10-26-2021, 11:41 PM
Let me just state, first and foremost, that I don't speak for everyone with what I'm about to say. Hell, I probably don't speak for /a lot/ of people when I type this, but it's something thats been bothering me, that I've seen within my group (the ebonblooded, specifically), and that other people's experiences may differ a lot from us. With that said, I think the 'momentum', as you describe it (and its pretty apt) is sapped, hard fucking core, from our main group. You can see it on the player count, and you can really see it in game. The Ebonblooded tower used to be active constantly, with 10-15 people online or around the area at any time. Even after the Ebonblooded took over and the Fireblooded got pushed out, the entirety of the Coat was still relatively active, and you'd see people running around and at least interacting and doing stuff frequently.
But now? The last three times I've logged in at peak hours, I've seen nobody except one or two individuals who were moving to their rooms or going to do quests or any of the above. Very rarely do I see RP, very rarely do I see people in the world or wilderness interacting, and even more sad, the last big public event we had felt.. Pale, in comparison to prior events. Maybe it's just me, and maybe the eruption of the other six factions that were made appable caused this and they're booming, but I think as one of the game's primary antagonistic forces, it feels.. Hard to feel engaged. It feels impossible for us to do very much.
I've had this conversation with Simple in the past, but I just want to air my thoughts out here, because I think a lot of us are feeling the same thing.
When it really, honestly, truly comes down to it, if Osrona wanted to do something about us, short answer, we'd be fucked. We've got two, maybe three powerhouse characters (rip tunder u were a real one) who could actively stand against the biggest of Osrona's characters, and even then, there's more behind them to back them up. Osrona has had years and years to build up, they've had uniques passed down from generation to generation, they've had teachers to offer them easy dev opportunities for hiddens, and most importantly, at some point, had to be enabled in order to fight off the vampire menace. This isn't me thinking this is a bad thing, but I do want to note this is probably where a lot of motivation has been thoroughly sapped dry. I want to further say that I don't think there's any real administration bias towards the Ebonblooded. I don't think you guys actively dislike us or try to keep us weak and frail - In fact, I'd say we've ran about average in terms of getting stuff approved.
But maybe, therein, lies the issue?
The game has been in a constant flux of warfare since Spires. Maybe since E1, I wouldn't know, but I've heard tales. While this is fine for a narrative, as it encourages conflict in the grand scheme of things, there's just nothing else outside of it that offers any sort of enabling device. If you only go on events to shape the world, most of it gets lost to space and time because nobody else sees it. If you don't engage with the current """world"""(read: what we are rping), then you won't be rewarded for it. This is also relatively fine; Shape the environment for others, and it rewards you. All of that said, it forces you into this aspect of either you fight your enemy to get more powerful, or you stay in mediocrity forever. And lets be honest, truly honest: No matter what anyone wants to say, hidden spells are an upgrade. They are a massive powerspike to most characters, even if they're merely offering a niche benefit that fits ones build.
People are not only tired of war, they're tired of what feels like *meaningless* war. You can see it now if you look at the world; The Vampires quit out, and then.. Nothing. There was a big era of peace before the Ebonblooded kicked the Fireblooded out, and now? Now, the ENTIRE SERVER (barring maybe daggermark but they're new) instantly went against them because they were either scared of Osrona or 'allied' to them, no matter their own principles. Ninety percent of the game instantly went and decided 'hey, those guys who are doing what most of us should be fine with? fuck them, its war'. And what's worse, maybe only two or three of our top contenders have been offered benefits and boons to counteract this. Again, I don't think we've been biased against- Far from it, honestly.. But I think what we're up against, whats stacked against us, should be a clear indicator of the game state as a whole.
The Ebonblooded hasn't done anything globally because we'll get stomped out. The entire game wants them dead. Osrona could declare a war and delete them if Simple wasn't an IRL mercy virtue. They've got the vast majority of the server on their side, and without a little bit of enabling, most of us would die instantly to a real full-scale war against the server. Take the entire map, put them on our doorstep (which was happening, by the way...!), and say 'good luck, by the way, you're denied mana absorb, but have a slightly buffed stance'. 'We know you've taken more Ls and are more proactive than anyone else in the game, but we hate your OOC attitude, so we're denying this'. This is conjecture, of course; I don't know what goes in inside the journalmin team's pages anymore, and I'm not privvy to that sort of information, so it's just a guess..
..But it sure does feel bad when the only way to get ahead in this game is to fight the enemy, and we can't fight the enemy because we're not strong enough, and we're not strong enough because we can't fight the enemy, and we can't fight the enemy because-
Well, you get what I mean.
Your ideas are a good start - Global arcs to encourage people to do ANYTHING else. The game that shan't be named, right now, is popping off because they have several DMs constantly running stuff in the world. They're pushing plotlines and even little 'wow elementals are here we need to stop them!' that make the game world seem.. Actually alive. Because it isn't right now. It's different flavors of "good" all meandering together while team evil sits on their mountain and broods and desperately tries to churn out a cool project that will just make team good want to kill them even more.
Increase the reward DMs get substantially if they're running global or on-map events. Have a dedicated team of players and DMs constantly run stuff around that anyone can sign up or just show up for, maybe not with any tangible benefit but just to start chains of events(see: rob). Have a sect of players who are gateways to the playerbase, maybe 'player representatives', who can bring up issues they have in a controlled environment to actually have a 1:1 way of getting real staff intermediary talks instead of this vague 'he said she said' that the playerbase hates so much.
The game is stale right now because there's no way to get stronger. The villains are fucked, the heroes are sitting on their thumbs because they don't want to destroy them, and it's hard for the game to progress or do anything because nobody wants to be THAT GUY who gets the flak and blame for being the reason the game died.
We need outside sources for power, and not just "sometimes you get a cool dev mat but the journal team only gives you +2 pow to your sword". We need outside sources for power, and not just "we know the world is stacked against you and you've done three deadlies against people twice your size, so heres a stance upgrade". We need outside sources for power, and not just "we know you're the most proactive member of your faction, but you're too flip-floppy in our opinion, so you're flat out denied".
The world needs adjusted, the risk-reward systems need CHANGED, ENTIRELY, and the gamestate needs revamped.
I'm not one to suggest a timeskip because I think it's a horrible idea; But with the way things are right now, maybe moving the region, changing the big players, or just.. Doing what Tattles and I did with the Barsburg arc by massively changing things up could be a good thing for the game?
just my two cents
But now? The last three times I've logged in at peak hours, I've seen nobody except one or two individuals who were moving to their rooms or going to do quests or any of the above. Very rarely do I see RP, very rarely do I see people in the world or wilderness interacting, and even more sad, the last big public event we had felt.. Pale, in comparison to prior events. Maybe it's just me, and maybe the eruption of the other six factions that were made appable caused this and they're booming, but I think as one of the game's primary antagonistic forces, it feels.. Hard to feel engaged. It feels impossible for us to do very much.
I've had this conversation with Simple in the past, but I just want to air my thoughts out here, because I think a lot of us are feeling the same thing.
When it really, honestly, truly comes down to it, if Osrona wanted to do something about us, short answer, we'd be fucked. We've got two, maybe three powerhouse characters (rip tunder u were a real one) who could actively stand against the biggest of Osrona's characters, and even then, there's more behind them to back them up. Osrona has had years and years to build up, they've had uniques passed down from generation to generation, they've had teachers to offer them easy dev opportunities for hiddens, and most importantly, at some point, had to be enabled in order to fight off the vampire menace. This isn't me thinking this is a bad thing, but I do want to note this is probably where a lot of motivation has been thoroughly sapped dry. I want to further say that I don't think there's any real administration bias towards the Ebonblooded. I don't think you guys actively dislike us or try to keep us weak and frail - In fact, I'd say we've ran about average in terms of getting stuff approved.
But maybe, therein, lies the issue?
The game has been in a constant flux of warfare since Spires. Maybe since E1, I wouldn't know, but I've heard tales. While this is fine for a narrative, as it encourages conflict in the grand scheme of things, there's just nothing else outside of it that offers any sort of enabling device. If you only go on events to shape the world, most of it gets lost to space and time because nobody else sees it. If you don't engage with the current """world"""(read: what we are rping), then you won't be rewarded for it. This is also relatively fine; Shape the environment for others, and it rewards you. All of that said, it forces you into this aspect of either you fight your enemy to get more powerful, or you stay in mediocrity forever. And lets be honest, truly honest: No matter what anyone wants to say, hidden spells are an upgrade. They are a massive powerspike to most characters, even if they're merely offering a niche benefit that fits ones build.
People are not only tired of war, they're tired of what feels like *meaningless* war. You can see it now if you look at the world; The Vampires quit out, and then.. Nothing. There was a big era of peace before the Ebonblooded kicked the Fireblooded out, and now? Now, the ENTIRE SERVER (barring maybe daggermark but they're new) instantly went against them because they were either scared of Osrona or 'allied' to them, no matter their own principles. Ninety percent of the game instantly went and decided 'hey, those guys who are doing what most of us should be fine with? fuck them, its war'. And what's worse, maybe only two or three of our top contenders have been offered benefits and boons to counteract this. Again, I don't think we've been biased against- Far from it, honestly.. But I think what we're up against, whats stacked against us, should be a clear indicator of the game state as a whole.
The Ebonblooded hasn't done anything globally because we'll get stomped out. The entire game wants them dead. Osrona could declare a war and delete them if Simple wasn't an IRL mercy virtue. They've got the vast majority of the server on their side, and without a little bit of enabling, most of us would die instantly to a real full-scale war against the server. Take the entire map, put them on our doorstep (which was happening, by the way...!), and say 'good luck, by the way, you're denied mana absorb, but have a slightly buffed stance'. 'We know you've taken more Ls and are more proactive than anyone else in the game, but we hate your OOC attitude, so we're denying this'. This is conjecture, of course; I don't know what goes in inside the journalmin team's pages anymore, and I'm not privvy to that sort of information, so it's just a guess..
..But it sure does feel bad when the only way to get ahead in this game is to fight the enemy, and we can't fight the enemy because we're not strong enough, and we're not strong enough because we can't fight the enemy, and we can't fight the enemy because-
Well, you get what I mean.
Your ideas are a good start - Global arcs to encourage people to do ANYTHING else. The game that shan't be named, right now, is popping off because they have several DMs constantly running stuff in the world. They're pushing plotlines and even little 'wow elementals are here we need to stop them!' that make the game world seem.. Actually alive. Because it isn't right now. It's different flavors of "good" all meandering together while team evil sits on their mountain and broods and desperately tries to churn out a cool project that will just make team good want to kill them even more.
Increase the reward DMs get substantially if they're running global or on-map events. Have a dedicated team of players and DMs constantly run stuff around that anyone can sign up or just show up for, maybe not with any tangible benefit but just to start chains of events(see: rob). Have a sect of players who are gateways to the playerbase, maybe 'player representatives', who can bring up issues they have in a controlled environment to actually have a 1:1 way of getting real staff intermediary talks instead of this vague 'he said she said' that the playerbase hates so much.
The game is stale right now because there's no way to get stronger. The villains are fucked, the heroes are sitting on their thumbs because they don't want to destroy them, and it's hard for the game to progress or do anything because nobody wants to be THAT GUY who gets the flak and blame for being the reason the game died.
We need outside sources for power, and not just "sometimes you get a cool dev mat but the journal team only gives you +2 pow to your sword". We need outside sources for power, and not just "we know the world is stacked against you and you've done three deadlies against people twice your size, so heres a stance upgrade". We need outside sources for power, and not just "we know you're the most proactive member of your faction, but you're too flip-floppy in our opinion, so you're flat out denied".
The world needs adjusted, the risk-reward systems need CHANGED, ENTIRELY, and the gamestate needs revamped.
I'm not one to suggest a timeskip because I think it's a horrible idea; But with the way things are right now, maybe moving the region, changing the big players, or just.. Doing what Tattles and I did with the Barsburg arc by massively changing things up could be a good thing for the game?
just my two cents
![[Image: edbae8adc4cdc657c7307971b838ad95.png]](https://i.gyazo.com/edbae8adc4cdc657c7307971b838ad95.png)
if anyone asks i got banned for sending /messages to people