Yeah this sums up why I hate the storylines you come up with. You railroaded an entity that was pretty important to one of the sides putting in effort in this crappy grind event, with no foreshadowing, into a comical farce. If you can't see why I'm upset, then I really do have one foot out the door.
Antioch is in a weird spot in large part because in addition to some retirements, several people left a city they really liked specifically because that city (Antioch) was WAY too strong. I like Ithaqua well enough, but Ithaqua was completely irrelevant on the world stage (which is fine, as long as there is an org like Antioch that is a powerhouse). ... I will say, if Antioch gets deleted, I will never willingly help break up a juggernaut org again. Ever.
To be honest forcibly redistributing combat assets on occasion should be an admin function anyway..
So, Imperian's in between a rock and a hard place right now. Here's the skinny:
Stavenn genuinely needed deletion. The statistics were supposedly overwhelmingly in favor of deletion and were so obvious that we did not need an event to tell that.
The death of Stavenn caused another, smaller wave of retirements because Stavennites couldn't cope with losing 'muh Imperial RP' (but apparently did not care about it enough to log in!)
This left circle distribution lopsided.. Demonic 1, Magick 2, Anti-Magick 2.
There is now a serious expectancy that Imperian will slim down their orgs. Jeremy encourages this expectancy based on what he has said at multiple junctures - namely, Twitch streams.
We reach an event that clearly has global stakes. The event continues forward.
The Final Day comes. Grashella apparently did enough to save Antioch's bacon (which makes not much sense, because they're telling us as a pbase: 'Grashella's efforts were enough to justify the existence of an otherwise dead org')
Anti-Magick as a circle gets sold up the river with this move. We took all the signs that Antioch was dying and decided it was within Ithaqua's RP at the time to decide not to help. The choice not to delete Antioch effectively guaranteed some kind of infighting, sure.. but between who, really? No matter how you look at it, not deleting Antioch after Ithaqua took moves to say 'fend for yourself' doesn't really generate any reasonable conflict or infighting because you're asking a healthy person (Ithaqua) and a bed-ridden cancer patient (Antioch) to duke it out.
Nothing that the rest of the world did is going to have much consequence - Celidon continues being Magick-but-not-really (they use magick, but don't side with the global power that is Kinsarmar), Khandava continues fighting Kinsarmar (as they primarily have done for a month and change now).. the only way I could see this being wrong is if Celidon continues having a positive relationship with Khandava for the sake of screwing Kinsarmar.
A dangerous precedent is set by Antioch's survival: "if we wish hard enough, we can avoid actions necessary for game health!"
I cheer on org destruction for a lot of reasons..
PROS..
Population consolidation.
Narrative consolidation.
Newbies get help they deserve because ultimately they should always have somebody around.
.. but I also dread it for two reasons:
CONS..
Swale's point of 'combat redistribution' becomes even more difficult. Circles are locked out/inaccessible to certain players if each circle only consists of one org (the one that happened to be healthiest at the time, specifically).. to elaborate on a personal example, if Kinsarmar is the healthiest when it becomes Magick's turn, I can never access Magick's classes ever again in any reasonable capacity. By deleting the 'safety valve' option in each circle, you're damning notorious or dangerous players.. that are often combatants.. to be restricted to less options as players. This eventually takes a HUGE toll on body count per circle. The deletion of Antioch means that none of us can ever piss off Ithaqua so badly that Ithaqua decides to permanently enemy us. Permanent enemies of Khandava are likely feeling this in real time - if they wanted to play Demonic, what options do they now have?
Potential retirees because 'muh org RP' - this seems like an empty con, because they clearly did not care enough about the org to log in anyways. This is just people sucking at writing their way to a new path in Imperian's storyline.. see: people that cried about the death of the Gods.
My solutions to this would be radical and probably widely opposed:
Delete all cities and councils. Delete all sects. Start from scratch and make shard skills, etc applied via sect membership. Their theoretical 'flux' should handle the concern of being locked out of a circle, if we make some adjustments during the shrine war review that will inevitably happen. Why is this a good idea? Because sects are player-created constructs. They could be in flux much more often, rising and falling with the size of their circle. The multiple sects serve as safety valves to ensure that everybody gets to play everywhere, which makes balancing out combat teams a lot easier in theory. Their concepts are more digestible than 'what is Kinsarmar?' or 'why is Ithaqua Ithaqua?'.. 'oh sweet, the Order of Conquest, wonder what that's about?' in comparison should illustrate this point. It also gives our entities some more relevance, I guess.. though that doesn't matter as much to me in the grand scheme of things.
OR, even more radical - delete Ithaqua and Antioch, then subsequently DELETE ANTI-MAGICK FROM THE GAME. Their professions can be handwaved as neutral. Neither circle has historically cared about Anti-Magick's nebulous 'not-magick' power source. Give every current AM player a 'free circle swap' and cut them loose. Give one of the AM orgs to Demonic (probably Antioch, because it's right next to several undead things). Re-establish the safety valve approach. With four orgs instead of six and AM's population distributed appropriately, we shouldn't need to delete anybody else. Why is this smart? Truth be told, I thought this was coming.. but for Demonic! With Khandava the only one on the 'weaken' side, I foresaw them getting ground to dust by their decision combined with the collective moxie of the world. Turns out we hate Kinsarmar way more anyways and Khandava has the manpower to avoid such a fate in any case. There's no active reason in the narrative to be Anti-Magick anyways. Anti-Magick's power has clearly not been able to avert plenty of catastrophes in the past, from meteors to demon invasions all way up to Legion and Urzog (both of whom Antioch chose to side with, which is telling from a narrative perspective). It also avoids the drama of another mass retirement due to org deletion, the tears that come with it if they don't retire, etc. Anti-Magick is the weakest narrative link anyways and Imperian cannot support three sides any longer.
Maybe some smart guy will look at the 'puzzle' I've laid out and come to an equally effective conclusion. Truth be told, I can't really figure out an amenable solution to the tendency for players to join the Winningest Team.
<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>
Deletion of an org was never a priori in this event. If it occurred organically, it would happen, but if the event didn't lean that way, it wouldn't. The event was definitely intended to give that feeling of urgency, and it was always a POSSIBLE outcome of the event, but we didn't go into this saying "we're deleting an org in this event".
There is also more to come spinning out from this event, and more story to tell. No one is out of the woods yet.
I agree with all of this - in particular, the fact that the strongest combatants (guys that can be actual team captains) tend to be perma-banned from several orgs. At best, those orgs don't realize what a gift they're getting and will make it a huge hassle for that guy to come over (because in their mind, he did, after all, successfully raid them over 9000 times). Not good.
I love all of the above, really, including the deletion of Antioch, under the conditions you state (so rest assured it will be a Christmas miracle if it somehow happens). I'd say deleting all cities and councils is the most radical, and the option I'd be most keen to try first. If it really, really doesn't work after a good try, build new cities from scratch and delete AM. You can almost always make an epic story to justify attempting to improve mechanics.
EDIT: alternatively, do both option 1 and 2 at once (delete all cities and councils, plus AM).
EDIT2: Sects would need a few tweaks to make it fairly untenable for a circle to have less than say, 2-3 viable sects that are on at least working terms with one another. Some of the framework is there, but ultimately, you're currently rewarded (mechanically, so, the way that matters) for having a single uber-sect (again placing too much make or break power in the hands of a few players). To be more specific, having multiple sects currently allows you to get people to have a wider variety of rituals, and also allows you to attack shrines more effectively, but it's still not truly enough to make up for the importance of having the biggest, baddest shrine network possible, and hand in hand with that, the fact that even "friendly" shrines are effectively hostile to your shrines.
Wait does this mean that a new entity will replace esmy or is the sect dead?
Considering its the only sect Demonic has at this point, I sure hope not. They just used this to open up a slot for a future entity to take over I'm guessing.
You point your finger at Wyll and pretend to shoot.
I think it would be awesome to have everything blow up.
Nomadic tribes as a system would be unique and interesting, but I'm saying that without really considering how it'd work mechanically or in ways conducive to a healthy game. But it would at least be unique!
I thought the event did well in giving the sense of urgency, but I think it went just a -bit- too long. Burn out was a real problem, and I think the chain was too influential for both sides. It did too much damage to the Rashirmir and then too much to bolster it, so neither side was able to fully enjoy the fruit of their labor.
I'll defer to other people regarding how Esmy appeared out of nowhere, but I had no idea who she was and there was no foreshadowing that she'd play a part, so any meaningfulness was lost.
It's my first Imperian event (at least what felt like a proper event), so I can't really judge it in relation to other events Imperian offers, but when I compare it to one of Lusternia's, I was disappointed.
Lusternia did (does?) a good job of letting individual players affect how an event unfolds, whereas here it felt impersonal. The stakes were org level (which felt great!), but I found each new development to be lackluster. How were we supposed to know how to strengthen the rashirmir? An entity told us. How to get the rods? An entity told us. What was actually going on? An entity told us. There was no sense of discovery that I saw, and any new information was spoon-fed from entities.
It felt bad for me because I've tied almost all of my character's RP to the spirit realm, yet I didn't feel empowered to really influence or participate in moving things along. It was all reactionary and to the point where I was hesitant to be more vocal for fear of having my RP fundamentally countered by an event where the individual didn't seem to matter.
I think the worst part was actually the climax. I know a lot of non-PKers got really frustrated with how things went because we were trying to figure out what to do with the phylacteries only for PK to start happening. The defense was mounted, but it became difficult-to-impossible for some to get through the fights in order to take part in the event. I came close to logging out 10 minutes into it because I was very annoyed at the chaos and confusion.
I get that Imperian is a PK game, but if this event's climax is reflective of how much PK is going to be shoved down our throats, I'm not sure how long I'll be around. Lusternia was also PK-heavy, but when it came to climatic-events, usually the conflict was put on hold so that the RPers could get their chance to shine, either with forced non-aggression (which was overall rare) or just a general acceptance that more was at stake. At the very least, I like to think that if Lusternia had a similar event, the non-coms would have been left alone so that they could have participated too; at least until the defense fell, in which case they would have been told to leave or die. With Imperian, though, I can't help but think there're a lot of asshats around.
I'm also really bummed about Esmyrsia going - I was hoping she'd eat an entity or two at some point or push the 'distrust the intruders' narrative, but it's fair enough to let go of a character that isn't active anymore, especially after about a dozen new entities were introduced to the game.
As for what @Rokas said: 1- Ithaqua attacked Kinsarmar first. To be fair, Kinsarmar was going hog on Khandava at the time, but we were attacking the people who've been working against our goals for the last 2 weeks. Ithaqua positioned themselves from the very start to be fighting against those who wanted the Door sealed ie us, thus, they were enemies the same way Khandava were.
2- As @Zerin and @Lynyssa pointed out before, the event up to this point was situated to be 'everyone v Khandava'. If the fight hadn't started during the chaos, AM and Magick would have been working together and Khandava might as well have gone home. Roleplay-wise it's hilarious that Ithaqua fought for 3 hours against their own self-interests, but event-wise it would have been even more lame if they hadn't.
3- It's clear the Admin were expecting some fighting over the phylacteries but I don't think they intended for it to be literally 3 hours of the entire game throwing punches. Apparition waves were worlds less PK-heavy than shardfalls and most of the game was on one 'side' at that time.
4- After we figured out the syntaxes/goals of the phylacteries, the entire point of our PK was to keep people away from the Door. Again, we had no reason to trust that anyone from Ithaqua wasn't helping Khandava at that time, since Ithaqua was helping Khandava at that time. A lot of your non-comms weren't hassled like the fighters were either - I know Arian and Yasmeen were at the pinnacle undisturbed for the majority of the event.
Beyond that, I've only cared about/participated in a few Imperian events myself. I do want to say I liked the influence the PvE aspect of things had, to the point that PK was really never embedded into the event itself. Overall I think this was a great event that was very mindful of the playerbase's strengths and weaknesses and tried to include all aspects of the game - Entities helping with figuring out the quest for RPers, bashing for PvE, and the option but not requirement for PK.
edit: I do also like that it was designed so that political buttkissing could only help an organization so far, as opposed to an event where cities can form alliances and largely determine the outcome.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
1) Uh.... What? I was fighting apparitions and then next thing I knew I was being attacked by Kins. Everyone else said the same, and if you're considering the event over the past few weeks to mean that we attacked first, then you and I are talking about very different things.
4) Yasmeen was killed multiple times and was cut out of the event until I braziered her in at the end. If they were undisturbed, it's because they gave up and stayed in Ithaqua because they got tired of giving you guys lol-free-xp. Ithaqua's non-coms were mostly/all disappointed with the event, especially since they changed plans to be around.
I'm happy with the event overall, but I think you and I have a different view of what figuring out a quest means. This event had the entities telling us what to do whereas Lusternia would have had npcs -enable- questers to figure out what to do. I would have preferred the entities spearheading the discovery rather than simply knowing and telling us. Maybe that discovery took place in other orgs, but it didn't happen in Ithaqua. It's like Morrowind vs Skyrim as far as quests go. In Morrowind, you had to read text and pay attention whereas in Skyrim, you have a compass point.
I just want to clear up that Khandava said they weren't interested in focusing anything, which is why Ithaquans were assisting them. So we weren't working against anything except Kinsarmar. And I only did that because I got killed for no reason by Kinsarmar.
We could have killed the people focusing on many occasions, but we didn't. (Some of them did cop a death or two before we realised they weren't part of the Kinsarmar gank-squad).
@Rokas - I'm not saying you personally started hostilities with magick, I'm saying Ithaqua did.
@Zerin - Focussing nothing = Legion emerging. The very fact that you could have killed people focusing is why you were clumped in together and targeted. The very fact that you did not recognize the impact of your actions was why you were clumped together and targeted.
Ithaqua's ignorance of the mechanics of what was happening is unfortunate, but is still ultimately their own fault for siding without question with the people who've very vocally wanted the Legion released, against people who have consistently been working towards the same goal. We're very much talking about the same event. Like it or not, intentionally or otherwise, your people sided with the Legion.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
Maybe the reason I insist that Imperian can't support three sides is because the conflict still feel binary, especially when it comes down to Events. This event was Pro-Legion or anti-Legion. It's tough to have even teams when there's 3 players and 2 choices. I liked the Woodland Warriors last night, for sure, but that only came in to being based off of necessity.
<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>
We sided with the people that weren't attacking us. Kins definitely started it, and saying otherwise is kinda dumb. We had non of our combatants around at the beginning to start killing people off.
Think what you will. I wasn't fighting for the first half hour or so, but when my team starts lolling at Ithaqua being aggressive first, I believe it. It's not like we gain anything from lying, and I'm not saying we wouldn't have wiped you out just for the fun of it, but that's what happened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
We did start it! We were talking about it before the post, but once the post was made that pretty much sealed the deal. Plus I was asked to play the 'bad guy' by another combatant, and we had a good time doing it. I know that many of you are not pker's, but chatter among pker's was pretty lively - with all sides showing up to discord to talk about how much fun they were having. So in the end, I think I made the right choice.
The grind was terrible and too long and really at the end the personal barriers didn't do much at all, so I feel like I massively wasted numerous hours. It also came down to "our barrier just has to be better than Antioch's", which took away some of the urgency because their barrier was always 0.
I didn't like the entity ending at all. Esmy-whosit has been inactive for so long that half of us didn't know her, and have no special attachment to her. The death also seemed really sudden and anti-climactic. I find myself not caring at all that she died because I don't even know who she is and it really ended with "a door killed her". She had no character development or anything, just wham-bam-dead.
I also didn't like entities dishing out the information because there was no sense of discovery and it took much of it away from the players. I liked that they were involved however - as the post said... a balance would be nice.
I think clustering the objectives together at the end was a mistake - they should have been divided up across the world. There were so many people there doing stuff that the spam pretty much overtook everything and I had no idea what was happening for most of it.
I also agree that the non-PK crowd should have had more avenues for participation in that end part. It would have been very easy for the large gank-squads to just kill any RPers from other circles (which happened), thus making it unenjoyable for them. I'm unimaginative so I have no ideas for alternatives.
I think events should be geared with more palatable options that each city and council could find merit in. I.e. actively focussing to weaken the Rashirmir was only ever going to be Khandava's gig and alone they wouldn't have the numbers. There should be different options, and not so much of a "good and evil" avenue. I'm still unimaginative so I have no ideas for alternatives.
Just a minor feedback, there were two phylacteries and a pool to focus on? In the future, just from a mechanics perspective consider have three separate items to focus on. Else, people just choose the first phylactery by default.
People chose the first phylactery cause they would do 'focus on phylactery' and Lhortae's is first on the list. That's why Silantor's was ignored, it needed more keystrokes to get to, or at least that's what I think.
Just a minor feedback, there were two phylacteries and a pool to focus on? In the future, just from a mechanics perspective consider have three separate items to focus on. Else, people just choose the first phylactery by default.
People chose the first phylactery cause they would do 'focus on phylactery' and Lhortae's is first on the list. That's why Silantor's was ignored, it needed more keystrokes to get to, or at least that's what I think.
This is a good point, and something we'll keep in mind.
We saw a good number of people deliberately making a specific choice (based on chatter), so I don't *think* it changed the outcome here, but it's definitely something for us to keep in mind.
I know some people are unhappy with killing Esmyrisa, but her player will not be coming back.
This is probably the main complaint I have seen so far, and I understand the attachment to your
favorite entities. It is the nature of divine roles in Imperian. They will come and they will go.
Yeah, I'm done. You don't even grok *why* that's upsetting like I didn't explicitly freaking explain it in a thread you've been watching, and you chalk it up to us being upset about her being deleted (which we all knew was going to happen eventually with her not playing.)
I can't imagine why Imperian has been steadily dying.
@Gjarrus : I want to address your concerns directly. I totally get where you are coming from and I know how much player roles are build up around a god/entity/religion/sect. I don't want you to think I am ignoring you and that I don't understand your concerns. I am very sorry if you feel that way. Let me try to explain things and why we have to do them they way we do.
Ideally, none of our volunteers would ever quit and would play their roles forever. Or, at least they would decide when they are done and have a nice event to wrap things up. In truth, they are players just like all of you. After a while they slowly stop logging in as much. After a few months, we rarely see them again.
This is a big problem with gods on all of the IRE games. It has been for the 15 years I have been working here. Without compare most of the emails I get from the other games revolve around the actions of gods in a game. Gods and the issues around them are the biggest complaint item from IRE players as a whole. It ranges from players thinking gods are actively working against them, to unfair RP punishments, to gods inactivity, to player and god deaths. By their nature gods touch every aspect of a game and players quickly get upset by whatever is going on around them.
These are 100% valid complaints. They are very hard to deal with because the gods are players just like everyone else and they do it for the enjoyment. All players are working for and against each other to varying degrees.
Let me address try to address the issues revolving around activity and how we attempt to deal with it on Imperian. First, the main complaints I normally hear.
Players want their god to be active and are upset when they are not. They feel like cannot advance their role or their RP.
Players hate it when an inactive god role gets a new volunteer to play the role. The complaints focus around the fact they can tell it is a different person. They talk and act different. Their ideals and focus changes. They don't favour the same players the same way. There are a lot of reasons why players do not like it. This has always been the number one complaint I get some players in regards to gods.
Players hate it when a god decides they do not like them. This happens a lot when the player behind the god changes or when the player does something the god does not like.
The Imperian god/entity system exists to try and mitigate some of these problems.
Cults and Sects are built up about the ideals of mortals, hence the "Age of Mortals". Religion is player-created instead of god-created. Think of the entities as the gods illustrated in "American Gods", if you have read that. With strong ideals you are going to attract an entity that is shaped to your beliefs and empowered by worship.
We have made it very clear that entities will die off at some point after the player behind them has stopped playing them. If we brought in a new person to play Esmyrsia, and they did not like your character, you would hate them more then you hate us killing her off. I know it sucks and I am sorry about that.
Entity death allows for characters in the game to have a bit of closure and move along. This is also why sects and cults are player-run instead of god-run. Players build the up the RP of their ideals and then an entity can be shaped by that and fall into place. This hopefully allows players smoother transitions to a different entity. The can justify they change in personality because it is clearly a different entity. We even allow for entities to typically adsorb the essence of killed entities to justify why they may have some of the same personality and ideals as one that has passed. They do not have to change their religion to an active god every time one goes inactive.
Of course, the system is far from perfect. As you have pointed out, the major hate now stems from the fact that your god will not come back and you will have to adjust to a new one.
Is it a perfect system? No. We're in a position where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
I hope this at least helps you see it somewhat from where we are coming at from running the game. Gods are a touchy thing on all IRE games and this is the way we have tried to address some of those issues.
The feeling that some players absolutely, definitely get listened to very intently, and the realization that you are absolutely, positively not in that group, and probably never will be, will get just about anyone to stop logging in very much. Eventually. And who is and isn't in that group is absolutely baffling at times. It's actually become a joke between a couple of us. One of us is in the group, the other never will be. If you're in the right group, you can get away with verbally disemboweling people on the forums... for example. This happens partly because the community is small, and you are going to make an impression on admin as you deal with them. But it also happens because it's sort of glorified and encouraged to do business in this way.
And all of this goes well beyond the deep combat mechanics that nearly all players accept as the exclusive domain of a few experts, and deep into the quality of life, and player experience domains that should belong to nearly all committed players.
Let me continue this a bit more and try to broach your specific concerns about having a plan for the entity and the fact that the plan can't proceed now that she's dead.
I semi addressed this in the first part of my post, in which Entities do not come back. In addition, no one has mentioned a possible story for her, to us. There is no way we would be able to bring her back as a character (not sure that is something you were looking to do though).
Esmyrsia was orginally written as a fairly campy villainous role, overall. She made a habit of searching for new sources of power and trying to seize them, including dangerous activities like opening or using demonic rifts. It is within her character to be opportunistic and attempt to take power from Death's Door, and it fit in well with the story of the event and the decisions made throughout it. Ultimately, it didn't work out for her this time, but in the process her energies empowered Charon; her story doesn't end solely in a mistake or failure, but also in sacrifice to allow for Charon's empowerment and the defense of the Physical Realm from Legion.
As far as giving no warning and it being a shock - we never talk to sects before their entities die, for several reasons. The largest is that if we did, the event would feel like it was on rails (this one wasn't), and the people that had foreknowledge wouldn't get as much out of the event in general. It pulls them out of the event entirely, either because they don't care about it anymore (because it's doing something they don't want), or because since they know the outcome, the motivation is gone.
I think @Gjarrus is frustrated because he'd have liked to have a say in how Esmy died, not so much that she did or not. Maybe he had a better idea for her demise that was more in role for the character, rather than the random 'my time is now!' death to misadventure.
<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>
Comments
So, Imperian's in between a rock and a hard place right now. Here's the skinny:
I cheer on org destruction for a lot of reasons..
PROS..
.. but I also dread it for two reasons:
CONS..
My solutions to this would be radical and probably widely opposed:
Maybe some smart guy will look at the 'puzzle' I've laid out and come to an equally effective conclusion. Truth be told, I can't really figure out an amenable solution to the tendency for players to join the Winningest Team.
There is also more to come spinning out from this event, and more story to tell. No one is out of the woods yet.
I love all of the above, really, including the deletion of Antioch, under the conditions you state (so rest assured it will be a Christmas miracle if it somehow happens). I'd say deleting all cities and councils is the most radical, and the option I'd be most keen to try first. If it really, really doesn't work after a good try, build new cities from scratch and delete AM. You can almost always make an epic story to justify attempting to improve mechanics.
EDIT: alternatively, do both option 1 and 2 at once (delete all cities and councils, plus AM).
EDIT2: Sects would need a few tweaks to make it fairly untenable for a circle to have less than say, 2-3 viable sects that are on at least working terms with one another. Some of the framework is there, but ultimately, you're currently rewarded (mechanically, so, the way that matters) for having a single uber-sect (again placing too much make or break power in the hands of a few players). To be more specific, having multiple sects currently allows you to get people to have a wider variety of rituals, and also allows you to attack shrines more effectively, but it's still not truly enough to make up for the importance of having the biggest, baddest shrine network possible, and hand in hand with that, the fact that even "friendly" shrines are effectively hostile to your shrines.
Me: c a n d o
Nomadic tribes as a system would be unique and interesting, but I'm saying that without really considering how it'd work mechanically or in ways conducive to a healthy game. But it would at least be unique!
I'll defer to other people regarding how Esmy appeared out of nowhere, but I had no idea who she was and there was no foreshadowing that she'd play a part, so any meaningfulness was lost.
It's my first Imperian event (at least what felt like a proper event), so I can't really judge it in relation to other events Imperian offers, but when I compare it to one of Lusternia's, I was disappointed.
Lusternia did (does?) a good job of letting individual players affect how an event unfolds, whereas here it felt impersonal. The stakes were org level (which felt great!), but I found each new development to be lackluster. How were we supposed to know how to strengthen the rashirmir? An entity told us. How to get the rods? An entity told us. What was actually going on? An entity told us. There was no sense of discovery that I saw, and any new information was spoon-fed from entities.
It felt bad for me because I've tied almost all of my character's RP to the spirit realm, yet I didn't feel empowered to really influence or participate in moving things along. It was all reactionary and to the point where I was hesitant to be more vocal for fear of having my RP fundamentally countered by an event where the individual didn't seem to matter.
I think the worst part was actually the climax. I know a lot of non-PKers got really frustrated with how things went because we were trying to figure out what to do with the phylacteries only for PK to start happening. The defense was mounted, but it became difficult-to-impossible for some to get through the fights in order to take part in the event. I came close to logging out 10 minutes into it because I was very annoyed at the chaos and confusion.
I get that Imperian is a PK game, but if this event's climax is reflective of how much PK is going to be shoved down our throats, I'm not sure how long I'll be around. Lusternia was also PK-heavy, but when it came to climatic-events, usually the conflict was put on hold so that the RPers could get their chance to shine, either with forced non-aggression (which was overall rare) or just a general acceptance that more was at stake. At the very least, I like to think that if Lusternia had a similar event, the non-coms would have been left alone so that they could have participated too; at least until the defense fell, in which case they would have been told to leave or die. With Imperian, though, I can't help but think there're a lot of asshats around.
As for what @Rokas said:
1- Ithaqua attacked Kinsarmar first. To be fair, Kinsarmar was going hog on Khandava at the time, but we were attacking the people who've been working against our goals for the last 2 weeks. Ithaqua positioned themselves from the very start to be fighting against those who wanted the Door sealed ie us, thus, they were enemies the same way Khandava were.
2- As @Zerin and @Lynyssa pointed out before, the event up to this point was situated to be 'everyone v Khandava'. If the fight hadn't started during the chaos, AM and Magick would have been working together and Khandava might as well have gone home. Roleplay-wise it's hilarious that Ithaqua fought for 3 hours against their own self-interests, but event-wise it would have been even more lame if they hadn't.
3- It's clear the Admin were expecting some fighting over the phylacteries but I don't think they intended for it to be literally 3 hours of the entire game throwing punches. Apparition waves were worlds less PK-heavy than shardfalls and most of the game was on one 'side' at that time.
4- After we figured out the syntaxes/goals of the phylacteries, the entire point of our PK was to keep people away from the Door. Again, we had no reason to trust that anyone from Ithaqua wasn't helping Khandava at that time, since Ithaqua was helping Khandava at that time. A lot of your non-comms weren't hassled like the fighters were either - I know Arian and Yasmeen were at the pinnacle undisturbed for the majority of the event.
Beyond that, I've only cared about/participated in a few Imperian events myself. I do want to say I liked the influence the PvE aspect of things had, to the point that PK was really never embedded into the event itself. Overall I think this was a great event that was very mindful of the playerbase's strengths and weaknesses and tried to include all aspects of the game - Entities helping with figuring out the quest for RPers, bashing for PvE, and the option but not requirement for PK.
edit: I do also like that it was designed so that political buttkissing could only help an organization so far, as opposed to an event where cities can form alliances and largely determine the outcome.
4) Yasmeen was killed multiple times and was cut out of the event until I braziered her in at the end. If they were undisturbed, it's because they gave up and stayed in Ithaqua because they got tired of giving you guys lol-free-xp. Ithaqua's non-coms were mostly/all disappointed with the event, especially since they changed plans to be around.
I'm happy with the event overall, but I think you and I have a different view of what figuring out a quest means. This event had the entities telling us what to do whereas Lusternia would have had npcs -enable- questers to figure out what to do. I would have preferred the entities spearheading the discovery rather than simply knowing and telling us. Maybe that discovery took place in other orgs, but it didn't happen in Ithaqua. It's like Morrowind vs Skyrim as far as quests go. In Morrowind, you had to read text and pay attention whereas in Skyrim, you have a compass point.
We could have killed the people focusing on many occasions, but we didn't. (Some of them did cop a death or two before we realised they weren't part of the Kinsarmar gank-squad).
@Zerin - Focussing nothing = Legion emerging. The very fact that you could have killed people focusing is why you were clumped in together and targeted. The very fact that you did not recognize the impact of your actions was why you were clumped together and targeted.
Ithaqua's ignorance of the mechanics of what was happening is unfortunate, but is still ultimately their own fault for siding without question with the people who've very vocally wanted the Legion released, against people who have consistently been working towards the same goal. We're very much talking about the same event. Like it or not, intentionally or otherwise, your people sided with the Legion.
We saw a good number of people deliberately making a specific choice (based on chatter), so I don't *think* it changed the outcome here, but it's definitely something for us to keep in mind.
I know some people are unhappy with killing Esmyrisa, but her player will not be coming back.
Yeah, I'm done. You don't even grok *why* that's upsetting like I didn't explicitly freaking explain it in a thread you've been watching, and you chalk it up to us being upset about her being deleted (which we all knew was going to happen eventually with her not playing.)
I can't imagine why Imperian has been steadily dying.
Ideally, none of our volunteers would ever quit and would play their roles forever. Or, at least they would decide when they are done and have a nice event to wrap things up. In truth, they are players just like all of you. After a while they slowly stop logging in as much. After a few months, we rarely see them again.
This is a big problem with gods on all of the IRE games. It has been for the 15 years I have been working here. Without compare most of the emails I get from the other games revolve around the actions of gods in a game. Gods and the issues around them are the biggest complaint item from IRE players as a whole. It ranges from players thinking gods are actively working against them, to unfair RP punishments, to gods inactivity, to player and god deaths. By their nature gods touch every aspect of a game and players quickly get upset by whatever is going on around them.
These are 100% valid complaints. They are very hard to deal with because the gods are players just like everyone else and they do it for the enjoyment. All players are working for and against each other to varying degrees.
Let me address try to address the issues revolving around activity and how we attempt to deal with it on Imperian. First, the main complaints I normally hear.
- Players want their god to be active and are upset when they are not. They feel like cannot advance their role or their RP.
- Players hate it when an inactive god role gets a new volunteer to play the role. The complaints focus around the fact they can tell it is a different person. They talk and act different. Their ideals and focus changes. They don't favour the same players the same way. There are a lot of reasons why players do not like it. This has always been the number one complaint I get some players in regards to gods.
- Players hate it when a god decides they do not like them. This happens a lot when the player behind the god changes or when the player does something the god does not like.
The Imperian god/entity system exists to try and mitigate some of these problems.Cults and Sects are built up about the ideals of mortals, hence the "Age of Mortals". Religion is player-created instead of god-created. Think of the entities as the gods illustrated in "American Gods", if you have read that. With strong ideals you are going to attract an entity that is shaped to your beliefs and empowered by worship.
We have made it very clear that entities will die off at some point after the player behind them has stopped playing them. If we brought in a new person to play Esmyrsia, and they did not like your character, you would hate them more then you hate us killing her off. I know it sucks and I am sorry about that.
Entity death allows for characters in the game to have a bit of closure and move along. This is also why sects and cults are player-run instead of god-run. Players build the up the RP of their ideals and then an entity can be shaped by that and fall into place. This hopefully allows players smoother transitions to a different entity. The can justify they change in personality because it is clearly a different entity. We even allow for entities to typically adsorb the essence of killed entities to justify why they may have some of the same personality and ideals as one that has passed. They do not have to change their religion to an active god every time one goes inactive.
Of course, the system is far from perfect. As you have pointed out, the major hate now stems from the fact that your god will not come back and you will have to adjust to a new one.
Is it a perfect system? No. We're in a position where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
I hope this at least helps you see it somewhat from where we are coming at from running the game. Gods are a touchy thing on all IRE games and this is the way we have tried to address some of those issues.
And all of this goes well beyond the deep combat mechanics that nearly all players accept as the exclusive domain of a few experts, and deep into the quality of life, and player experience domains that should belong to nearly all committed players.
Let me continue this a bit more and try to broach your specific concerns about having a plan for the entity and the fact that the plan can't proceed now that she's dead.