Post War Thoughts

Keroc · December 2021

Hey folks,

Now that all the cities are now in a state of ceasefire, we're curious to hear about how you felt about the recent war. It kind of felt like some people had various thoughts regarding some aspects/mechanics of it, but the overall feeling from the player base seemed to be generally positive.

Feel free to talk about what you enjoyed about the war, and perhaps what you didn't like. The thread is open to all discussions.

Bulrok · December 2021

I liked the part where we did the PK.

Almol · December 2021

One of the best parts of the Aetolia ‘21. It was a breath of life into the world. It’s hard to get around the fact that very little matters mechanically in Aetolia, your org or character isn’t going to be damaged beyond repair by another character, but it /felt/ like there were things on the line and we were behind the wheel.

Illikaal · December 2021

Honestly I'm lowkey sad it ended so soon. I was really having a blast for the bits i was able to participate in. My work schedule has been slowburning me to death the past 6 months, but I have 2 more to go before I get back to normal. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed all of it and I appreciate both sides for making some effort, if any, to abide by the rules and make it as nongriefy as possible.

May we never know p- eerrr. Something something Dendara.

Seurimas · December 2021

Some sort of active militia system might have been nice. I was in full-blown assassination mode when I was able to participate, but I didn't feel right ganking people who weren't actually participating. I generally resorted to searching their name in the #game feed on the Discord and seeing if they were in any big fights recently. This feels like an incomplete view of participation, and not a standard that was broadly held, but it's what I went with for my own ganks.

Conversely, cities should be able/eager to boot inactive people from their militia rosters, perhaps. Or maybe the whole problem will fix itself now that people understand war is a thing that can actually happen, and decide more intentionally whether to join militias. There was a lot of "I don't wanna be seen as lazy, but I don't want to be free game for ganks all the time" going around, which seems like a lot of bad expectations from those people specifically. At least, I did not see anyone else saying "you have to be in the militia to be a good Lochian/Enorianite/Duiranite/Spirean", but very vocal people saying "I have to be in the militia because X".

Elene · December 2021

I enjoyed the war, despite how it turned out to be. I feel like there were quite a handful of miscommunications that went on in the war, and it definitely exacerbated things. There was a lot of freeform opportunities to PK though, and I've never seen Shadow fighters been so pumped up to PK before. Aside from just the PK, the support from the city, at least where Bloodloch was concerned, was phenomenal, proving that you don't have to fight to be useful, and I enjoyed the fact that newly joined novices were also rarring to help out, even if they might not be of use and even if it meant they would die a dozen of times for being militia.

There were some slip-ups here and there from either side when they attacked individuals who were clearly not in the militia, which I think could be better policed by players. I also think that the war has also spurred a lot of PK creativity and troop strategy that I would probably have never seen if we hadn't had the war, and we did have a good hit-back from Spirit in terms of the back and forth engagement.

I do wish we were able to do more with the troops however, because they felt like an afterthought to use, and there are no consequences to losing them or benefits to using them creatively. They don't matter in the end, and what really matters is who PKed better. Which makes troop usage a very sad and potentially useless resource in a war.

What I think would be nice reminders for future wars:

- People joining wars and refusing to be part of the militia. People should be explicitly encouraged to join the militia if they want to participate on the action.

- People shouldn't be afraid to leave the militia if they don't want to take part in it, and they shouldn't be given flak for leaving. However, if you do choose to leave so you can be apart from the PK war lynch, remember you made the choice to leave.

- Getting players to remember that they should try to govern themselves on "how much to be griefy" is always a thin line to ride. Hypnotizing people to kick guards, PKing people just because they were in a room with militia members when they were attacked, etc.

What I feel I want to talk about:

Tether divide, and how much should we feel like we should support our allied city on the same tether despite the fact we may have different city agendas and existing clash of interests. With the tether divide, we're already essentially playing Team Blue vs Team Red for lessers and orrery, so I was honestly ready to see if we could keep it to a city vs city war.

Throughout the war, I have heard the same refrain, "The cities of Spirit are allied in their support for each other, but it is unfortunate that both your cities do not share the same sentiment."

Is it such a bad thing to have independence or nuances of a relationship between cities on the same tether? Bloodloch started a war over the monolith, and it was clear that we had our own objective going into this, so we did not expect Spinesreach to agree with our reason for war, or even come to assist in something that does not even involve them at all on a political level. Is it an expectation that we must jump to each other's aid even if it doesn't match the city's ideals?

For example: through the war, and especially at the tail end of it, I found myself grasping to understand why Enorian could still consider helping Duiran when it was clear they didn't care how many innocents (Spirean hoplite troops marching home) they killed. If they were suspected to be guilty of potential involvement, then they had to die. Enorian clearly was uncomfortable with their actions, but they just seemed to let it be or decided they wouldn't need to address it.

As you can tell, the mindset on both sides differ greatly, and I can tell that it will largely continue to affect any wars that might rage across the game again in the future. So, tldr, what I want to ask for is clarification; how are we expecting cities to behave like in conflict?

Aeryx · December 2021

I enjoyed it, it was the first one I've really gotten to take part in on this character. But I do agree the troops seemed confusing and pointless, and there didn't seem to be much of a way to really affect the objective, in this case, the monolith. If we're talking about the idea of now going into the phase of making mechanical changes to the war system, I think that objectives, or stakes, have got to be in place in the future. I get that a lot of people like just doing it for the PK, to do it to do it, and I do as well to an extent, but I don't think it's healthy to not have a mechanical goal to strive for during it. I understand 'but my immersion, my organic RP', but there needs to be a balance. We're not always going to have the same people, the same variables in place that lead to this just ending due to certain people being willing to let it end. I think there's a way to have mechanical objectives and stakes, and also keep the RP aspect of it as well. It is not impossible.

In short, I think it went well. It could have been a lot worse, it could have been a lot better. It was a solid experience, with room for improvement.

Sheryni · December 2021

I enjoyed the change of atmosphere. The game felt alive, and the city really came together and that was nice to see.

I didn't enjoy the pk most of the time. It seemed like it was primarily just ganks on individual combatants or large groups storming much smaller groups.

I tend to like genuine competition so I like fair teams that make fights challenging but not insurmountable. The war seemed like mostly dogpiling. I don't mind cities guard raiding each other and the like but I'd like to see more fights where pk skill feels like it matters.

Things I'd like to see in this vein:

1. Some kind of outposts you can fight for control of, that have a twin foci/hunting grounds style mechanic for those of us who would prefer the competitive fighting over dogpiling. Having control would contribute to the war in some way.

2. I think we should draw a line on people outside of the warring cities participating and also keep war between two cities only unless all cities consent. So, Duiran and Bloodloch declare on each other? Great. Enorianites should not be able to pk the lochians. I heard in holy wars this is actually enforced, where uninvolved orgs can't participate. I think that should be the case here too. I also don't think a second city should be able to start a war on the city that's already in a war. Keeping it between cities would help keep the fights more fair.

3. From a story perspective, the war's start was great. It felt compelling to me and we knew why we were fighting. The end, however, was disappointing and abrupt, to me. I don't really understand why we're no longer fighting. I realize it's likely ooc motivated (Christmas and the lack of a mechanical way of determining a winner) but I'd -like- to see more of a story finish. I think the war as a whole started seeming less focused and more aimless when it became more about shadow and spirit ganking each others' soldiers wherever they go and less about Mamashi.

I think it'd be cool if you could declare war -over- a particular area, or declare a territory dispute as part of the war over a particular area. Then there could be some kind of outposts you can enter within that area and fight over. You earn some kind of points and at the end of a time period, a winner is declared and has formal "control" over the area for some period of time. Then, if Duiran won control, they could do rp things trying to restore life around the monolith and Bloodloch would no longer be able to intervene. Maybe they get guards in the area akin to city guards to keep the opposing city out.

Macavity · December 2021

I wish there was more for non PKers to do during a war. I mean as Trade Minister of Bloodloch, I held a sigil fund raiser and it went rather well, but outside of that, it would be nice if there was something system side that we could do to help boost the PKers, troops, fortifying the home city, or something. That way there would be more involvement

Seurimas · December 2021

From a story perspective, the war's start was great. It felt compelling to me and we knew why we were fighting. The end, however, was disappointing and abrupt, to me. I don't really understand why we're no longer fighting. I realize it's likely ooc motivated (Christmas and the lack of a mechanical way of determining a winner) but I'd -like- to see more of a story finish. I think the war as a whole started seeming less focused and more aimless when it became more about shadow and spirit ganking each others' soldiers wherever they go and less about Mamashi.

I will note, there's a lot of "end of the war" talk here (and this thread is called "Post" war thoughts), but a ceasefire agreement is not necessarily a peace agreement. Is it really over? Maybe not! All it would really take is someone or some people breaking that ceasefire

Czcienn · December 2021

I'm going to post something that some people might not want to hear or disagree with, but it does reflect my personal views and from my conversations with many people in Spirit throughout and after the war, a fairly common view among Spirit.

I absolutely loved the PK, how energetic, galvanised, and united Spirit has been since the start of the war, and how so alive the game felt on both sides. And in the context of a war, PK is definitely important, but behind it all we're actually playing a roleplaying game. It makes sense then that we don't have mechanical objectives, but it's also the lack of mechanical objectives can, and did, led to a very disjointed roleplaying experience.

The simple fact was that Spirit actually just outnumbered Shadow significantly for most times of the day throughout most of the war. There were very few battles where we actually lost. We more or less controlled Mamashi throughout, we managed to kill off far more troops, we mostly led on killstats and avoided deathstats, we managed to organise raids on Bloodloch proper during primetime including one where we killed dozens of guards despite there being many player defenders, Spinesreach was effectively shut out of the war from the start. But despite all of this, we could not actually push our agenda because of the lack of mechanical objectives.

In a roleplaying game, there has to be an acceptance that if you're going into a conflict you might end up having to play the role of the losing side. When either party enters a conflict with no intent on ever playing the losing side no matter what happens during the war, it's no longer for the roleplaying experience. Yeah I know, losing sucks. I hate losing! But I'm not going to pretend to win my sect fights when I clearly did not, and part of me entering into that sect fight was the implicit agreement that I was willing to take a loss. It happens with conflicts with mechanical objectives, so why shouldn't it also happen with conflicts without mechanical objectives?

There are also the pains of how far people will push when it seems like everything is on the table. I appreciate that most players on both sides didn't go too far with this, but there were things some players on Shadow did that left a very sour taste in our mouths and I am certain there are some things players on Spirit, maybe even myself included, did that Shadow felt the same about. While there are some things that I am sure both sides policed, there are also things that would have just slipped through or happened regardless.

Ultimately, I cannot advocate for more wars without objectives such as this one. It was absolutely one of my favourite experiences in Aetolia, but I just get the feeling that it would start feeling less and less amazing as we get more of these with resolutions that are, frankly, quite lame.

Naos · December 2021

What are the chances of us getting a breakdown of troops lost, kills/deaths per tether, etc for the duration of the war?

Alela · December 2021

Elene said:
Tether divide, and how much should we feel like we should support our allied city on the same tether despite the fact we may have different city agendas and existing clash of interests. With the tether divide, we're already essentially playing Team Blue vs Team Red for lessers and orrery, so I was honestly ready to see if we could keep it to a city vs city war.

Throughout the war, I have heard the same refrain, "The cities of Spirit are allied in their support for each other, but it is unfortunate that both your cities do not share the same sentiment."

Is it such a bad thing to have independence or nuances of a relationship between cities on the same tether? Bloodloch started a war over the monolith, and it was clear that we had our own objective going into this, so we did not expect Spinesreach to agree with our reason for war, or even come to assist in something that does not even involve them at all on a political level. Is it an expectation that we must jump to each other's aid even if it doesn't match the city's ideals?

For example: through the war, and especially at the tail end of it, I found myself grasping to understand why Enorian could still consider helping Duiran when it was clear they didn't care how many innocents (Spirean hoplite troops marching home) they killed. If they were suspected to be guilty of potential involvement, then they had to die. Enorian clearly was uncomfortable with their actions, but they just seemed to let it be or decided they wouldn't need to address it.

As you can tell, the mindset on both sides differ greatly, and I can tell that it will largely continue to affect any wars that might rage across the game again in the future. So, tldr, what I want to ask for is clarification; how are we expecting cities to behave like in conflict?

the interesting thing about these relationships between 'allied' cities, to me, is that i think if the fight had been started by Enorian over something Duiran didn't specifically care about, i can absolutely see Duiran letting Enorian swing. in some ways, Enorian's ethos encourages them to get involved where other cities might just watch - in my mind, this connects with the way Enorian feels compelled to (and sometimes complains about) defend their protectorates. it's part of the organizational RP. Duiran, on the other hand, isn't so committed to 'goodness' or 'defending the innocents' per se. they can more easily ask "What's this got to do with the Wilds or Dendara?" and if the answer is "Nothing" just shrug and walk away.

likewise, i think Bloodloch is more likely to get involved in a Spirean fight that doesn't have anything to do with us - or barely does - because a big component of our organizational RP is basically dickswinging about Strength and being an Empire that'll conquer all of Sapience. particularly if we saw Spines taking on both Spirit cities, we'd be much less hesitant to jump in than Spines was.

in both cases, the relationships between the allied cities are asymmetrical. this is potentially a really interesting thing to keep in mind during intra-tether RP. should Bloodloch or Enorian reproach their allies for not reciprocating their ride-or-die mentality? should it influence whether they join future conflicts? should they try to use it as political leverage? i don't wanna suggest the answers are or should be set in stone, but they could be good guides for the future!

Elene · December 2021

Just to feed @Bulrok's ego, because he said he did it without any deathgems after 1 week of the PK:

Elene · December 2021

Czcibor said:

But despite all of this, we could not actually push our agenda because of the lack of mechanical objectives.

What was your city's objective going into the war to begin with? Because if you're entering a war with no idea of what objective you're trying to reach, then that is the problem.

Duiran's objective was obvious: force Bloodloch to do something about the monolith that was withering life around it.

Bloodloch's objective was straightforward: defend the monolith and get people to understand the significance of its existence.

In any RP-driven conflict, if you have no aim to see something accomplished, it's going to be hard to push any agenda. Haern's concern might have started it, but he isn't going to end it for Duiran. Players have to find an acceptable way to do so, and as the war drew on, like @Sheryni said, it became less about the Mamashi, and more about who we can PK/gank more.

There was no attempt at or further RP involved, until ceasefire discussions took place. Even now, after the ceasefires are signed, I'm still looking forward to actual RP involving research around the monolith.

Edit: You make a fair point, @Alela. In this regard, would it be that Enorian's objective was therefore to ensure that whatever Duiran sought, they would be able to help obtain it?

Lim · December 2021

Hmm.. I think the general issues will be addressed by whatever war system you guys are working on - things for non-coms to do, clearly set goals/objectives, etc. There was that thought that was being discussed in discord where there could be resource depletion (aside from the goals being achieved) as a means to force a lose, e.g. run out of ylem, run out of gold - that was a fairly good thought - not sure if you guys can figure out a way to implement it.

What I'd really like to see is more RP. Aside from the stuff that us players can get up to, I would love to see more perspectives/RP from the regular day to day citizens who are caught up in the conflict. The guard's family who's father got killed in a raid. The merchants whose trade has been disrupted. The orphans made by innocents caught in the cross-fire. The RP about Gods, Orders and their potentially world-ending disputes is nice and exciting, but it would be extra nice to also see a lot more of the little folk featured too. Doesn't have to be emote session, can even be random little public posts by disgruntled citizens. Or an influx of refugees suddenly appearing in cities. Little flavour things like that that help create the atmosphere.

Alela · December 2021

making a separate post for my general thoughts.

initially, i was very confused about the scope of the conflict. no direct declaration or statement of intent, just a bunch of Duiran's troops standing on the monolith in Mamashi. i heard through the grapevine that Haern ordered this. (Although this was later corrected. Maybe?) it had the appearance of Duiran singling out an order? or uh... a guild maybe, since the monoliths were part of the Earthcaller class belonging to the Teradrim? unclear. of course, some of us in Bloodloch responded with troops (since, like, troops are meant to fight troops... and if Duiran's were fortified [can't remember if they were], it would've been impossible to hit them otherwise) which immediately made it a war. i get that war is messy in real life, but this is a game. the lack of constraints or mechanics made this beginning very weird and a little salty.

thankfully, the fighting was mostly pretty fun! bloodloch was getting whooped hard much of the time, but that happens. our whole schtick allows us to take a lot on the chin while maintaining the delusion that we're still making progress toward our goals, which frankly is good for our OOC morale.

the thing i really didn't love was when Ivoln's order started taking shots. this just further blurred the parameters of the conflict, and it was impossible to defend. Ivoln's order isn't particularly large, for one thing, and the people defiling (or defending defilers) seemed to come from all over. it wasn't an order vs order conflict at all. so, as an order, there wasn't any clear target for us to strike back at, even if it had been feasible for us given the huge disparity in numbers between Ivoln's order and the entire Spirit tether.

by the 'end' of the war, we'd lost over 80 shrines. mass shrine defiling is just... it's a pain. when you've got only one or two people with a wild hair defiling shrines, it's manageable. they can only do so many, and a small order can generally muster one or two people to chase them off. it's reasonable. when an entire tether is defiling your divine's shrines en masse, however, it's pretty miserable. maybe not in the moment so much, since sometimes skirmishing can be enjoyable, but for those of us who spent hours and hours over the course of days to replace all the last shrines - not so much fun. considering this, it's incredible to me that in addition to defiling the vast majority of Ivoln's shrines, Spirit was also able to defile the vast majority of both Bamathis and Severn's shrines (including, iirc, Severn shrines INSIDE Spinesreach) after the events in Farsai. Severn's shrines can't even be replaced by players, so it's much more 'final' than defiling shrines to a divine with an order.

maybe it seems like i'm harping on this a lot, but somewhere on this forum, under another character's name, i responded to complaints from Spirit about my solo defilement of an order's shrines. the consensus at the time was that it was uncool of me to do that since my character didn't belong to an order, so there was no way for the attacked order to respond beyond trying to beat me up, which they were ill-equipped to do on their own. i ended up agreeing that, while this might be fine from a purely RP standpoint, it wasn't very considerate as a player, and i stopped. i think there are some parallels to the way Ivoln (and, to a lesser extent, Bamathis/Severn) was singled out by Spirit during this war. in both the cases of Ivoln and Bamathis/Severn, an order was attacked by people from across the entire Spirit tether. there was no clear target for retribution, no clear path toward containing the damage, and definitely no way to defend against a much, much larger and many-headed force. it was an attack without restraint, defined endpoint, or even a well-defined relationship to the larger war. if one of Spirit's orders had simply declared a holy war, it would've felt much less frustrating simply because it wouldn't be so open-ended: the two orders would have it out, someone would lose, and that'd be it. we'd still have to rebuild some, but it wouldn't be the same situation where we had no hope of defending, let alone possibility of fighting back.

as for the war's ending... i think it came when it needed to. i told someone (who'd largely been absent from the game for the war's duration) in discord on Thursday or Friday that i foresaw it getting more or less tied up that weekend, and i was right. it just seemed like the folks who'd participated the most were pretty done, although probably for different reasons. i have to imagine Spirit was annoyed with Bloodloch's insistence that we weren't losing, and i think Bloodloch was frustrated with the lack of clear... anything regarding the conflict. it was maybe a little dissatisfying in terms of narrative, but there was barely a clear narrative to begin with - remember, troops were stationed at the monolith without any communication to the opposing faction (whoever that faction was intended to be).

if anyone's still reading this, in closing, i hope the pools will consider how to complete the war system for which we've been given a few pieces. a sandbox is nice, but even the most expansive sandboxes have edges to keep things from getting too messy. likewise, i hope some thought will be put into ways to limit (or maybe guide?) conflict directed at a specific order. sometimes you gotta take one on the chin, but if half the game can all gang up on you and utterly destroy all your shrines without meaningful limitations or goals, then like... that's not the sort of loss that motivates me to get back in there and try again next time.

/$20.00

Czcienn · December 2021

Elene said:

What was your city's objective going into the war to begin with? Because if you're entering a war with no idea of what objective you're trying to reach, then that is the problem.

We entered to help Duiran, and also to beat down Bloodloch which has been antagonising Enorian for as long as I've been here.

And by the end I don't see a world where it isn't clear why Enorian fought so hard. It wasn't even about Mamashi or Duiran anymore, because Bloodloch quickly showed it didn't care about them either. People literally suiciding into our city and losing multiple levels just to kill our guards and NPCs, blockades on the road killing everyone who tried to enter or leave the city including non-militia becoming a daily occurrence.

Duiran may have instigated the war, but for us the war became much more personal and punitive. If that doesn't count as RP I don't know what does.

Nipsy · December 2021

I recall fondly that I did not begin the guard killing or Bloodloch as a whole attacking and blockading until -after- Enorian joined the war.

I also fondly recall shouting that it was not “the Beacons war” and to withdraw from it and actions would cease.

So to weigh participation solely on actions that happened after Enorian joined a war to aid their Allies (which is fine by the way) but use it as justification for being a victim is a poor excuse on why one joined the war.

That being said I had a lot of awesome RP with people from Enorian throughout the war and even received esteem from Enorian citizens for my “die hard behavior” and willingness to lose to try and prove a point against the “stubbornness of Enorian”

So for what it is worth. I am happy with everything I did in an effort to pull one City out of the running to defend their home against a kamikaze Gnome so my City could fight the actual place that had an objective stake in the war.

Also thank you to those who were chill throughout the war and realized character actions do not correlate with player mentality. IC actions don’t always have OOC motive and I respect your maturity.

Overall response positive.

Overall interaction amazing.

Overall opinion. I believe pushing some envelopes was important in this conflict and permitted to show what people were willing to do in conflict and how much they are willing to sacrifice or tolerate. I think we met some important benchmarks in community behavior and this will help develop more mechanic and value in conflict plans going forward both story wise and free form.

Czcienn · December 2021

Why we entered the war and why many of us stopped pulling our punches are entirely separate reasons, as I already explained.

Many of us were not keen on raiding or even doing anything outright hostile outside of Mamashi at first.

Elene · December 2021

Czcibor said:

What was your city's objective going into the war to begin with? Because if you're entering a war with no idea of what objective you're trying to reach, then that is the problem.
We entered to help Duiran, and also to beat down Bloodloch which has been antagonising Enorian for as long as I've been here. And by the end I don't see a world where it isn't clear why Enorian fought so hard. It wasn't even about Mamashi or Duiran anymore, because Bloodloch quickly showed it didn't care about them either. People literally suiciding into our city and losing multiple levels just to kill our guards and NPCs, blockades on the road killing everyone who tried to enter or leave the city including non-militia becoming a daily occurrence. Duiran may have instigated the war, but for us the war became much more personal and punitive. If that doesn't count as RP I don't know what does.

I think you have the timeline wrong here. Enorianite citizens were already independently joining the official war declared by Duiran, but it was only after Enorian declared war from the blockades at Duiran that Nipsy started his solo dives, and then it progressed into something more with the rest of the militia. Even after that, we decided against raiding Enorian despite the fact that the bulk of the raiders came from Enorian. We largely tried to keep it city-focused and directed the rest of any larger skirmishes or actions upon Duiran itself.

I also think we were pretty good at trying to minimize casualties with non-militia. I do remember that we accidentally killed Jezreth but we rezzed him in the tear and told the web not to attack him anymore as he's non-militia.

I'm sure that by the end of it, Enorian had a personal reason for remaining in the war and being a part of it by the end, but it is probably disingenuous to think there was an initial objective to begin with, other than to be there to support allies.

Iesid · December 2021

My thoughts first, then some responses:

1. War was awesome. I loved almost every minute of it. I think there's currently still some stuff that only one tether or another can do and this war highlighted that a lot.

2. The shouting was pretty lit. I think all the posturing made some new antagonist relationships. I think every Spirit character will now jump at the chance to kill Nipsy, for instance, so congratulations on becoming a villainous lightning rod.

3. I noticed a lot of initial reluctance on Spirit's side of the fence to begin doing stuff like raiding/killing guards, dusting shrines, ganking militia members who hadn't fought yet, etc. I hope we get some objectives before the next war, because it's evident that the majority of Spirit is not interested in the 'old school IRE' definition of raiding and war. I would be very wary about how we mechanize objectives, however, because I feel it will restrict what we declare war over. I'd like to see:

a. A territory control system. (I'm to understand we used to have this - fighting war over territories would be a much more palatable concept)
b. A raid system with objectives (check Imperian's city raiding system for some ideas)

Overall, I think my biggest concerns with the system rest with how there's no pressure that prevents a city leader from simply refusing to settle the war. I believe both Duiran and Bloodloch's city leaders were prepared to leave the war going on forever until one org or another got tired of it. That's probably not the healthiest arrangement, because it's ultimately one that encourages weaponizing burnout or activity that creates burnout. It makes attrition the only victory path.

Elene said:

Tether divide, and how much should we feel like we should support our allied city on the same tether despite the fact we may have different city agendas and existing clash of interests. With the tether divide, we're already essentially playing Team Blue vs Team Red for lessers and orrery, so I was honestly ready to see if we could keep it to a city vs city war.

Throughout the war, I have heard the same refrain, "The cities of Spirit are allied in their support for each other, but it is unfortunate that both your cities do not share the same sentiment."

Is it such a bad thing to have independence or nuances of a relationship between cities on the same tether? Bloodloch started a war over the monolith, and it was clear that we had our own objective going into this, so we did not expect Spinesreach to agree with our reason for war, or even come to assist in something that does not even involve them at all on a political level. Is it an expectation that we must jump to each other's aid even if it doesn't match the city's ideals?

Enorian was content to let individual citizens make their own choices. I don't know how things go over on Shadow, but Enorian and Duiran have a fairly strong relationship and it engenders IC friendships that compel individual characters to want to stand with their allies. Individual citizens of Enorian were not going to let Duiran be outnumbered, especially with a goddess nipping at their heels telling them to 'fight fight fight'. Duiran never 'expected' Enorian to help. Some characters interpreted Enorian's initial non-intervention as cowardice, because those characters have their own bias on what they understand Enorian to stand for - but at no point did any of us look at Enorian and ask them to bail us out.

I don't expect everything to become tether vs. tether, but I also don't expect people to set their roleplay aside for sake of sportsmanship.

Elene said:

For example: through the war, and especially at the tail end of it, I found myself grasping to understand why Enorian could still consider helping Duiran when it was clear they didn't care how many innocents (Spirean hoplite troops marching home) they killed. If they were suspected to be guilty of potential involvement, then they had to die. Enorian clearly was uncomfortable with their actions, but they just seemed to let it be or decided they wouldn't need to address it.

I just wanted to point out that I agree with this and I was astounded Enorian didn't say something. I still don't know why we did it; it wasn't a decision done with much or any consultation. I suspect it to be something that will come back up later.

Elene said:

As you can tell, the mindset on both sides differ greatly, and I can tell that it will largely continue to affect any wars that might rage across the game again in the future. So, tldr, what I want to ask for is clarification; how are we expecting cities to behave like in conflict?

I expect cities to behave in the interests of their overall mission statement.

I do not expect every citizen of every city to be exactly in line with that mission statement. They will make their own choices. Which is why I disagree with this as well:

Sheryni said:
2. I think we should draw a line on people outside of the warring cities participating and also keep war between two cities only unless all cities consent. So, Duiran and Bloodloch declare on each other? Great. Enorianites should not be able to pk the lochians. I heard in holy wars this is actually enforced, where uninvolved orgs can't participate. I think that should be the case here too. I also don't think a second city should be able to start a war on the city that's already in a war.

You're asking to put artificial lines around organic conflict. I dislike this notion for the sake of 'fairness', because that fairness comes at a price. While you might say that's self-serving, one day the shoe might be on the other foot and I will still defend it. By putting those artificial borders around roleplay-oriented conflict, you're encouraging people to use those limitations in strategic or calculating ways. Smaller cities would seem like more appealing targets to try and attack or engage in open world PK warfare with. I might raise a counterpoint to you that Bloodloch should have been less careless about where it placed troops - if that had been done, Enorian at large would not have gotten involved.

Elene said:

What was your city's objective going into the war to begin with? Because if you're entering a war with no idea of what objective you're trying to reach, then that is the problem.

Their objective was to assist Duiran in subduing a shared enemy after Bloodloch made the war Enorian's problem. A nation attacked by an outside force needs no further reason to engage in war.

Alela said:

the thing i really didn't love was when Ivoln's order started taking shots. this just further blurred the parameters of the conflict, and it was impossible to defend. Ivoln's order isn't particularly large, for one thing, and the people defiling (or defending defilers) seemed to come from all over. it wasn't an order vs order conflict at all. so, as an order, there wasn't any clear target for us to strike back at, even if it had been feasible for us given the huge disparity in numbers between Ivoln's order and the entire Spirit tether.

by the 'end' of the war, we'd lost over 80 shrines. mass shrine defiling is just... it's a pain. when you've got only one or two people with a wild hair defiling shrines, it's manageable. they can only do so many, and a small order can generally muster one or two people to chase them off. it's reasonable. when an entire tether is defiling your divine's shrines en masse, however, it's pretty miserable. maybe not in the moment so much, since sometimes skirmishing can be enjoyable, but for those of us who spent hours and hours over the course of days to replace all the last shrines - not so much fun. considering this, it's incredible to me that in addition to defiling the vast majority of Ivoln's shrines, Spirit was also able to defile the vast majority of both Bamathis and Severn's shrines (including, iirc, Severn shrines INSIDE Spinesreach) after the events in Farsai. Severn's shrines can't even be replaced by players, so it's much more 'final' than defiling shrines to a divine with an order.

Some notes:

I believe it's OK for a city to be angry at an order. Feel free to quote this a year from now when Omei betrays Sapience and everyone's mass defiling her. They're just shrines. You can put them back. People will get bored with directionless defiling.

Defiling shrines became the de facto approach because it's a way to damage a given party or group. The monolith is linked to Earthcallers, Teradrim, and Ivoln. Some Spirit players (largely Duirani and Benedicto) saw defiling his shrines as a way to strong arm a response from the order and Ivoln, because there were no mechanical objectives. We had to make up our own - or, at the very least, invent an enticing reason for you guys to tap out and concede or negotiate a ceasefire. Or invent an enticing reason for that order to begin advocating for ending the conflict. What you guys took out of it was that we were blurring the lines of the conflict.

I posit to you that the only thing more directly tied to the conflict than defiling Ivoln shrines was standing at the monolith getting eaten by coyotes.

For Bamathis and Severn: unfortunately, the storyline fell into such a place that a large portion of Spirit was suddenly galvanized to attack both gods. They were reminded of the duplicity of their opposing tether in Severn's emergence. While it might be your interpretation that it was not an okay move (or maybe Severn showing up was OK), it pissed Duiran off and they wanted to defile very badly. They wanted to get back at the person who ticked off their patron. Valorie went on a Severn shrine dusting rampage. Enorian was more than happy to defend their allies, now that Bloodloch had made a move on their trade routes. During an open war, some players viewed Bamathis and Severn losing shrines as much the same as Ivoln: we were going to force another group inside your tether to suffer losses that would make them tap out.

Nipsy · December 2021

@Elene did scold Nipsy to focus on the objectives. I can attest to that.

However often especially during times when we were outnumbered 2-1 or even 3-1 it did effectively pull 4 or 5 Enorianites to come back to their City to defend which while a low blow is a valid tactic to try and even the spread.

Even if it was to Elene’s chagrin a lot of the time, when you are one city against two cities who for all intents and purposes are stomping you. You have to do whatever it takes. Strength and Arrogance RP and all that.

Also @Iesid you were a great catalyst of the spirit IDGAF approach and I’m thrilled that you were willing to push things wildly as much as I enjoyed being a Gnomish Molotov of hate and irrational rage for the people of Spirit

Czcienn · December 2021

I never once said Enorian joined the war because Nipsy raided Enorian, or even for any other reason other than to defend Duiran and because the enemy was Bloodloch, a city Enorian has had a lot of antagonism towards even before the war.

I said Enorian had a much more personal stake in the war once a slew of other things had happened.

Elene said:
Even after that, we decided against raiding Enorian despite the fact that the bulk of the raiders came from Enorian.

Maybe we just have entirely different definitions of raiding, but we were having people being lured out of Enorian with the gate being blockaded almost daily.

Valorie · December 2021

Alela said:
i heard through the grapevine that Haern ordered this. (Although this was later corrected. Maybe?)

Just chiming in to point out that while Haern came up with the idea of moving troops initially as a way to prevent people from using that monolith in particular (RP-wise, it doesn't do anything mechanically), He clarified that it wasn't an order and ultimately it was up to us as players to make that decision, which I did. I don't want this to seem like it was the player behind Haern trying to single out an order or a guild, because I always thought it was going to be Duiran VS BL from the moment I moved troops there. I don't think anybody expected BL as a whole to go "ah yeah the Teradrim/Ivoln's order/Earthcallers can deal with it".

Almol · December 2021

@Iesid for clarity, is 'strongarm' somehow different to you than 'weaponizing burnout or activity that creates burnout'?

Elene · December 2021

Czcibor said:

I never once said Enorian joined the war because Nipsy raided Enorian, or even for any other reason other than to defend Duiran and because the enemy was Bloodloch, a city Enorian has had a lot of antagonism towards even before the war. I said Enorian had a much more personal stake in the war once a slew of other things had happened.
Even after that, we decided against raiding Enorian despite the fact that the bulk of the raiders came from Enorian.
Maybe we just have entirely different definitions of raiding, but we were having people being lured out of Enorian with the gate being blockaded almost daily.

Yeah, I meant guard raiding!

Elene · December 2021

Iesid said:

Some notes: I believe it's OK for a city to be angry at an order. Feel free to quote this a year from now when Omei betrays Sapience and everyone's mass defiling her. They're just shrines. You can put them back. People will get bored with directionless defiling. Defiling shrines became the de facto approach because it's a way to damage a given party or group. The monolith is linked to Earthcallers, Teradrim, and Ivoln. Some Spirit players (largely Duirani and Benedicto) saw defiling his shrines as a way to strong arm a response from the order and Ivoln, because there were no mechanical objectives. We had to make up our own - or, at the very least, invent an enticing reason for you guys to tap out and concede or negotiate a ceasefire. Or invent an enticing reason for that order to begin advocating for ending the conflict. What you guys took out of it was that we were blurring the lines of the conflict. I posit to you that the only thing more directly tied to the conflict than defiling Ivoln shrines was standing at the monolith getting eaten by coyotes. For Bamathis and Severn: unfortunately, the storyline fell into such a place that a large portion of Spirit was suddenly galvanized to attack both gods. They were reminded of the duplicity of their opposing tether in Severn's emergence. While it might be your interpretation that it was not an okay move (or maybe Severn showing up was OK), it pissed Duiran off and they wanted to defile very badly. They wanted to get back at the person who ticked off their patron. Valorie went on a Severn shrine dusting rampage. Enorian was more than happy to defend their allies, now that Bloodloch had made a move on their trade routes. During an open war, some players viewed Bamathis and Severn losing shrines as much the same as Ivoln: we were going to force another group inside your tether to suffer losses that would make them tap out.

I think you more or less pissed people off, rather than galvanize them to tap out, which isn't a bad thing overall.

Alela · December 2021

Iesid said:

[[nonsense redacted]]

it's okay for a city to be angry at an order, but a common theme throughout this war was that there wasn't really much communication coming from y'all's side. there weren't troops on the monolith in mamashi one moment, then there were. no public post, no messages to ivoln's order that i'm aware of, etc. certainly, the issue with the monolith later became clear, but we were already in pretty deep. i'm not gonna say we always have to spell things out for people on the other side, but if you want something done (e.g. removing or containing the monolith's influence), it helps to tell people what you want when you start swinging at them over it.

this is really why i keep saying the parameters were never clear. first it was troops on a monolith, which was a city versus an undefined opponent for unknown reasons. then it was city versus city. then it eventually became 2 cities versus whatever targets were convenient. we had no avenue for response because, at every stage, you didn't give us a target. you didn't tell us what you wanted in the beginning. then, you kept widening the circle of things you'd hit without communicating (y'know, RPing) anything to the new targets.

can you justify it from a RP standpoint? clearly, yes. does that make it actually fun as a game? lol no. it's all well and good for you to say you'd be fine with it in some hypothetical future, but many of us have watched y'all (including omei's order, if not you specifically) be very much NOT fine with it when it actually happened. it's not unreasonable for us to form expectations based on players' past behaviors and directly stated limits. that you, personally, profess to have a greater tolerance doesn't really mean you've got carte blanche to do whatever without regard for anyone else - but i frankly don't believe you've got that tolerance, considering the way you've come after me OOC in response to a completely IC action you didn't like.

this is the point of mechanics, however. if we had proper mechanics to guide conflicts, all this baloney (on both sides) would be utterly irrelevant. limitations are good, actually, and can enhance creativity. i strongly disagree that we should continue to eschew them because they might foreclose some unknown possibilities when they would definitely help us to avoid unnecessary sources of bad feelings.

Iesid · December 2021

Almol said:
@Iesid for clarity, is 'strongarm' somehow different to you than 'weaponizing burnout or activity that creates burnout'?

No.

Alela · December 2021

also, i still have nfc what the deal with the coyotes even is, so afaik, they're set dressing rather than something meaningful to the conflict - and i've asked about them, ICly, to people who would know! can't seem to get any information about anything! lol

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