@Wyll When did I say anything about Celidon appeasing Kinsarmar? It's not about playstyle. I'm all for roleplay. I'm not anti-roleplay; you're conflating the two for no reason. You seem to be getting very personally invested in this; you sound kind of insulted really. My "reach of influence" probably goes a good deal farther than a "handful of people in my organization", specifically because I'm good at pk. As you pointed out earlier in an attempt to prove the 'stark difference' in one player's ability to affect another. It is very much a conflict driven game; @Jeremy has said as much himself. The history of the game is conflict. Period. Without conflict, there would be no game. I didn't say "conflict is pk." Conflict is any number of things that "disturbs a temporary peace." If someone were to challenge my Erege spot, that would be an example of a conflict.
Yes, I know it is a conflict driven game. It has been said enough. It's like you can't talk about this game without people bringing up conflict, whether it be the wrong kind of the lack of conflict. Blah blah, conflict. Entities can bring conflict too, but then they'd be meddling and you don't want that but you are pro conflict?
But the truth is, this game doesn't run entirely on conflict and a good portion of the playerbase don't log on solely for conflict. You can say that is what this game is about and the admin can say that, but it's a game that offers a variety of things for players to do that have nothing to do with conflict or generating conflict. If it was an entire game of only conflict, we wouldn't have fishing, owning homes and decorating them, various trade skills, gambling, etc, etc, etc. This game doesn't begin with 'conflict' and it doesn't end with 'conflict'.
I'm not personally insulted at all, just stop pretending that someone is personally offended/insulted when they don't agree with you.
Again, your influence is within your organization and it doesn't reach as far as the handful of players you decided to tag in an attempt to rid Kinsarmar of entities. You can waddle out and pick on that group I mentioned in my 'stark difference' statement, but Pk rules exist. If they aren't messing with you, then you have no reason to impact their game play at all. Yet some of you still find a way because you'r starved for it.
That's really all I am getting at. Don't force your play style on someone else. Is it really that hard to understand?
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
@Wyll bruh, almost none of the people I tagged are on the forums. I just did it to do it. I don't need anyone to come thumbsup anything I post; it's up here for people to see, admin included. And if they think they're valid concerns that's really all I care about. I just like highlighted names; call me a weirdo. Of course there is more to the game than conflict in general; but the game kind of did begin with conflict, and if it does end (unlikely,) I'm sure it will end with conflict.
Say what you want about "my influence"; if you think it's only in Kins, by all means that's fine with me. I would disagree, since clearly this group of people has already complained to you about it. If they're complaining, they probably fear it. If they fear it, that's called an influence. TL;DR: this is going off on tangents. I wanted to keep it entity-specific.
@Owyn, this will be my last comment since yeah, we went off after talking about entities, but no one fears you. People call you annoying because it is a casual comment, just like you'd casually say 'It's nippy out here!' when the weather suddenly turns. Both are facts and low effort/casual comments. Nothing more. Complaining is not fear, complaining is human nature. You're on a forum where 51% of posts are complaining.
You can't actually do anything to Celidon/Ithaqua/Khandava that is of consequence, so largely no one cares. You also can't do anything of consequence to any player in the game because PK rules exist and there are no real losses with death. But that isn't a personal attack towards you, no one can do anything to this game that has any real lasting consequences. All of those decisions are ultimately left to the admin, as it should be because there should be no bias when those decisions are made.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
You can't actually do anything to Celidon/Ithaqua/Khandava that is of consequence, so largely no one cares. You also can't do anything of consequence to any player in the game because PK rules exist and there are no real losses with death. But that isn't a personal attack towards you, no one can do anything to this game that has any real lasting consequences.
@Wyll Some of the things you're saying right now are the sort of statements true PK griefers drool over. Because they're the kind of thing that can be held up as "see? We need harsher mechanical penalties like xp loss or guards that cost gold to replace and/or more play in the rules" (in our case it would definitely be harsher mechanics). Luckily, no one still playing seems to want that kind of extreme. I don't want it because I am not a top-tier PK-er and very likely never will be, which means there will always be a number of people who could grief the hell out of me in a true hard core environment. Well, that, and I think it's almost always just... actually griefy to do real, mechanical damage to an org or player that requires "grinding" to fix.
That said. How about that tutor? Any possibility of making it relevant again by making it completely negate guards with respect to defending citizen players, possibly to include even healers (with the stipulations and oversight I mentioned)? I think it is worth trying and tweaking if needed (in particular, people do need to have a shot at getting it back from a stronger org).
Also, IRE presents itself as a suite of games for all kinds of players. That's only soooort of true. If you can truly keep your mouth shut and truly avoid conflict, you might be mostly left alone. That said, it didn't work for Shou, and he's as quiet and nice as they come. I wish I'd seen the games for what they are earlier in my playing career. For the most part, IRE games cater to top-tier PK-ers and political power players, at least historically. And really... they cater to top-tier PK-ers. They truly do. Literally everyone else really is sort of backdrop/cannon fodder, which does bother me - mainly because they're not entirely forthright about it to begin with. For one, PK rules absolutely do not protect people as much as most people think they do - mechanics, and only mechanics, protect you from the brunt of actual griefing. They're also completely ineffective against non-PK griefing, because they are PK rules, not "I am in charge of this city that has shard skills and I personally dislike you and therefore you cannot be in this circle and have shard skills" rules.
But I think more and more, they're going to have to actually pick an audience (likely, again, top-tier PK-ers) and be proud of what they are and what they offer (to a specific audience). They also need to sweeten the deal for that audience (perhaps by not allowing so much non-PK griefing, for example). Because even if people haven't thought about it as much as I have (too much), I think people are more likely to pick up on things like that. I didn't pick up on it because I had literally never played any online game of any kind when I started playing IRE. Essentially, the question is "is this game actually being developed for a player like me? Am I actually the intended audience"?
I like Imperian where we are @Jules. A least when it comes to punishment for death. Personally I don't want to hunt for 5 hours and have a death wipe that experience gain away. I'm also more open to exploring dangerous things and exploring unknown parts of the world because dying isn't a big deal if I make a dumb mistake.
If death were to be more hardcore, the rewards need to be bigger for risking death. In its current form, none of the activities that involve PK are worth losing anything over in death.
As for the second half of your post, I don't think picking an audience and sticking to it is going to work and we can sit here all day and discuss theory or ideas for ways to improve the game, but the truth is all of it is very hard to balance.
Notice how catering all promos to PKers suddenly caused a power creep problem after years and years of promos? To where now PKers are complaining about power creep because they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars every month for a new virtual item or two. I'm not making fun of them for that complaint, because it honestly is dumb and unreasonable to expect players to shell out hundreds of dollars every month to be viable in a virtual world.
The game would be healthier overall if they catered to all types of players because some of them depend on the other to play. I'm also not logging onto a MUD full of unchecked PK and I can think of a handful of players I RP/hang out with in the game isn't either. And guess what? They spend on the game every month. PKers are not the only people who will drop money on this game and I wish IRE would realize that.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
@Jeremy Saunders I strongly, strongly believe killing the Gods in the first place was a mistake. The people that were the most vocal about "stop letting Gods control us" were mostly PKers who are now ALL GONE. As an aside, I also believe this demographic objected the most to someone telling them what to do because they liked to have the feeling of power in the game. I don't care one way or the other what powers entites get, but I do think that as it stands right now they are rather pointless because they do carry less sway than a regular player. I can interact with them and I enjoy doing so on occasion, but it does feel pointless because they carry no influence at all. At minimum, I would like to see them able to possess mobs (mob RP is great, even little inconsequential interactions), create random little items (I loved the God trinkets we used to have), be able to make their sect temples more than a door and some empty rooms (please bring back God Temples). I'm still undecided whether I would like them to have stuff like the "God slap" or city patronage, merely because they can be abused. However on the other I think without "power" abilities, they remain little more than a glorified player.
If entities are becoming "more actively involved", I think this would need to be done alongside making sects actually matter. As it stands right now they are boring and have basically nothing at all to do with RP, and I'm only in one because I can highfavour myself at will. Likewise with shrines: the way they function right now is so prohibitive to encouraging new cults/sects and drives people into the one with the most shrines in the best places. In turn this limits RP opportunities hugely. Both Conquest and Hunt are incredibly dull and with crappy premises. Can't speak to the other circles though.
Also I object to the "this is a conflict driven game" mindset over "this is a text RP game" mindset. I don't mind conflict, but myself (and a lot of less vocal players who don't read the forums) are not here for conflict for conflict's sake.
That said our avenues for RP have been slowly whittled down... Guilds are next to useless, sects have next to no RP, so on an org level that leaves us our cities, and even those are being whittled down.
@Jeremy Saunders I strongly, strongly believe killing the Gods in the first place was a mistake. The people that were the most vocal about "stop letting Gods control us" were mostly PKers who are now ALL GONE. [...]
Also I object to the "this is a conflict driven game" mindset over "this is a text RP game" mindset. I don't mind conflict, but myself (and a lot of less vocal players who don't read the forums) are not here for conflict for conflict's sake.
That said our avenues for RP have been slowly whittled down... Guilds are next to useless, sects have next to no RP, so on an org level that leaves us our cities, and even those are being whittled down.
The realization people in this game need to have at some point is this game can be all about conflict all it likes, if you don't have people to fight with, it gets really boring really quickly, and frankly, quite a few of the remaining people (not naming names), are probably doing a good job of driving new people off.
I like Imperian where we are @Jules. A least when it comes to punishment for death. Personally I don't want to hunt for 5 hours and have a death wipe that experience gain away. I'm I don't think picking an audience and sticking to it is going to work and we can sit here all day and discuss theory or ideas for ways to improve the game, but the truth is all of it is very hard to balance.
Notice how catering all promos to PKers suddenly caused a power creep problem after years and years of promos? To where now PKers are complaining about power creep because they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars every month for a new virtual item or two. I'm not making fun of them for that complaint, because it honestly is dumb and unreasonable to expect players to shell out hundreds of dollars every month to be viable in a virtual world.
The game would be healthier overall if they catered to all types of players because some of them depend on the other to play. I'm also not logging onto a MUD full of unchecked PK and I can think of a handful of players I RP/hang out with in the game isn't either. And guess what? They spend on the game every month. PKers are not the only people who will drop money on this game and I wish IRE would realize that.
It's as difficult as we make it, which evidently means its impossible.
Speaking from personal experience, if anything I started dropping a lot more on IRE when I got out of doing PK as a regular thing but if you're not PKing you're basically a third-class citizen to IRE. Always have been probably always will be.
@Jeremy Saunders I strongly, strongly believe killing the Gods in the first place was a mistake. The people that were the most vocal about "stop letting Gods control us" were mostly PKers who are now ALL GONE.
This is not the reason why the Gods were killed.
It's not even close. The Gods weren't killed because of any one faction of players, they were killed off as part of an attempt to deal with a huge amount of problems with Imperian's Gods.
And the thing is, the entity system is actually very well designed. It solves almost all of those major problems. Unfortunately, it has two major weaknesses and those weaknesses basically killed it out of the gates.
50% of the playerbase immediately dug their heels into the dirt and yelled "$*%# YOU WE WANT OUR GODS BACK" and refused to give it a chance.
Imperian is too small for the system to really shine. There just aren't enough people for volunteers to interact with when they can't actually play the game, which is why Imperian had to try letting people keep their mortals while playing entities.
I just find people’s argument that they are not God’s hence reject the a little churlish.
I see the teething problems, that there has been some BM around players especially combatants by some of our newer volunteers but nothing that cannot be fixed.
I even support the no-entity for Kinsarmar stance. it certainly adds a layer of RP which I enjoyed. Part of the problem is that entities are currently not able to affect anything.
What might be useful is entities be able to augment or enhance existing cult rituals. nothing game breaking but certainly enough to help people seek them out.
Further, I think it’s important to let Entities have their own cults from an RP perspective. Sometimes it’s difficult to adopt your RP to existing cults whose leaders might be either inactive, uninterested or otherwise not motivated to invest in Entities.
@Jeremy Saunders I strongly, strongly believe killing the Gods in the first place was a mistake. The people that were the most vocal about "stop letting Gods control us" were mostly PKers who are now ALL GONE.
And the thing is, the entity system is actually very well designed. It solves almost all of those major problems. Unfortunately, it has two major weaknesses and those weaknesses basically killed it out of the gates.
50% of the playerbase immediately dug their heels into the dirt and yelled "$*%# YOU WE WANT OUR GODS BACK" and refused to give it a chance.
More want to address the bolded.. we coddled this behavior from all avenues instead of stomping it out. The problem of course is stomping it out only really strengthens it as a stance. Anyways, moving on:
The entity system will only not work if players want it to not work. It is clear that a particular subset of players, inflated or no, is trying to engineer that situation (be it in their own circle or otherwise) based on an OOC prejudice towards 'immortal' figures for a myriad of manufactured reasons. It strikes me as ironic, because this is the same crowd complaining that the game is stagnant and they have nothing to do. Entities are a guaranteed conflict/RP generator, you merely need to accept the package it has been delivered to you in. As well, the detractors cannot tell me entities don't have less mechanical power. They can't PK, they can't be city leaders, they have no recourse if you grow abusive. They simply have to take it. Jeremy has gone on the record via an announcement post to tell us what they can and can't do. This perpetuated culture of 'anti-entity roleplay' (which is merely a bastard child of the above) is part of why we lose so many volunteers. Anybody that engages in this is (knowingly or not) laundering harassment through their 'roleplay', which largely consists of egocentric rejection of a person trying to make their game better.
I cannot get behind the statements made by people opposed to the system, because thise reasons frankly reek of anecdotal bullshit from earlier ages of Imperian. In the end, if you are verbally abusing or brigading against an entity, you are brigading against a player and volunteer with no way to stop you. It shows a huge measure of what kind of person you are and the sum of your personality that you would willingly do this to somebody that can't fight back. Don't complain when they are finally empowered to check your abuse. It is much like a schoolyard bully railing against the rules that tell them they can't give nerds wedgies. Of course they are opposed to it: they get their jollies harassing these people due to a preconceived notion of what type of person wants to play that character.
Every concern this minority group has, has been taken in to consideration, yet they continue to rail against the system. At this point, they are being contrary - 'stop liking things I don't like!'. I can see it in the tone of their arguments, I can see it in the defeatist attitudes they have about the system, etc. It strikes me as, once again, a bunch of starving people that also prefer to be picky eaters. I think I used the phrase 'choosy beggars' last time. The opposition, to me, projects their fears of the worst of this system unto each entity volunteer. I think that is unfair to them.
It is clear that the people in any given circle, namely the ones heading it up, cannot or will not generate conflict even if they have the biggest stick to wield. Because of this, we need things outside of their control, outside of their authority, to start the ball rolling.. and keep it rolling, because clearly they will try to intercept and stand perfectly still with their ball while bitching that it doesn't move.
Edit: I think the entity system is an elaborate response to an exceptionally easy problem to solve. We should have just killed each god that went inactive and had their Portfolio/Aspect/Theme spawn a brand new god when a volunteer wanted that role. Instead, we shot ourselves the foot, killed an RP crowd across multiple years, and now we are fighting tooth and nail over the fact that we have people who WANT TO MAKE THE GAME INTERESTING.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I actually like the entities. If several of Kinsarmar's players don't like them, it's better for the entities to hang out with people who do. Volunteering can suck but the fact that I have been seeing these volunteers at different hours of the day means that there is something going on in the game. This is a good thing for me. I see their presence as a work in progress, because they have to start from somewhere. I know from talking with a couple people that they seem to expect entities to be some kind of fusion of a waiter and their mother to cater to their needs. Not calling any of you out but I feel that we need to give them a break. They are here to have fun too and there are players out there who like entities, I just wish they would share their feedback on the forums rather than discord etc.
I enjoy entities. I find it irritating when certain players try to shoe-horn entities into the position of "Gods 2.0", or react to them on that basis. Entities don't have sway or control over your character unless the cult or sect you're in allows one to attach, and even then, it's minimal at best.
For the majority of players this isn't going to be an issue - If you really abhor the idea of an entity attaching to a sect or cult, join a sect or cult that won't ever let one attach or found your own. It doesn't take much at all to stay within the bounds of what a sect or cult requires, unlike orders, where the whim of someone above you in rank could result in instant expulsion, whether that someone above you was a mortal character or a god.
I agree with Sarrius on this, mostly - Some anti-entity roleplay is understandable, but it's a dick move to actively try and stop entities being part of an entire circle just because they might try to change things in ways you dislike or call your character out over something.
Just as PK sometimes isn't optional because you get ganked, in this game, roleplay isn't optional and might sometimes get in the way of what you want to do. That's just how it is, and it has always been this way and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. I'm glad we have new entities and I hope they stick around because it's fun to interact with them. Plenty of people who wanted nothing to do with gods found a simple solution to that - Don't get involved in orders and don't mess with shrines. Why is that so impossible now for those who dislike entities?
Plenty of people who wanted nothing to do with gods found a simple solution to that - Don't get involved in orders and don't mess with shrines. Why is that so impossible now for those who dislike entities?
its impossible from a mechanical stand point for pkers and people in general, when the norm is getting highfavours on the regular for pretty much everything mechnically you do, as well as having the rituals a sect offers. in the short time I've played imperian I witnessed an entity kick someone out of a sect, an entity who had mostly been gone/not logged in for a long time up until that point. But, lets not get what I'm saying twisted, I honestly don't care one way or another about most of the entities. I am weary of them though because of what I witnessed, when my bashing income is much increased by rituals, and while combat rituals are not required, they are distinct advantages some players can have over others without a sect, having been witness to it as a rogue combatant. I would be more interested in seeing what powers they do acquire before I am swayed one way or another.
I've promised
to post about my true position on entities, so here it is. Maybe I'm off base,
but I feel like entities were sold to us as beings that would not try to take
the place of gods. They would be infant energy creatures that would take an
interest and attach to sects as they grew. Their role was meant to be a support
role that would enrich the culture of the org with rp and creative ideas that
they would have the admin support to implement. I am all for this, but I kind of feel like
we were sold a lie. Fast forward to today where we have seen many entities try to
be gods since their creation.
I will never be ok with entities having the power to take
over a sect that they had no hand in creating. I don't think entities should
have leadership powers but if it must be, then it should be a more democratic
structure. I also think sects should have a way to separate from their entity
if they wish.
You cannot blame people for being suspicious of entities or
metagaming when they have witnessed entities invading the privacy of their
homes or using their powers in a way that is suspect. It is suspicious to have
an entity trying to meddle in politics when they are supposed to be young and
just learning about the world.
Now, just as many people are balking against the idea of
entities, it is announced that they will be getting more powers. I know
innocent accidents happen and I know things are not always as they seem, but it
seems like it should be relatively easy for admin to allay some of these concerns.
There are people who have made it their rp to be against entities and that
likely will never change for them. But there many more people who do not feel
so strongly against it that they could not be won over if more safeguards were
put in place and if they didn’t feel like they were being forced on them.
My suggestions
are as follows:
1)
Block entities from travelling inside homes or
at least travel blocked rooms.
2)
Give sect leadership exclusively to its leaders
and use entities in a creative support role and for rp.
3)
Give sects the ability to separate from their
entity.
4)
Don’t force entities on people that don’t want
them. I think it’s a valid path of RP to be against them. If the players behind
the entities don’t take it too personal, it provides for some interesting rp in
its own right.
5)
Don’t penalize orgs for not using entities. I
don’t like thinking that an org might be penalized or another given an
advantage during an event because of entities.
6)
Ask entities to be on guard about using their powers
in ways that breed suspicion.
My suggestions are as follows: 1) Block entities from travelling inside homes or at least travel blocked rooms. 2) Give sect leadership exclusively to its leaders and use entities in a creative support role and for rp. 3) Give sects the ability to separate from their entity. 4) Don’t force entities on people that don’t want them. I think it’s a valid path of RP to be against them. If the players behind the entities don’t take it too personal, it provides for some interesting rp in its own right. 5) Don’t penalize orgs for not using entities. I don’t like thinking that an org might be penalized or another given an advantage during an event because of entities. 6) Ask entities to be on guard about using their powers in ways that breed suspicion.
My rebuttal.
1) Most of these entities are not from Imperian, or from IRE at all I think. So expecting them to know when you've closeted away in your boudoir wearing nothing but a smile is really beyond their limited omniscience, or even beyond your proposed limitations.
2) Joint leadership is better, the odds of BOTH the current leader and the entity buggering off is low, though this bashing of them continues they may all just bugger off for greener pastures. But you'd enjoy that wouldn't you.
3) This is fair, honestly. People change, or you may find out that there was a fundamental misunderstanding between your sect and your limited power (un)intentional drama factory.
4) No one's forcing an entity on you, why do you think this is the case? Yes they're fishing for a cult that will accept them, that's in their RP that's not Jeremy or someone higher up the food chain going GET A JOB YOU LAZY ORBS, OR I'LL MAKE LEGION EAT YOU. That's progression, the thing we've been gagging for ever since I showed up to this arms race scene.
5) Don't think about it then? You're worrying about something that is arguably out of step with the rest of what Imperian offers to its players. Consequences are minimal, or at least mitigated by throwing money at it.
Since this is thread is about improving Imperian, and the bandwagon's destination is Entity-ville...
1) Give entities the power to use NPCs as ventriloquist dummies, this could be fun, and is probably intended for them in the future anyway. I'm still saying it because it needs to be said.
2) Give entities the ability to reverse teleport/summon (i prefer reverse teleport) people, not to the entity, but to some pocket dimension or somewhere similar to this. Some entities have their own little secret place already. There is an voluntary acceptance clause attached to the ability. (You have received a collect call from 'It's asking for my name, why is it asking for my name?', do you accept the charges?)
3) More meddling. They're pretending to be gods, or most of them anyway. Let them meddle more since it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than the norm of 'Org A raided Org B for Objective Butter' or 'Hm, would you look at the time... it's Boss-Rush-o'clock!' and the fan favourite of staring into the Abyss of Idleness whilst slipping slowly into madness yammering on Discord (an appropriate name considering the bent of this thread now). Let them run their proverbial leash out on that, find out they're not gods. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe they're secretly spaghetti monsters and we wind up with another plot monster to fight over when it'd make way more sense to band together on it. (This is not more of the same bitterness that is repeated ad infinitum, this is just a tribute to the bitterness and then the immediate kneejerk reaction of NO NOT LIKE THAT that often follows immediately afterwards)
Meddling is the enemy of stagnation. Yes, the routine is nice. It's pretty, it's normal. I like showing up and finding out that my pants are still on my person, my guns are still loaded and my world is exactly as i left it as before. But every now and again, I like to flip the ant farm on its head and shake it up. We all do this as gamers, we save the game. Break our internal RP and go on a rampage with our super-powered protagonist and when we've had our fun, reload the save and resume normalcy. This is good. I like it when things get flipped on their head for a while, and we fight to return to our normal status. Do I want some lasting changes from it in this particular game? Yeah, I'd like some persistent consequences. I'm still waiting for some myself from the last event.
Castrating the entities into a shell of what-could-have-been just so you can continue on your own power trip has got to be the most boring 'fight' I've ever heard of. Imperian turns players into supermortals. We're not gods per se, we're not entities, but we are definitely not standard mortals. We need a proper challenge, the only thing that stands in the way of Aetherian 'mortal' supremacy is the last few vestiges of pre-Mortal Age divinity (Legion), an MIA horde entity, and a newly minted High Lich. The entities can give us that, either through whatever they get empowered with in the future and give it to us through mini-plots that hopefully run together or at least follow a comic book like formula (complete with retcons!) or by being an actual pain in our collective necks. But they NEED to have teeth to be even a remote challenge to us in any regard be it 'physically' as an actual keyboard mashing fight, OR as basically a DM.
And you wanna nerf them like an overpowered profession? Are you serious? Are you that insecure about whatever it is that's got you (I'm using the general 'you' here) in such a twist over a handful of people who wanna make our lives a smidge less boring on a regular basis like we wanted that you're calling for a ballgag on their potential before they've even had a chance to get to grips with the game?
I want to see the entities get really elbow deep in this sticky mess we call a game. They can provide a welcome distraction while Dec, Eoghan, Jeremy and whoever else tinker away at whatever machinations they have in store for us. But they can't do that if we constantly bash their faces in whenever they slip the leash you're trying so very hard to slip around their heads.
The complaint about them meddling is silly. That's kind of why they are there. If you want them to be ineffective glorified players with teleporting abilities, then there is no point in them existing. And if that is all they are, I can't see it being fun for the volunteers behind the entity.
And believe me, I cared very little for them when they first came around. But I still opened myself up to RP with them and get to know them because they took the effort.
All I am seeing with these complaints about them is people are afraid of losing power within their tiny circle of influence.
Edit: Also, if admin comes around to reading any of this, please stop shutting down conversations that get a little heated. It should be evident that players feel very passionately about a certain topic if there is this much activity around it and it got heated.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
The idea of any entity stealing or ruining anyone's cult or sect RP is pretty laughable considering sect RP hasn't existed in any meaningful way in at least two years. They're glorified sets of bashing and pk bonuses and I, for one, fully support any entity making earnest attempts to change that.
Of course, IC I see entities as little more than tools to be bound to mankind's purposes. It is the Age of Mortals, after all.
The idea of any entity stealing or ruining anyone's cult or sect RP is pretty laughable considering sect RP hasn't existed in any meaningful way in at least two years. They're glorified sets of bashing and pk bonuses and I, for one, fully support any entity making earnest attempts to change that.
Of course, IC I see entities as little more than tools to be bound to mankind's purposes. It is the Age of Mortals, after all.
this is pretty much my way of looking at it. lo and behold I started about a year and a half ago, sect RP has never existed for me. I want it to happen, but I also really like my mechanical advantages that are the norm. As long as they can't limit my mechanical advantages, I'm okay with whatever they can do. Maybe I'm only having this issue because Unspeakable is the only active sect in demonic, and because I'm... lazy and don't have the time or drive to try and cultivate another cult/sect when I'm sitting nice and happy with my max out ritual points and have inherited a nice shrine network. Call me selfish if you will, its okay, I am.
It feels awfully like people just want entities to be glorified roleplay helpers with no actual impact on the game, which is a horrible idea and bound to mean we get zero entities because it would make the job pointless and boring.
Sects are these wishy-washy dull agglomerations of vague ideas where the "roleplay" and "investment" amounts to building shrines and stacking bashing bonuses. I don't think giving sects any ability to split from an entity is wise, as the moment an entity does something the sect leadership dislikes they'd just start pushing the entity out. The sect isn't yours, it's not your pet project, it's the work of a large group of people if you have a big shrine network and to act like an org can belong to a single player or even a small group of players is ridiculous. That isn't how sects or any other in-game org should work, and in the past, it was often gods and order-driven roleplay that led to ideological changes and shifts within orgs. It was fun!
As for them meddling and teleporting into houses - So what? Trying to help situations or nudge things is fine, it's roleplay and it's pretty much what they exist to do, to change things, to interact and keep the game from being a boring and unchanging sandbox where nothing actually differs year to year. They have no way that I know of to tell if a room is a house beforehand.
Please, admin folks - Don't listen to these demands/requests to neuter and ruin entities. If anything, support entities in what they do and encourage this kind of engagement, because it'll do the game good, no matter what a vocal minority like to claim.
I have to agree with Alvetta. We can say they're not *supposed* to be Gods 2.0 until the celani come home to roost, but the fact of the matter is, pretty much everyone - yes including those that have been saying this - are treating them as if they are. We lament at the ways people want them to be different from gods, and shout them down, and then complain they're not fulfilling the same mechanical role gods did. Get a grip. (Or don't, chances are I'm blowing this popsicle stand.)
The fact that an apparent large number of people are voicing complaints that are getting shouted down - that is basically exactly why Imperian is where it is today - but more importantly, why it isn't going to change.
I'd find the "but muh RP" arguement a lot more compelling if I felt any of them actually had interesting RP, but I'll be honest, having interacted with several of them (they seem to like to constantly pop up to pester me in my own house), I don't find any of them particularly endearing. I don't particularly enjoy being condescended to.
The people opposed to entities existing and interacting with the game are a vocal minority and to frame it as those people being "shouted down" is ludicrous at best.
It's clear from this thread that the actual large number of people - The actual, literal majority of voices in this argument - Like entities and want them to be supported and encouraged. The hilarious complaints that they "keep popping up in houses" and other attempts to frame everything entities do as somehow abusive or wrong is getting tiring, because frankly, other than a couple of minor instances of them using the peace room thing wrongly, nothing untoward has happened.
There are thousand-word posts in this thread addressing the concerns voiced by those opposed to entities, from a variety of players in a variety of orgs and positions.
You're not being ignored or shouted down at all, you're just upset you can't do exactly that to people who like entities and are voicing support.
If the teleportation into people's homes is a really big concern and I understand why it is(personally I don't want to be disturbed by working on the second edition of "Crotches and Crochet" a romance novel coming out soon), it is easy for admin to remove that ability from them. But I think giving them the ability to teleport to players or other rooms is needed and fine. In fact, I've already messaged admin about it.
And this whole argument of them not having interesting RP is really also ridiculous, @Anette. If you don't enjoy their RP that's fine, but other people clearly do. Everyone has their own flavor of what they like.
No one is shutting down the vocal minority here and I think their grievances have been listened to and dissected by those who are for entities. It seems more like the only attempt at shutting anything down is shutting down entities. And to that, it looks like a lot of people are saying "Nah, we'd like them to stick around and we'd like them to have powers and abilities and be able to meddle."
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
4)
Don’t force entities on people that don’t want
them. I think it’s a valid path of RP to be against them. If the players behind
the entities don’t take it too personal, it provides for some interesting rp in
its own right.
This is really the only thing that needs said and left alone. It's a rather large point that scales in so many different un-measurable ways it's truly hard to formulate a solid argument for it. Entitites in my experience over 20 years of mudding usually come with "muddy" waters. Forcing them on a faction/city/council/playerbase usually ends up in some kind of forced RP where you need to accept their existence or be left out of the "club". Mix this with so many other points is generally why some people(not all) view them as negative.
Like I've said before, though - The simple solution to not wanting to be involved with entities is to not talk to them and avoid the sect/cult system.
None of the bonuses or benefits of sects are so substantial that you need to be part of them to compete and you can ask other people to highfavour you. Most of all, don't try and push entities out of entire cities because you dislike them, as there are likely plenty of people in that city or council who do enjoy interacting with entities.
You don't get to dictate whether an entire org in the game interacts with entities, just because you as a player don't want to.
Comments
Yes, I know it is a conflict driven game. It has been said enough. It's like you can't talk about this game without people bringing up conflict, whether it be the wrong kind of the lack of conflict. Blah blah, conflict. Entities can bring conflict too, but then they'd be meddling and you don't want that but you are pro conflict?
But the truth is, this game doesn't run entirely on conflict and a good portion of the playerbase don't log on solely for conflict. You can say that is what this game is about and the admin can say that, but it's a game that offers a variety of things for players to do that have nothing to do with conflict or generating conflict. If it was an entire game of only conflict, we wouldn't have fishing, owning homes and decorating them, various trade skills, gambling, etc, etc, etc. This game doesn't begin with 'conflict' and it doesn't end with 'conflict'.
I'm not personally insulted at all, just stop pretending that someone is personally offended/insulted when they don't agree with you.
Again, your influence is within your organization and it doesn't reach as far as the handful of players you decided to tag in an attempt to rid Kinsarmar of entities. You can waddle out and pick on that group I mentioned in my 'stark difference' statement, but Pk rules exist. If they aren't messing with you, then you have no reason to impact their game play at all. Yet some of you still find a way because you'r starved for it.
That's really all I am getting at. Don't force your play style on someone else. Is it really that hard to understand?
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
Say what you want about "my influence"; if you think it's only in Kins, by all means that's fine with me. I would disagree, since clearly this group of people has already complained to you about it. If they're complaining, they probably fear it. If they fear it, that's called an influence. TL;DR: this is going off on tangents. I wanted to keep it entity-specific.
You can't actually do anything to Celidon/Ithaqua/Khandava that is of consequence, so largely no one cares. You also can't do anything of consequence to any player in the game because PK rules exist and there are no real losses with death. But that isn't a personal attack towards you, no one can do anything to this game that has any real lasting consequences. All of those decisions are ultimately left to the admin, as it should be because there should be no bias when those decisions are made.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
@Wyll Some of the things you're saying right now are the sort of statements true PK griefers drool over. Because they're the kind of thing that can be held up as "see? We need harsher mechanical penalties like xp loss or guards that cost gold to replace and/or more play in the rules" (in our case it would definitely be harsher mechanics). Luckily, no one still playing seems to want that kind of extreme. I don't want it because I am not a top-tier PK-er and very likely never will be, which means there will always be a number of people who could grief the hell out of me in a true hard core environment. Well, that, and I think it's almost always just... actually griefy to do real, mechanical damage to an org or player that requires "grinding" to fix.
That said. How about that tutor? Any possibility of making it relevant again by making it completely negate guards with respect to defending citizen players, possibly to include even healers (with the stipulations and oversight I mentioned)? I think it is worth trying and tweaking if needed (in particular, people do need to have a shot at getting it back from a stronger org).
Also, IRE presents itself as a suite of games for all kinds of players. That's only soooort of true. If you can truly keep your mouth shut and truly avoid conflict, you might be mostly left alone. That said, it didn't work for Shou, and he's as quiet and nice as they come. I wish I'd seen the games for what they are earlier in my playing career. For the most part, IRE games cater to top-tier PK-ers and political power players, at least historically. And really... they cater to top-tier PK-ers. They truly do. Literally everyone else really is sort of backdrop/cannon fodder, which does bother me - mainly because they're not entirely forthright about it to begin with. For one, PK rules absolutely do not protect people as much as most people think they do - mechanics, and only mechanics, protect you from the brunt of actual griefing. They're also completely ineffective against non-PK griefing, because they are PK rules, not "I am in charge of this city that has shard skills and I personally dislike you and therefore you cannot be in this circle and have shard skills" rules.
But I think more and more, they're going to have to actually pick an audience (likely, again, top-tier PK-ers) and be proud of what they are and what they offer (to a specific audience). They also need to sweeten the deal for that audience (perhaps by not allowing so much non-PK griefing, for example). Because even if people haven't thought about it as much as I have (too much), I think people are more likely to pick up on things like that. I didn't pick up on it because I had literally never played any online game of any kind when I started playing IRE. Essentially, the question is "is this game actually being developed for a player like me? Am I actually the intended audience"?
If death were to be more hardcore, the rewards need to be bigger for risking death. In its current form, none of the activities that involve PK are worth losing anything over in death.
As for the second half of your post, I don't think picking an audience and sticking to it is going to work and we can sit here all day and discuss theory or ideas for ways to improve the game, but the truth is all of it is very hard to balance.
Notice how catering all promos to PKers suddenly caused a power creep problem after years and years of promos? To where now PKers are complaining about power creep because they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars every month for a new virtual item or two. I'm not making fun of them for that complaint, because it honestly is dumb and unreasonable to expect players to shell out hundreds of dollars every month to be viable in a virtual world.
The game would be healthier overall if they catered to all types of players because some of them depend on the other to play. I'm also not logging onto a MUD full of unchecked PK and I can think of a handful of players I RP/hang out with in the game isn't either. And guess what? They spend on the game every month. PKers are not the only people who will drop money on this game and I wish IRE would realize that.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
@Jeremy Saunders I strongly, strongly believe killing the Gods in the first place was a mistake. The people that were the most vocal about "stop letting Gods control us" were mostly PKers who are now ALL GONE. As an aside, I also believe this demographic objected the most to someone telling them what to do because they liked to have the feeling of power in the game. I don't care one way or the other what powers entites get, but I do think that as it stands right now they are rather pointless because they do carry less sway than a regular player. I can interact with them and I enjoy doing so on occasion, but it does feel pointless because they carry no influence at all. At minimum, I would like to see them able to possess mobs (mob RP is great, even little inconsequential interactions), create random little items (I loved the God trinkets we used to have), be able to make their sect temples more than a door and some empty rooms (please bring back God Temples). I'm still undecided whether I would like them to have stuff like the "God slap" or city patronage, merely because they can be abused. However on the other I think without "power" abilities, they remain little more than a glorified player.
If entities are becoming "more actively involved", I think this would need to be done alongside making sects actually matter. As it stands right now they are boring and have basically nothing at all to do with RP, and I'm only in one because I can highfavour myself at will. Likewise with shrines: the way they function right now is so prohibitive to encouraging new cults/sects and drives people into the one with the most shrines in the best places. In turn this limits RP opportunities hugely. Both Conquest and Hunt are incredibly dull and with crappy premises. Can't speak to the other circles though.
Also I object to the "this is a conflict driven game" mindset over "this is a text RP game" mindset. I don't mind conflict, but myself (and a lot of less vocal players who don't read the forums) are not here for conflict for conflict's sake.
That said our avenues for RP have been slowly whittled down... Guilds are next to useless, sects have next to no RP, so on an org level that leaves us our cities, and even those are being whittled down.
Wyll said: It's as difficult as we make it, which evidently means its impossible.
Speaking from personal experience, if anything I started dropping a lot more on IRE when I got out of doing PK as a regular thing but if you're not PKing you're basically a third-class citizen to IRE. Always have been probably always will be.
It's not even close. The Gods weren't killed because of any one faction of players, they were killed off as part of an attempt to deal with a huge amount of problems with Imperian's Gods.
And the thing is, the entity system is actually very well designed. It solves almost all of those major problems. Unfortunately, it has two major weaknesses and those weaknesses basically killed it out of the gates.
I see the teething problems, that there has been some BM around players especially combatants by some of our newer volunteers but nothing that cannot be fixed.
I even support the no-entity for Kinsarmar stance. it certainly adds a layer of RP which I enjoyed. Part of the problem is that entities are currently not able to affect anything.
What might be useful is entities be able to augment or enhance existing cult rituals. nothing game breaking but certainly enough to help people seek them out.
Further, I think it’s important to let Entities have their own cults from an RP perspective. Sometimes it’s difficult to adopt your RP to existing cults whose leaders might be either inactive, uninterested or otherwise not motivated to invest in Entities.
The entity system will only not work if players want it to not work. It is clear that a particular subset of players, inflated or no, is trying to engineer that situation (be it in their own circle or otherwise) based on an OOC prejudice towards 'immortal' figures for a myriad of manufactured reasons. It strikes me as ironic, because this is the same crowd complaining that the game is stagnant and they have nothing to do. Entities are a guaranteed conflict/RP generator, you merely need to accept the package it has been delivered to you in. As well, the detractors cannot tell me entities don't have less mechanical power. They can't PK, they can't be city leaders, they have no recourse if you grow abusive. They simply have to take it. Jeremy has gone on the record via an announcement post to tell us what they can and can't do. This perpetuated culture of 'anti-entity roleplay' (which is merely a bastard child of the above) is part of why we lose so many volunteers. Anybody that engages in this is (knowingly or not) laundering harassment through their 'roleplay', which largely consists of egocentric rejection of a person trying to make their game better.
I cannot get behind the statements made by people opposed to the system, because thise reasons frankly reek of anecdotal bullshit from earlier ages of Imperian. In the end, if you are verbally abusing or brigading against an entity, you are brigading against a player and volunteer with no way to stop you. It shows a huge measure of what kind of person you are and the sum of your personality that you would willingly do this to somebody that can't fight back. Don't complain when they are finally empowered to check your abuse. It is much like a schoolyard bully railing against the rules that tell them they can't give nerds wedgies. Of course they are opposed to it: they get their jollies harassing these people due to a preconceived notion of what type of person wants to play that character.
Every concern this minority group has, has been taken in to consideration, yet they continue to rail against the system. At this point, they are being contrary - 'stop liking things I don't like!'. I can see it in the tone of their arguments, I can see it in the defeatist attitudes they have about the system, etc. It strikes me as, once again, a bunch of starving people that also prefer to be picky eaters. I think I used the phrase 'choosy beggars' last time. The opposition, to me, projects their fears of the worst of this system unto each entity volunteer. I think that is unfair to them.
It is clear that the people in any given circle, namely the ones heading it up, cannot or will not generate conflict even if they have the biggest stick to wield. Because of this, we need things outside of their control, outside of their authority, to start the ball rolling.. and keep it rolling, because clearly they will try to intercept and stand perfectly still with their ball while bitching that it doesn't move.
Edit: I think the entity system is an elaborate response to an exceptionally easy problem to solve. We should have just killed each god that went inactive and had their Portfolio/Aspect/Theme spawn a brand new god when a volunteer wanted that role. Instead, we shot ourselves the foot, killed an RP crowd across multiple years, and now we are fighting tooth and nail over the fact that we have people who WANT TO MAKE THE GAME INTERESTING.
For the majority of players this isn't going to be an issue - If you really abhor the idea of an entity attaching to a sect or cult, join a sect or cult that won't ever let one attach or found your own. It doesn't take much at all to stay within the bounds of what a sect or cult requires, unlike orders, where the whim of someone above you in rank could result in instant expulsion, whether that someone above you was a mortal character or a god.
I agree with Sarrius on this, mostly - Some anti-entity roleplay is understandable, but it's a dick move to actively try and stop entities being part of an entire circle just because they might try to change things in ways you dislike or call your character out over something.
Just as PK sometimes isn't optional because you get ganked, in this game, roleplay isn't optional and might sometimes get in the way of what you want to do. That's just how it is, and it has always been this way and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. I'm glad we have new entities and I hope they stick around because it's fun to interact with them. Plenty of people who wanted nothing to do with gods found a simple solution to that - Don't get involved in orders and don't mess with shrines. Why is that so impossible now for those who dislike entities?
I've promised to post about my true position on entities, so here it is. Maybe I'm off base, but I feel like entities were sold to us as beings that would not try to take the place of gods. They would be infant energy creatures that would take an interest and attach to sects as they grew. Their role was meant to be a support role that would enrich the culture of the org with rp and creative ideas that they would have the admin support to implement. I am all for this, but I kind of feel like we were sold a lie. Fast forward to today where we have seen many entities try to be gods since their creation.
I will never be ok with entities having the power to take over a sect that they had no hand in creating. I don't think entities should have leadership powers but if it must be, then it should be a more democratic structure. I also think sects should have a way to separate from their entity if they wish.
You cannot blame people for being suspicious of entities or metagaming when they have witnessed entities invading the privacy of their homes or using their powers in a way that is suspect. It is suspicious to have an entity trying to meddle in politics when they are supposed to be young and just learning about the world.
Now, just as many people are balking against the idea of entities, it is announced that they will be getting more powers. I know innocent accidents happen and I know things are not always as they seem, but it seems like it should be relatively easy for admin to allay some of these concerns. There are people who have made it their rp to be against entities and that likely will never change for them. But there many more people who do not feel so strongly against it that they could not be won over if more safeguards were put in place and if they didn’t feel like they were being forced on them.
My suggestions are as follows:
1) Block entities from travelling inside homes or at least travel blocked rooms.
2) Give sect leadership exclusively to its leaders and use entities in a creative support role and for rp.
3) Give sects the ability to separate from their entity.
4) Don’t force entities on people that don’t want them. I think it’s a valid path of RP to be against them. If the players behind the entities don’t take it too personal, it provides for some interesting rp in its own right.
5) Don’t penalize orgs for not using entities. I don’t like thinking that an org might be penalized or another given an advantage during an event because of entities.
6) Ask entities to be on guard about using their powers in ways that breed suspicion.
"My idea to fix the entity system is to add so many restrictions to it that nobody will want to be one."
1) Block entities from travelling inside homes or at least travel blocked rooms.
2) Give sect leadership exclusively to its leaders and use entities in a creative support role and for rp.
3) Give sects the ability to separate from their entity.
4) Don’t force entities on people that don’t want them. I think it’s a valid path of RP to be against them. If the players behind the entities don’t take it too personal, it provides for some interesting rp in its own right.
5) Don’t penalize orgs for not using entities. I don’t like thinking that an org might be penalized or another given an advantage during an event because of entities.
6) Ask entities to be on guard about using their powers in ways that breed suspicion.
My rebuttal.
1) Most of these entities are not from Imperian, or from IRE at all I think. So expecting them to know when you've closeted away in your boudoir wearing nothing but a smile is really beyond their limited omniscience, or even beyond your proposed limitations.
2) Joint leadership is better, the odds of BOTH the current leader and the entity buggering off is low, though this bashing of them continues they may all just bugger off for greener pastures. But you'd enjoy that wouldn't you.
3) This is fair, honestly. People change, or you may find out that there was a fundamental misunderstanding between your sect and your limited power (un)intentional drama factory.
4) No one's forcing an entity on you, why do you think this is the case? Yes they're fishing for a cult that will accept them, that's in their RP that's not Jeremy or someone higher up the food chain going GET A JOB YOU LAZY ORBS, OR I'LL MAKE LEGION EAT YOU. That's progression, the thing we've been gagging for ever since I showed up to this arms race scene.
5) Don't think about it then? You're worrying about something that is arguably out of step with the rest of what Imperian offers to its players. Consequences are minimal, or at least mitigated by throwing money at it.
6) Well where's the ducking fun in that?
1) Give entities the power to use NPCs as ventriloquist dummies, this could be fun, and is probably intended for them in the future anyway. I'm still saying it because it needs to be said.
2) Give entities the ability to reverse teleport/summon (i prefer reverse teleport) people, not to the entity, but to some pocket dimension or somewhere similar to this. Some entities have their own little secret place already. There is an voluntary acceptance clause attached to the ability. (You have received a collect call from 'It's asking for my name, why is it asking for my name?', do you accept the charges?)
3) More meddling. They're pretending to be gods, or most of them anyway. Let them meddle more since it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than the norm of 'Org A raided Org B for Objective Butter' or 'Hm, would you look at the time... it's Boss-Rush-o'clock!' and the fan favourite of staring into the Abyss of Idleness whilst slipping slowly into madness yammering on Discord (an appropriate name considering the bent of this thread now). Let them run their proverbial leash out on that, find out they're not gods. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe they're secretly spaghetti monsters and we wind up with another plot monster to fight over when it'd make way more sense to band together on it.
(This is not more of the same bitterness that is repeated ad infinitum, this is just a tribute to the bitterness and then the immediate kneejerk reaction of NO NOT LIKE THAT that often follows immediately afterwards)
Meddling is the enemy of stagnation. Yes, the routine is nice. It's pretty, it's normal. I like showing up and finding out that my pants are still on my person, my guns are still loaded and my world is exactly as i left it as before. But every now and again, I like to flip the ant farm on its head and shake it up. We all do this as gamers, we save the game. Break our internal RP and go on a rampage with our super-powered protagonist and when we've had our fun, reload the save and resume normalcy. This is good. I like it when things get flipped on their head for a while, and we fight to return to our normal status. Do I want some lasting changes from it in this particular game? Yeah, I'd like some persistent consequences. I'm still waiting for some myself from the last event.
Castrating the entities into a shell of what-could-have-been just so you can continue on your own power trip has got to be the most boring 'fight' I've ever heard of. Imperian turns players into supermortals. We're not gods per se, we're not entities, but we are definitely not standard mortals. We need a proper challenge, the only thing that stands in the way of Aetherian 'mortal' supremacy is the last few vestiges of pre-Mortal Age divinity (Legion), an MIA horde entity, and a newly minted High Lich.
The entities can give us that, either through whatever they get empowered with in the future and give it to us through mini-plots that hopefully run together or at least follow a comic book like formula (complete with retcons!) or by being an actual pain in our collective necks. But they NEED to have teeth to be even a remote challenge to us in any regard be it 'physically' as an actual keyboard mashing fight, OR as basically a DM.
And you wanna nerf them like an overpowered profession? Are you serious? Are you that insecure about whatever it is that's got you (I'm using the general 'you' here) in such a twist over a handful of people who wanna make our lives a smidge less boring on a regular basis like we wanted that you're calling for a ballgag on their potential before they've even had a chance to get to grips with the game?
I want to see the entities get really elbow deep in this sticky mess we call a game. They can provide a welcome distraction while Dec, Eoghan, Jeremy and whoever else tinker away at whatever machinations they have in store for us. But they can't do that if we constantly bash their faces in whenever they slip the leash you're trying so very hard to slip around their heads.
Only it's not a leash. It's a damned noose.
And believe me, I cared very little for them when they first came around. But I still opened myself up to RP with them and get to know them because they took the effort.
All I am seeing with these complaints about them is people are afraid of losing power within their tiny circle of influence.
Edit: Also, if admin comes around to reading any of this, please stop shutting down conversations that get a little heated. It should be evident that players feel very passionately about a certain topic if there is this much activity around it and it got heated.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
Of course, IC I see entities as little more than tools to be bound to mankind's purposes. It is the Age of Mortals, after all.
Sects are these wishy-washy dull agglomerations of vague ideas where the "roleplay" and "investment" amounts to building shrines and stacking bashing bonuses. I don't think giving sects any ability to split from an entity is wise, as the moment an entity does something the sect leadership dislikes they'd just start pushing the entity out. The sect isn't yours, it's not your pet project, it's the work of a large group of people if you have a big shrine network and to act like an org can belong to a single player or even a small group of players is ridiculous. That isn't how sects or any other in-game org should work, and in the past, it was often gods and order-driven roleplay that led to ideological changes and shifts within orgs. It was fun!
As for them meddling and teleporting into houses - So what? Trying to help situations or nudge things is fine, it's roleplay and it's pretty much what they exist to do, to change things, to interact and keep the game from being a boring and unchanging sandbox where nothing actually differs year to year. They have no way that I know of to tell if a room is a house beforehand.
Please, admin folks - Don't listen to these demands/requests to neuter and ruin entities. If anything, support entities in what they do and encourage this kind of engagement, because it'll do the game good, no matter what a vocal minority like to claim.
The fact that an apparent large number of people are voicing complaints that are getting shouted down - that is basically exactly why Imperian is where it is today - but more importantly, why it isn't going to change.
I'd find the "but muh RP" arguement a lot more compelling if I felt any of them actually had interesting RP, but I'll be honest, having interacted with several of them (they seem to like to constantly pop up to pester me in my own house), I don't find any of them particularly endearing. I don't particularly enjoy being condescended to.
It's clear from this thread that the actual large number of people - The actual, literal majority of voices in this argument - Like entities and want them to be supported and encouraged. The hilarious complaints that they "keep popping up in houses" and other attempts to frame everything entities do as somehow abusive or wrong is getting tiring, because frankly, other than a couple of minor instances of them using the peace room thing wrongly, nothing untoward has happened.
Anyways, Im done.
You're not being ignored or shouted down at all, you're just upset you can't do exactly that to people who like entities and are voicing support.
If the teleportation into people's homes is a really big concern and I understand why it is(personally I don't want to be disturbed by working on the second edition of "Crotches and Crochet" a romance novel coming out soon), it is easy for admin to remove that ability from them. But I think giving them the ability to teleport to players or other rooms is needed and fine. In fact, I've already messaged admin about it.
And this whole argument of them not having interesting RP is really also ridiculous, @Anette. If you don't enjoy their RP that's fine, but other people clearly do. Everyone has their own flavor of what they like.
No one is shutting down the vocal minority here and I think their grievances have been listened to and dissected by those who are for entities. It seems more like the only attempt at shutting anything down is shutting down entities. And to that, it looks like a lot of people are saying "Nah, we'd like them to stick around and we'd like them to have powers and abilities and be able to meddle."
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
This is really the only thing that needs said and left alone. It's a rather large point that scales in so many different un-measurable ways it's truly hard to formulate a solid argument for it. Entitites in my experience over 20 years of mudding usually come with "muddy" waters. Forcing them on a faction/city/council/playerbase usually ends up in some kind of forced RP where you need to accept their existence or be left out of the "club". Mix this with so many other points is generally why some people(not all) view them as negative.
None of the bonuses or benefits of sects are so substantial that you need to be part of them to compete and you can ask other people to highfavour you. Most of all, don't try and push entities out of entire cities because you dislike them, as there are likely plenty of people in that city or council who do enjoy interacting with entities.
You don't get to dictate whether an entire org in the game interacts with entities, just because you as a player don't want to.