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Re: Talking About Tethers

Working with what you have is always easier than working against it, unless you're willing to start over from scratch. Short of razing all the cities to the ground and rebuilding them in a way that makes the tethers irrelevant and basically forces the characters to form completely new groups, I don't see how breaking up Shadow and Spirit would work.

I like the concept of the tethers. "Poke the reality cancer" vs "Don't poke the reality cancer" is my kind of jam. But I agree the execution has some issues.

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.

Rather than split up Spinesreach and Bloodloch, I think it'd be easier to build up whatever their role within the Shadow tether is meant to be.

Legyn

Re: Talking About Tethers

I have heard over and over that Shadow tends to not be so good at helping new people learn, focusing on a culture of self reliance. Maybe part of your problem is calling your tether's other city 'dead weight'. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, or so hard, to help that other city move in a more positive direction.

And maybe, just maybe, it would be a better idea to fix the problems in your back yard instead of pointing at people who have -done- that work a long while ago and shouting 'this is what's wrong with Aetolia'.

For reference, not counting newbies/neutrals/people I don't have cataloged in my namedb, there are 10 people from bloodloch, 20 people from spinesreach, 13 from duiran, and 16 from enorian online at the time of this posting. There may be times of the day where Spirit truly does outnumber Shadow. But usually the numbers are close, and there are definitely times where Spirit is outnumbered. If y'all can't work together, that really strikes me as a you problem.

Xavin

Re: Talking About Tethers

The cities do have independent RP, though. If you think that everyone in Enorian cares about everything Duiran does and the other way around...well, that's just not the case. But there has been a lot of roleplay and working together that has built up the relationship that Duiran and Enorian have. I understand that that relationship leads to frustration at the moment for people in Spinesreach and Bloodloch, but - at the risk of sounding callous - that's not a -tether- issue. If Bloodloch and Spinesreach have a strained relationship, like Duiran and Enorian have had to some extent in the past, then maybe work needs to go into strengthening that relationship, and it's not something that will just change over night.

Xavin

Re: Talking About Tethers

For that to happen there would have to be some very monumental shifts in both player and in game culture. Tethers really only hard coded something that has been more or less fact since I started playing back in 2006 or so - Duiran and Enorian have always had at least semi overlapping interests and Bloodloch and Spinesreach have almost always had at least a somewhat amicable relationship aside from a few brief spats where they fought.

Anti-civilization has been tried in Duiran before and would be the only way I could think of to really fracture the positive relationship between that org and Enorian, and the majority of players didn't really care for it then, why would they now? Especially when the arguments tended towards...well, less than engaging.

Edit: I also think that some of the current issues stem from what seem to be cultural differences between the two tethers. From the outside at least it looks like Shadow tends to value the success of the individual over the value of the group, while Spirit tends to take the opposite approach. Maybe that's just how it looks from the outside though?

Xavin

Re: Talking About Tethers

I feel like it needs pointed out - in addition to Elene's mention that there is no unifying goal on Shadow tether - that Spinesreach currently has no reason to change and, really, why should they want to? They're content with their current situation and are happy with their RP and status. Outside players attempting to move in and "fix" things, as some of you have put it, would actually be far more disrespectful and far more damaging to IC and OOC relationships than attempting to address the larger tether issue.

It seems like most of Spinesreach is not really into the PK scene and that's their choice. What isn't a choice is that all available PK is against two other cities - that's how the game is designed. When I play the game I want to RP and PK, I don't want to have to get involved oocly with a bunch of people in order to be able to do that. Remember this is the 'RP game' and it should support that playstyle.

Kurak

Re: Talking About Tethers

There is not really a relationship issue. Unless we are talking about this event specifically, which the whole premise of the thread was to not, but even then Spines, outside a small handful of players, has been a non-presence on the field since I started. They really just only have a handful of people that will PK.

I did not mention Spines specifically in my original post and this whole thing is moving into tribalism. We are purposefully taking my words in the most uncharitable way and it is derailing the thread. My point does not change, Tethers artificially tie a city success to another. So I am really missing how the observation is a 'shitty' attitude.

edit for clarification

I feel like it needs pointed out - in addition to Elene's mention that there is no unifying goal on Shadow tether - that Spinesreach currently has no reason to change and, really, why should they want to? They're content with their current situation and are happy with their RP and status. Outside players attempting to move in and "fix" things, as some of you have put it, would actually be far more disrespectful and far more damaging to IC and OOC relationships than attempting to address the larger tether issue.

Iazamat

Re: Talking About Tethers

Yikes what a shitty attitude.

If you care about it, you should help fix it. If you don't, well I guess keep blaming the game instead of yourselves for not taking action, and helping to mend the issues like Enorian and Duiran both took steps to.

There is not really a relationship issue. Unless we are talking about this event specifically, which the whole premise of the thread was to not, but even then Spines, outside a small handful of players, has been a non-presence on the field since I started. They really just only have a handful of people that will PK.

I did not mention Spines specifically in my original post and this whole thing is moving into tribalism. We are purposefully taking my words in the most uncharitable way and it is derailing the thread. My point does not change, Tethers artificially tie a city success to another. So I am really missing how the observation is a 'shitty' attitude.

edit for clarification

Kurak

Re: Talking About Tethers

I think a lot of the frustration stems from how we all look at tethers and roleplay around it. I've played this game since 2003, and took a 10 years break around the time multiclass was released. 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."

Taking all these points into consideration, I certainly do see why both Bloodloch and Spinesreach would place a stronger emphasis on their individual identities than working together when world conflict forces a confrontation between Shadow vs Spirit. We look through the lenses of our ideology before joining hands.

While community is a unique part of this game, I don't particularly enjoy OOC sentiments that influence RP decisions. I've made plenty of friendships from the Shadow side too that makes me continue to play and want to play, but I won't bend my back over and force things if they don't fit.

Elene

Re: Talking About Tethers

I have heard over and over that Shadow tends to not be so good at helping new people learn, focusing on a culture of self reliance. Maybe part of your problem is calling your tether's other city 'dead weight'. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, or so hard, to help that other city move in a more positive direction.

Unless something has changed significantly, I have a hard time believing this. When players come over from Spirit to Shadow, most remark on how helpful and kind Shadow is, which is the exact opposite of what they hear from other players. If this is the case, however, it'd be extremely cool of players to point this out rather than use it as ammunition to start arguments on the forums, as we are all one community and it should be in the interest of the game's health that we work to fix something like that. Pointing those people in the direction of actual helpful Shadow players and/or relaying to us when they fall by the wayside is a much better option than holding it in reserve as a "gotcha!" Furthermore, I think you also have to keep in mind that there are players who have had poor experiences in Shadow orgs due to their own behaviour and OOC issues and their word should be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, I don't think it changes or diminishes Kurak's point that something larger than players are equipped to handle or should have to handle is at play here and there is some level of blame to place at the feet of the tether system, whether you want to acknowledge that or not.

Iazamat

Re: Talking About Tethers

I mean, I'm going to be real.

If someone from Enorian was calling Duiran dead weight on the forums and getting backed up by other members of their city, I'd stop helping out of spite. That said, I don't think it has to go any further than that. It's just a very unkind thing to say, and, imo, undermines the point of the main post pretty severely.

Eaku