Exterminations

Xarian

ITT: 100 or so aggrieved complaints about something that didn't exist in the first place. But of course, no white knighting occurred. Back in my day, griefing meant actually making the game unplayable, not adding a cosmetic line to a room you never go to anyway.

/getoffmylawn

Daskalos

I think the issue that the Duiran players are trying to say is that they feel compelled by their RP, which has been established time and again by both the Duiran gods and player leadership, to protect nature and fix the damage. Because of this compulsion, they feel they can't just ignore it as has been suggested and thus they are forced, by another group of players, to spend their entire day doing menial tasks such as rejuvenation.

Moirean

Again, I don't think anyone has said to just ignore it. I have been saying don't rejuvenate if rejuvenation is costly/tiring/tedious. There are other routes - that's the entire point of playing a roleplaying game, to use creativity and all that jazz.

The Indorani not fighting back, that's a whole other issue, and I find it confusing - like, why start all this if you guys don't actually want the conflict?

Xavin

Moi, I think you know the answer to that question.

Daskalos

That's the thing, they can't exact their vengeance any other way, they can't PK the people doing it, and Bloodloch is shielding the perpetrators (because of their own RP). The admin gave them a way to fight back (jungle the desert) and, at least from what I'm seeing\hearing, all that has done is poked the bear and created an even bigger response by Bloodloch, which has now lead to the side that was initially trolled ALSO getting PK'd into the ground by a third party that was previously unrelated.

I honestly feel bad for some of the people in Duiran. That's some old school you did an event and LOLhelpedArtifice stuff right there man. I think they feel helpless because Ezalor isn't ever going to back off or admit defeat, that's not how he plays the character. The Indorani are trolling as an organization, so what do you do there? I dunno what they're going to do, but I definitely understand the frustration. I've been there, and it sucks.

Xavin

And apparently the staves are getting turned off already, I don't even know. So. Yay, I guess. Shadow side gets what it wants. Again.

Moirean

Xavin said:

Moi, I think you know the answer to that question.

I really don't. I'm not in the loop with them. According to what I have heard via web, it was to build up guild activity, which is like...wow, let's use a blowtorch to light a cigarette type of bad tuning.

Xavin

@Moirean that's a bit better than the running assumption spirit-side. They're claiming it's to 'gather essence', presumably for essence caps. Now, I've filled spiritbulbs, I'm assuming it works the same way. You can fill about 10 on your own, wait a bit, and then fill some more. Exterminating 100+ rooms for essencecaps is pretty insane.

Moirean

Well. I exterminate to fill essencecaps for my shop, but I don't do it where anyone will find it. >_>

Mariena

As of today, after having a conversation with Dexter, Duiran decided to go a 'kill all the people exterminating, don't bounty until a whole forest has been exterminated." Approach. A project was created to track those who needed to die for exterminating but I was willing to not bounty as much, so that he would perhaps maybe not exterminate as much. That worked about as well as carrying water in a wet paper bag. Made everyone happy for a grand total of half a minute.

We apparently also overused the fancy-staff so now we have a Tired-Angry Omei telling us to bend like grass in the hurricane because nature will fix itself.

This is kind of chafing, on an ooc level. I'm trying to work with everyone and I figured giving fighters kind of free reign while not bleeding gold out the nose, while also still avenging the wilds would do it.

I still want to and do endorse conversation between us all. I WANT that.

But everyone's tempers wind up so fast it's hard to match what is going on. It is, in fact, why I don't pk. Too much going on! But we'll get there. We'll have some rp if it kills us.

Dexter

1. Lasted about half a minute because why exactly? Noone exterminated today. But right after Dexy and Mari talk, Wylliam shoots off at the mouth threatening Dex and the Indorani, claiming the bounties wont stop. Which brings me to.... #2. I, nor any Indorani were complaining about the bounties. I simply stated that if they continued, I would take it to the next level, and enemy/hunt those who collected bounties on those who exterminate.

Now, if you remember right a week or so ago it was "Go right ahead, it costs us near nothing to fix." And now all of a sudden a week later it is griefing? Dex has not exterminated one room yet, and to prove a point walked into a forest room to get attacked. Granted he vivisected the attacker in defense, my point though is why the attack in the first place, if there was no extermination?

So lets not say one thing in game then come here and blow smoke. Dex never came whining about the bounties. He was ready to take it to second base. Still ready to. If you want to bounty, then bounty no big deal. But as i said ic, be ready to fight over the ridiculous 12+ bounties on one extermination event.

Daskalos

Only in Aetolia does the instigator get to play the victim and threaten further for the reaction to their own actions in the first place.

Mariena

I can only speak about my own interpretations, thoughts, and feelings on the matter.

Lim

Seir said:

I don't really care one way or another provided people aren't playing with an intent to make the game miserable for others. Conversations that I've heard on both sides bug me personally because they speak of a mentality where people are finding an OOC satisfaction in making the game unsatisfying for others and I'm a firm believer in "name-and-shame" but I'd get my hand slapped for it. Point is, conflict is fine but I'm losing confidence in the fact that people want conflict for the fun that it can bring rather than they want another avenue to make people on the other side miserable because they've allowed IC prejudices to bleed OOCly. There's really no excuse for it. Ever.

So, back on point, I do believe that Aetolia's playerbase can be mature and engage in conflict, but if both sides keep demonstrating an inability to show restraint, we're likely not going to see a return of a war system and other more in-depth forms of conflict. Yeah, people will always complain, but it's really gotten to a point where it's more than that and some members of our playerbase are devolving to a point where it's getting really reprehensible. I enjoy conflict as much as the next person, but I understand restraint as I enjoy having an opponent on the other side that finds equal enjoyment in friendly competition. When people drag the names of other players through the mud (something that folks in spirit are guilty of on Front Line) and when they talk about how they enjoy and get their kicks from making the "other side" miserable (something that shadow is guilty of in webs), it's quite honestly depressing and begs the question why anyone would want to participate in conflict if this is what they're going to expect?

Edit: And this is completely discounting any discussions of game balance or what have you. I'm really calling into question the motives and behaviors behind certain players nowadays when it comes to conflict. Back then, it was really a small handful of folks that were PK'ing for the sake of griefing, but now it really has gotten bad and I don't really know where the Aetolian "e-honor" went. I know a lot of players on both sides have it, but I see a lot of people that used to PK no longer really participating it for a variety of reasons, one of which is that players can't show restraint and are doing anything for a win.

Yeah. This sucks, and is what is the root cause of the problem. We could delete exterminate today, but we know that something else will crop up soon enough.

Elie

I love this thing where people keep going in a loop like the bird in Mariena's signature, saying, "We can't just IGNORE it! But there's nothing else for us to do!"

Elie said:

Okay, I'mma take a swing at this, because I think @Moirean‌'s right. What she's trying to say that people keep ignoring is that it's entirely possible to pursue an RP-motivated response to extermination without having to rejuvenate every single room. Your mechanical response does not have to be the sum total of your RP response. Because - and correct me if I'm wrong here, not especially involved - but my understanding is that rooms regrow at the new year. So rejuvenating is not mechanically necessary. It is entirely RP-motivated - you do it because you need to be seen to be doing SOMETHING.

But you could do a LOT of things. That's what Spinesreach is kind of known for doing - pushing the envelope of what works in Aetolia by looking for solutions and then asking gods if they can do what they're dreaming. Duiran could do the same. Research ways to protect the forest. Draw upon the spirits of Dendara and enact a ritual that will keep the forest from being damaged for a year - but to do it you have to sacrifice three councilmembers. Conjure spirits that will rise from the ground whenever someone exterminates and they'll have to fight them. Ensnare some eld and persuade them to defend your grounds. All of these things are RP responses that you could work on, could involve the ENTIRE council in making work, and it would increase community feeling and give you something to do, while giving you a different response that was actually effective and interesting. Why are you relying so heavily on the solution that bores you, accomplishes nothing, and doesn't stop the person doing it? Try something new. Try ANYTHING new.

You could do all kinds of things. I just listed three. Want me to go on? Could probably come up with about ten more RP things you could do that don't have to involve people in Bloodloch who don't want to RP, and with which I'm sure the gods would be more than happy to assist, because they would constitute you moving to solve your problem in a meaningful way rather than complaining on the forums. Hell, I bet if you worked hard enough at it, you could enact permanent change in the game that would keep this problem from happening again! It's almost like 90% of the other change in the game... player-driven and god-supported.

Edit: In fact, @Omei‌'s thing with the staves really reads to me like someone who is sick of hearing the complaining and would really love you to come up with a real solution on your own. It's a bone being thrown to stem the tide of whine, it's not an answer. It's not her JOB to find an answer. It's yours.

Riluo

I tend to agree, this whole thing is circular and reminds me of my patients that use the classic line of, "But but.. but I.. but we..." every time they are faced with an issue or inherently challenging conundrum.

It is very non productive and only leads to the same thing time and again. Perhaps there is another solution you can take such as stalking claim to something that their guild holds dear, buying out all the commodities they require. Bartering with some npc villages to revolt on the guild and starting a small event where they refuse to sell the commodities thereby limiting and increasing costs for those set on wiping out the forests. Other alternatives include having your "city" go savage and chase out members of the guild from all forests for a period by getting the old ranger rp up and going again (I.E) novices patrolling with senior guild/city members to spy on those involved. Indeed, the action of turning the deserts into jungles was a nice touch and if it was handled better you could have invoked a deal with those living in the area, "we will remove your desert homes if you do not do x." Or "As of now -insert thing-." The opportunities are limitless if you only immerse yourself in your rp and think like your character, rather than looking at the forums for answers or validation.

Either way the use of the "but" statement is not helping anyone, instead be proactive and find solutions.

Good luck with your rp.

Angwe

Elie said:

I love this thing where people keep going in a loop like the bird in Mariena's signature, saying, "We can't just IGNORE it! But there's nothing else for us to do!"

Edit: In fact, @Omei‌'s thing with the staves really reads to me like someone who is sick of hearing the complaining and would really love you to come up with a real solution on your own. It's a bone being thrown to stem the tide of whine, it's not an answer. It's not her JOB to find an answer. It's yours.

That's... pretty much exactly what She said over CT before giving up in exasperation, along with things like, 'This was supposed to be a lesson'.

She didn't even seem mad, just kinda... disappointed.

Stathan

If a divine gives you something that can act like what you're having a problem with and you run off and overuse it without thinking it through as to where the magic is coming from, the staves in this instance, it's pretty much in their right to shake their heads at you and take away your new toys because you start acting exactly like the thing that was bothering you in the first place.

Exterminate in itself is mildly annoying, mass extermination is down right silly and I cannot now, nor have I ever seen a reason for it to happen. Having been on both sides of the fence I know how silly the other side can seem during some sort of conflict like this.

One person, not going to point anyone out at this point, gets an idea to do something to try and shake things up. Others hop on the bandwagon because it sounds fun. Tick off the organization you were intending to tick off, maybe get some pk, maybe some RP, move on have fun. Back in the old war system wars could last a few weeks but then they ended and things went right back to the way they were minus a few boundary lines maybe. Things changed we moved on. Sometimes they became wars of attrition to see who ran out of money/soldiers first and thats when it became silly.

The mass exterminations are another example of this happening. The people doing the exterminations are basically running around and doing what they want, and from what I've heard, other than Dexter they refuse to respond with RP or a fight and just high tail it off to Loch. Okay all well and good. Duiran gets staves to set up jungles and go all out jungling the desert and then throw a hissy when they start getting people bountied 20+ times for doing -exactly- the same thing the exterminators were doing.

To me, this entire argument is turning into a circle of "They started it, we just finished it" and is going to continue on like that until 1. Exterminate is removed. 2.The people actually RP out a resolution. 3. (Not happening) The druids return and forest bind out all the Necromancers like what happened years ago. 4. The divine step in and just shake a big godly finger saying "That's enough." which is basically what happens every time conflict gets out of hand.

I'm not related to this in any way shape or form, I'm just getting real tired of the back and forth shouts of nonsense and general disruptions it's causing and overall, for lack of a better word, whining it's causing.

We want conflict. /get conflict
We want resolutions. /get more conflict
This isn't fun anymore.

Seems how it's going and how it always goes because the people in charge tend to disagree on levels that cause their players to get irrate over a IG situation. I read earlier that Ezalor never plays surrendering or anything like that, which will cause an endless cycle of griefery to anyone involved with him. There is no such thing as always winning. You can't always be the best. You will never always win. It's part of character growth and development to accept that and find happy mediums where you aren't entirely losing rather than always having to be right.

Mephistoles

This thread has been a fun ride. My favorite part of all of this is @Moirean‌ pointing out that one of the primary sources of complaint, exterminate killing plants, doesn't actually appear to happen. You have to test skills before complaining about them. Test test test. That's my big take from all this.

Toz

I suppose my objection to all of this is effort vs effort.

Exterminate costs very little. It takes time, which they have plenty of. It costs gold, which is easy to get. It benefits by granting essence.

Its counter skill has a cost. It takes time (finding areas exterminated) and gold - or just a lot of time (1 year IG). It has no benefit save restoring the area exterminated.

Stopping them is even harder still - you'd have to sit around farsee spamming every single Indorani classed person. You get a bit of xp if you manage to kill them.

Solutions:
- Up the cost of exterminations. EXTERMINATE - costs 15%/35%/60% essence, destroying 1/adjacent/adjacentx2 (rooms adjacent to you+rooms adjacent to them) rooms of forest after 20/50/120s.
- Delete exterminate.
- Increase the time it takes, and how people notice. A message to Duiran - You sense the rhythm of the forests being disturbed within the .
- Grant a benefit to the forestals for when they rejuve a forest. +wp/+end regen (Forest's Gratitude defense), for instance. That means, if someone's destroying forest for giggles, if they do it too often they'll buff their enemies, which may serve to discourage it.
- Delete exterminate.
- Release fishing.

I'd be happy with any/all of the solutions above!

Riluo

The important point here is the fishing.

Elie

Toz said:

I suppose my objection to all of this is effort vs effort.

Solutions:
- Up the cost of exterminations. EXTERMINATE - costs 15%/35%/60% essence, destroying 1/adjacent/adjacentx2 (rooms adjacent to you+rooms adjacent to them) rooms of forest after 20/50/120s.
- Delete exterminate.
- Increase the time it takes, and how people notice. A message to Duiran - You sense the rhythm of the forests being disturbed within the .
- Grant a benefit to the forestals for when they rejuve a forest. +wp/+end regen (Forest's Gratitude defense), for instance. That means, if someone's destroying forest for giggles, if they do it too often they'll buff their enemies, which may serve to discourage it.
- Delete exterminate.
- Release fishing.

I'd be happy with any/all of the solutions above!

Or hey - any solution that is motivated by characters finding a solution to their problem, not players complaining and admin cleaning up the mess.

Toz

Elie said:

Or hey - any solution that is motivated by characters finding a solution to their problem, not players complaining and admin cleaning up the mess.

The trouble with this is the same reason we have pk rules. I could pk farm you all day and there's nothing you can do about it RPly to stop me. You'd have to issue, or quit playing. When you give one person or group the trigger and they keep pulling it, sometimes you DO need to step in and find a way to give the other side a trigger. Or limit the effectiveness of the gun.

Elie

Sure. So go find one. Don't wait for the gods to make one for you.

Rashar

Look, if @haven and I go and burn down the fucking forests, will you guys stop fucking talking about exterminate?

Jesus.

Fuck.

Mephistoles

Toz said:

The trouble with this is the same reason we have pk rules. I could pk farm you all day and there's nothing you can do about it RPly to stop me. You'd have to issue, or quit playing. When you give one person or group the trigger and they keep pulling it, sometimes you DO need to step in and find a way to give the other side a trigger. Or limit the effectiveness of the gun.

You've got the direction wrong though. In this case, the ones getting PK on them are the exterminators. They exterminate, you have an excuse to kill them. They're not getting an excuse to kill you. They pull a trigger and you get to kill them.

Plus, as Moirean pointed out, it's a cosmetic gun now. Doesn't mess with your herbs. If you feel compelled to respond that's on you. You can't say that they're forcing you to do anything. You dictate your own RP and how you respond to it. If you don't want to respond to it, you don't have to.

Seir

Forestals are complaining about exterminate and the response it necessitates due to roleplay for the same reason any of you would complain if a city enemy was in your character's home and refused to leave.

Edit: And yeah, we get to kill the exterminator when they actually bother not to immediately run off to Bloodloch when someone so much as breathes on.

Really, can we stop with the statements of: "You don't have to rejuvenate" or "you can do this thing that would obviously require divine intervention and thus is completely out of the player's power to do anything about". We all know those are not feasible, reasonable, or realistic solutions.

Mephistoles

Seir said:

Really, can we stop with the statements of: "You don't have to rejuvenate" or "you can do this thing that would obviously require divine intervention and thus is completely out of the player's power to do anything about". We all know those are not feasible, reasonable, or realistic solutions.

No. Why can't that be an option? Why can't you have a more laissez faire management style for the wilds? You're narrowing your options down when you actually have more ways of dealing with this.

Toz

Honestly, yeah. @Seir has the right of it - imagine if I was standing in your house calling you a unicorns. I'm not raiding your city, your house is a different area - you don't HAVE to respond. The choice of 'hunt them down and kill them' or 'ignore it' isn't really a choice at all - one is not working, and the other is flat-out losing. Because this IS a competition - it's Indorani vs Forestals. This is CONFLICT, but one side is at a drastic disadvantage. RPly, mechanically, all sorts of ways. Indorani have a coded way to start a fight. To push their agenda. The Forestal side has no comparative way, except the rod that Omei made. Why is it on them to come up with a way to stop mechanics?

The degree to which they lose can perhaps be argued, but I refuse to explain to people why Duiran should care about the forests being sucked dry by plant vampires for the same reason I'm not going to explain to you why Enorian should dislike the Undead - you can read, it's long established IG, and it makes sense.

Elie

It's... not a realistic solution to RP out any one of a thousand thematic fixes that are initiated by player ideas and depend in some small fashion on the help of the divine who is sitting there sighing at you wishing you'd do exactly that?

Like, Omei is AUDIBLY and VISIBLY waiting for you to figure out what you want to do about this besides whine. The minute you come up with anything, I have this feeling it will appear out of thin air. The problem is that all you can apparently come up with are mechanical fixes that your characters have nothing to do with - that are, in effect, the gods remaking the world so that the thing that annoys you magically goes away. That's ridiculous, and they obviously don't want to do it.