Citizenship and Neutrality

Toz

Shots and flags fired, oh lawd.

Elie

Okay yeah but.

It seems like Spinesreach's method is actually the best. They have a strong enough "city-identity" that people can connect and communicate with one another on the basis of them both being Spireans - even if their GUILD experience is entirely different. They are confident enough in their citizenry to assume that their people will stick with them even if they stray ideologically. And I can understand why other cities would not take the same tack...

But at the same time I can understand why people really wish they could play anything other than the hard-line Enorian zealot and get away with it. And I know what the thing is here - it's not that you CAN'T play Mal from Firefly, or Vampire Hunter D - you can play borderline shit all you want, but you need to be established first. Hadoryu got away with being incredibly screwed-up and smearing the good-guy line for years, survived five separate contestations, because he was already established in his role. Because he had the swinging power not to be taken down when he strayed. But is that what we really want? Is it really the kind of game we'd prefer, one where people with TIME on their side, people who are already part of the in-crowd are permitted to transgress against our holy RP rules. can bone a necromancer on the desk at which they interview novices, and everyone else who dares to make a Luminary novice gets their guildmaster and their secretary and their city leaders down on their ass inside of the first five minutes they spend in a vampire's presence?

Not to be the libertarian here, but the less government oversight in our game, the better. I know everyone's argument is "HEY IT'D BE TOTALLY HARD TO BALANCE" and "HEY EVERYONE'S GONNA ABUSE EVERYTHING" and yeah. Yeah, it is. It's gonna be hard to balance. That's, ah... kind of part of the job if you choose to be a game dev team. And our dev team needs to get used to actually selling what they advertise in terms of player influence. You tell people they can influence the direction of player civilizations - but when they stray too far outside your plans, you stomp them the unicorns down. It doesn't matter how many players are behind you when you do this - it doesn't ACTUALLY make it okay. "Hey, the Infernals want to move to Duiran, they're FLOWERKNIGHTS - stomp them into the ground!" - Yeah, that was an administrative decision destroying a player-motivated direction. Like when there was an inexperienced player invested with the incredibly important role of Severn, and he managed to circumvent a powerful player movement to ally Spinesreach with Duiran for a while. How interesting it would have been if they had an alliance! How complicated that would have been - the machine city with the forest commune, held together by affection but divided by ideology, fascinating conflicts in every quarter! Every interaction is a new story! And it would be so awesome if we were able to do anything like this! I can think of another hundred occasions where players could actually have done anything in this game, another hundred examples.

A hundred more examples of the administration indicating that we actually had the agency they advertize on the box. And a hundred examples of us being locked into the same binary, two-party bullshit that we've played out for fourteen years without any interesting development. This is stupid, folks, this black-and-white shit. We've tried to buck it a thousand times, and when we actually got close to changing anything, everything we ever did was retconned. Flowerknights are bad, kids. So are Spireans who ally with Duiranites, thereby restructuring the incredibly boring and repeSo are those filthy Ashtani Mages. So are Ascendril - remember when we were told that there was no hope of any player-inspired class ever making it into the game? Thank god it only took two - three - five years. Hopefully it won't take that long for anything we say in this thread to mean anything at al. Hopefully they won't continue advertizing this game as the most profound, powerful player-influcenced experience while continuing to squash whatever strays outside the lines of their neat, pointless coloring book.

This game has been advertizing itself as the ultimate player-created and motivated experience for years, but kids - we've all been playing this game since we were teenagers. A significant portion of us have been guides, builders, and gods. We have a realistic idea of how much of what we actually do fucking MATTERS at all. And it's vanishingly LITTLE compared to what you advertize. And if only the plot that makes you stomp down our ideas was actually directed in any way - but it's not. You have a plot planned out for the next ten steps, but it's not about making a better game for any particular gaming segment, it's not about telling a powerful, profound story - it's just about perpetuating what's going on at the given moment so that you continue to seem like you know what's going on. Because the worst thing that anyone could imagine is that the helplessly, desperately, emotionally devoted players of a game could have any real effect on its direction, right?

Riluo

How was that trolling?

Moirean

Ishin and I chatted about this a bit and here's the conclusion I've come to:

There is a difference between theme and identity and I think the two get conflated a lot. Theme is super important. It helps people visualize things and shape their roles and give these great concrete ideas to run with. Theme is cool architecture and distinctive mobs and fun concepts that are common in your org. Theme helps give fun inspiration to your org's culture. Theme is Duiran being built out of an amazing giant tree, theme is a humanoid Russian polar bear celebrating Spirean vodka, theme is creepy cowled people passing you in the streets of Bloodloch, theme is Enorian's awesome holy district.

However, that theme should be there to encourage and inspire what players do, not dictate it. When I first got CL, at our first town hall, we discussed this, talking about how Spinesreach doesn't have a "goal" - and we were like, you know what, we like it that way. Our citizens and what they want to do, what interests them, that's our goal. I've gone and tried to add a lot of things to augment our theme: expansion to the library and a prison with broadcasts about experiments, a rundown fairground with a cigar-smoking clown running a blackjack game with risque cards, government offices processing paperwork about limbs lost in unstable singularities. I aim to give people stuff to inspire them to do what interests them. Eleanor runs SRS, Kelliara is building a shapeshifter empire, the Syssin have [redacted]. We give opportunities for people to get involved if something interests them, and sometimes it fizzles. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it really resonates and people run with it and I end up adding another spire.

From what I've seen, I think sometimes it's easy to cross over from providing opportunities into defining identity. With theme, someone who doesn't really mesh with the theme is a bit of a wild card and a quirky person in an org, but someone who goes against the org's identity is an outcast and inappropriate for the org. Orgs should be about people with common interests congregating for shared goals, and the themes will inspire how they go about that. The goals and identity will naturally develop. Once people start defining orgs as the city of x, and you have to work for y, it becomes a lot more restrictive, sets stuff on the rails, and really limits what players can do. You can't easily shift what an org wants and is working for if the org is defined as a specific thing. Organic change can't happen due to player politics and roleplay and people lose a lot of their power to shape the game's story - which is a really powerful aspect of why MUDs are fun to play.

tl;dr: It feels like stuff is often done backwards, with the concept of an org's identity being decided on, and things pushed to fit into that, instead of the identity being a natural thing that evolves from the org and its members, their activities, interests and goals.

Valdus

Elie said:

Not to be the libertarian here, but the less government oversight in our game, the better. I know everyone's argument is "HEY IT'D BE TOTALLY HARD TO BALANCE" and "HEY EVERYONE'S GONNA ABUSE EVERYTHING" and yeah. Yeah, it is. It's gonna be hard to balance. That's, ah... kind of part of the job if you choose to be a game dev team. And our dev team needs to get used to actually selling what they advertise in terms of player influence. You tell people they can influence the direction of player civilizations - but when they stray too far outside your plans, you stomp them the unicorns down. It doesn't matter how many players are behind you when you do this - it doesn't ACTUALLY make it okay.

I'm going to avoid responding to the rest of this, because I'm all for letting players voice their frustrations, concerns, and ideas - it does help us move forward and decide where we want the game to evolve - but this is a blatantly unfair representation of what the process is. The tether system was introduced as a way of compromising the previously existing class restrictions that had, through loopholes, led to things such as Bloodloch druids/templars, which in turn spurred much of the same level of complaints.

This is not a matter of "this is totally hard to balance". It's a matter of making a design decision and sticking to it, to prevent these kind of unbalanceable situations that players have vehemently rallied against previously. I'm sorry if you feel that this is a case of false advertising, but saying it's a matter of the administration not WANTING to do the work is, frankly, legitimately offensive to the volunteers who do spend their time brainstorming ways and putting in the hours to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. It's one thing to have idealistic views of what you want the game to become, and another to actually have the ideas and plans necessary to make them happen. They don't just appear from nowhere, and they certainly aren't being intentionally withheld so that the admin can rule with an iron fist.

Moirean

I don't think people have railed about the classes being in orgs they aren't designed to be in, however. We've bitched about the unintended loopholes the class combinations created - just as we've bitched about hangedman + impale, vivicripple, enfeeblerate, and dozens of other oversights, which have been dealt with by the liaison system as they are discovered. This is an important distinction. It's not the classes themselves. It's the skills working together in ways that haven't been prepared for.

The tethers are an understandable solution to this problem. Instead of dealing with every single iteration of imbalance from this cross-talk between skills, the mingling is prevented. It saves time and effort and energy and lets you guys focus on other stuff. However, it doesn't prevent the loopholes (people can just not join cities - see the situation with Atrapoema being a Teradrim helping Duiran), and it has ramifications on the game's conflict and politics, ramifications that are being felt as the game's lore and alliances are forced into places where they can support the mechanical decision.

Tethers don't make the admin team lazy and I agree that it's wrong to portray it as such. Tethers were the solution they picked for a clear problem. I do think it's reasonable to question if maybe there are other solutions out there. There's obviously a lot to factor in when considering such a thing - dev time, lore and story arcs, combat balance, etc - but perhaps it's worth sitting and doing a postmortem on and analyzing if the full impact, both goods and bads, of the mechanic has achieved what is wanted.

Valdus

I am 100% for discussing new ways to bridge these gaps. I agree that tethers are not ideal, but it isn't as if the perfect solution is simply something we're avoiding. We have hundreds of ideas and concepts that never make it past infancy, because there are so many layers of complexity in moving forward, and we don't want to reintroduce issues we've long since moved past.

I can promise that it's always something we're willing to approach, I simply don't agree with characterizing it as a matter of people not wanting to tackle the issues. I take even more exception with it being characterized as 'false advertisement' - we have to provide some boundaries on what players can affect, because we have to worry about cohesion and continuity, and easing new players into the game in a way that makes sense. We made the decision awhile ago that this would best be done through city/council orgs, and this is the direction we intend to keep moving in. That, however, doesn't mean we're against finding new ways for players to explore inter-org relationships that inherently ARE complex, nor are we against giving guilds new ways to expand on their identities and find reasons to be distinct from their parent organizations.

Moirean

Awesome post - and I think it really needs to be highlighted that there's never going to be perfection in a persistent game. Stuff is ALWAYS changing, new ideas are always being explored, gameplay approaches themselves evolve - look at how people game these days versus how they did a decade ago. It's not the same and that's why we see changes like making lists baseline or incorporating mxp and revamping the newbie areas.

I read a lot of dev blogs and I think Blizzard is one of the best examples out there of this. They are arguably the biggest giant in the industry and they are always changing the mechanics in WoW, testing out new solutions. It would be absurd to expect Aetolia to simply find some perfect answer, and just from my experiences as a GM and CL, testing out new org schemes, paths, structure and all that, I know that it's a tricky, complex and ongoing process. I can only imagine how much more is involved when it's an entire game that's being addressed.

Rashar

@‌valdus

I am sort of curious as to how much the direction Enorian is taking is player driven evolution, rather than top-down mandate, or (worse) driven by the player of a God.

It's your game, I suppose, and you're free to run it how you want (addressing the admin as as a whole here), but eh. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And, really, I have heard far, far more complaints about it than I have heard support. Just because not everyone is willing to step up and raise a fuss (or piss people off like I do) doesn't mean they are supportive.

In fact, by a very large margin, I would say that most of the people I do hear support from are members of Dhar's Order. And even the ones in that Order who are meh about it OOCly aren't going to speak up ICly most times.

You're not going to get much protest when half of the active and influential players belong to the patron, and some people just assume it's meant to be, or that the majority wants it because the loudest make it seem so.

I mean, hey. If that's what you want, cool. I've moved on. As my only option, to quote someone else, is the Catholic Church or a group of wildlings, the shadow side gets another player. Not that I'm a game changer, but still.

I worry that you're going to end up with the 10 people who really like to play this holy roller sort of 'good', a few remnants and alts that don't actually log very much, and everyone else is going to eventually mosey over to where they can play a game and not feel like they're sitting in church.

Areka

Enorian's role seems to be the chump of the game, and at least for the last six years, is the extreme white to balance Bloodloch's extreme black.

We're pointless. It's the Midnight Age and things should feel desperate, therefore it's OK for us to be the chumps of most global events, and internal events. We're forever the kicking boy who makes no difference in the world. We can't end Undeath. We know this OOCly, and stop giving a shit ICly to a point outside of repeating the empty rhetoric because that's what the org is.

Not all of us are behind the City of the Gods, but it's the most solid proposal that's been given outside of the vague, bland apathy that the city was in before hand. Bunch of us are also open to ideas - I know I'd rather play up the port and have us be a fortified, sea-side safe haven against Undeath and let the guilds form more of a coalition of different approaches/values (it seems we can never find a balance between alienating zealotry or utter apathy).

Part of it is the shoe-horning of what the Org is and how utterly pointless and ineffectual we are in the grand scheme of the game. Otherwise? If you have ideas, actual ideas, please share them. We can't work with silence or elitist 'be more Spinesreach' or snarky, disdainful scoffing or temper tantrums.

If you have other ideas, actual ideas, please, share them, even if it's just here on the forums in OOC world.

Rashar

Clamping down and being more grr, or hard-edged, or devout, or what have you isn't the answer. And it isn't going to help you not be chumps ICLY ( I've never felt that way, anyway. That is you or some people assuming that because your entire path in life is a mechanical impossibility ) when it costs you players.

I had my ideas, which basically revolved around, 'make it more appealing for someone to be alive' since we can't end them and we don't have the numbers to fight them. Everyone threw fits and said I was trying to make a new Spinesreach. Which, hey. Maybe that's valid, but I'm just one player and I make mistakes. I would argue that Spines is prettttyy successful at being fun for players, so. Eh.

But you know what? I didn't hear any other options or approaches beside 'grab your bibles and lets have a pointless crusade!' ... When half the city doesn't even -do- stuff in an outward direction. Crusades don't happen in your back yard.

And that's not me talking shit, because I don't care how you play the game. You can be a valuable player and character and fun without ever leaving the city. But it really makes the whole crusade/push our path thing fall flat. -that- is why I, and at least six or eight other players I know, pretty much ignore it.

Edited for typos. Sorry, on my phone.

Areka

Maybe it was just your approach that squashed that, since all I at least recall hearing was let's unenemy Moirean and everyone abandon the gods. The one suggestion you brought up with not enemying Spirean living noobs was received favourably and if you had pushed it would probably have been ratified since no one voiced objections.

Being more apathetic won't help either. We've been there. Done that. The city's central history/dogma is the Revelation, and when we have an extremist Admin-given purpose, it becomes equally as flat when we just shrug about it.

I agree though, that crusades won't happen on a city level, it's not effective for the realities of the game and player involvement and enjoyment.

Edit: I suppose my big kick back with 'make every org like Spinesreach' is that making the polarized orgs in a polarized game more neutral just doesn't make sense. Can you identify what are the things about Spinesreach that you want to see emulated? Other than not caring about the world? What are things that you want to see extracted and applied *while recognizing that Enorian's history, lore, and thus far Admin-stated purpose (unless there's some seriously large misconception that we just don't know about)*?

Because "we hate undeath and we want to end it but being engaged to the undead or having sexy teaparties in their havens is OK" isn't going to work.

Aarbrok

On one side you have a "We are the power, we are undeath..the strength..we refuse to submit and we will be stronger, better, harder, faster....(Almost went into song)

On the other hand, the opposition is forced into a we need to stop this, in part ingraining the roleplay to become a fighter, to not grow on the values and ultimately base the character on the guideline of "Bringing the light by purging the darkness" which in a storybook has its principle, but in what is "designed to be" open ended roleplay, it is imposed that if you are part of this organization then you must be/feel this way.

Then you have the adverse more neutral standing cities whom have been forced to make alliances due to coded conflict (ylem) to stay afloat and maintain various perks for their citizens, none which people are willing to do, which was proof during my time in Duiran when I ultimately shut down the Pylon to see reaction as a study, which I assure you did not go favorably. These conflicts have been created due to the tethers influence on roleplay, when words like Spirit and Shadow are tossed around in game as frivolously as they are, it has been places as an in character classification instead of just a skill restriction.

Duiran has dark and light, where it ultimately serves the Rhythm, there is a means for the madness but that being said, the influence of Enorian in Duiran has put conflict internally from my memory, as it has basically been discussed we really are not big fans of the light, but we need them, its a pity we cant survive on our own (Im phrasing this from when I was there, I am not certain if it is like that or not)

Spinesreach has the same thing, there are just as many Spireans opposed to vampirism and undeath but we cant publicly roleplay it due to tarnishing relationships and the fact that one of the most popular Spirean guilds -cannot- actually be Spirean due to restriction that has been shut down on an administrative level. (not that I am discounting the administration, thank you for what you do...but I think the premise for alot of things was more or less that the Player driven roleplay and desire of the players is not considered as much even -within- their respective tethers.

If that makes sense.

I don't really want to step on toes and I am super sleep deprived so if this sounds snotty or snarky its not intended to, I just think that there is alot of potential that is missed out on due to restricting internally tethered roleplay causing a breakdown that could potentially bring some cool ideas to the forefront.

Rashar

I like your approach of using the worst (from Enorian's point of view) thing I tried to pass and taking it completely out of context, and not mentioning anything else I did or tried to do. You are good at this, the public debating. Very adept.

Also, Rashar never tried to say we should abandon the Gods. Rashar had been a follower of a God (or Goddess) his entire life.

But they don't belong in the constitution, or the ruling of a city. That whole separation of church and state thing, while not an Aetolian matter, was pretty sensible.

Moirean

I just don't understand why you guys need to sit and define a theme instead of focusing on finding tangible things people enjoy doing and encouraging that. I already wrote a lot on that subject, though, so I've said my opinions on the matter.

Aarbrok

I think an idea would be...and I hate to say this

Do what Achaea did with the Church sort of thing, an organization that is a mirror opposite of the Dominion lets say, something for like the Luminaries and the Daru to be part of, ultimately harnessing the spark as a holy cleansing of darkness for the greater good. Something where people could be baptized into as one touched by the spark, come up with a various amounts of laws, protectorates in which the church is supposed to represent that way it takes some of the weight as a whole off the entirety of Enorian to follow this absolute.

I think that religion is imposed alot there which is not necessarily the worst thing, but can infringe on the Roleplay of others. However, by having an organization which those could choose to be part of they are accepting of the Gods words and acting on behalf of them, leaving those who choose not to to be "Good" but not holy necessarily, Good by means of idealism and belief, but not by religion as a whole dictating them.

It may be something to consider and may relieve some of the stresses of a God driven city.

That and perhaps people could be elected representatives to lead the church, making it a seperate entity much like the Emperors, they could have prelates and Archprelate whom would say be the voice of Dhar or Damariel or something of the like.

Rashar

@areka: It was never stated or implied that anything should be like that, though. -you- guys accused me of being like Spinesreach. All -I- wanted to do was lighten the place up and make it more fun rather than serious. In my mind, it's on the guilds to give you that sort of focus and direction. A city is just a place to live, and we could have kept those hard parameters that make Eno what it is. No undead, no vampires, no wicked mass slaughtering bad guys.

I don't know. What I wanted was intangible and vague, and wasn't going to come quickly. It wasn't going to come at all when people looked immediately as if it were me trying to push some 'let's hug vampires' agenda.

Like I said, maybe it wasn't the best option. But, in my opinion at least, it was a better option than the city of crusades. And there weren't exactly man others.

Areka

As I said, those are what I remember. Really big outbursts, one sensible thing that we were favourable to. If there were other things, I don't remember, they've become overshadowed by those three points or how things were handled. The biggest impression given was how rude and dismissive you were when people objected and how quickly you wrote everyone off. Your intention got lost.

I'm not defending the Gods being in the constitution, though it would be nice if we had more administrative assistance/input.

@moirean - We have a theme. We've had a theme. It's a dull, tried theme that isn't supported in the world so previous council/herald groups wanted to try a new approach to give it some activity. Getting away from that theme is the challenge, both because it is so deeply ingrained and because the orgs in the city are very divided over it. Each time we try to lighten or lessen things it devolves to really, really ugly infighting and people on both sides stop caring. Or there's enough frustration over "This is what we have been and should be, we're the last hope for the world" being ignored with people boffing vampires and the roleplay/value apathy, which in turn has the other side of the coin dig in their heels and call out louder "no, no we have to adhere to this even more strictly since people abuse the room they're given."

Tangentially, this is also the side that tends to have the most combatants (because it is polarized and likely to involve itself in conflict, which means more fighting), and many don't want to see them walk, so stop protesting (because then we're even more the whipping boy for BL and Spinesreach's shouts when our warriors leave).

While in theory a "just lighten up and relax a bit" is appealing and nice, it at least to date hasn't been even remotely that simple.

Alexina

Maybe all the vampires ever wanted was a hug.

Did anyone think about that, hrm?

Rashar

I like how this so quickly spiraled into Areka vs Rashar, or even Enorian vs Rashar. I'm irrelevant at this point - gone, yeah? My point stands, as do my questions, and they aren't questions that you should really feel justified in answering.

Although as a Dhar rep, you're probably pretty qualified.

Slyphe

Areka said:

I'm not defending the Gods being in the constitution, though it would be nice if we had more administrative assistance/input.

To be fair, I did have a meeting with Enorian and pretty much said, "Listen, I'm willing to code up whatever you guys want as long as you do the writing/prove you're taking part in the plan here/can get other people involved for fun."

I've received exactly 0 messages regarding any of the 3 "plans" that were brought up during that meeting.

Areka

I know you have Slyphe, I'm working on mine (inbetween other IG shit and interviewing/job app process). By administrative assistance/input I mean (and should have clarified) aide with organization direction. Projects are nice and they can help us with some aspects of things, but we really need a sit down.

Under G-man, Admin were going to sit down with OOCly orgs and do a status check, see where things were, what the goals were, health, direction, and offer advice and support to the leadership for that momentum. That didn't happen, but would be really helpful with getting our shit together, especially with how incredibly toxic the infighting gets when we just start trying to do things on our own.

Trager

Alexina said:

Maybe all the vampires ever wanted was a hug.

Did anyone think about that, hrm?

Come here, bb. Come here.

Rashar

Didn't I hug Alexina once?

I thought I did. Maybe I didn't.

Slyphe

Areka said:

Under G-man, Admin were going to sit down with OOCly orgs and do a status check, see where things were, what the goals were, health, direction, and offer advice and support to the leadership for that momentum. That didn't happen, but would be really helpful with getting our shit together, especially with how incredibly toxic the infighting gets when we just start trying to do things on our own.

If this is something that would be of value, I see no reason why it couldn't happen. It'd be nice to get a little game plan down. I'll run it by Razmael and see what he says.

Ishin

Who's Dhar? I never see that guy playing.

Toz

Ishin said:

Who's Dhar? I never see that guy playing.

Careful, he likes to throw rocks.

Moirean

Areka said:

Under G-man, Admin were going to sit down with OOCly orgs and do a status check, see where things were, what the goals were, health, direction, and offer advice and support to the leadership for that momentum. That didn't happen, but would be really helpful with getting our shit together, especially with how incredibly toxic the infighting gets when we just start trying to do things on our own.

We had a round of these about a year ago.

Areka

They weren't evenly done then, since Templar were definitely missed, and I don't recall if I was in leadership in Eno at the time, but haven't heard of any such conversations there either.

Edit: And thank you, @Slyphe. It would be a big help. I'm sorry we're all late with your stuff, I do not mean to sound unthankful for the attention/offer you've made. Between RL headaches and IG disruptions (orc/mog event, one of the project leaders quit Enorian for a time, four leadership turn overs, etc), I know we're behind.

Moirean

Another round would be nice, for sure. Sometimes it's nice to just check-in even if nothing major is wrong.