A Goodbye

Aishia

Players should feel influenced by it, yes. That's the point. Probably a softer touch than the harm of stealing that much crap, both in material value and in impact on the health of the org in question. There's a clear avenue of mitigation and resolution there that I'm surprised no one has thought of yet.

Eliadon

Kalak said:

Aishia said:

If you think the 100 day thing was designed to endure for 100 days and not simply to prompt some sort of action, or that these kinds of things happen without full administrative approval then I don't know what to tell you.

But that act itself colors the judgement of players ICly and looks very unprofessional for both Divine and Management. It is like a nuclear strike, if I must make a comparison. Not the end effect of an elaborate plan executed through sheer manipulation and effort. When people are forced to act on the gunpoint (or should I say on the hexpoint for being lore appropriate?) then something dies at the very core of a MUD game.

Stealing -all the commodities- is a hydrogen bomb, if that is a normal nuke.

Nahuaque said:

@Shachalai you telling me that does not make it so.  I am not telling you how to feel. Just that IC deception inherently involves OOC deception to prevent meta gaming and that it is not inherently wrong. Your feeling don’t determine whether something is ethical/unethical.

EDIT: agree 100% with @Kalak’s statement above.

If we're getting into ethics..

This is unethical from a deontological point of view, from a rule utilitarian point of view, and from an act utilitarian point of view. Unicorns you, fight me.

Kalak

Eliadon said:

Stealing -all the commodities- is a hydrogen bomb, if that is a normal nuke.

Actually no, it could be more appropriate to compare it to a sort of cancer because the plot was spread over a long enough time and it got through the diagnosis of the Enorian. It is not "Return comms or else!!!" situation which is a nuke.

Lin

@Toz @Benedicto if you guys ever find yourself wanting to try an MMO, hit me up on Final Fantasy XIV. I've been loving the roleplay here on the Mateus server and I haven't once looked back. Turns out adversarial engagement doesn't require actual concerted efforts to ruin the experience of the player behind the keyboard - that's just an Aetolia thing!

Eliadon

Kalak said:

Eliadon said:

Stealing -all the commodities- is a hydrogen bomb, if that is a normal nuke.

Actually no, it could be more appropriate to compare it a sort of cancer because the plot was spread over a long enough time and it got through the diagnosis of the Enorian. It is not "Return comms or else!!!" situation which is a nuke.

In that case, the Gods cursing Spinesreach and the Syssin was more like a rather nasty, very temporary, perfectly curable communicable disease.

Much nicer than cancer.

Shachalai

Nahuaque said:

@Shachalai you telling me that does not make it so.  I am not telling you how to feel. Just that IC deception inherently involves OOC deception to prevent meta gaming and that it is not inherently wrong. Your feeling don’t determine whether something is ethical/unethical.

Whether you're evaluating ethics from a deontological or a consequential point of view, Atarah and Fezzix are clearly in the wrong as initiators of theft, and wronger still owing to the adverse consequences inflicted on the game as a result of their actions. I'm angry about that.

Your attempt to muddy the waters and invalidate my emotional response to this is a way, however indirect, of telling me how to feel; not only is that dismissive and irritating, it makes you disingenuous.

Nahuaque

Eliadon said:If we're getting into ethics.. This is unethical from a deontological point of view, from a rule utilitarian point of view, and from an act utilitarian point of view. Unicorns you, fight me.

Deontology is a broad category of ethical philosophies. Saying something is wrong under deontology makes as much sense as saying that something is illegal in Asia. It’s a categorical mistake.

Act utilitarianism - only unethical if it does not maximize pleasure.  So, again, it is not INHERENTLY wrong.  Also no one actually believes or follows act utilitarianism. Peter Singer is basically the last holdout for a poor moral philosophy.

Rule utilitarianism - wrong if it does not conform to a rule that maximizes the “good”. So now we have to first define what the “good” is.  So we again arrive at the “It’s illegal in Asia” problem.  It may be inherently wrong but that is contingent on what you define as the good.

It should probably be mentioned that most moral philosophers don’t subscribe to these antiquated moral philosophies anyway.

You don’t know what your talking about.

Eliadon

I think you missed the last sentence in that line.

Aishia

This is a bad thing that is only making people feel bad, and has broken social mores in a big enough way that it's readily apparent to most people. It's as much as a loophole simply existing so orgs can run themselves smoothly. I guess I'm waiting for the argument that it's ok to drain a guild of credits/gold when you're fed up with it, at this rate.

Mykellah

This thread is DARVO in action.  Im done with it.  And probably the game in general if this is to be the response to griefing.  "Get over it"  Okay, I will.  By playing a game where three people cant ruin everything fir everyone else.

Mykellah

edit: thanks phone

Satomi

I'm just going to throw in a word or two more, from my perspective, because I read something from @Rasani about how Spines had no intention of giving the comms back.

I was woken up my Lenina OOC, the other day, skype/discord spamming me with "TOMI! WAKE UP! TOMI!"
When I finally acknowledged her, she told me, "The syssin stole a bunch of comms."
My response? "Oh, that's nice.." and I rolled over to go back to sleep
She pinged me again, "They stole tons of Ash."
I groaned and rolled out of bed with a quick, "Fine, I'm up."

I popped into Aetolia, saw a few messages, looked at the new Comms load, and my gut instinct was, "ugh, damnit."

Personally, if I were the one thieving the comms, I would've just stolen like.. you know.. 10%? 20%? Being Comms Minister in Spines shows me what we use, so they'd have been missing like a small amount of ash or something. Teensy bit of Ice. Seeing this motherload dropped at my feet was elating, exciting, enjoyable, and ultimately made me wary.

The curses weren't the reason the comms were returned. They were an excuse to use just to keep from getting booted out of the City for committing something akin to Treason, from an IC perspective.

I skimmed a lot from the last two pages, woke up to 40 new posts here, but I wanted to make it pretty clear that the community isn't devolving into trash, Spines isn't a pit, etc. etc.

Honestly? If not for the curses, I would've kept 10-20% of the comms and been willing to give you lot back the rest. Tomi would've called it a 'Tax' that Enorian should've been paying Spinesreach for protecting the realms or some nonsense.

Heck, I even made sure that, from an admin perspective, that this was a legit thing and I wouldn't get shrubbed or something for making plays Tomi would want to make.

It's w/e though. Tomi cares about Comms. She doesn't care about how many guards die, or how badly the city is cursed into the ground. I just think it's fun that Karhast was the only person to shoot me a tell when I could have been willing to negotiate.. but since the Senate was being the intermediary, I just went 'meh' and started crunching numbers to determine exactly what our profit was on this whole endeavor, from a Comms perspective. (which, btw, at average prices the Ash alone was roughly/over 30 million gold's worth of profit, if we kept it all)

Then again, I understand in the panic Tomi gets forgotten. She has a much bigger opinion of herself than other people likely do.

(Edit): When I actually suggested keeping 10% of the comms, it was because I wanted some of the resources. I genuinely did! Enorian is barely using any of their stuff! (That's how Tomi saw it, because I have to strictly regulate Ash just to maintain some semblance of supply but they have tons of Ash somehow). I even asked if we could offer to pay for some of the comms. Maybe I'm in the wrong here, but I just wanted some of that sweet, sweet Ash. Ice is okay, but Ash is divine.

Nahuaque

Shachalai said:

@Shachalai you telling me that does not make it so.  I am not telling you how to feel. Just that IC deception inherently involves OOC deception to prevent meta gaming and that it is not inherently wrong. Your feeling don’t determine whether something is ethical/unethical.

Whether you're evaluating ethics from a deontological or a consequential point of view, Atarah and Fezzix are clearly in the wrong as initiators of theft, and wronger still owing to the adverse consequences inflicted on the game as a result of their actions. I'm angry about that. Your attempt to muddy the waters and invalidate my emotional response to this is a way, however indirect, of telling me how to feel; not only is that dismissive and irritating, it makes you disingenuous.

I haven’t attempted to invalidate your emotions.  And, I acknowledge you have them.

At the same time, I don’t think that your emotions matter in this context nor do I think that makes me disingenuous. I have a disagreement with you about whether something is wrong. It’s a disagreement about a matter of fact and the fact that you feel hurt, while sad, doesn’t mean that what happened was wrong. 

Toz

I'm going to add I could not be more proud of Seirath and how they handled themselves with it all. I know I haven't been around to do that org justice but you all swayed things in a meaningful way, undid a lot of bad feels and toxicity, and your first gut instinct was to palm some for yourself while giving the rest back. I adore all of you.

Shachalai

That isn't good enough, @Nahuaque. You cannot, in the face of the outrage and disappointment displayed here, argue with any kind of valid reasoning that this was ethical.

In fact, what you're doing is worse. You are saying "I acknowledge what you are saying and how destructive this was to the community and its norms, and I am ok with that to the point where I will argue with the people who were victimized by it over whether it was even a bad thing."

That's flatly unacceptable, and I'm disappointed in you.

Nahuaque

Shachalai said:

That isn't good enough, @Nahuaque. You cannot, in the face of the outrage and disappointment displayed here, argue with any kind of valid reasoning that this was ethical.

I can do that and have been doing that. You just haven’t provided an argument against it.

I don’t know you and don’t care if you are “disappointed” in me.

Satomi

I also want to say that, based on the speed with which comms restore in the wilderness camps/cities, Enorian would have never recovered from this, short of my just never going out to collect comms again. I kind of make it my business to gather comms and, as much as I hate to be that person, from an IC perspective this would've been more than enough reason to start dangling their missing comms about with a bully-like taunting of "I'll give it to you back for X per!"

Nah, Tomi is an opportunist, but she isn't evil. If I had the motivation I could've made it my business to make sure all the wilds were bought out. @Kalak. There was no recovery short of Admin intervention, or resources being returned. (I genuinely have no idea if Duiran and Bloodloch even bother going for comms, these days.)

And I had no motivation to assist or crunch numbers for the return of the comms except my own goodwill, since a lot of the curses didn't even affect/bother me. I had one for 20 days. I'm endgame, and frankly, Tomi thinks Dhar is a joke (cause Guild background), and the Syssin could've been the scapegoats for a massive comm gain from my end. I don't need no Haven! *FLEX*

@Rhyot in Spines, we buy back comms for 1g, but sell at rather high prices due to scarcity, with certain resources. When in the wilds, ash and ice can cost up to around 1k gold if only 1-2 is about, that's a gold hit that is almost unacceptable from a Minister perspective, when you have a budget. Based of the prices I hear Enorian charges for Ash and Ice, though, I might have to start upping my own prices. I'm being far too nice with my modest stock!

(Edit): Also also, with the way resources are used in Aetolia atm, everyone is losing resources every IC year. If Duiran had been willing to give Enorian half their stock, that would've only accelerated Duiran's comm loss, with supposedly 4 cities vying for limited resources. And I don't even know if they could've supported that kind of stock gift. And and I can genuinely see reasons for Duiran to not even offer Enorian help, since Enorian cares more about people and Light and less about Nature and the Cycle. In the grand scheme, once Bloodloch and Spines are eradicated, those two will just end up going to war.

As far as Comms go, it's just a brutal situation all around, and as much as I want Spinesreach to become the global Comm supplier with all cities paying us for the PRIVILEGE of using our stock (above cost, of course. They're outsiders. There are tariffs.)... that would've only been fun for me. Probably not you guys. Since I'd be able to arbitrarily decide who gets cut off if they don't abide by our imperialistic rules and statutes.

Satomi

Aishia said:

This is a bad thing that is only making people feel bad, and has broken social mores in a big enough way that it's readily apparent to most people. It's as much as a loophole simply existing so orgs can run themselves smoothly. I guess I'm waiting for the argument that it's ok to drain a guild of credits/gold when you're fed up with it, at this rate.

I know it's a double post, but when I went to make sure I wasn't going to be shrubbed, it was specifically because it didn't involve gold and credits that it was playing out.

It is a loophole, and until any changes go through, being hex/curse bombed is a solid response. Why? Well, for one, it forces the leadership to justify their actions to everyone else in the Guild. If the Guild supports it, they won't really care that they are incapable of being productive and will back up their leaders IC. If the Guild doesn't support it, the leaders get ousted/steps are taken to resolve things behind the leaders' back.

All in all, as bad as this whole situation was, I applaud the administration's handling of it. They saw a loophole being exploited, they acted in a way that forced organizations (Spinesreach/Syssin) to make some hard choices and weigh how strong their greed was over their desire to be a shining beacon of Civilization... and how much they cared about their citizens. Like I said previously, the curses barely even affected me, but they could have been devastating for novices, lowbies, etc. It's on us, as the Leadership, to recognize the detriment our actions might cause on those below us and recognize/rectify any overreaching we do.

This was an overreach. Parties made sure it was rectified, because without the Admins approving those hexes and curses, there was literally no motivation to scramble, as it were. We all shine, or fall, in times of crisis. As bad as Enorian had it, Spinesreach was in a similar amount of flux, though for entirely different reasons.

So.. tl;dr I want to thank the Administration for applying some pressure. It was a good call, as much as I've read people disagreeing with the decision.

Shachalai

Nahuaque said:

I can do that and have been doing that. You just haven’t provided an argument against it.

I don’t know you and don’t care if you are “disappointed” in me.

Correction - you can't argue your point reasonably. There are plenty of excellent arguments in this thread for why this was destructive and unacceptable, not least of which is the fact that we have lost players, and a lot more players are hurt and considering leaving. Speaking strictly in terms of game health, this was a damaging, disproportionate act.

And, yes, that's unethical.

You don't have an argument against that, because you're not arguing in terms of people - you've admitted as much by saying that my emotional response isn't relevant to anything - you're arguing in terms of abstract principle. Abstract principle which conveniently happens to agree with the conclusions you've arrived at.

As for not knowing me?

Dude.

[mod redacted reference to Shachalai and Nahuaque examples of friendship]

In light of the fact that you know me, I invite you to consider engaging my arguments, and the arguments of the other people who were hurt by this, in good faith - toward the goal of making sure that we, as a community, are better than what Atarah and Fezzix orchestrated.

You can of course continue to implicitly defend them, and further undermine the norms we've established as a community - but if you do, my respect for you is probably gone.

Nahuaque

@Shachalai I didn’t know who you were but that certainly would not have changed my position on anything.  Who is giving an argument is not relevant.  

You cannot ransom an opinion from me with statements like “if you do, my respect for you is probably gone”.

Org theft may be frustrating but it is not against the rules. It is not inherently wrong to deceive players and characters while playing a deceptive player. From what I can tell this was ICly done. As for game health I think thats something yet to be seen. Game health isn’t so easily assessed.  Maybe this will hurt, maybe it will help. Either way I don’t fault the Fezzix or Atarah for what happened but I disagree with the way the admin handled it and I disagree that the initial act was unethical.

Mihaketi

Then you're being deliberately antagonistic to the people in this thread who have expressed that this was predicated on out of character investment and deception, and you're making a point of saying that they shouldn't feel the way they feel because you, as a completely uninvolved person, disagree. If you won't acknowledge that, then you should at least acknowledge that it's crass, rude and in poor taste to sit in someone's thread declaring that they can't stomach the behavior of players and soapbox relentlessly about it.

Have a shred of empathy and make your own thread about how awful the admin are if it's that kind of problem for you, stop taking a dump on everyone in this thread who is hurt by what happened.

Satomi

Nahuaque said:

Org theft may be frustrating but it is not against the rules. It is not inherently wrong to deceive players and characters while playing a deceptive player. From what I can tell this was ICly done. As for game health I think thats something yet to be seen. Game health isn’t so easily assessed.  Maybe this will hurt, maybe it will help. Either way I don’t fault the Fezzix or Atarah for what happened but I disagree with the way the admin handled it and I disagree that the initial act was unethical.

@Nahuaque @Kalak
I agree completely. Org theft isn't against the rules (to an extent). It isn't wrong to deceive when it is done IC. I don't fault Fezzix or Atarah's actions. In fact, Tomi approves. As Trikal said before, this is a GREAT bargaining chip. I knew Atarah was up to something, but I didn't realize it was this massive.

Where I disagree with you is on how the Admins handled it. Perhaps they were hasty in dispensing the curses. Perhaps the curses and hexes could have been spaced out a bit more to provide a degree of mounting pressure on Spines and the Syssin to negotiate. Unfortunately, Enorian was a bit stonewalled, from what I hear, and there were no pending negotiations. As far as they were concerned, they just got screwed over and there was no hope of getting their stuff back.

I also understand that you may not completely know how devastating and crippling it is to have all your essential comms stolen. If Atarah stole all their obsidian, rope, leather, coal, they would've just been like "Ah, stupid Spireans. Lets raid em a bit and then restock on the 200+ supply in the Wilderness shops for a few weeks."

Unfortunately, Atarah stole their Ash, Gold, Silver, etc. The comms that are always either 100% bought out in the wilds, or being left to grow to a point where they aren't egregiously expensive to be bought out (which is still easily 10x the cost of 1 coal for just 1 ash, ice, or gold). These are comms an org cannot sustain themselves without. Ash is used to supply enough pills to sustain combat. Gold is used to supply enough elixir/salves to sustain combat. Steel is for weapons (though the decay times would've let them hobble along for a couple RL weeks), and cloth for clothing (though I don't mind fighting a bunch of nudists ) etc. etc.

I get playing Devil's Advocate, I do, but you have to understand that when people are upset and frustrated, it is more than just the act. It's the consequences. They were faced with a future that was essentially this: Little to no comms. A steady decrease in their ability to supply weapons/pills/curatives. Eventual reliance on Duiran, and likely Spinesreach as well, to provide said curatives/gear in shops that will be likely overpriced to what they could possible do.

Imagine how you'd feel if the future you saw for your Org/City was essentially as a Vassal to another Org/City, possibly one being your sworn enemy, just through the simple act of losing every single essential commodity in your warehouse.

(Forgive me if I sound like I'm making assumptions, you're just my targets and a lot of the 'you' that I state are more the royal 'you' directed at anyone who doesn't understand or sympathize with the sheer frustrations of Enorian during this crisis.)

(Edit:) Oh my goodness, @Mihaketi, your avatar is ADORABLE!!! AAAAHHH!! Okay, okay, Serious time now.

Tiur

Pretty sure this isn't constructive anymore. I'll start a.. sort of thread in a bit where we can discuss this without angryface.

Also, all threads are threads about how awful the admin is. I learned this rule from WoW.