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Sunder is not a Spirit resource.
Sunder is an Aetolian resource.
The system was repeatedly villainized and disparaged as the reason why Spirit wins, which is not true. Especially with the advent of mirrors, Sunder has become a tether neutral system. The only reason it doesn't seem accessible to Shadow is because nobody from Shadow is willing to come to me and contribute to the project. All they need to do is come to me and explain why they want to add this or that, how it helps teams, etc. I have no problems with taking your work and distributing it on your behalf to all of the Shadow newbies you point towards the Sunder server. We have a very friendly, tether-agnostic Discord with a tech support channel, a coding help channel, a channel for discussing combat strategy, etc.
The only reason Shadow doesn't also have that 'single combat system' is because of lingering tribalism imbued into the game by players who no longer even play the game or contribute. I've gotten whiffs of this. You are correct and there is no defense for it.
That said, now that the invite has been extended, I hope people will assist. It's a good community tool and one that people should look into helping with if they have the time and inclination.
As for 'gotta start doing something like that'... well, I'll repeat that I'm always glad to add stuff in. As more classes get mirrored, Spirit stuff will trickle down to conversions into Shadow mirrors and you will eventually have a system that supports every class in varying degrees of detail. For example, I'd posit that a Revenant stands to gain far more from Sunder than a Warden or Oneiromancer does, straight out of the box, because neither of the latter two had any dedicated Carnifex or Indorani users adding constant improvements the way Sunder did for the myriad Templar users. I recall this as well, but the course of events is a little different to my memory. I think it came down to philosophical disagreements on what Sunder 'should' do and that the individual who made that fork decided to do so on their own because of that.
Oh! SORRY! I never meant to imply it was ooc. I meant that the characters either fought for something that hurt them or catch crap.
Stepping away from this event, let's look at Duiran and Enorian. They work together because they both want to see the Cycle prosper. But if Enorian launched an offensive that was something like 'We can wipe out the curse of undeath for eternity, but in return, Dendara will be destroyed', I full expect some Duiranites to help Enorian but most to say Pit no and them try and stop Enorian from them accomplishing their goal.
This is my half asleep ramble of saying Tethers are good so you can tell a character's general beliefs in the Spirit vs Shadow fight, but I do not think it should play as strong a role in RP as it does. 'I am Shadow so I cannot support this God in this event because he is a 'Spirit' God. Or vice versa
Unfortunately, the way Aetolia's setting currently is has not allowed us to embrace diversity or roleplay distinctions. If you want to be competitive, then you're inevitably going to have to toss all of that aside and work for the overarching theme right now, which is Shadow vs Spirit.
For example, I really like your hypothesized situation: If Enorian can wipe out the curse of undeath for eternity, but in return, Dendara will be destroyed, what will Duiran do?
In the same vein, if Bloodloch decides they need to recklessly draw more from the Shadow Plane to make manifest their dominion over Sapience, what would Spinesreach do?
Idle thoughts of fancy, I guess.
Looking at this, and looking at the offer from Bloodloch for research into what was essentially a new field of magic, it made sense to be like "No, we should help them, not because they're our allies or because of the treaties or because ShAdOw-whatever, but because we stand to learn some new cool stuff from it, and that is, on paper, our schtick." Unfortunately, that's just really not what the city is. Spines doesn't have an identity right now strong enough to push us towards a singular goal. We're basically the Hufflepuff of Aetolian cities where "all the rest" go, and that makes it really difficult to involve ourselves in any sort of meaningful way in events.
I guess the whole point I'm mentioning it is that the decision wasn't being made at a tether-based "SHADOW GOOD, MUST SUPPORT SHADOW" sort of level, but one from a city culture angle...and I think city culture is what makes the in-game world interesting rather than simply ShadowxSpirit, because that makes it four separate entities, rather than only two. I don't think tethers are an issue when those four cultures get their chance to do things uniquely them and shine for it. Double points if/when those things cause conflict on one side of the tether, like when Syssin and Consanguine were at war over the whole Ati situation.
Undeath and blood and
shoutingstrength? Go go gadget Bloodloch.Trees and Dendara and Spirits? Do ya thang, Duiran
Light and Spirit and Truth? Praise it, Enorian.
Spinesreach?...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
BUT, this RP and identity has basically boxed Spinesreach into a corner where the only real conflict it can be invested in (as a body) are things that directly threaten Spinesreach itself. Which, in a sense, is true of all the cities, but the things that can threaten Spinesreach aren't really ideological. Someone has to show up at Spine's gate with and army and be like "We think you have too many rights!"
Spines became a de facto neutral city, or as close as we can get to having one. They don't really get along with Eno and Duiran because they do have existential threats going on in there regarding shadow, and they do let yucky vampires join up. But aside from that, they're kinda the forgotten city, with no real reason to get out of bed in the morning. Just as they don't really seem to have a reason to defend themselves, they don't seem to have a reason to go out and do something proactively (i stg italics better not linebreak me again or I'll rip my hair out).
I think in a game that has effectively two sides to it, and one of the sides is almost unanimously unified on all issues while the other has one city that is Mordor But With Snugglies and the other is America But We Say Comrade, this is going to create some serious challenges when it comes to designing apparently balanced conflicts, especially if they're mechanical and require physical bodies to fight things.
It doesn't seem like an unfixable problem to me, and I think it can be done without crunching the toes of any org's major RP. Just will take some creative thinking.
I still think tethers as a concept, of two fronts opposed to each other, needs looked at. It seems overly basic, for a game that has four different orgs with different identities. I'm not sure under which conditions one might say Only Spines and Duiran fight each other, or Spines and Eno fight against Bloodloch and Duiran, or any number of strange scenarios one might conceive of could be justified. But I think it warrants consideration. Mechanically, I do still think you shouldn't have Wardens joining Spinesreach and all that jazz, and that definitely should stay.
P.S. to throw in a artifact rant, anything ylem fields/mist gathering/antiquated gauntlets are all gated behind the tethers - if you're cityless to avoid some of the above issues you now have paperweight artifacts
Tethers aren't bad, nor is it the tethers that are making things difficult. They are a good thing. They separate the identities of each side and how each side would play. If tethers didn't exist, you'd have players who want to make an actual Shaman, Sentinel, Templar, or Luminary but want to be in Bloodloch. You would have players who want to be an actual vampire, Indorani, or Carnifex join Duiran and Enorian. Excuse me, what? Each of these classes have actual lore tied to them that specifically go against what those cities stand for. If you eliminate the tethers, you eliminate lore. You eliminate lore, you basically have no reason to PK each other because you should all be supporting each other. If you're all supporting each other, then you have successfully created a utopia and we all need to close out of Aetolia and be like "We won!!". If we don't close out of Aetolia, then we would -need- the Albedi Gods to come mess up everything. (Granted, mechanically speaking even the Albedi gods would lose because you can't have them win if you want people to continue to play the game, so even putting minds in that direction the whole thing is moot really. Unless we want Imperian 2.0, Post-God killings....)
I'm seeing a lot of commentary that bounces between tether, PK, and player interactions/mentality. So I'll expand further into that as well.
Tethers aren't the make or break of an outcome in PVP events, the players are. Spirit has a solid foundation that stands upon solidarity, unity, and teamwork which is -why- they are so successful. Sure, they have Sunder that accounts for 99.9% of their ability to form large groups when it comes to PVP (not knocking it, yall are doing awesome and I miss fighting against y'all) but they are also (from the outside looking in) generally more accepting of people who want to just be like "Hey, I have a stick. I 4 can smack people too?"
Shadow has this mentality of putting on assless chaps and being like "Come get some" and then tearing each other down under the guise of "constructive criticism". This is further seen when people decide they want to demoralize and attack people for not participating, because they cant/won't code in some support thing, or because they don't like a specific group of people. This is toxic behavior on an internal level that bleeds to other facets of the game and players wanting to support.
As a former Bloodlochian, their ideals -will never- line up with that of Spinesreach. Spinesreach isn't about subjugation, might before right, destruction of everything around them, prove your strength, or whatever other schtick you want to throw in there. Just like Bloodloch isn't about making things fair or just in their city, focusing on research/education, or just allowing people to portray their opinions without being crumpled under a boot. While I do not know much about Duiran/Enorian, I will not speculate about their general differences but I have seen them at each others throats almost as much as Spinesreach and Bloodloch have been. At the end of the day though, Duiran and Enorian -will always- work together because "Bloodloch is the bad guy! GET THEM!!!" Whereas this call isn't always made against Spinesreach because, for lack of better terms, it is a neutral city that just so happens to support the Shadow tether because of RP reasons.
As an end note. I'd love to see tethers get expanded upon with a true neutral city. A city that doesn't really push any goal other than "We exist" that is NPC ran to avoid every amount of political input that could sway it from one side or the other. If players want to join, then they can be any class they want, support any organization they want, and nobody can tell them not to because "You do you, boo-boo". This would eventually cause a bit of conflict when you see a Shaman giving away Dendara secrets to the Archivists, when you see a vampire openly feeding in Enorian (not that they'd allow it still, but the thought is entertaining), or when you see a Templar fight alongside a Carnifex. The upside of this would be that there is no organizational conflict because there's no organization to war against, putting all the onus on the player(s) that got involved. A literal definition of picking and choosing your battles.
This would no sway on the current build up of the cities either due to an actual city having far more content/RP available to them than a neutral city such as: guilds, clans, credit/gold reward systems, political intrigue, ministry positions, etc. The only thing a neutral city would have access to is a pylon that allows the players to continue to use their ylem powers, of which they'd need to kill ends or run minors. Then again, you could just make the neutral city be Delve and have infinite ylem so they didn't -have- to do that, but could if they wanted to.
Don't assume malice in what can be chalked up to ignorance. I think that we do a lot of the former, as people. This isn't a problem unique to Aetolia, but it does tend to come up since it's a conflict-driven game. But sometimes that means that we need to pause and remember that other players (aside from a few little shit exceptions) have little to gain in harming others out of the game. We should all be thinking more like Dungeon Masters, in that we want to set up other players to enjoy the experience, even if something "bad" happens.
When there are high stakes situations out there, I think the competition heats up considerably. Case in point: Sib doesn't tend to get involved in PvP, but this was significant enough to set off every alarm bell in existence. The ....health? well-being? ...of the Soul Mirror is one of those suuuuuper high stakes situations. When the fate of the world hangs in balance, it would be a hard sell to tell Duiran and Enorian to not fight so hard over it.
Maybe we need some more medium or low-stakes stuff going on?? I dunno, just spitballing here.
Being a rogue is always an option, even if not a very appealing one. Yes, that will lock you out certain aspects of the game, but every one of those aspects is tied into conflict in some way.
More to the topic, I do think that there are some valid points to the idea of it not being fair for Bloodloch to have to carry all the weight of combat on one tether. And I can't say that there haven't also been times over the years where Duiran or Enorian has had to carry the weight of their tether's combat. I think the thing that I am leery of, though, is any solution that would cause players who main Enorian or Duiran characters to feel like they're being punished because their orgs work well together. And while calling for tethers to be broken up now might not be intended to look like that, I hope that some of you can at least understand why it -can- look like that.
One last thing, and maybe it's me reading into things or taking some things too personally, but I really hope that it isn't intended for some of this to read like unhappiness that in the narrative right now Bloodloch is not living up to some of the things it claims (in general). This wouldn't be the first time it's happened to that city, or to any of our cities, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Ultimately, I'm not convinced that the tether system is 100% the cause of all of this.
It might be hard to accept, but I for one would feel this way if the tables were turned and Shadow had the numbers. I have never found one sided battles very compelling from either side. In Achaea I would frequently dip out of battles where we outnumbered the opposing side 2-3:1. The huge number disparity will always be a problem with the pendulum swing of the Tether system. In my experience when it is broken down to cities you have a better chance of aiming for an even battle.
I think some of the feelings from Spirit players (myself included), is that Spirit rarely (if ever) seems to get a clean win. It's always "Congratulations! You've won..! But at what cost?" And that's just a real slap in the face, especially when I've never been more thrilled to see Spirit players really show up in force and band together during the past two major conflicts.
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