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This will still fall in line with BL roleplay AND allow for the living to be in Bloodloch. But again, IC communication is going to have to happen to turn the city to the right to make this happen.
Edit: In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed in those who play in the Carnifex. You guys have a code that says guild first, city second. Great! But when push comes to shove, you're spitting on that roleplay/lore just so you can stay in Spinesreach. Seems a little contradictory to me. I get having personal reasons for not wanting to join Bloodloch. Sure, we're not exactly the most livened city (no pun intended), but at least give it a chance, yes? This is not an attack to players, just something I hope you guys spend a little more time thinking about before you ultimately go, "Fuck this shit I'm out." and drop your ENTIRE roleplay just to stay Spirean. BL has just as much to offer as Spinesreach does and we can work something out.
The game's balance has three guilds per city, and Spinesreach already has its three guilds that fit there better than anywhere else. Putting in a fourth guild would make Spines too crowded, and trading one of our current guilds for the Carnifex would force said guild into a city where it thematically doesn't fit and leave Spinesreach with two "military/combat" guilds. The balance just isn't there.
Personally I am torn between Bloodloch being Undead only or allowing Living citizens, I am unsure what would be best for the city and the game in general. I would like to understand the pros and cons of it all.
- Bloodloch gets more people in the city to interact with.
- We have more creativity flowing into Bloodloch that doesn't make people burn out.
- Eliminates any bias/moronic thought process that people have placed upon Bloodloch
- It stops being as quiet with more citizens
Cons:
- Bloodloch loses its status as City of Undeath
Ok another question, Would Loch accepting living alleviate some of the problems the Carnifex face and allow then to become a Bloodloch guild?
The Carnifex need to realize that they've been roleplaying not as Carnifex, but as some sort of fantasy knight class that they've made up. I remember when Xenia had that roleplay with Slyphe about one of her Warhounds and when I finally made a Carnifex, I was kinda shocked. It seemed like Xenia truly cared for her warhound as though it were a partner, like the old Falcons. But a Carnifex actually treats the dogs like meat. Butchering them, beating them within an inch of their life, and killing them when it's time for a replacement. When you get rid of a dog during breeding, you end up with a meat item. ACTUAL MEAT. It just doesn't seem to connect with what I saw on the outside.
For those who want to quit, you're probably right to do it. The guild has never been the sort of RP you've wanted to be, but were trying to make it work and that is commendable. I think the displaced Carnifex would have a better chance roleplaying within Spinesreach in a more Military-style loyalty-knight rp than what the Carnifex are supposed to be on paper - A brutal, violent, horrible group of people who do horrible bad things in service to their gods/city.
In my opinion, if you're looking for a guild to not be guildless, I think the Syssin are your best bet. The whole 'Secrecy' thing isn't so far off from the 'following orders, keep your mouth shut' aspect of a Knight. Manipulation isn't always just subtlety, it can be intimidation which is a good transition. The Syssin and the displaced also have extreme loyalty to Spinesreach, so there's common ground. Plus, I don't think any of the displaced are vampires either.
Is the thought of going to Bloodloch and being a Bloodlochian really that bad? And if so, what are your issues of doing so?
At @Rhyot, for me personally? I tried playing in BL on an alt. It was miserable, the only 3 people I could ever find that weren't AFK, 2 went to play different characters and 1 retired leaving me to sit afk in the city myself. I tried starting stuff a few times, tried reaching out, and never had any luck. City's too quiet for me, I don't enjoy vampires as a theme at all, and don't care much for undeath either. It's just a city that needs plenty of work (imo) and it isn't an org I find compelling to join and work on, especially so fresh on feeling like I'm losing all my work on the last org I participated in.
I've always been a bit confused with the Carnifex. Especially upon moving to Spinesreach, the Cabal was very clear to me (It is why I moved, after all), the Syssin makes perfect sense, and the Sciomancers to me (And I know this is simplifying) seemed just like darkie Ascendril. Which, in a way, I guess they are, but that still makes them fit well into the particular ancient-yet-metropolitan vibe Spines has going on. It kind of reminds me of, say, London, actually. Modern exterior built atop and alongside older ruins with a seedy underbelly.
Carnifex were a bit of a wrench in the gears of that portrait. Rhoynn met a lot of wonderful individuals who were Carnifex and who were firmly Spirean, as well. He's met some people, also, that seemed to have been Atabahi before their closure too. There's also the errant Teradrim and vampire in the city that gives it that bohemian vibe. But the Carnifex having one place in the city, and a GH outside any city, and, for a while, a prominent Spirean as their leader made them seem Spirean in loyalty, but when you dig into their skills and lore and what they say they do, it always seemed a bit...overt and vicious to be Spirean.
Just like @Toz I've got a vampire alt in BL. It's been an interesting experience. The few, RARE occasions I was able to get some roleplay with people, it's been amazing. There's such a rich backstory to the Vampire bloodlines and the Dominion and Houses. But then, seemingly almost -separate- to that, you have the guilds, and I never learned or heard much about the Indorani or Teradrim on my alt. Most people seemed to second-class as Shapeshifter or Indorani, and Carnifex was simply not mentioned. I don't really know if 'locking' a guild to their city and prohibiting outside members to join entirely is the best solution, but I do believe that firmly rooting Carnifex back to Bloodloch, and, if what is said is true, shifting Bloodloch to a place that would (Perhaps, maybe begrudgingly? Accept the Living) and just doing away with non-vampire undead ENTIRELY would help revitalize the place.
As an MKO transplant, I kind of see Spinesreach and BL as two very different facets of Sar-Sargoth. For those of you unfamiliar, SSG was the only 'baddie' city in the triad of MKO. It was led and almost primarily populated by dark elves, with a minority population of humans, goblins, elves, etc. The dark elves saw every other race as a displeasing, but necessary, addition to their populace who were treated as lower-class citizens and it made for some interesting intra- and inter-city conflict on that front.
I could see the locking of Carnifex and the opening up of Living citizens as a good thing to bolster BL. I could see, perhaps, a slow mechanical shift away from basic Undead status, too, since I was drawn to Aetolia, in part, cuz it was branded as the 'Vampire IRE'. Regular undead people kind of defeat that purpose. All the 'darkness', none of the mechanical ups and downs, I can see its appeal, but it strips Vampires of their place. Instead, I would think a good path to move on is to maybe downplay the Houses, make the Dominion a 'guild-like' entity as a whole, since Praenomen is a class and there is, already, an inherent hierarchy based on who you were Sired by, and leave Carnifex as the brutal, moral-less defenders of the City of Vampires. Living citizens, or unsired vampires (Nightwalkers? Nightstalkers? I can't remember) could be seen and treated like second-class citizens, too. So you could have people totally allowed to live as Living in the city, with a pressure (But not a requirement) to become a vampire to 'truly' serve Bloodloch.
I think that way, you'd make people a lot more comfortable with BL, see an influx of new characters sticking around and alts or old people coming back, in time, and remove that 'stigma' as @Rhyot put it. Again, I can't really speak to the Carnifex, and I am certainly sure they're not the only guild that needs some redirection and some fixing, and I also realize this has gotten a bit rambly so I'll just leave it here.
That is one interpretation of how a Carnifex and hound relationship should go. My own was closer towards - this hound is useful, I care about this hound. This hound is not useful, it's as good as meat and will likely be fed to my more useful hound. What I don't understand is how it would even make sense, in a self-centered mindset, to actively damage something of value. I get that a lot of people would have preferred to see the Carnifex be these stone-gargoyles, flat, stoney and cold. But gosh that's so exhausting and boring to play.
While the removal of mandatory undeath would help relieve tension for some, there still needs to be some kind of incentive for the guild/players to want to go back. Perhaps something involving the Seluno Brothers? Or for something more recent and relevant to the Carnifex guild, something akin to that Dhar event with the souls? It'd make sense both historically and practically then if their "mission" was the cause of their return to Loch to herald change or whatever.
That aside - I'm not convinced these changes will garner the results you desire. I recall a huge discussion taking place on the forums where I was trying to understand OOCly why Enorian wouldn't engage Duiran to shake things up. What eventually came to light if I remember correctly was that the players felt that:
Spinesreach's leader at the time echoed similar sentiments in regards to engaging Bloodloch. While I haven't personally seen much if any evidence of the first and find the second point a touch ridiculous considering there isn't really anything to lose, it did help me to see their motivations. Where I valued story first where ever it might take me, even if it meant losing, the other players had higher priorities. They valued mechanical direction/incentive and security first and story to follow. They feared Admin intervention for "wrong roleplay". They feared they had much to lose for little to no gain.
With that in mind, if the goal is to "Allow guilds and cities to focus more on their fundamental theme and mission in the game world, promoting compelling roleplay between organizations" then I don't believe moving players by force into communities they themselves haven't chosen is the best way to go as it won't necessarily solve the perceived problem.
Instead consider providing more incentives and avenues for organizations to interact with one another. Players across the board have said and shown that they love cosmetics. They also crave weight and consequences to their actions. From Templars being actually able to save villages to Sentinels defending their communes and forests to Cabalists expanding their knowledge of the arcane and chaos realm, etc. I think the game would benefit more by supporting those core desires and you'd find players naturally gravitating and reshifting based on that design as opposed to the artificial move suggested that's so controversial and alienating parts of the player base. My two cents anyway.
What I mean by that is we had one of the most charismatic players to play the game carve a niche for the Carnifex (with a level of dedication, time and effort we should never expect from any one player and considerable help from T biggie) and she made some really cool things happen for both the guild and Spinesreach...
But let's be honest. That person was also very very capable of ignoring realities that occurred outside of her intentions and using blunt force personality to Make It So. And so the whole time we've been ignoring - or at least sort of glossing over - the fact that thematically the Carnifex are really one of the most aggressively vile and 'evil' entities/organizations in the world. Let's ignore the Mike Vick animal abuse, no matter how you want to sugar coat it, and just remember that these people steal souls. They're essentially at war with life and maybe literally (I've been gone a bit) at war with Dhar.
Even most vampires are really only corrupted by their nature. Beyond that - feeding on people? That's survival at this point, realistically. Let's be real. There are a lot of fluffy leeches in Aetolia.
I feel bad for y'all, because you did some really neat things with that guild. But there's just no argument to be made for the Carnifex being Spirean. Or, as was mentioned to me yesterday, to really even be living.
I'll say the same thing I've said to others who threatened or did quit over similar circumstances (Daru disbandment) - in the end, 'my rp just won't let me' is a poor excuse. We make ooc decisions all the time and then formulate them into IC actions. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and make something happen.
It's of interest to me as sort of an outside observer, having only just come back, that this almost falls into the my mechanics > your rp arguments we've all participated in. And I'd remind @toz what side of that you've been on if I recall correctly.
Hate to see anyone go. There really isn't another game like this out there. And please forgive what autocorrect may have done.
Edit: But let's be honest, it's accurate.
What about the very real situations where people end up being run out of a city? It's happened a number of times and not always with just reason. These people would be forced to just remain without a city because there's no other avenue for them unless they want to lose their guilds as well. That's putting a lot of control into the hands of other players, potentially ruining a city and guild connection for an unfortunate caught in the crosshairs of a few loud folk able to push their way.
Additionally, what about people who have player houses in the city they call home? That's often a lot of credits sunk into a place. Are people going to be refunded for the forced decision? Will they get a free transfer of their house if it happens to be in the opposing city?
I'm just really having a hard time seeing anything positive about this sort of dramatic change and I'm sorry if I've come off a little aggressive.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
Though overall, Illuminai will be left un changed.
- Carnifex hounds were brutally beaten until the revamp, when they actually took that away from us. It had the same explanation then as it does now - beat them/turn them into meat if they're worthless. If they work, then why risk damaging the goods?
- Re vs Dhar: that's an awful conflict axis. We tried that, we gave it a few tries in fact, and between another PC getting slapped down by the entire pantheon for trying to hurt a god (forget who, but all the gods apparently take offense to trying to kill a single god), a dropped plotline or six, etc. going after Dhar was stupid and pointless as a guild direction. We tried getting special rezz setups etc. (why does Dhar even allow Spireans to rezz, by your logic?) and were told no, so we just sort of ignored it like the rest of the stuff that wasn't working because trying to kick a square peg into a round hole is a waste of everyone's time.
- The statement we 'sold our rich lore for membership' is pretty laughable, given the only lore that exists for Carnifex was player-written and worked on, not something given to us. What is Deathlore? Nobody knows, we just made it up. All that ritual-y stuff done about Deathlore? Who knows if that's even canon. We used to sit on ICS and bullshit about what it might mean/how it might work, and eventually we figured out what sounded 'close enough' based on what we can do with our skills (can stop weapons with a shield of souls, so they can move physical objects, etc.) We never cared about membership, we cared about being a good guild, and because we were a good guild (and tended to be on the smaller side for the first half of release), we were extremely active.
- 'Ignore being mean to novices' is pretty...I actually am going to just drop the list here.
I have no idea what weird reality you play in as Volka, I have no idea if you ever come out of your haven. I know I'm not the most active lately, but between throttling a protege while dangling them over a balcony, a long and celebrated history of kicking the piss out of people in formation for screwing up, watching @Xenia give people all sorts of shit in various forms of abuse for stepping out of line, and the rest? I call BS on that entire frankly offensive rant. There was, at one point, a push to have a more 'inclusive' Specialist RP that traded certain perks for the ability to join the Keep outside the usual hierarchy, but it was originally supposed to be offered to only people who were especially useful, and as a means to bolster what we lacked in a few areas - with @Xenia taking over, I'm also 99% sure we scrapped the system.
This rant indicates an extreme misunderstanding of the history, the way things went at the start, and what lead us to this path. If, as it seems they do, the admin want their evil knight guild back and in BL? Fine. But to say we 'walked away in favor of membership' when in reality we were left to fend for ourselves and make things up that worked (esp. in regard to the fun others had - our slaughter trips got a lot of forum complaints so we softened the edge) highlights some pretty massive ignorance of the subject at hand.
You aren't a full member, you don't show up to stuff that I have ever seen, and you're here spitting on the last 6 RL years worth of play that went into something while apparently having no idea what you're talking about.
EDIT: In fact, Roan got deleted/killed in retaliation for some event Chakrasul did against Dhar's temple. Just, boop dead/gone forever. Which left us without a tutor for roughly two weeks. And then we tried to do an event to fight back, it got forgotten about, picked up at the last second and resolved with a 'you fucked up fight this super powerful npc goodbye'. Top tier conflict axis imo.
Maybe this is the best solution. Maybe it isn't. I can't determine that because I can't see the big picture clearly. All I see is stuff I've worked on for the past nine months going down the drain.
I guild- and city-hopped enough that getting into Spinesreach took me about a real life month. Getting into the Carnifex took time on top of that. I joined Spinesreach because I hate Bloodloch - it didn't make sense with Arbre's RP anyways, which spared me the issue, but if push had come to shove, I would have come up with some excuse for her to join Spinesreach because I have no interest, as a player, in Bloodloch. I joined the Carnifex more out of player motivations than character. I couldn't really imagine how Arbre was going to manage fitting into a military structure but I was willing to try it just to enjoy the game. With a lot of help from Toz and Xenia, I managed to eck out a place in the guild where she fit in and belonged. I have been minding my p's and q's in Spinesreach and trying to build up a positive reputation there. I've been working HARD in both instances. Does Arbre fit the mold of a stereotypical Carnifex? No. Not even close. She's more than a stereotype; she's a living, breathing person, with strengths and flaws, beliefs and fears. She didn't join the guild and immediately assimilate - following the rules properly took time. But I've reached the point where I consider Arbre a Carnifex. Not just because she's in the guild and therefore one by default, but because she sincerely believes in their ideals.
These ideals, practices, and laws came from a lack of admin interaction. Exactly WHICH admin's fault it is doesn't really matter; somebody - multiple somebodies - dropped the ball and left the guild without guidance. So a group of people in the guild got together and came up with their own practices. Everything the guild is right now has been built up by the players, and that's kind of cool in my mind. Aetolia sells itself on the players being able to change the landscape of the game, and that's what they did here. What they were given was very little and very empty - their whole purpose was just 'unicorns Dhar'. They took that and made a vibrant culture that allows people to progress based on merit.
It's become a beautiful guild and I love it, and everyone who worked hard to make the guild what it is has the right to be angry that you're changing everything up. It isn't just a matter of "suck it up and join Bloodloch or be rogue". There are going to HAVE to be blatant changes in the guild to make this work. Is this a good thing? I don't think so, but like I said, I'm way too close to the issue and I recognize that.
So the end result? I'm being forced to choose between the Carnifex and Spinesreach. I'm way more invested in the Carnifex than Spinesreach, though I know it's not going to be the same guild I joined by the time these changes are done. So what am I doing about it? Trying to come up with a plausible excuse to leave the guild, either now or by the time the changes come in. I made the decision as a player that I would enjoy Spinesreach more than the Carnifex by the time the dust settled. Does that make me a bad roleplayer? Maybe. But I don't care. I'm going to play the game how it's fun.
I do want to comment that I hope that Oleis and crew stick their hands in quite personally and work with the guild during the transition. There are going to be a lot of hurt people, and I don't want Alathesia bearing the brunt of it just because she was unlucky enough to be the one in charge when it happened.
Oleis, I'm stepping back, trying to stop my unicornsing about the situation, and take the hand I've been dealt. I'm trusting you not to unicorns this up.
@Roxi: Because vampirism is separate from the guild structure, it's staying as-is right now in terms of city allegiance. But Dominion changes of their own are coming.
@Arbre: That's the plan.
Edit: To add: "Since people are already quitting and leaving city."
- The living have no place to be undead -
I can't speak on others, but it was absolutely a solo-RP I did with Xenia, trying to figure out if it was something she should even be doing. In the end, the character adopted a devil-may-care sort of stance and embraced the risk that she too may fall to her own practices at the hands of another. I mean, some of you know know and remember the reputation Xenia got for her hunting methods...
-Beat your hounds more-
No, you beat your hound more. OK more serious insight on this. I'm not the most active RPer, especially when it comes to RPing the mundane and beating my hound, training it, blah blah blah. I am not particularly inspired to sit there and write about kicking it. If in an RP my hound was doing something that it shouldn't be it'd get a swift kick to the side, but beyond that nothing more. I went through this phase when I first joined the Carnifex where I emoted a ton of shit to do with my hounds while I learned how to use emotes, but I mean come on. Do you guys really expect me to enjoy exploring the same brutality shown to hounds then over and over and over for the sake of consistency to the world over the next three years? I dunno, it's like everyone complaining on this topic just lacks empathy and is probably being hypocritical. I'm sure there are aspects of your own RP that you should technically be making a bigger show of but you got bored with and let slide. Everyone wants to see brutality with the hounds, but that's not the only form of abuse and perhaps the abuse is subtle. Xenia is reckless with the hounds she likes and negligent of the ones that are a necessity (breeders). All others are meat or simply forgotten. Just look at the breeders, those hounds probably never see anything but the inside the kennels and never get out. Anyway, whatever, I didn't kick my hound more in emotes because over the course of years it becomes a dead horse.
-@Roxi you point out that basically it was too inclusive -
Actually you're probably right, it was too inclusive. The truth: If I thought your character was too much of a pain to deal with/interact with AND actually didn't do anything consequential, well I let the person exist and linger because they would have their use as a number at some point in a fight. You're upset because you were looking for interaction and instead got pointed towards an alternative route, but I wasn't like...begging for you to stay either. Each person that was offered this was offered it out of indifference on my part. You don't want to go through the usual progression and whatever, ok fine, those people weren't going to contribute with PK anyway and why not let them just add to the culture instead? At the end for me it was too big. The individual interaction and shaping was too much to do with the numbers that were around and my decreased playing. More honestly, I was just tired of getting involved in other people's RP and wanted to do my own thing.
-Carnifex should be against Dhar all the time-
The entire time I was in the Carnifex, we would try to do this, it was always player run and resulted in attempting to do whatever was in our control: Kill villages, RP some shit and start a fight. Never once did I see it supported from an admin/event level beyond the update when Dhar showed up and killed everyone's hounds. Instead we were left with, 'hey remember that time we killed all the Jaru villagers, yeah that was cool.' Still we kept at it, trying to grasp and create something from this one bit of conflict but one can run into a wall only so many times before they say fuck this wall, I'm finding another way. Not to mention, and this is directed at those who say we didn't do the Dhar conflict enough or whatever, the pure pain in the ass it was to start a fight with lifers and then get bitched at OOCly and told that this RP conflict line is flat. Eventually they just stopped responding. I took that as the win against Dhar. That guy wasn't saying anything to the Carnifex, they were still able to do their deathlore, and his order was just as complacent. How did the Carnifex not win that conflict?
TLDR:
Yeah, it sounds like the Carnifex needed to be reworked andwere neglected for a long time. I've stopped complaining and already moved on in game. Some people in the Carnifex should absolutely chill the fuck out and embrace the change, but by and large they have, except when they log in here to see some new person voicing their outsider perspective. On that note, everyone who is throwing in their two-cents to just say, 'You guys sucked at what yoi were intended to be, get over it,' can go fuck themselves.