Returning player frustrations

Sayre

Hey all,

I planned on coming back from a very VERY long hiatus to this game, and was very excited about it. I am most familiar with the Consanguine Houses from my time playing before, so decided to jump back into those. For the past week or so, I feel like I've given it a honest go. Just tried leveling and reacquainting myself with the system, but something seems lacking.

By far, what made this game for me was these intense RP sessions and the rich lore that those sessions could be built from. I come back to see the lore still there (though fairly greatly changed from my previous time here) but no engagement from anyone. I've had a couple people reach out to make sure I was not a lost newbie, and I greatly appreciate that. But I joined a House and no one's said a word. No RP, no introduction... People have been playing that were in my House also. Have the Houses grown stagnant or is this a full game issue? I've checked game population, and at any point it looks like nearly a quarter of the game are Consanguine, so I would think if any clan didn't have issues with interaction, it would be them.

I may be asking or expecting too much.. I don't know. I just wanted to share that that has been my experience, and I went over to another IRE game and was immediately immersed in roleplay. I don't want to be there though - I've always loved Aetolia, and want to be here. But that original experience is what's holding me here - not my current experience. Now imagine I'm a true newbie and this is my first round with this game. I can't see anything making me want to stay in that example. Just wanting to share this perspective with you all. I hope this can help encourage others to reach out and interact with people they may be unfamiliar with.

Rhyot

I can't speak for anyone else, but a lot of the Houses just go about their own business and help out those when they need help. Bloodloch as a whole doesn't really do a whole lot of intense super RP moments. That's left to our shadow companions in Spinesreach.

If you are wanting pure RP intense times, Spinesreach, Enorian, or Duiran would be the best place for you to go to. If you want to be a vampire still, Spinesreach is where you should aim. While Bloodloch has lots of knowledgeable people, we're also a group of people who are wholly independent and don't really talk a lot.

Sayre

Thanks for the reply. I don't mean to sound whiney or anything in my main post - Just venting and trying to share perspective. I appreciate the insight here. I guess I see the possibility of sire/thrall or event House/servant ripe for, and really necessitating, RP. It's good to know this may be a changing dynamic with BL players though.

Perhaps I'll try out other cities/clans then. Thanks, truly.

Vyxsis

Rhyot said:

I can't speak for anyone else, but a lot of the Houses just go about their own business and help out those when they need help. Bloodloch as a whole doesn't really do a whole lot of intense super RP moments. That's left to our shadow companions in Spinesreach.

If you are wanting pure RP intense times, Spinesreach, Enorian, or Duiran would be the best place for you to go to. If you want to be a vampire still, Spinesreach is where you should aim. While Bloodloch has lots of knowledgeable people, we're also a group of people who are wholly independent and don't really talk a lot.

i've been in neither bloodloch nor aetolia as long as the esteemed Shadowprince Rhyto Bah'humbug (:p ), but i recognize what he's saying. a lot of the long-time citizens of bloodloch tend to be loners or just keep to their existing groups, it's true. the vampires are in a weird place - i don't want to introduce a debate about the pros and cons of the current situation, but we currently have five (5) consanguine houses within the dominion. as far as i know, the game in general has a relatively diminished population in comparison to ye olden days of glory, and the population of vampire characters has followed suit. so less players, spread across five quasi-orgs... oh, and some of these quasi-orgs barely (or just don't) get along. at the risk of being painfully obvious, despite the clear potential, vampires are not presently a hotbed of RP - particularly for newcomers.

all that being said, i don't think moving cities is the only (or best) course of action. you don't have to be a citizen of whatever city to RP with characters from that city, and while there may be an element of convenience to being a citizen where you intend to do most of your RP, there's not really any mechanical issue with being a citizen elsewhere. want to hang out in spinesreach a lot? that's cool. you can log out there, too, so when you log back in, you're already there! the stronger reason to stay in or leave bloodloch - or any city, really, but we're talking about bloodloch - is your character. who is your character? what do you want them to become? what sorts of interactions do you want to have, both in general and with members of particular cities? i can tell you with absolute certainty that characters from enorian and duiran will generally react very differently to a bloodlochian than they would to a spirean. so rather than thinking of your choice of city in terms of which city will give you a self-contained experience, i recommend thinking about how your city will play into all your interactions regardless of who you're currently dazzling with emotes.

on a more personal note, i hope you won't leave bloodloch. i said i recognize there's a lot of truth to Rhyot's assessment, but i'd like for there to be less. we've had a few waves of new(er) (to aetolia) players in bloodloch who are interested in RPing, which is great - if everyone who wants to RP leaves bloodloch, though, it'll probably remain as it is. yes, it'll take time and effort to foster more of a RP-friendly atmosphere in bloodloch. yes, there are grumpy oldbies who will resent your fancy emotes. setting the foundation of a new era of bloodlochian RP will also be rewarding, though, and you'll be able to directly influence quite a lot of bloodloch's direction. so... if you think bloodloch provides the right background for your character, please consider staying to help build RP.

Sayre

BL has essentially always been my go-to city. I enjoy what it has to offer. I'll have to think on this some and will most likely create a new character regardless of what direction I decide to go. I don't know if the vampire's 'are' in an odd spot, however. Population is down, as it is generally across the game, but mostly when I have checked, I'll see some 10-14 vampires on out of 50 or so people in the game. Those are good odds. Perhaps spreading them out across the Houses lessens it some, but I take the complete opposite approach to what you said.

Houses that are very different and don't get along sounds like the perfect hot bed of potential RP. I may be biased though, as my history in the game on older characters was ripe with HousevHouse struggles. And I understand that perhaps vampires or BL has kinda grown into this level of comfort where you do you, and other people do them, and that's that. I'm even somewhat fine with that mentality. But at the very least when you see "X has joined your House".. I don't know... acknowledge them? Sometime within the next couple of days at least?

Everyone wants the game to continue and grow. As I said, if this was my first experience, I would not play again. Maybe this is isolated - maybe I'm a stickler. But maybe not and maybe this happens more often than it doesn't. That's all I'm saying. And don't feel like you have to coddle me/others. It'd be incredibly disingenuous for your character to have his pet newbie who he's going to love and take care of if that's not your character. My first Sire treated me like a worm and quite literally took a body part from me from the get-go. Yet after over a decade, I still remember his name and think about all of the fun RP moments we had. You don't have to be nice to people. Just be 'something' to them.

Iazamat

What House did this happen in? Sadly, Houses don't have an introduction via NPC like guilds and the Dominion do, and the Dominion one really doesn't do a great job of getting you started in your chosen House, since it's for the Dominion (and only fires if you choose nightstalker from the intro). While it looks like quite a few vampires are always on, probably half or so are constantly AFK (and never shut channels off to indicate that), especially if it's past midnight EST, which only compounds the problem of neglect when newbies join a House.

Sayre

I don't want to point any fingers at this House or that person - just pointing out general perspectives I've had as a mock new player. As I said, I'll be remaking a new person when I decide what to do, even if it's stay in BL as a vampire. Nothing gets better if people don't talk about it, so I just wanted to start a conversation.

Xenia

I will say it is difficult to get the RP and organic introduction to a House from a novice starting point. I have found if this is what you want you must treat it like fishing and be loud enough for people to wake up and take initiative. Once people think to take the initiative and engage with you, it tends to be alright until you start having aspirations towards advancement. This is a situation where I see things stagnate, again, it's possible to advance, but it's going to be very much on you taking the initiative and being willing to swim upstream.

Kandara

I um...can I share an experience I had on my second rp interaction here too please?

Mordion

I can completely sympathize with you being that I was in the same position fairly recently. I house bounced as a newb because I was expecting more in-house interaction and it just didn't happen. I was also trying to RP a personality at first that was quieter and would have relied heavily on others for RP introductions.

In many ways, I'm glad those previous houses didn't work out because it forced me to revamp my character's personality quite dramatically to a point where he's much more unique and doesn't just blend into the crowd.

My advice... be something no one else is playing. Many people want to be the badass but honestly playing a fiercely loyal dim witted ogre who thinks he's very clever has been very entertaining.

Leana

I've not played a lot over the last week due to a lot of life stuff and just not being interested in anything going on. When I am around, I try to do a little RP in every conversation I have and try to initiate at least one person. It's something I do even if I don't really feel it, because I want to get people engaged if I can so they stay around and maybe take over for some of the leadership roles. >.>

I'm not shy about how much I really like vampires. I talk about them a lot and I occasionally bring up the idea to Vyxsis in game. I started a thread about them to try and get information from others because I didn't want my opinion to be too biased. There's a lot of potential here if people will try to conceptualize vampires within the game and current Aetolia lore/sentiment.

Vampires (like most guilds) are suffering from the lack of purpose behind their organization. This wasn't a problem when you could -only- be a vampire and no other guild, choosing to become a vampire was also permanent and isolating. You could either join a House/Clan or be a rogue. Guilds have this problem too, but they have a lot more going for them that helps make them worthwhile.

Since that's no longer the case, the only reason to be apart of the House is for roleplay and the ability to sire others (I'll bring that up later). That would be fine if vampires did not also have a city, guild, and order they can draw roleplay sources from. There is no fundamental reward for being apart of a house like there is a city (ylem rewards), guild (guildrank rewards, unique facilities and skills), and order (order powers and divine blessings). Maybe a fix for the situation would be to give each house a unique power or reward that's worthwhile and grows stronger the higher they are in house rank?

A more fulfilling response might be time to stop separating the vampire houses. As sucky as it might seem to break from tradition, this arbitrary separation (since all houses have to follow the dominion rules anyway) is only hurting the class and roleplay for the entire game. The Dominion fulfills the role of collecting all the vampires together in an organization. It identifies them by their bloodline and sets the laws they must follow.

You can keep the bloodlines intact but have everyone be part of one house (Or the Dominion) and maybe one day they can grow to need separate houses.

I'm genuinely curious what others think. I'm not trying to be malicious, but it really seems to me on the outside (and inside, on my vampire alt) that a small minority of people are allowing their selfish greed hurt a major part of Aetolia and stop this from happening.

The last time this happened it was done poorly and much of the membership of the houses were lost because they fell into the city-issue we have now: only four choices with almost no leniency for those who don't fit the mold perfectly. This is how Bouchard continued and this is why thirty or forty people quit the game or got cured rather than be forced to kneel at another house's rules.

It should of been -ALL- the houses into the Dominion, but the bloodlines intact. All seven or eight of them. (I still think Dominion is an awful name for the vampire houses, but that's just me).

Edit: Dominion restricting siring is a forced 'no-rogue house' mechanic that isn't really enforceable. Someone who knows this exists will just tell potentially progeny to get sired by the NPC and quit the dominion to join their house. I don't even know why this is a thing.

Toz

You can't quit Dominion, even if you wanted, @Leana.

Delete Houses. We don't have the pop to support them, their leadership is entrenched deeply and no one can remove the ones who just sit in their coffins, and they are all the same flavor of "we are the best superior blood hiss" with no functional difference. There is nothing to gain by them being a separate entity, and them being able to pick Primus is choking vampires to death because only a patsy will ever be considered.

Delete Houses, blood rank converts to vote weight for Primus, Emperor/Empress ranks for path heads. Won't fix everything,  but it beats the heck out of what we have now.

Kandara

What does the Dominion do?

Iazamat

Nothing. It's meant to be the overarching governing body for Houses, but right now, it's moot. People focus on their Houses and mostly ignore Dominion, until the Primus does something the older, more entrenched players dislike (hence Toz's use of the word patsy). From my perspective, too, when the Dominion was implemented, very little was done in handing players workable lore to build from. Instead, the decision to double down on and hardcode peerage was made in substitution of RP and plot, so vampires have been stuck in the same rut since 2008.

Kandara

Iazamat said:

Nothing. It's meant to be the overarching governing body for Houses, but right now, it's moot. People focus on their Houses and mostly ignore Dominion, until the Primus does something the older, more entrenched players dislike (hence Toz's use of the word patsy). From my perspective, too, when the Dominion was implemented, very little was done in handing players workable lore to build from. Instead, the decision to double down on and hardcode peerage was made in substitution of RP and plot, so vampires have been stuck in the same rut since 2008.

What can the Primus do then?

Emir

They got some super sweet rp skills. 

Mordion

I know all houses aren't real active, and some in the extreme, but I have to admit that since I started playing bouchard has been very active, interesting, and helpful to me as a newer player. The dominion feels very pointless though and in my opinion the bare minimum the primus should have the power to do is get rid of inactive house leadership and hold each house leader accountable in upholding their house's purpose and reputation.

Vyxsis

i want to kind of highlight something @Leana hinted at because it's a major feature of my side of our conversations about the game generally. she alludes to how the existence of consanguine houses really only benefits a very small subset of players - i.e. certain entrenched oldbies. while there are obviously some exceptions (noob Empress @Rijetta D'baen where art thou), if you look at vampire leadership over the period i've played, there's very little movement. (yes, i know it was functionally impossible until relatively recently, blah blah blah hear me out.)

on the one hand, it might seem like this makes sense. characters who've been around and accomplished things certainly deserve to be elevated in some respect or another, right? on the other hand, you have to balance rewarding longevity with allowing real opportunities for new players to see their characters become successful. theoretically, the recent-ish changes to vampires were to help create such opportunities, but i think they were ultimately too much of a concession to players whose interests did not align with the game's interests more generally.

aetolia, in my opinion, finds itself in a dangerous spiral. the majority of its regular player-base is long-time players. retaining a loyal core is a great thing in many ways. however, a core does not in itself foster growth. my perception is that many game systems - both formal and informal, in-character and out-of-character - favor this core to the exclusion of new players. if this is not the case, then why are the majority of city ruling councils old players and/or characters? why do all three cities with a singular city leader (i.e. not Duiran) headed by oldbies? why is the majority of guild leadership oldbies? representatives of divine orders? etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.

i recognize there are only so many things that can be done about the informal and out-of-character systems that encourage this situation since those systems aren't the direct purview of the admin team. however, retaining in-game institutions that mainly serve and are easily dominated by oldbies certainly does nothing to help. my perception is that such institutions are retained because of player outcry, in the interest of retaining the core. it makes sense, but it's short-sighted because prioritizing oldbies over newbies will lead to a net loss rather than growth. MUDs are extremely niche, so numbers will always be limited. why limit them further by alienating possible converts?

what if the oldbies leave, though? well, that's a risk, but if some oldbies leave in the process of making way for new players, i'd say that's worth it.

(i have a semi-related rant about IRE's pricing policies [tl;dr lower prices will increase population and revenue ya dinguses], but i'm already stretching towards an off topic flag.)

to connect this to the topic at hand, we need lively organizations that welcome (in the sense of *include* and *integrate* - not necessarily be all sunshine and smiles) new players, and most of our current organizational models aren't doing a good job of this. the vampire houses are particularly good examples of this since they're largely stagnant, confusing, and impenetrable to newbies, and they serve no apparent, meaningful purpose to the game as a whole. they're a significant contributor to the problem Sayre initially stated in the OP - i.e. the vampire houses and bloodloch more generally seem to be very unfriendly (cf the sense of 'welcome' above) to RP, particularly RP that involves newbies.

Emir

In regards to all the comments about lack of meaning/purpose for orgs:

Name a single, meaningful, purposeful, organization. Just one.

This problem is not inherit to vampires, it's inherit to the entire game. The templars serve no purpose. The sentaari serve no purpose. Not a single order serves a purpose.

I mean sure, they all serve some general purpose like, The Templars are brave Knights and yadda yadda do battle against evil yadda yadda, but Vampires have that too, they're the bad guys.

In regards to waiting on Admin to motivate us/them/whoever or provide purpose, get out with that. We don't need more guidance or drive from the Admin, if anything they need it from us. Sorry to do the unpopular thing here and openly bash our Admin (in like the most PC way possible??), but I'm not looking for another Carnifex incident. Or more vampire incidents. The vampires have been the most babied organization in the game and received more special treatment from the Admin than anyone, and that is clearly not helping. The best thing the Admin could do right now is to eliminate the Patsy aspect of Primus and then bugger off and take a backseat. Let players decide the direction, step in only if it's getting super out of hand.

Every org already has pre-existing lore to expand upon, or they can just wing it. So long as their ideas aren't completely radical and off the wall in the worst sort of way, the admin should support those decisions. Every change I've seen talked about in regards to the Dominion from players always circle back to 'the admin want this', when instead it should be more along the lines of 'this isn't feasible due to manpower or other events right now but we'll work on this the first moment we get a chance (just pls don't say soon)' or meeting players with compromises if it's too extreme.

Reliance on the admin is how you get the Aetolia we have, where everyone is just waiting. Waiting on the next event, waiting on the next post, waiting on the admin to fix their problems. There's this giant world full of lore and cool things and everyone is just afk waiting all the damn time.

Just my 2 cents. I'm sure only like 1/10 people agree with me.

Vyxsis

fwiw i don't really disagree, @Emir. if anything, i'm mostly saying obstacles to (especially new) players getting involved and in the driver's seat should be eliminated.

Kandara

Just going to add this to new player frustrations, and hopefully maybe give some insight?

Here's my problem: There's nothing to do, and I don't feel compelled at all to spend anymore money on this game because of it. Maybe for the oldbies that got to do some of the awesome stuff in the past you don't mind dropping money, but I myself find myself even trying to explain away even buying the membership because I don't see the value.

Hunt: Is very painful. Level 70 mobs do 2.5-3k damage to me depending on the area, with all my defenses and shield I'm level 80 with 4k hp. Doesn't make me feel particularly inclined to set out into the big open world. Now with as hard as the mobs hit coupled with sometimes how expensive curatives are, and the limited manner in how to make gold. (I've just been going to Lich Gardens and killing Venicus for 1k every now and then.) It gets really expensive to hunt, really fast which just adds to the frustration of the whole situation. Just to hunt in the Sparkle whatever level 75 place, rings and fire resistance enchantment. Now I only hunt after checking esterport or spinesreach directory for health, mending, and anabiotic and then make my decision if I'm going to go out and hunt today or not.

RP: Cliches make it unattractive to speak to other House vampires. What is there to RP about? What conflict? What drive? Most of the time RP so far has been just meet and greets, or romance gossip/giggling, or some type of weird mean girls turn nose up at you rp, learning about the past that has been filled with activity, excitement, more guilds, more things to do, more religions to follow, more cities to visit, more wars, apparently undead could be priests back then, crafting was important, socialization was important, etc. After the rp conversation I got to have I OOCly felt like I came to this game 200 IC years too late and missed out on all the fun, honors, classes, and so on. Generally that means I'm sitting in the library reading about the good ole days.

Sometimes RP also feels like jumping through hoops. I ICly wanted to chop someone's arm off for a science experiment, here's the list of people I had to ask/actions had to be taken.

Check library/nonexistent anatomy book for probability of experiment -> Person I wanted to chop the arm off of - > House Person -> Guild Leader -> Primus ((I stopped after guild leader lol))

Politics: Haven't seen any.

"Neutral" Classes: Wanted to learn monk for the longest but I can't find anyone to learn it from. Mind you I could learn it from a city mate if I spend 400 lessons or 40 credits and then buy another class slot. But as previously mentioned before, I don't feel compelled to spend money on this game. There's nothing driving me to do so, no sense of hope for the future or any progressive factor.

Dominion: Still have no idea what it is/does.

Religion: Deity of choice is on away.

PvP: Huge learning curve, still soaking up information from two days ago from a lessons with Vyxsis.

City: More dead than the undead sometimes.

Explore: Everything has been discovered.

Toz

Rant to follow probably, as is tradition.

Anyone who says "we can't do x without the Primus' okay" should be mocked on HT and, if applicable, contested immediately. It is not the Primus' House and the Dominion is the most toothless org I've ever seen- if you cower in fear of THAT you aren't much of a vampire. Your House/body/beliefs/agenda, they can deal with you if they have a problem- just start doing shit until they notice.

Hell, that's how Toz got War Minister in Spinesreach. I started yelling at people and organizing stuff with absolutely 0 authority and they went with it. Ymmv but that's fine too, better to try and get slapped down later than sit around watching paint dry waiting on permission that won't ever come.

Leana

Doing stuff on your own is only possible if you have people on your side. If you're some newbie or relative nobody or your ideas aren't supported, you're done. @Toz You have a lot of reputation and a lot of people will just listen to you without even questioning. Telling someone to just ignore their IC 'god' is not feasible for everyone. It's part of what @Vyxsis said, about the systems in place (hard coded systems) meant to placate the old entrenched people who are DONE moving people to action. They've done it already, they don't have the energy to do it anymore. (We need Aetolian social security)

And what @Emir says is exactly it. I can't tell you how many times groundswell RP was put down by Admin to the point that the established players can't think in any other way than: "Until this becomes hard coded into the game, LOL sure your -RP thing I don't agree with- is real." Death of Ashtan, the Drakken enemy, the whole of Albedos, the many RP endeavors of the Carnifex (Who have a history of breaking away from Bloodloch, making their way in the mountains, then siding and finding a place with Spinesreach only to be forced back to Bloodloch for no reason other than 'Their HARD CODED skills match Bloodloch and we need every city to look the same'), and not least this war with the three factions.

We need coding to focus on the pvp/pve side of things and code restrictions removed from the overall RP side of things. Story (Central plot point) = player engagement (carrot and stick) = conflict (different opinions) = money (people spending money). City membership is required to do anything - why? Is this going to be another SURPRISE to force the players into artificial conflict? Enorian and Duiran will always see eye-to-eye until conflicts are created to directly address this issue, so splitting Spinesreach and Bloodloch up artificially was a real bad idea. They can be different and close allies, like they were.

@Kandara Unless the guildmaster of the Sentaari approves your Free apprenticeship, it'll cost you credits/lessons. They won't approve of it because you're shadow and the guild is Light aligned. It sucks, but we have the same problem with Syssin and Light aligned people, though I have no idea how Syssin solve Light folk wanting an apprenticeship. It just doesn't make sense to train your enemies, which is why the alternative method was put into place.
Religion part sucks for everyone, there's just not enough people. Everything else is a symptom of waiting syndrome.

Toz

@Leana @Rijetta showed up and took her orgs by storm. She started shit, worked hard and wasn't an alt. I'm a known but that comes with baggage- a lot if people respond well to a newbie who wants to honestly make a difference and can move/shake. Just like in real life, you won't get a management spot when you apply for janitor. Unlike real life, you can be the most popular janitor ever and coup the CEO. I watched Rij rock it, and I've seen @Moirean and @Arbre turn coups into an art. Vamp Houses are insulated against it somewhat, but I'm reasonably sure if you pushed you could do it.

The trouble is people want it now and they want it big. Ashtan is dead and I pray it stays that way. If you want to be neutral pull a @Lycurgus the Wayfarer and be...neutral. Hire out, do jobs, get a name for yourself. Seirath started small and now we've got a nice thing going. Touching guilds was a mistake and I've got a whole rant about that for when I've got a keyboard, but vampires and BL and more absolutely CAN do shit. You just have to account for other people wanting other things and figure out how to work around that, instead of the traditional "I want this give now" mindset.

Zaila

I feel like there are a lot of frustration listed here that are related to "It's hard to find non-introductory RP"

- This is a sentiment I feel any time I try to create an alt. As a novice, it is SUPER hard to track down new RP (whether it be in your guild, house, city, or just the world at large). Our world is so big that it can be very difficult to find people congregated who are actually looking to role play. How often have we heard novices ask over NEWBIE "where do I go to find role play" or "where do I go to meet new people?"
- Yes, you can be a ballsy mofo and just go find every person in an empty room, but a lot of people are either shy of approaching people that they aren't sure WANT to be approached and/or burnt out from trying 5 people already and every one of them is afk or just left when you showed up.

Let me shamelessly plug my idea (100% ripped off from other games that have this and that I can make characters and immediately get RP in) that I think might slightly assist this:

Idea #1283 Section: unassigned Support: 2
2018/08/22 06:51:25: A WHERERP feature. So: a list of places where players are actively waiting and hoping to be stumbled upon for RP. I think that making it simply a list of locations that players are waiting in is best because this will encourage people to seek out new players and situations. This list would be 100% voluntary and separate from the WHO list. Obviously, people can cross check with WHO to find out who is waiting, but only if the waiters don't have some chameleon /cloak/gem hiding their presence on WHO. It should be easy to put yourself on and off the list, like WHERERP ON and WHERERP OFF.

Like the idea? IDEASUPPORT 1283
Have a comment on the idea? IDEACOMMENT 1283

Vyxsis

Toz said:

Rant to follow probably, as is tradition.

Anyone who says "we can't do x without the Primus' okay" should be mocked on HT and, if applicable, contested immediately. It is not the Primus' House and the Dominion is the most toothless org I've ever seen- if you cower in fear of THAT you aren't much of a vampire. Your House/body/beliefs/agenda, they can deal with you if they have a problem- just start doing unicorns until they notice.

Hell, that's how Toz got War Minister in Spinesreach. I started yelling at people and organizing stuff with absolutely 0 authority and they went with it. Ymmv but that's fine too, better to try and get slapped down later than sit around watching paint dry waiting on permission that won't ever come.

as frustrating as it can be, i think the game really rewards assertiveness at this point in time. whatever fame or notoriety vyx has accrued is because i was constantly around and constantly inserting myself. i still do just kinda... get into things. i don't necessarily go find one person who's alone, but i'll definitely jump at a group. i also RP solo a fair amount - depending where i'm doing it, people will sometimes show up to be like "uh what are you doing here" lol.

Vyxsis

Kandara said:

What does the Dominion do?

if you want a good chuckle, here's what i was recently told by Someone Powerful: the Dominion rules Bloodloch.

Sayre

Mordion said:

I know all houses aren't real active, and some in the extreme, but I have to admit that since I started playing bouchard has been very active, interesting, and helpful to me as a newer player. The dominion feels very pointless though and in my opinion the bare minimum the primus should have the power to do is get rid of inactive house leadership and hold each house leader accountable in upholding their house's purpose and reputation.

That's the most Bouchard thing you could've said lol. I intentionally stayed away from Bouchard on this character. In my past I was.. 'involved' with the beginnings of Bouchard and the eventual creation of Ve'kahi, so I was hoping to try out something different this go-around.