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Tone of Aetolia
I've played aetolia almost since it was created, and I've played all of the other IRE games as well. It was always aetolia that drew me back though. I'm sure some of this is just nostalgia tinting my views a bit, but originally this was the dark game. Darker tones, darker themes, the midnight age. This was the gothic game. It had a distinctly different tone than the rest of IRE and I think it's what kept drawing me back.
Now this didn't give an advantage to the evil or bad guys in the game over the good guys. It was more of an even when you win, you still lose thing. Every step forward risked two steps back most of the time. We didn't get happy endings. They were dark, but full of emotion and passion and I think it's what drived so much RP here and how we became known as the RP capital of the IRE games. That gothic environment promoted and reinforced it so much. Swept you up and made you want to be part of it, it was almost impossible to get by without doing deep RP.
For a while now that gothic tone seemed to have been toned down instead of the game's tone, the midnight age theme, to a minor role that occasionally happens, and it's become more a typical high fantasy story with happy endings and big fights and magic, and not the emotional darkness that used to be there. The various subtle grey areas that fluctuated in organizations becoming more flat and standard. I miss that aspect of the game, when it was the game all around you. The shift of focus has also led to more people I think identifying themselves as the good guys, and less real villains for people to fight besides what the admin provide us.
I was wondering other people's thoughts on the matter, especially long term players who remember what it was like way back then. Do you think the game has shifted away from the midnight age, the gothic themes? If so, did you enjoy things more with those darker tones, or do you like it more now? Would like to pick some brains, gather some thoughts, and see if maybe I'm the only one that feels like this or not.
Now this didn't give an advantage to the evil or bad guys in the game over the good guys. It was more of an even when you win, you still lose thing. Every step forward risked two steps back most of the time. We didn't get happy endings. They were dark, but full of emotion and passion and I think it's what drived so much RP here and how we became known as the RP capital of the IRE games. That gothic environment promoted and reinforced it so much. Swept you up and made you want to be part of it, it was almost impossible to get by without doing deep RP.
For a while now that gothic tone seemed to have been toned down instead of the game's tone, the midnight age theme, to a minor role that occasionally happens, and it's become more a typical high fantasy story with happy endings and big fights and magic, and not the emotional darkness that used to be there. The various subtle grey areas that fluctuated in organizations becoming more flat and standard. I miss that aspect of the game, when it was the game all around you. The shift of focus has also led to more people I think identifying themselves as the good guys, and less real villains for people to fight besides what the admin provide us.
I was wondering other people's thoughts on the matter, especially long term players who remember what it was like way back then. Do you think the game has shifted away from the midnight age, the gothic themes? If so, did you enjoy things more with those darker tones, or do you like it more now? Would like to pick some brains, gather some thoughts, and see if maybe I'm the only one that feels like this or not.
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Some people are going to wear rose tinted glasses, some use anecdotal reasoning, and strawman arguments to discuss the pros and cons to how things are vs they used to be.
What I'm saying is that I will enjoy this thread, but be careful what you wish for.
Example: An event similar to the Orrery, but there must be a balance, On one hand, if you raise it to max rank, that means your enemies are less likely to be able to take it away from you -BUT-, if you go for max filling up, the corruptive effect of mixing both shadow and spirit as is necessary, causes some effects upon the outcome. Say... Rank 1-3 you get minor to mild benefits, but rank 4-5 you get major benefits, but in exchange for 4-5, you have to suffer some drawbacks. Say... we did this with Ylem, ranks 1-3, your city's ylem powers are boosted a little, say..5-15% respectively. Rank 4 gets you 25%, and rank 5 gives you 50%, but if you push to rank 4, you end up with your powers costing maybe 50% more, and if you push to rank 5, your city ylem powers double in cost as the orrery boost is overloaded and the balance of shadow essence is 'siphoning' some of the ylem essence away.
As a pvp event idea, anyways.
While things like..say.. well. How about that recent event that ended up releasing a new Bloom plague. Sapience won, but also failed to realize the folly of what was really going on. Single-minded doggedness resulted in spreading the Bloom once more. This wasn't a pyrrhic victory, but it wasn't a total victory either. This was a silver-cloud lined with darkness.
I think we need to balance everything to be like a rolling storm across plains. There's gonna be godrays of pure victory and sunlight to shine through, there are going to be stormy dark days of pure victory for the shadow, and sometimes.. sometimes there are gonna be lightning storms that set those plains ablaze, and tornados that rend the earth, but rend the clouds away in turn. These are the victories that are more a grey area. The day was won, but at what cost? I think that we should drift more towards a middle ground. Have the total victories for both sides, just as much as there are pyrrhic and grey victories in turn.
One of my assessments is that Instutionalized PvP and Draconian PvP rules really contributes to the feeling that "everything is getting flat and standardized" When you play a dark-fantasy MUD game, you expect the gameworld to be a chaotic and distasteful place outside of your city and safe-spot. You would expect bandits, mercenaries and even player villains who try to further their aims. Now I do not support griefy things which are devoid of RP but all these instutionalization makes people not seek PvP on the "real gameworld" actively. You are a PvP aficionado? Get your 1 vs 1 kick on Sect. You like group PvP? Get your x vs x kick on Lessers/Majors. And there is not even a story, not even a retribution, does not feel like you thwarted a key extraction operation of the other city. It is just eh...a subgame isolated from gameworld. Of course there are odd attempts from time to time, but they are quite rare and on individual basis.
On the other hand the game cannot provide true villains when there is no permanent loss about one thing or another. It will provide RP villains here and there, but never true villains which will make many characters' face contort in distaste and fear. Now let us say I wished to build a roving band of death cultists...and even gathered enough interested people to tag along, what will guarantee that we would not be issued because well we actually kidnapped the fishing maiden and cut her body into pieces. And no, death cults do not ask for your permission either IC or OOC. Or I wanted to create a mercenary band or a band of merry bandits, it will be easily stomped into ground by game-rules, power-level differences and playerbase into the ground.
Also I dislike cities and Gods being lumped into de-facto sides by tether...but that is a whole another story.
Aetolia isn't dark enough for you? What game have you been playing? Aetolia is a pretty crapsack world without being hamfisted, edgy, and in your face about it. Huanazedha exists with its open prostitution and drug den (Moghedu and one of the Grecht cities has brothels as well), slavery storylines are literally everywhere - both NPC and player (I can list quite a few player characters that started as slaves). Ever seen the Lich Gardens? Villimo Fields? Torturers Caverns? The Forgotten Dome? Arbothia? Not happy places.
Want bloody culty stuff? How about the Blood and Soul cult in Scidve? Or Migyar's cult beneath Mournhold? There's some really messed up stuff going on all over the place.
I find that a dark theme works best when there's this sort of illusory veneer of mundane on the surface, but when you stop and think about it, or take a bit of a closer look, you start to realize that the world is actually a really scary and crappy place. That's what Aetolia comes off as to me. And as dark fantasy goes? That's perfectly fine, I think. You don't want to go too dark or else it will breed apathy. Because if everything is in-your-face grimdark and crappy all the time, why should you care about anything?
I have noticed that the game has been moving away from certain types of events. Pyrrhic victories make for great events and stories. The Bloom? Epic-level world-encompassing threat; awesome. The Demon Blade and the Juxa Steelhew rebellion? Also awesome. Kerrithrim? Super awesome. War of Night? Hell yes. These events were large in scale, and kind of help with reinforcing the game's theme.
For smaller scale events, there was the whole Migyar's cult thing with Enorian way back, where they had to destroy an abomination that would have grown into the next Kerrithrim. Duiran has had a lot of really cool Dendara-centric events. Spinesreach has had a few really neat mystery or research-centric events in the past. Events like these are usually total victories where the participating parties can feel good and accomplished.
These sorts of things are necessary. Because if you're not thrown a bone every now and then, why will you want to care? However, these feel good events don't have to happen all the time. For example, Enorian has Raim Vale riiiiight next to its walls, and the people in it aren't exactly fond of Enorian. Why not have an uprising? Ditto for Spinesreach. Rebel's Ridge, Three Rock, and Spellshapers Tower are right there. And Bloodloch? Why not have El'Jazira rebel? Or, heck, why not have murder mysteries go on within cities just because it's a crapsack world? It would further drive home the idea that even your cities aren't perfect or safe.
There are some events that don't go over well, though, which have been moved away from, despite sort of fitting with the game's darker themes. The social commentary type ones? Those tend to piss players off. A lot. I can recall a few regarding racism that went on in Enorian and Spinesreach that didn't go over well, and people just wanted them over with. Events that end with 'lolArtifice' or Severn dicking around for His amusement? Those get pretty enraging as it completely undermines any sense of player control. It's like pulling a Deus Ex Machina, but against you.
To address some of Kalak's complaints... There aren't roaming death squads or theft in Aetolia because they get really griefy really fast, and in my experience (recently, I might add) there are players who won't do it for the RP. They do it because they enjoy making others miserable, and I hate to say it, but some players here don't know how to exert self-control or restraint when it comes to stuff like that. When I played Achaea years ago, I was brand new to MUDs. When I started there? Every time I logged in, I'd get PKed or robbed. Not kidding. Every time. I stopped playing after like a month and started on Aetolia instead. The fact that that sort of thing doesn't happen here, I think, is a sort of anti-frustration and anti-griefing measure. You may think it's awesome to be an assassin that's taking a hit on an entire family, but when none of those players have actually done anything wrong? It breeds a feeling of 'screw this, I don't want to play'.
Long story short: I don't think Aetolia's tone has changed all that much. It's very much a dark fantasy, but it's not super in your face about it. You have to immerse yourself in it a bit. And I think it's a good way to go about it. A good theme doesn't have to bash you over the head. Think about it. As a player, your character can think the world is good, and safe, but then you start peeling back the layers and seeing it for what it really is.
The main issue is that, event villains and occurrences are predictable while player enemies are not predictable. You know that event will eventually grow and end, but players cannot cope with a player-danger because they will not bend the knee or even try to deal with the situation in a RP fashion when they are on the bad end of the conflict, because they are stubborn OOCly. Of course there are always people who does such things for lols and stuff, but closing gates to such possibilities THIS hard with rules and measures, chokes the game.
So you will see death cults in events and lore, but not actual death cults by players because it is heavily discouraged. And the more such "We do not care" moments occurs towards PvP, then the immersion side of the game gets damaged. That is my personal view of course. I prefer a world full of dangers, mercenaries and bandits where a portion of that danger is represented by players.
Even when it came to just roleplay and I had a recent stint where my character became somewhat villainous as a result of IC things, I RP'd with someone (who enjoyed these interactions), but others around that character made it absolutely miserable to do so. To the point where I was getting punished mechanically when nothing even really happened. I ditched that arc because it became so unbearable due to these people and it turned me off from RP'ing with them again.
So yeah, it goes both ways. I'm okay with how Aetolia is. People do forget sometimes that Sapience is pretty crapsack after the War of Night, but the cities themselves have pretty good living conditions, which is why refugees flood into them.
I didn't want to air dirty laundry here, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
There was a series of incidents recently where someone wanted to engage in assassin RP, and was hired to kill members of a certain group. None of the members of this group had done anything to warrant the killing, and no one even knew what the hell they were being killed for. Said assassin had been known to abuse the 'one-death' rule in the PK guidelines, and frequently would go after people for little to no reason.
RP and PK aren't completely separate from each other, but if you want to create player death cults, you had better be DAMN good at RPing. RP out your target selection, kidnapping, etc as opposed to just running in, PK, and then leaving the person you killed wondering wtf happened.
You want a world of dangers where players make up the dangers? Where you can get robbed or PKed at a moment's notice for anything? That was my experience with Achaea, and it's probably still like that, so if that's what you want, well, there you go.
What I try to say is that, a middle ground should be found, even if that might be risking giving an inch.
RP is very boring anymore because most times, its already all drawn out. You already know where you're going. And with most world events, you already know exactly how its going to end. The Bloom? We all knew what was going to happen... So I stayed in my haven for 3 days until the 'cure' was found and then just read the news for the cure, did what I had to and went about my business.
Roleplay with other players is very boring and uneventful as well. More times than not, I hear talk about people going, "This is what I want to happen." If you're already scouting out the end of your roleplay arc and refuse to accept any deviation, that's no fun. When I roleplayed in Imperian, I just winged it. I roleplayed with almost the entire playerbase and just went with it. THAT was fun. I had no idea who I was going to talk to, what about, what would be said. I had no expectations. And the character that was molded was absolutely fantastic! But here in Aetolia, everything is planned out. And then you have all the cliques and the requirements to join a clique or what you have to do to be recognized. It's a hassle. Its boring. That's why I don't roleplay and that's why I'm outspoken against those who do primarily roleplay. If I'm going to roleplay, I don't want to know where its going to end. I don't want to plan it out. I just want to go with it.
In regards to PK. It's also very drab and boring. You can't raid without being labeled as a griefer because "Oh no, you're making me do something I don't want to do. Now I can't emote for X time." On top of that, city guards are almost impossible to kill unless you get a group. So city raiding is pointless because people complained that raids were ruining their fun. You can't just jump people anymore because you'll get issued if your only reason is "Because I don't like your face." I'm a vampire, I should be allowed to jump who I want, when I want because I want your blood. Lessers/Majors/Sect/Orrery are all disconnected from the world as a whole. There is no retribution, there is no chance for revenge. You lose at a lesser/major/orrery, well... congrats. You lost. That's it, end of story. Period. Game over. Now go on about your business like it never even happened. Sect is just a place where people can go to 1v1 because they're bored and want to test combat abilities.... without having to worry about the opponent calling in their 50 friends because they're about to die. This has caused the PK scene in Aetolia to pretty much become non-existent.
I love Aetolia. I would love to help make it better. But we keep instituting more laws, more safety nets, more rules. And players become more and more close minded to just a few individuals around them and we deal with negative repercussions because someone doesn't like the way we roleplayed or they didn't like a specific emote or they didn't like that they were killed. It has left a stale tone to Aetolia in an overall trend.
The Albedi Gods are so alien in their objectives; they're more like forces of nature than sentient beings, and that's an approach I find appealing and dark.
The Albedi Gods are awesome, thus far. And I totally cannot wait to see more of what's in store with them.
As far as the tone of the game goes, I feel like we, the players, are partially responsible. While it's been mentioned that events can be very linear (which I don't completely agree with), I feel like even if they are you'll always get out what you put in.
To use the noted example of the Bloom, it became clear to me fairly early on that what the point of the event was from an OOC perspective, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the event, purely because I threw myself into it, and I was ecstatic beyond words to find that my awesome peeps in Spinesreach and the Archivists were right there with me, acting like this really MIGHT have been the end of the world. The more energy I devoted to it the more satisfying I found it. Sure, it played out mostly like I predicted, but getting swept up in it was still fun, and there were even a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. Enough so, that I can't help but wonder whether we, the players, put a few unexpected kinks into the way certain parts played out (looking at you @jaymi and your infectiousness
I feel like this attitude extends in part to the tone. While the Admin, @Razmael, @Tiur, and others direct the overall flow of the game, they are, at the end of the day, going to try and reflect back at us what we want, within reason. They tend to pick up what we put down. If we want a darker game then it's up to us as much as it is up to Upstairs to darken things down. And that's going to mean both getting involved, and a shift in attitude, because to be perfectly honest we players can be quite an ungrateful bunch at times. An intergral part of a darker tone is going to be things not going the way we want/expect them to, bad things happening to our characters, and other assorted miseries being inflicted upon us. If this is what we want, we can't pitch a fit every 10 seconds because we poked an angry God in the eye and they ripped one of our characters arms off, or whatever.
While I think there has been a shift in tone of the game since I started playing, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Like many things, now that it's been pointed out there's a difference and I can see it, I can also see good points and bad points. Personally, I don't mind whether the game shifts back to a dark tone, Kelli has always been fairly grey in terms of morals, and purposefully so. At the same time, if we carried on in a similar "high fantasy style" as @Tina suggested, I'm not sure I'd mind that either.
Either way, I think tone begins at home. If you want darker RP, darken it. Find some. Start some. Dip your toes in the water by participating a bit in some. I can assure you there IS some grim and nasty stuff percolating in the background if you look for it.
We need to take some of the responsibility for our game on ourselves.
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.
Sure, sometimes we all have a bad day, and can't deal with certain things. That's the way it is, but one has to deal with consequences of that as they come. However, there seems to be a lot more people around these days who cannot stand to lose. This game can't have winners all the time, and it is discouraging to always get the short stick in a conflict. However, there are few ways to set up conflicts that have a way to go back and forth in a somewhat satisfactory way if our attitudes remain the same.
Through the years, things have changed. At times there have been a lot of people who would cry grief when they had actually stepped into a conflict of their own choice simply to try to get out of it. This prevents a lot of people from engaging in darker-themed conflict because they don't want to deal with the added drama that will come as a result of it.
Other times there were people around who simply enjoyed causing misery for certain people, for purely OOC reasons. This also prevents people from engaging, because they don't want to run the risk of being called griefers. Sometimes they will be called this even by people who might not even be part of the conflict.
On a different note, the hard tethering ensures there's no neutrality, but at the same time, it has made it very difficult to blend black and white into certain shades of grey. For instance, no deity will take on followers from the opposite tether, meaning there's no way of playing a truly unreliable character in terms of loyalties.
- Say I'm a Sentinel, but I also walk the path of Iosyne. Iosyne makes a demand of some kind, and then it's up to me to try to play that out without it being noticed that I'm doing her bidding, because if I do, I might get tossed out from the guild I'm slowly trying to take over.
- Or if I'm an Archivist, who does the bidding of Damariel, sharing all the intelligence from within the guild with the Order in an attempt to further His influence.
- Or a Templar being slowly converted by Chakrasul (to pick something familiar that happened in the past! <.<)
This is by no means a call to open up for neutrality. It's more a call to allow for a different kind of conversion and an added layer of potential RP and conflict.
both sides - but especially lightside - tend to exist and interact primarily with others in the same bubble. with only a couple exceptions (looking at @Dzekk and @Benedicto, primarily, but h*ck even @Karhast that one time), there's been very little in the way of RP with vyxsis that extended beyond trading barbs in tells. sure, calling each other stupid and weak is all well and good, but it lacks much depth. even when i've gone out of my way to try and engage a variety of vyx's former comrades - e.g. randomly appearing places, making mild mischief, etc. - most basically just walk away. aside from those mentioned above, my most sustained interactions seem to've been vyx trying to get things going and being ignored - although, there's also been a small amount of over-the-top hostility with no room to RP at all, but this is actually less of an issue imho since at least that's interaction. this has left me with the perception that there's very little room for cross-side RP, which seems to make it difficult to have any kind of meaningful conflict, emotional investment, or tone consistent with what a number of people here are saying they want. my experience before and my continuing experience is that most lightside folks only really interact with the, for lack of a better word, "fluffier" darkside folks, and again, many do not interact at all. some organizations even explicitly ban such interactions for a significant portion of their membership (for example, the illuminai don't allow "associating" with darkside people until you've passed aiyr qaepa).
now, let's be super duper clear: i'm not suggesting all of our characters should be best friends or even on friendly terms since that would also be counterproductive to sustaining a dark tone and meaningful conflict. if our characters don't interact and develop meaningful (if adversarial) relationships, though, how can we expect anything other than what we've got at present?
in any case, maybe my perceptions don't match most others' experiences, or maybe folks aren't RPin' because they just don't like me, idk. just giving my $0.02.
That being said...
The problem with sustained antagonistic RP is that it can get really annoying or obnoxious really fast if you're not careful. I've had some really good rivalries with dark side characters in the past that were intense, but didn't veer off into annoying or obnoxious.
If people are just simply walking away from you? You're probably doing something wrong, or did something to deserve shunning. I say this as someone who up until rejoining Duiran and the Sentaari was largely shunned by light side players despite not even being Spirean. If you're Spirean or Lochian, AND you're being super antagonistic? Unless people on the side you left really enjoyed RPing with you before, you're gonna have a tough time of garnering cross-faction RP. If you want rivalry/enemy RP, it requires a much deeper level of understanding of what people are willing to entertain from you, and understanding when you're going too far.
Unfortunately, most people don't recognize when they're going too far, or don't care, and it's a story I've heard over and over.
however, i don't really think this is what's going on. i mean, again, ask people like @Dzekk or @Benedicto if their experience RPin' with vyx has been just unbearable.
my experience on lightside was that speaking to darkside folks was discouraged - both for myself and others. other than poking fun on occasion (which has always been a feature of vyx's character and hadn't really made the RP-well run as dry as it is now), vyx is not really a mean or antagonistic character. she's not going around calling people names, murdering people at complete random, etc. i'm trying not to name names here because it would just be inflammatory, but when i say people just walk away, i mean - e.g. vyx will appear, say hello and make an innocuous introductory comment, and the person will say "I have nothing to say to you. Duanathar." when previously we'd been friendly. sure, i expect some characters to feel hurt or betrayed, but when the vast majority aren't doing anything to express that aside from completely avoiding vyx, it seems to be a little... odd.
now, again, i focused on discussing my own experience because, well, it's my experience and i don't want to speak for others. that's not to say i haven't heard or observed similar things happening to others, though, and i feel like making the issue entirely about me rather than trying to see the broader issue i'm attempting to describe is a little uncharitable.
All that said, I couldn't agree more that the lifers are comparatively discouraged from interacting with darkies than darkies are with lifers. As a Syssin, it gave ample excuse and opportunity to chat with 'the other side', but now that I've joined that other side, (aside from not many darkies having anything to say to Zaila) that relative reaching out interaction is frowned upon heavily and viewed with suspicion.
I think part of the problem with cross-tether interaction is finding a good excuse for our characters to do it without the character actively trying to convert or be converted.
Hi.
People who don't literally murder people in the streets can enter either Duiran or Enorian to do as they please, and even getting rid of enemy statuses isn't so hard. Given the direction some orgs are supposed to take, what would you recommend people do beyond the way things already are?
What can be done to stop this from happening and stop more people from leaving lighters? I don't have much to suggest beyond less hostility, less suspicion, less spying. Have things changed in the last year and a half? Possibly! But I doubt it.
Edit, because I missed @Arbre 's post:
That's a fair point, but.. Given that admin literally saw fit to step in to fix Duiran up between then and now, I feel safe to say things have changed.