Absolute State of Antagonists

[Milly]

 going as far as to DM Tattles all sorts of rude things after the fact?

If you actually do this (i.e: DMing people rude things because of their IC) - this is fucked up. I don't care who you are.

Tattles and I have actively DM'd each other laughing and hyping each other up, even when we were enemies. There's no.... REASON to do this. Not just to Tattles - but to anyone. Stop that.

[I-0]

i only dm rude things to mouse

[Chance]

...

I think a lot of what you're saying here is valid and while the perspective is insightful, it feels somewhat overblown to me. We're always going to have meta/OOC as a problem and need to do everything we can to snip it in the bud when we see it, but even with that being an issue it's just something that's easy to point a finger at when the atmosphere isn't overly exciting. It's very easy to say 'large groups of people are bad' and blame the community, yet this is also the same community that produced some of my favorite moments during the Osrona-Myll feud. Great scenes can come about even while dealing with those problems, if the energy is there.

Not to dismiss your points, though. We all need to do better when dealing with sensitive IC info, and decide how to handle some people (Jumpy!, Kahsmos, etc) so issues we've seen in the past don't repeat. 

My main issue is always going to be mediocrity. I want the community to produce a Malentine, an Asta, a Satsuki, or the dozen+ leaders we had at the start that kept things interesting. I want arcs that were as fun as the Huangzhou-Vampire-Dawn war, the end of Spires with the expeditions and the competing city-states, the 2014-2016 era of Eternia when a lot of great players (who are mostly disinterested now...) were enthusiastic and always put on a show for everyone. The current environment doesn't feel likely to produce that at the moment that and I'm not really sure to do other than to let time run its course and hope for the best. But perhaps for most people the current day to day roleplay is entertaining, so it's difficult to tell.

[Boneless Pizza]

It's fine if people suspected I was a witch OOCly after some of the things on the forums, but I never straight up told all my friends "hey guys I'm a witch!!" because I felt it'd be lame. ICly, however, there was... hardly any reason at all to suspect she was a witch in all honesty. It wasn't until Hades spoke up that it really became a valid possibility. My hexes weren't perfect, but I tried regardless because I wanted to make stuff happen. It came with risks along the way though generally I was careful because I wanted to see how much I could accomplish.

I don't think it's weird for people from Nysea to defend someone who was loyal and faithfully fighting demons to try and fit in with the village and help it prosper. It's not really fair to say that all of that happened because I'm liked OOCly and that the entire argument against Nephele was completely valid. In the end, the result was the same. I guess it doesn't matter as much in hindsight.

Please don't be too hard on them though. I'm going to move past this stuff now and I suppose the people who might've known and tried to help me probably just didn't want me to have an abrupt, sad end after a lot of buildup. I don't hate Tattles by any stretch. I'm not even that mad at anyone after sleeping on it honestly. My only regret is that it didn't happen at a better time of day where things weren't so rushed and everyone just wanted to get it over with.

I tried, I failed. That's that. It's also why I want to wish the other antagonists the best of luck and why I'll try to treat them the same way I'd want to be treated if I were in their shoes again.

[Divine Soldier]

It makes doing anything, especially if you're trying to be secret in any manner like witches are, impossible. Look at Nebula, for example; You can all sit there on your hands and pretend all you want that it wasn't metagaming when, out of the ENTIRE CITY OF OSRONA, a finger was pointed at her and Nox. Out of 60+ PCs, when they were not and had not done anything at all witch-related, they are the ones who got the finger pointed at them.

I mean, actually, from very early on, suspicion had been cast on many people, including my character, Esbern, and even Osiris. It was just that the leads didn't go anywhere (because they weren't actually occultists or witches, and thus there was no real lead to follow).

Part of the issue with only some things being heavily meta-gamed is that people assume that so long as they're not aware of it, it doesn't happen. Early-mid game (basically up until the end of the wars), there was a lot of discrete intrigue RP - which was fun for the people RPing it, and had serious effects on the many characters, and the entire state of the wars aswell.

[Tattles]

I knew a thread like this was going to appear at some point in the day and I was thinking on how I'd respond to it, only to realize what I had thought of was going to end up being an incredibly long winded effort post that would read more like me desperately defending myself while pointing fingers and trying to say what could have gone better while holding tight to my hindsight. Instead I'll go forward without mentioning last night as a whole.

What Mouse and Chance have said is all this conversation really needs to boil down to. Discord ruins this game, not only in the ways that they've pointed out, but in the mere concept of destroying the fantasy and mystery. I've mentioned this to some in the past in smaller conversations where I share the anecdote of my first week on Spires consisting of me running around and meeting big name characters that amazed me. In the era where I didn't know a single person OOCly, these characters struck me with true fear, admiration, interest, and curiosity. This game felt so much larger without the knowledge Discord brought to it. This is why I've taken my own habit of starting incognito or quietly where I go in 'dark' so to speak. Unfortunately that hasn't proven to be a great solution. 

But of course, that is only half of the problem.

The mods and admins have a difficult time punishing metagame because it is hard to prove without hard evidence, but we all know it when we see it. When someone's IC bends like taffy to fit their OOC interests, it is something the administration can't punish, despite everyone knowing and recognizing how ugly it is, along with the fact that we all know it when we see it as well.

These two issues are things that really you, the players, have to start policing for yourselves. You have to hold your friends accountable, or else our RP environment will continue to suffer and bleed and this will not be the last time we have this conversation.

- Call out your friends when their IC flips on a dime
- Call out your friends when you know they're metagaming information
- Call out your friends when they show up in a big important scene that was mentioned somewhere on Discord and start trying to influence it
- Call out your friends when they gank low RPL characters and push for higher than justified cap rolls
- Call out your same friends when they kill these characters or when they drag them off to their inevitable deaths/indefinite imprisonment elsewhere instead of RPing an escape like so many have advised time and time again
- Call out your friends when they grime/scum/act in a way that hurts the game as a whole

At some point, we have to be accountable for our own actions. We're all adults, and while the admin team operates as some measure of security and rule keeping, they can't do it all. Strengthen your OOC and IC barrier, question why you're RPing a certain direction. If you want this game to be better, begin with yourself. Move on to your friends and help them be better. Continue on in this pattern and who knows, maybe something might change.

[Method T]

At this point in time, I believe everything that needs to be said has been said for this thread. The flaws of the community and its approach to RP, the over reliance on Discord and the numerous meta-chats the various cliques and factions have built up over time, and even the constant voice-chat/stream groups that take place when a major conflict or event happens. So, I'll just lay out the things I personally feel hurt the game, without hopefully retreading the same statements I've seen throughout this thread.

Honestly, I feel like the playerbase has an over-reliance on the roll system in this game, in an era where every win or loss is hindered by that small scruple of RNG that ultimately determines 90% of the playerbase's following actions. This isn't to say that the roll system is a bad thing, it definitely has its place in the RP ecosystem of Eternia, but I feel like people should focus less on the outcome of the roll, and more of the outcome of the Roleplay.

For a vast majority of E1's lifespan, capture rolls did not exist, neither did a proper Injury system, and the end outcome of a fight was determined by the good will and common decency of your fellow RPer, and injuries when added were determined in a very similar fashion. Come E2, this freedom and system of trust was replaced by the Capture System and the injury system was fully implemented, giving less freedom on wound severity but more concrete consequences for the act of conflict. In some ways this was a necessary change, to mechanically restrict players from acting on casualty-heavy PvP-based characters, while still including the presence of danger in active conflict.

Since then, people have taken the outcome of the roll system as the gospel, oft determining their character's actions and the end result of both toons on the outcome of said roll, death to those who roll low, mercy to those whom roll high, and often quite literally in an IC sense, with characters showing unusual acts of charity when their opponents rolled well, and being completely merciless when the rolls were in their favor.

Now, this isn't to say that the system itself is the reason for these issues, it's more of an issue with the community, with us players as a whole, that causes this to be a problem. At the end of the day, whether it's because 'The IC fits', someone has an unlucky roll, or stupidity is rewarded with the more of the same, we as players should have more of a focus on what truly matters in the situation. Did you come to spend hours upon hours of your time, writing up text, creating stories, building connections and interacting players to 'Win' a game, a game with no end goal, where the future is determined by the players themselves; or did you come to Eternia to roleplay, to build those stories, to form those memories, those sparkling gems that you remember weeks, months, or even years down the line, even after you've gone and left this game.

-------
It's more fun if you take a step back and turn off the television, lift your blinds and just enjoy the scenery, be ignorant of the world at large, but fully invested in that small fraction of the whole that you live in. It is said that Ignorance is bliss, and I believe that it is absolutely vital for a healthy Roleplay environment, where the air of mystery and the unknown fuels the curiosity of the players, where the twists and turns are now surprises and not telegraphed weeks in advance.

Be kind to your fellow RPer, be ignorant, just have fun, and stop focusing on winning. It's a story, not a competition.

[Oyster.]

As somebody who has played two witches, one of which was overtly a witch and the other that was such an asshole and (coincidentally) joined the twilight troupe so ended up gaining suspicion anyway...

I can't say that the hexes feel weak or whatever. If someone fails to respond to a hex appropriately, you can adminhelp. when i used hexes on Caritas, it was to resounding effect-- to orchestrate a jailbreak with half a dozen of them, to turn people to the side, to stir up a scene. On Mariaan I used far less yet when they landed they were impactful items.

Putting any sort of stricter definition to what hexes do will only lead to deeper metagame. In the end hexes are a tool to instigate roleplay-- the more overtly you use them, the more justification one might have for recognizing them in play.

There's also an elephant in the room to address... antagonists aren't supposed to win. Not in E3, from what I've told. Antagonists may achieve their goals, they may kill half a dozen players, they may summon forth mimic meteors (which is a win in my eyes) but they aren't going to 'win' by conquering and ruling in safety. At least that's the vibe I gathered.

Threads like these are not uncommon, always popping up from the early days of E1 forum activity but for different reasons. Sometimes it was oscuri oppression, sometimes about the Republic being too strong, sometimes about.. well not that much in spires tbh. I'm afraid it always comes down to the same thing-- unless certain key players are a) antagonistic and b) motivated with a LOT of free time, peace will reign.

Then it will snowball and 'absolute state of good guys' or something similar will crop up after a few months.

This post is a little rambly so I'll consolidate my thoughts in a single line: Witch hexes are fine, demons seem a bit restricted but they're literally just a superior race so I don't see a problem, the power of antagonism comes from the people that lead it.





You know what hexes do need, though? Something suggested by many of us for a long time and I don't know if it's in yet. MAKE THE HEX FONT BIG AND BOLD SO IT ISN'T MISSED IN THE WAVE OF WHITE TEXT THANKS.

EDIT:

I'm unsure what to do about people allegedly roaming Dreadwoods with invisibility potions, however, or people generally looking to grime low RPL demons. I personally witnessed it - and it's honestly horrible.

Publicly shame & bring back OK modifier. Also demons need Hunters Eye!

[Chance]

You know what hexes do need, though? Something suggested by many of us for a long time and I don't know if it's in yet. MAKE THE HEX FONT BIG AND BOLD SO IT ISN'T MISSED IN THE WAVE OF WHITE TEXT THANKS.

that was added recently, it also pings you. there was an issue with the recipient of the hex not logging which is good in today's reboot too

[Oyster.]

excellent work