewhat hostile, so I'm going to try and be fair here and hope this can be a constructive conversation.
I think the half vs half aspect of the game really kills the pk scene. Now, I know not all fights are purely about numbers. It's about attitudes, it's about coordination, it's about a whole host of factors. But by splitting the game in half, it essentially limits diversity in such a way that it ends up being eminently clear which side has the weight of numbers at any given time.

Raids, such as during the last war when Bloodloch raided Enorian/Duiran, or when spirit raided Bloodloch, it became a tether wide conflict in all instances. Even just a month or so ago when Sheryni raided Enorian with just the two of us, half the group that showed up was Duiran people. Spinesreach shows up to defend Bloodloch, and Bloodloch shows up to defend Spinesreach in this same vein. You can't ever tailor your group and say you know, we only have a few, Enorian only has a few, lets go fight Enorian, or lets go fight Spinesreach, because you're getting the whole tether no matter what.

But when all the weight congregates, it's a lot more telling in a two sided conflict than it would be in say, a four-sided conflict. I enjoy winning as much as the next person, and as stated above I would definitely bring all my people, but that doesn't mean that's fun or engaging in the current climate.

I agree with the bolded. However, my experience is that splitting organizations up has no actual benefit besides making your orgs feel smaller to the players inside of them. In Imperian, we had (RIP Stavenn) two orgs per tether and three tethers, with the orgs inside those tethers occasionally getting into kerfuffles: Ithaqua and Antioch never had true peace/cooperation, for instance, and Kinsarmar/Celidon are/were in a cultural civil war for literal IRL years. What this really does is that it separates the PKers and the Others from one another. One group goes to one org and the other takes the remaining one. The people looking for conflict ask 'which city is big right now?' and pick that one, since larger orgs are less risk averse. I think the same thing would happen here, to the expense of the story and those orgs that would take the hit on membership.

I don't think we would get the scenarios you are illustrating with more even fights or whatever. Organizations would be intimidated by the idea of running up against larger ones. By splitting us into four cities, I actually think we would just keep the same unfun issues but change who the big dog is and I'm just not interested in that.

Instead of it being say, four warring factions each with a variable number, it's two lump sums. I've heard in the past shadow was the larger, and would stomp all over spirit. I can say currently spirit is the larger, often reaching anywhere from 15 to 20 people against shadow groups of 10 or less.

But you really can't start open world pk without it devolving into tether-based pk. Foci? Tether oriented.

I don't think the solution to this is to split orgs and tethers up, but split players up. This deathessence mechanic has made that exceptionally clear to me.

Keroc floated the idea of making Twins as frequent as Lessers currently are, then sliding Lessers back to how frequent Twins currently are on the Discord and I've never been in love with the ylem conflict system more than when I was imagining that possibility. We would need to revisit how joining a Twin works (namely by getting rid of the 2+2 gating), but I think that would do so much for this problem that I agree exists. What I think Aetolia should try to do is lean on combat scenarios that favor small teams, so that the actual size of the tether doesn't matter that much.

It's also worth noting here that there's really no way to seek out or define the size of pk battles. Before someone says battlefields, yes these do exist, but I think it's clear they're intended for very specific scenarios. They're not here to be a complete substitute for open world pk.

I think it's not quite correct to say this. Battlefields exist for us to use them as we see fit. I have issued a couple battlefields for 'right now' when it would make narrative sense. I tried more than once to get a 'spontaneous' battlefield running and I got nothing but people refusing to accept it due to some 'broad terms' or they didn't see it in the bashing spam and I didn't send a tell mentioning it. I feel as if we ascribe too much 'officiality' to a Battlefield just because it's an invested priv with the word 'roleplay' on the label. After my attempts and the Selunic melee, the system has seen absolutely no use aside from the Farsai Yvalamon Thing. Why can't it be used to supplement or re-direct world PK into more appropriate venues? I would like proof of this, and the best proof comes from genuinely trying instead of writing the system off before exploring its possibilities. Before dismissing something as a failure, I'd recommend trying to open a dialogue with folks to get what you are looking for or figure out how to start getting it. I talk to plenty of you, but nobody has ever mentioned that they wish they could do something battlefield related - and when I say 'plenty of you', I mean the entire community. The only reason battlefields aren't solving a lot of these woes is because we haven't been inventive enough to conceptualize how we can use them to achieve what we want. If an RP 'ambush' or military engagement between guilds is simply some emotes and a battlefield command away, we can make as many even fights as we'd like.

The Roleplay

Lets start with roleplay and the game story. One of the things I find the least compelling is that for every event, essentially, there is a "good" or an "evil" option, by necessity. With the game being split 50/50 the way it is, there's only a tiny amount of wiggle room for nuance here. Even if the organizations in question may slightly disagree, it forces that split regardless because of how the game is set up. Tethers, for all intents and purposes, basically subsume organizational identity, in my eyes. When it's 50% of the game against 50% of the game, there's not really an option or a desire to explore differences in org view and org direction, you need to sign along the dotted line to either fight for "good" or fight for "evil." ​If you don't support one or the other not only are you stepping outside the established norm that tethers have created, you're weakening whichever tether you're a part of, and breaking these long established ties and expectations.

I think a lot of the frustration stems from how we all look at tethers and roleplay around it. [...] In my opinion, I feel that it was because of the progression that is multiclass that there was a real need to divide the game into distinctly identifiable tethers.

Undeath is a pretty easy concept for Spirit to rally around. There have been very strong precedents for both Enorian and Duiran to rally around it and set aside their differences temporarily for the common goal. Though they might contend about the actions each city takes that pit them against each other at times (I'm reminded of the Gorshire thing), it ultimately doesn't matter because it's deemed less important in the face of larger concerns.

However, the same cannot be said for Shadow. What do we actually have to rally around that has a strong precedent to it? From past to present, there hasn't been a singular banding "goal" that unites both Bloodloch and Spinesreach to work together. All too well do I remember the days when Spinesreach did ally itself with Duiran to war against Bloodloch, after all. Since then, relationships hasn't been the best between both cities, especially as Spinesreach more fully established itself as a republic against the dictatorship that is Bloodloch's government style. Both our cities are only on the same tether because our means to our ends involve methods that dabble into the "shadowy" part of morality or do away with it altogether. I know it might be an overused phrase, but it has always felt that for us, "The ends justify the means."

[...]

Tethers artificially tie a city success to another.

Honestly, I don't really get what the tethers are fighting over. Spirit thinks Shadow is dangerous, which is fair enough, but the Shadow tether doesn't really have a reason to fight against Spirit aside from self-defense, and a lot of Shadow orgs don't really care about the Shadow all that much. The Sciomancers make it core to their roleplay, it's part of Syssin roleplay, but I'm not sure I'd consider it that important, Archivists barely use it, and as far as I can tell, Bloodloch places much more emphasis on Undeath than the Shadow.

From what I can tell, Spirit orgs have a much stronger attachment to their tether than the Shadow orgs do, which helps to smooth out the alliance between Duiran and Enorian. Their philosophies are fundamentally antithetical, but they both choose to prioritize the Shadow over their other conflicts.

It doesn't help that the greater Shadow vs Spirit tends to fade in the background, and is often undermined. There needs to be some constant reminder of what the Shadow is to help pull new players into the conflict. I think the only Shadow-related event I ever participated in was the Revenant release, and that was Spinesreach fighting against the Shadow.

These chunks, collectively, do not tell me that tethers need to go. It tells me that your tether needs course correction when it comes to lore that unites them.

I could take or leave tethers. However, after everything that tethers 'gave' to me as a player and a character, I'm not super fond of having to give those things up. I as a player would be frustrated to have to make my character give up a lot of very strong working relationships and I would really dislike the strain on their friendships and personal alliances. It would not be fun for me as someone that would be handling the aftermath of that change, which would have implications for the orders of deities and their own org lore. We're looking in the wrong places and we're looking from too far a distance. We can solve the problems that these posts are outlining without dividing organizations. Just to link something here, since I think it points in the same direction:

I've done something similar with Bloodloch and Spinesreach. This is another good example of two factions that IMO should NOT be friends. Bloodloch is the type of government Spinesreach essentially exists in opposition to. In any normal circumstance, I'd say Spinesreach is exactly the type of city Bloodloch would be eager to subjugate for their stance on freedom. That's what the empire wants, after all.

I have no disagreement here. However, I think it only illustrates that things have gone wrong in a completely different sense than you are saying.

Just based on initial reactions all around me, I feel as if this would bother Spirit far more than it would Shadow. From things I've heard from Shadow players that I talk to, Spinesreach and Bloodloch are playing two different games that only occasionally overlap. This is not the case for Spirit's two citizenship organizations and I feel that the aforementioned friendships and culture would inevitably drive those two organizations to strike a treaty no matter what lore you serve up... and then we would be back to Spirit - just this time with Shadow fractured into two chunks. That doesn't sound any more fun or interesting than the current state of things goes.

Spirit absolutely explores differences in org view on the regular: anybody in Enorian who deals with my character can attest to the fact that he is not like anyone in their city and often holds views that are repugnant to the org - especially on the topic of Enorian's 'forgiveness culture', mercy, or trying to convert/deter before resorting to violence. You can have unique characters and creeds united under one loose banner. Here's a snippet I plucked out that I want to talk about specifically:

I think this further weakens the narrative we're trying to tell, and makes the world overall less interesting. I'll try to pick on everyone equally here. I've gone out and asked Enorian and Duiran folks both why they help eachother, pointing out that Enorian is, for all claims of defending life and innocents and such, a blight upon the natural land. Shouldn't this be abhorrent to Duiran, being a fundamental violation of what they hold dear, regardless of what Enorian believes? Shouldn't Enorian, by contrast, be somewhat iffy about the more savage tendencies of the natural cycle and how it impacts innocents every day?

Absolutely - and they are. The closest we ever got in recent memory was during December's war, where my character was spitting insults at the entirety of Enorian's leadership for being cowards by his approximation. Before that, another instance involved my character killing a criminal he apprehended inside Enorian, instead of turning them over for imprisonment, trial, reform, etc. That caused internal issues in the city all the way until he quit and went back home. We're fine with the friction for a little while, as evidenced by the Omei and Damariel drama - I think it's an interesting thing to roleplay at, about, or around, so long as you give it a chance instead of subjecting it to repeated OOC commentary and 'unity rhetoric', which is absolutely a phenomenon inside of Spirit tether. We've built a very strong community that allows for the roleplay differences you are illustrating, but Spirit's lore connections overall give them a sense of 'big picture' that I do not see in Shadow's narrative. The characters of Duiran and Enorian are very different and that comes from their org creeds, which has managed to co-exist just fine despite that fact.

Additional Thoughts

Here's the part I do not have delicate words for, so forgive me:

Organizations would have greater narrative freedom if they were broken away from tethers. That's just facts. Whirran is right. Duiran wouldn't be shackled by Enorian's civilized roleplay or notions about fairness and conversion, which would lead to a much more fulfilling interpretation of Dendara and the storytelling surrounding it. Enorian could start rapidly expanding into these natural places they're absolutely surrounded by without these pesky Duirani telling them to respect the land and obey the will of Dendara. They could go on conversion missions to enlighten savages. Spinesreach could... do whatever it is they do now, as it turns out, because that's exactly what's going on. Bloodloch could continue being an evil empire without having to appeal to Northern sentiments every time they want to do something particularly scary or violent that riles up both Spirit orgs.

Spirit players are invested in keeping tethers because they feel they've worked hard to achieve the kind of momentum they now have and they feel that it is founded on teamwork and co-operation - because it is. They're always going to be invested in preserving the status quo because the tether is built on the backs of a strong community - you're asking to break apart a team that has grown to really enjoy one another's company and support. Players are reacting very poorly to not being able to help their buddies out specifically because of this feel of camaraderie.

Shadow players seem to be more invested in changing or deleting the institution in question because of how their organizations have shaken out in terms of diversity of player type. Because everybody piled into Bloodloch and there's nobody there to begin fostering Spinesreach, Bloodloch is saddled with the unfortunate task of growing much bigger if it wants to take on Spirit by itself. This is the only way for them to maintain healthy conflict, because 50% of their orgs do not wish to buy in for any number of reasons we could speculate upon. I will note that, right about now, Shadow does have clear proof that their numbers do not match Spirit's when we are looking at this event's engagement levels.

It is no surprise to me that this is split down tether lines, because of course it is. I don't want to dismiss real conversation as 'tether tribalism', because I do believe that it is unfair to expect Bloodloch to fight 1v2 and a 1:2 ratio. The solution, however, is not to piss off the other 50% of the game. The solution is reviewing all of our conflict mechanisms as a top priority and making sure that neither tether ever runs into the obvious imbalance going on here ever again.

Thank you for reading.