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@Kalak The limiting factor is herbs. The two easiest solutions (not necessarily the right ones) are increasing the pill output without ash, like you said, or increasing the herb limit on how many herbs you can collect per day.

Oh I was just pointing out to the misunderstanding in your math. 1 ash = 40 pills not 200. And I tested again whether I remember it correctly or not.





I wanted to say that instead of doing things in batches of 5, if we could do them in batches of 50-100 perhaps, ashless doing would be more bearable.

@Rhyot If everyone harvests, then it would not make sense if they do not have Herbalism, because you know the laymen cannot understand which proper herbs to pick. And possibly picking flowers and roots should be beneath a Chaos Lord! They'd better stick to more dignified arts But if we set the RP aside, I do understand that at the absence of a particular mercantile community things can be pricey, yet that is the basis of a working market. That should motivate people to encourage their citizens towards differing mercantile business. Another solution would be to find foreign contacts to supply your needs.

@Satomi Currently there is an unused capacity...basically with a 300 cr artifact and Harvest-related racial I can either make 1050 pills a day or 700 anabiotic without ash/ice. Perhaps for critical herbs or orders I could crack my stash and satisfy needs if it comes to that. Certain types of pills will be used with far less frequency like Thanatonin, Panacea, Somnium, Steroids. Defense pills also compared to Curative pills has lesser frequency of usage overally unless you are mainly fighting against a defense stripper. So one can draw a pattern here to establish a very healthy stash for themselves.

Regardless this is a marvellous side effect of everyone having one mercantile skillset which makes people seek each other to deal with their needs. If we make everyone fill their cache easily then we would devalue the skillset itself. Then suddenly you will need less herbalists due to gargantuan stocks everywhere. I would rather prefer to have people actively trying on solutions ICly and cooperating with each other instead of making everything abundant with Admin help. Shortages are good for business and gameplay.

Also Guilds/Cities exist to take care of novices...I am sure they can give wages for them to not feel like they are provided a donation or pocket change. Or they can be paid by guild/city to do a task which will not involve going out to places making them use their meager wealth on pills. So with that earned coin, they can take care of their needs for future.

Actually the pill usage fairly differs among different types so the total cost of having a workable stash is not that high. For example, no one in their right minds would waste ash or ice on making Thanatonin because there are so many skills which will give you Deathsight the pill itself becomes obsolete fast. Doing it with manual labor is more profitable. On the other hand anabiotic will always be in demand, though for PvE usage as it was pointed out, one can reduce the frequency of swallowing them. Of course as a Herbalist my percentage will be far higher then the suggested.

Also making a stash by effort is more then possible at the absence of a large scale conflict. It could be even incentivized with contracts among players. You could keep your ash or ice for the critical pills that you use frequently and for emergencies while acquiring other types by normal means.

Back in cities, I would generally offer them for no cost to novices without even breaking a sweat. While I have not been harvesting for a very long time, I still do not feel the necessity of spending ash and ice, but that is partly due to limiting the unnecessary usage. Mass consumption is another beast of course, but then tradeskills are supposed to be valuable when their practitioners do not supply the demand, yes? Otherwise everything would be back to dirt cheap and there would be no tangible profit from gathering herbs.

Also, I would be possibly dismayed if suddenly my whole reserves becomes worthless due to some global event...kinda like having your stash of gold turning into lead overnight.

I think, on neutrality we should broaden our horizon and could even step away from the matter of neutral orgs.

Neutrality does not necessarily mean staying away from conflict or choosing a particular side always. There are also subject of neutral roles such as the role of a bandit, pirate, mercenary, wandering merchant or a hedge mage etc. They are people seemingly unrelated to any major faction in a lawful manner but within the context of a dark-fantasy setting they can have their part within the struggles of the greater game. But those who play such roles are either seen as harmless (i.e they have no stake in the conflict) or as griefers or unfitting because they are not pushing the "get involved with guilds and cities as members" agenda.

Of course, in the current climate of Aetolia and with Tether system along the lack of need for additional muscle in conflicts...there is really not much incentive in neutral roles. You cannot steal or control a village as a group of bandits(which would give knights a reason to liberate the place or die trying)...cities will not hire a mercenary since there is nothing critical to fight for and everyone knows evil mages kill little kittens and eat babies so they stay away. Merchant is the most viable option for now due to Esterport stuff. But that does not mean, we should shy away from those roles altogether for they can really add a mix of chaos to the pot in my opinion.

The Spirit vs Shadow thing is so predominant in the game, you cannot make your character dump on a chamberpot without thinking whether the product will rip apart the reality or not. People need conflicts divorced from that Grand Play sometimes and even the same tethered sides should have a visible reason to slit each others' throats on large scale.

Also to those who wish to create something politically different then current cities. You can try forming a group and have an impact upon the game in one way or another. The thing is, it is not easy and city people will not acknowledge you most of the time. But it is a fun ride and under certain cases the group itself can become quite influential upon the gameworld. It is not for the faint of the heart. In the end, IRE games are financially about supply and demand. The management will not cater to you if you do not show an interest towards a certain type of role or way of playing.

It's not really alienating a losing side. As far as I'm aware, every city has had a surge of new players. For it to effectively alienate a "losing side", would mean that you never got new players or the majority saying "Don't join them. They're losers." (Kindergarten mentality).

Also, Enorian technically didn't lose. They got their commodities back. So no real loss was had short of a few players getting strung up in their emotions and deciding to jump ship. Like I said before, let emotions calm down and we'll likely see players return. Additionally, sometimes the losing gets a larger surge because some people are like "Hey, they look like they could use some help. I'm gonna grab some other IRE friends and convince them to join the side that just got destroyed."

Lastly, conflict and activity is like Schrodinger's cat. You have no idea what its gonna do until you do it.

The loss here wasn't just a player loss or a material loss. It was a blow to our norms as a community, and it encouraged a less collaborative and open OOC atmosphere. The most significant harm done was in terms of trust and community cohesion, and that damage is going to linger even if/when players come back.

I'm not prepared to downplay the significance of what happened just because technically nobody actually lost. I think the real costs are hidden and unquantifiable, and I also think that we shouldn't be so quick to preclude the possibility of their existence.

Schrodinger's cat doesn't strike me as being an especially useful comparison, either. We're aware that activity tends to flux downward in December, upward in the summer between school semesters, that there are peak hours... there are observable trends in when and how people play the game, and to say that it's all random is inaccurate. It's somewhat random, but average trends do exist.

snip

Yes. Good post, good thoughts. I like the idea of shifting conflict away from cities. I do want to keep raiding, but it should be much rarer, much more of a Big Deal, and much more expensive to do. Some sort of formalized system for it - I'm aware Achaea has one - would be kind of neat.

snip snip snip

to be clear, i was not endorsing neutrality, arguing that Shadow doesn't consume, etc etc.

i also wasn't claiming that there aren't or shouldn't be "us vs. them" IC attitudes.

i was quite explicitly discussing your framing of the polarization, with a throwaway observation that your framing is, in part, some of what underlies OOC hostility. you know, the "Shadow players are all mean and toxic" or "Spirit players are all do-gooder crybabies" - things that are obviously untrue, yet somehow are incredibly entrenched among players.

as a personal aside, i'm like most people in that i like to feel like people are actually considering and engaging with what i say - even if they disagree - because it conveys respect. you, Antehe, basically never give me this impression, as it seems you're too busy responding to an imagined interlocutor and/or condescendingly/hostilely giving lessons that don't need giving. i realize i'm a lowly mortal and all, but since we've discussed 'community standards' #ITT, i'd like to say that i believe these should be modeled from the top. if that's not something you can do, it's unlikely the player base will do it, either.

Imperian's experiences with it teach that it's not a good conflict generator.

idk, my sense is that Imperian's problems are rather larger than one particular city - iirc @Rhyot harps on about how they killed off all the gods or something, which seems like a more discouraging direction on its face. plus, it's worth pointing out that Achaea, which is (if i'm not mistaken) the largest IRE MUD, has a neutral/merchant city, and while i don't necessarily want to mimic all the kinds of conflict they've got, it seems like a better litmus test than a less popular game that's beleaguered with other issues. if Achaea is succeeding in spite of allowing some form of neutrality, that's a case that can be made, but i don't think Imperian having issues that may or may not be related is that case.

I just want to point out that it is interesting how Spinesreach is not mentioned in the first section, about bringing in a neutral city. I believe that is because that essentially already is the most neutral option. The only things keeping it Shadow-aligned are the tethering system and the guilds connected to it fiddling around with darker research and dangerous stuff.

i don't see spinesreach as neutral in the least, honestly, and i don't think what the guilds do is really accidental to, but rather constitutive of, the city's 'nature' (for lack of a better word bc tiredbrain). sure, they exist a little more toward the grey middle of the spectrum than bloodloch, but so does duiran relative to enorian. neither is really neutral, though, because they do ultimately stand with either Spirit or Shadow - duiran the former because it's life-promoting, spines the latter because it's expedient.

which leads me to...

The polarity in organizations is not just political, but elemental (as in there are physical conflicts, not just ideological). This has been laid out multiple times, resulting in many pockets of "neutrality" being willful ignorance of the larger conflicts of the game for the sake of promoting personal brand.

while i understand it's the 'admin stance', and while i don't see myself really winning anyone over to my viewpoint because that just doesn't happen on internet forums/blogs/facebook/twitter/snail mail chain letters/tumblr, i don't really love the framing of the conflict in terms of 'physical differences' because... a lot of reasons. what seems relevant to me here, right now, is that the opposition posed between political/ideological and physical/material is false both in Aetolia and the meatworld. to the extent that they're distinguishable, they are mutually constitutive. "there is no pre-discursive body," as some dead bald french guy wrote (rip discoballhead). we see this in Aetolia all the time, particularly in the construction of binaries.

Spirit vs Shadow.
Life vs Undeath.
Good vs Evil.
Existence vs Non- (or different?) Existence.
etc.

within the fiction of the game, Spirit may well be a 'physical' substance, but it is also Good (an axiological quality). look at it in the opposite direction, though: what in Aetolia is 'good'? it's definitely not something about Spirit-tethered characters' moral qualities, or else a number of those characters are Doing RP Wrong (which would be a silly claim). no, it's their relationship to Spirit.

but why is that the case? why is Spirit-Good and Shadow-Evil?

if your answer is a variation on "because [someone] said so" - regardless of whether [someone] is a God from the fiction or an admin speaking OOCly - that's ideological. for the God, it serves Their interests for the world to 'naturally' reflect Their views. for the admin, it's something else - control, the illusion of authorship, facilitating gameplay through a simplistic enforced worldview, idk, this is a bit off-the-cuff.

if your answer is a variation on "well, Spirit is Good because it doesn't destroy things, whereas Shadow does" - that's ideological. is existence good? which existence? why or why not?

ideology isn't bad per se, but it should be recognized (and recognizable). attempting to naturalize conflict that is always already political conflict only obfuscates things - and, *alanis morissette voice* ironically, it encourages the spread of "us vs them" attitudes to OOC relationships.

The difference in IRE is that political positions are vied for, wars are player driven, the world is organic.

i wrote like 8 paragraphs in response to this one sentence, but i've deleted them in favor of asking a single simple question:

how is the world "organic"?

tl;dr bug is long-winded, proceed directly to fart joke

I mean.. for an 'event' that was this big.. we could all just do what I did and scream at admins and ask for an opinion/clarification. Heck, they might even have ideas to make it a real event if it is good enough.

(dunno if the leadership wants to deal with a sudden influx of requests and ideas along this vein, though)

It would be fairly more time-conserving to learn self-determination at the face of such events instead of going to the Admin. Otherwise, might as well let the organizations to be led by Admin as well.

By the way, this was a real event with real outcomes, hence the outrage. Real events are not popular apparently. Some Aetolian players are quite accustomed to have soft cushions and safety tapes covering their events as far as I see.