It wasn't particularly climatic. Granted I was buried in combat spam, but from my perspective it just looked like a typical somedied by misadventure deathsight.
I DO NOT CARE THAT SHE DIED. I mentioned some ways to get rid of her to an entity that I was eyeballing to replace her. I was told that it'd maybe get considered but no promises, then boom, you come up with some BS about her being 'campy'?
I really give up. There are more reasons, but I'll be nice enough to not bring *that* bs up here. I'm just going to send emails about it to friends or something, since we don't care if players are emailing or IMing things outside of the game, regardless of content.
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.
I think this was a major disappointment. Her death felt very random, like it was just thrown in there to get rid of her. You say that sects and cults are player-run but this was completely admin run. There was no player involvement, no RP to it. There are a ton of ways this could have been implemented, given the sect RP to play with or even foreshadowing. This had nothing.
Well I was stressed out most of this event I get how there's some complaints that I was touted as having 'single handedly saved Antioch from destruction' and all...why people are pushing so much for that when, as this very thread has pointed out, not so long ago we were the OP powerhouse that had to intentionally cripple ourselves out of fairness to everyone else. Only been a few RL months, after all. I'm hoping I can somehow revitalize Antioch, though I haven't the foggiest damned clue how since it seems most everyone was cheering for its destruction as a whole, while cheering me on as an individual to keep doing what I was doing. 'cept Sarrius.
I hope no one's faulting me for trying as I had >_< (aside from the Ithaquans that ICily told me to just let my city die...it's futile and to give it up) I'd have done more, but I work full time and needed some sleep...I just did my best though Had some small amounts of help at least from a few other antiochians, I was NOT the only player at all involved. I'm just a way better hunter apparently, than most, thanks to my scepter. @Japa, @Shadeau, @Septus, @Dular, @Kodo, and @Eltarn all pitched it a little bit, each. Most were for very short spurts, and didn't do nearly as much as I did, true...but they were there and did their best, and I was proud and happy to have them stepping up despite the rumors of Antioch being deleted during this, damaged morale, etc Part of what hurt Antioch's involvement was the morale problem, from matters leading up to the event, and things said to us during. I'm just stubborn when I'm trying to protect someone, whole Templar RP bent, not about to let others down while breath still is drawn, etc etc. Even in this thread, people still calling for Antioch's deletion...there's absolutely not a godsdamned thing I can do to stop it, but I'm always going to try. Barring shrubbing or otherwise booted from the game, I suppose..though the point that it shouldn't be all on one person IS a very good one. Just was lucky I was able to be up to the challenge, no idea if I can a second time. Most certainly not alone...please don't make me do that again. Sincere request there, I really was stressed out during this, added to the need to get my Sect I started to head just before the chains started, to a stable point since everyone ALSO bailed on that for the Ithaquan based one.
I am sorry people seemed to have felt like 'one person saves Antioch' cheapened things somehow, I got that feeling from a few posts. I do understand where you're coming from at least, buuuut...was admitted this event was actually going to delete any cities. People just latched onto the idea and demanded it do that. So...I am sorry. I'd do it again, and probably will have to the next round of whatever comes, without hestitation. But I get where you're coming from.
Event went on way long, was super grindy, seems the only real way to impact the chain till we all got that suicide pact method was to let it shake off the hulks for two rounds before having enough to get the barrier up to at least nominal (I've gotten to extremely strong waiting for three rounds, and a looooot of the transparent apparitions. Kept running circles through Antioch, sewers and desert till I have 200+, then infused all at once with the 70-90 hulkings I'd manage to get by then. Had it down to a science by the third chain hitting Antioch because I had to sleep/work), and there was that matter with the entity dying at the end. I had no idea that was even another entity, truth be told. BUT, as @Sumie pointed out, in the future can implement having Entity-deaths become part of the Sect they are involved with, some gain/loss, like opening the way for a new entity to step in (since I did see that was a hinted concern, 'what happens to us now' with it being the only active Demonic sect) at some point later. Even if it's some other volunteer playing the role for the end if the actual player has already poofed, it'd be something. Change of behavior chalked up to the stresses of the RP leading to their deletion, whatever.
Major events are always going to have kinks to work out. Be it the coding of it, participation going as planned or not, pre-planned surprises or aspects of the event not going as people would've liked...best we can do is look at it as a learning experience, figure out what can be done better next time, and there's usually a next time, and move on for bigger and better.
People deciding on their own this was a city-ending event, and people in that said city despairing and agreeing with it, then giving up...that was the biggest problem with all of this for me, personally. I'll admit it put a fire under me to keep me going, but there was zero proof it was the case. But also little can be done for that when people are going to put their own spin and desires on things. Just leaves consequences for afterwards.
...realized this is getting a bit long, was an emotional trip for me a bit during all of this >_> I hope I've made a few good points though..sorry for the lengthy post. Best we can do is the best we can do, and there's always room for improvement is the TL;DR point. Let's make the next event better, and please no one left to fend for themselves...even if it was my choice to do so and will do it again if I must.
I would think it worth posing the question if org deletion has actually solved any issues. From my (admittedly now limited perspective), it has not. Circle deletion is a very different beast and I think there are tangible pros/cons there, but I remain sceptical of the idea that single org deletions has any nontrivial benefit without a very specific aim in mind.
As for the event, I don't have the full picture (I turned up for the ending and got randomly mobbed by Kinsarmar and then got recruited by Khandava), but a couple of thoughts: - I think its important to give established characters a bit of hype when they do die. I suspect people would've cared less about Esmyrsia getting smashed if it'd been a bigger send off. - Liked that we got to decide who would die when it came to the lichs. - Like the thematic changes to death. - Sad we lost Lhortae because he's easily one of the toughest bosses in Ire and has some of the best(griefiest) mechanics. It takes a special kind of boss to only die twice to players in half a decade. - Obviously, I liked the pk chaos. Do think some more things to do for the rp types while they were being defended would've been good, and would've added an additional sense of urgency.
Re Grashella saving Antioch: going to disagree with the people who said it shouldn't have been allowed. I understand their side (that Antioch is struggling and a logical org to kill if one has to die), but most of the reason to play a mud in 2017 over typical multi player games is you get to tangibly influence the direction things go. Just look at the last few posts to see how people react when they feel they lose their agency to influence something they think they should've been able to.
People deciding on their own this was a city-ending event, and people in that said city despairing and agreeing with it, then giving up...that was the biggest problem with all of this for me, personally. I'll admit it put a fire under me to keep me going, but there was zero proof it was the case. But also little can be done for that when people are going to put their own spin and desires on things. Just leaves consequences for afterwards.
That frankly annoyed the hell out of me through all of this, I don't know where the rumour came from, but the minute someone thought of it and then flapped their lips (fingers) about it all the wind went right out of Antioch's sails. Org deletion is gonna be on rails, there's going to be some notice, there's going to be a very obvious announcement the day of It is going to happen exactly like Stavenn in every possible way because Stavenn is what has set the precedent for deletion from here on out. In the Twitch stream a couple days before the event Jeremy and Eoghan were adamant that no one was going to be deleted any time soon, then the event fired up, and a week went by. To watch a one-time powerhouse ally just suddenly give up was extremely irksome despite all this information to the contrary.
Yeah I outlined my IC reasons, but I neglected to flesh them out at the time due to the event being active and I didn't wanna lay bare ALL my logic (also I'm notoriously bad at explaining my thinking both IC and OOC) to prevent getting metagamed into oblivion. People wanted it to be an org deletion event because it meant that the 'looming grim reaper' feeling would go away for a little while. This playerbase is inevitably going to treat every event as a possible org destruction event - even if it is repeatedly stated in announcements, in forum posts, shows up as a note in their stockings while those are still around -until we get down to 3 orgs.
As the leader of your 'allies' it was super annoying to see your players just give up or not care because 'well, we're going to die anyway, what's the point' is not a quality I'd like to see in the people I can expect to save my frozen bacon if it really came down to it. That my irrationally rational choices to say 'no, get your own apparitions' whilst simultaneously picking through Antioch when players were either not looking or not around wasn't met with any tangible pushback? Also upsetting. Granted that was probably partly due to the feeling of futility in the org, the weird reaction to conflicting opinion in this game (ie: i'm meeting resistance, therefore i should stop and discuss it with someone else in an OOC method, and before anyone snarks me back about this: i do the same but it's more running commentary on the situation vs me and/or headsup that i'm about to do something possibly stupid) and doing so probably fed into it somehow. Basically, I wanted you guys to start turning into Cave Johnson with some goddamn lemons. I wanted you to get mad, or to at least realise that no announcement was made ANYWHERE that Antioch or any other org was going boom. Instead you folded your cards and left the table.
I will preface this entire post with this point, because I have a feeling my posts only get half read when they get long (much like my classleads):
I would rather we just delete a side than a city. I think the game can't support the way we are going and our binary approach to any event or conflict management seems to agree with that. We turn the game in to a two side affair anyways, just at the expense of 'values-based' roleplay. We don't have the population for three sides. We don't have the PKers, especially, which creates a pretty lopsided environment where one circle completely dominates. We used to have this issue with more people, but then it was about people playing with their friends. The game needs to take a turn and I wish this event had been the way to do it. Please consider the deletion of Anti-Magick or Demonic as a circle. Demonic's actual population is deceptively low, it is basically the same 8 people every day. Anti-Magick and Magick can only fill out one of their two orgs.
If this complaint continues to ring true, I will consider going out of my way to establish a fake two circle paradigm instead. I am tired of population issues creating tremendous imbalances.
Now, I don't think the notification was so black and white as to say 'we aren't deleting one'. I recall that Eoghan took great strides last stream to insist that, if needed, they would delete an org, tears or no tears. Jeremy had said they were deleting an org by the end of the year a few streams ago. The proof was all there, we just took it IC as a collective... and Antioch's attitude didn't help.
I would like to see the end of Antioch because it has very few places to go from a narrative perspective. Years and years of events, infighting, poor leadership, etc wrote it in to a corner. The death of the Gods robbed it of a lot of purpose and players have refused every role that leaders since then have thrust upon it, aside from one. That role, by the way, was 'Killing You Guy'. Furthermore, I think that role was taken up by the necessity of being the global powerhouse it was at the time. Proof of this is that the city has since become irrelevant since the internally arranged diaspora of PKers. Maybe this has to do with the hands that held the reins after that great scattering/dispersal, but I'm not ruling anything out.
IC, my character had no reason to support Antioch. They'd refused his kindness the past four or five years (citing 'magick use'), had demonstrated a clear lack of worth to his new home, etc. Coupled with the clear historical basis for poor decisions established in his absence (see: their Legion alliance, working with Urzog), there was never any doubt that he was going to sell Antioch out and convince as many people as possible to do the exact same. Thankfully, that task did not require much effort as Ithaqua consists partially of people that the previous leadership pissed off.
<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>
TBH I like where Antioch got taken after the death of the gods by Khizan and Co. but without support from Admin there was nowhere left to go (Legion still got bound, Urzog still got semi-bound and abandoned everything with a 1 line news post) because you can't go 'we're becoming the horde basically' to much more moderate position, so at that point Antioch just stopped trying. We just showed up and killed things (which to be fair was most of what we liked to do anyways).
TBH I like where Antioch got taken after the death of the gods by Khizan and Co. but without support from Admin there was nowhere left to go (Legion still got bound, Urzog still got semi-bound and abandoned everything with a 1 line news post) because you can't go 'we're becoming the horde basically' to much more moderate position, so at that point Antioch just stopped trying. We just showed up and killed things (which to be fair was most of what we liked to do anyways).
The problem with that position is it hinges on being a powerful enough force forever. Too precarious, imo.
<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>
eh, I don't know that it does require being a powerful force in pk terms, and all the cities and councils are supposed to be a powerful force of some sort in RP terms. it just means Thematically you're tied to the horde. Instead of 'Die AM Zealots' it would've been 'DIE HORDE SCUM' not a huge difference.
Overall, I liked the event. It was my first participation in a major one. Lots has already been said so just a few points from my side: 1. The choice between Legion (pool), Lhortae (phylactery) and Silantor (phylactery) came across as "Welcome to the final Boss Fight. Behind doors number one, two, and three are plague, pestilence, and cholera. And you cannot even scratch the Boss". Uh what? None of the above. Even if I was demonic, I'm not sure who I would root for/against, and what did this have to do with the chain and saving my city? Not a WHOLE lot of rational decision making going on there. That said, however: I'll join in and say that faction was basically irrelevant in that event. 2. I was relieved that the actions of our little band of "Making a Difference(TM)" RPers was not completely overwhelmed by the "Taking A Stand(TM)" PKers, so cheers for that. That was a very real concern of ours. Given that wee hour of the evening in GMT+2, getting sidelined there definitely would have been a MAJOR letdown after a week of bashing to avoid "OR ELSE". 3. I think that it's grand Grashella saved her city despite of insurmountable odds. That was my goal too. Hats off! I get all the talk about game balance, but don't believe that giving in should EVER be on a player's to do list. If we, as players are all eager to start "taking a knee" to make org deletion easier, then something really has to be looked at carefully. 4. Esmy dropping out of outer space felt like she should have been wearing a red Star Trek uniform. Would she have tried to eat Boss B if we had had picked Boss C? Or both, if we had picked the "wrong one"?. Who knows. Did SHE save the world, then? Shrug. Just saying would have been nice if we had learned on the spot if 3.5+ hours of focussing and bashing had "Made a Difference(TM)" or not. I'm really hoping the dangling carrot (bashing saved your world/org) for round two of this event has a better reward than another carrot, but I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and see.
I mean, both remaining sets of "natural ally" orgs have become more and more oppositional as it's become more and more clear that admin really does intend to delete an org in each of the two remaining circles (and has stated so), and it's sunk in that "it's me or it's you".
I'd love to see a circle go, and I said as much about a year and a half ago (just for different reasons, but I like the new reasons too). An additional benefit, and my reason at the time was that two circles means a lot of cheese goes away eventually, and while a little cheese can be fun and S-tier players tend to like that cheese, the (three) circles are always balanced with the assumption that they are separate, and yet... it is not that infrequent for there to be "demogick" or "Team Templar plus Septus RG" and so forth.
Also... There is a very serious problem with entrenchment in orgs. This is actually IRE wide, and some people seem to be at least aware of it, whether they're stuck on solutions or not. Sometimes, it is because no one truly wants to lead. That does happen. So it would be a mistake to simply get rid of every leader that's "been there a long time".
That said, this is another area (besides PK-er distribution) where it would be really nice if admin occasionally picked up the box and shook it, or simply tried to rethink how we manage factions. One reason I do like Sarrius' idea of a shift to sects is that, with some tweaks (the one that immediately comes to mind is the current need to build very large shrine networks), sects would hopefully be very ephemeral. Sects would rise and fall. They'd have a life cycle and they'd die off, despite the best efforts of a few players to cling to life.
It would mean that despite the best efforts of a certain sort of player to maintain voluminous enemy/do not citizen lists going back RL years (even decades)... they'd just... fail. And resets would happen on many fronts. Felons would eventually get out of jail... And this game needs its felons. I will say that that does mean I'd also hope for a more critical eye on actual, sustained griefiness that is of the PK variety, because there's not really a way to do this without taking away one of the biggest tools that non top-tier PK-ers can use to "punish" players who truly are griefy, barely within the limits of what IRE will allow (which is actually quite a lot - in a word, Ahkan, and in his case, the player base failed to sufficiently sanction him as well). In short, I don't want to stop punishing players that really do deserve some sort of smackdown and who need to modify their behavior or end up effectively banished from the game, I just want to be able to trust admin to do that instead of players with personal grudges and deep-seated emotions from being directly involved (and possibly simply having a very anti-conflict mindset to begin with), and who sometimes use these tools in fairly griefy ways themselves. After all, not all griefing is PK... PK is just the most visible and theoretically the easiest to spot and police. In short, I am cautiously hopeful on that front that the cure would not be worse than the disease.
I think the gorilla in the room is an old one, but will not be solved by programming, reskinning or tweaking the mechanics of your/my sect, guild, or org (although these may get the ball rolling at first for pure novelty value). It is one of psychology and indoctrination. Each one of us is ultimately free to up and leave their circle at any time, and some do - repeatedly. You now can even bring your profession along with you, if you've chosen a "neutral" (misnomer) one. What more do we want? Full neutrality and a return to Caanae? Let's give it a try, I think affinity is lame. Loyalty or entrenching is not the problem here (there are empty or half-empty political seats in EVERY org, as far as I know), but rather a human one. It IS personal, because science has repeatedly proven that people are NOT rational, especially if their feelings get hurt. And collectively, as a game, we can't (and don't want to) prevent that.
I will agree with what many have said before me. IMO, the reason we get clumping (and I assume PKer clumping is meant here) is not that we have all gotten "too comfortable" in our snuggly orgs, but that certain orgs (in rotation) tend to attract one of two extremely polarized factions that would rather not stand in the same room with members of the other group for more than a few minutes. Without making any value judgements: it's currently "Killing is my Business, and Busyness is Good" and "The Journey is the Destination...Dude, Where's My Car?". I fully agree that we need both groups to have a healthy community, and I am fumbling about in an inept sort of way in my own organisation to achieve this, but believe that whoever can resurrect the "rare unicorns" of middle class will truly rule Imperian. However, they will have to show the patience of a saint and keep their elitism well hidden, because the other guys will repeatedly "refuse to get it". PKers will continually wonder why RPers don't love them for forcing them to fight (If only they TRIED it, sigh!), RPers will get frustrated why PKers never return their emotes (Don't they ever take a moment to question why? Groan). I can name one or two unicorns, and I really hope it works out for them, because it is a very tough road, leaving you loved by neither extreme. My take-home message from this event was that in a cozy community like ours, tight personal friendships cross all faction lines (PKers and RPers alike), making adherence to a particular lore dogma seem moot.
That frankly annoyed the hell out of me through all of this, I don't know where the rumour came from, but the minute someone thought of it and then flapped their lips (fingers) about it all the wind went right out of Antioch's sails.
The 'rumor' about deletion, from what I'm aware, came about by a Twitch stream saying that another organization would be condensed down/deleted before the end of the new year. This was the October Twitch Stream, I believe? I might be incorrect.
Clearly, this did not happen that way. While the majority of us believed this to be true - it did give 4/5 of Imperian the sense of urgency to try to ensure they weren't the one - which I think overall boosted the amount of participation in the Event.
As someone that kind of missed this because of my health and a variety of demands on my time, I kind of feel the traditional MMORPG event problem in that poking on Anette now to see what has changed for me, the answer is "diddly squat".
Everything returns to the status quo at the end of the day. Not sure what everyone's on about with Antioch, I still see almost no one around again now, presumably since their neck isn't on the chopping block anymore.
That frankly annoyed the hell out of me through all of this, I don't know where the rumour came from, but the minute someone thought of it and then flapped their lips (fingers) about it all the wind went right out of Antioch's sails.
The 'rumor' about deletion, from what I'm aware, came about by a Twitch stream saying that another organization would be condensed down/deleted before the end of the new year. This was the October Twitch Stream, I believe? I might be incorrect.
Clearly, this did not happen that way. While the majority of us believed this to be true - it did give 4/5 of Imperian the sense of urgency to try to ensure they weren't the one - which I think overall boosted the amount of participation in the Event.
Well, it also came out of a post made in January or something about the 'future ahead' in which they said 2 orgs would be deleted
Edit: I guess they were pretty nonspecific about it.
As someone that kind of missed this because of my health and a variety of demands on my time, I kind of feel the traditional MMORPG event problem in that poking on Anette now to see what has changed for me, the answer is "diddly squat".
Everything returns to the status quo at the end of the day. Not sure what everyone's on about with Antioch, I still see almost no one around again now, presumably since their neck isn't on the chopping block anymore.
With the looming threat of deletion gone, we return to our regularly scheduled programming in all ways. Antioch's salvation seems to have had a great effect on Ithaqua than Antioch itself; at least short term.
That frankly annoyed the hell out of me through all of this, I don't know where the rumour came from, but the minute someone thought of it and then flapped their lips (fingers) about it all the wind went right out of Antioch's sails.
The 'rumor' about deletion, from what I'm aware, came about by a Twitch stream saying that another organization would be condensed down/deleted before the end of the new year. This was the October Twitch Stream, I believe? I might be incorrect.
Clearly, this did not happen that way. While the majority of us believed this to be true - it did give 4/5 of Imperian the sense of urgency to try to ensure they weren't the one - which I think overall boosted the amount of participation in the Event.
Well, it also came out of a post made in January or something about the 'future ahead' in which they said 2 orgs would be deleted
Edit: I guess they were pretty nonspecific about it.
<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>
First off, let me just say that I'm sorry we lost an entity so many people were wrapped up in emotionally. It's never easy when a divine/admin poofs on you, even in the rare times you get a warning. As infantile as it sounds, I've retired characters because an admin left that I was particularly attached to; I realised that rping with them and building their order up was the main or only reason I logged into that character. It's hard -not- to get attached to some of the people we meet here.
As for the event, I'll admit my extreme confusion and frustration at most of it. Being a semi-newbie to Imperian itself, my part of the event consisted of 60% killing apparitions, 20% flying and watching for enemies inside Ithaqua who were apparently stealing our apparitions or bones (?), 15% rp'ing with @Dimitri or entities about how to stop Legion, and 5% dying because I thought I was clever to wyrm track to magickers in Antioch/Ithaqua who could apparently get back to their city faster than my wyrm can get to them.
If I buff Ithaqua, how much is it screwing Antioch? Isn't this part of our "pack"? Shouldn't we at least make a token effort not to alienate them, even if the city is mostly empty? Is this whole event a ploy by the entities to gain power? All of these things ran rampant through my mind.
Comments
I really give up. There are more reasons, but I'll be nice enough to not bring *that* bs up here. I'm just going to send emails about it to friends or something, since we don't care if players are emailing or IMing things outside of the game, regardless of content.
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.
I hope no one's faulting me for trying as I had >_< (aside from the Ithaquans that ICily told me to just let my city die...it's futile and to give it up) I'd have done more, but I work full time and needed some sleep...I just did my best though
I am sorry people seemed to have felt like 'one person saves Antioch' cheapened things somehow, I got that feeling from a few posts. I do understand where you're coming from at least, buuuut...was admitted this event was actually going to delete any cities. People just latched onto the idea and demanded it do that. So...I am sorry. I'd do it again, and probably will have to the next round of whatever comes, without hestitation. But I get where you're coming from.
Event went on way long, was super grindy, seems the only real way to impact the chain till we all got that suicide pact method was to let it shake off the hulks for two rounds before having enough to get the barrier up to at least nominal (I've gotten to extremely strong waiting for three rounds, and a looooot of the transparent apparitions. Kept running circles through Antioch, sewers and desert till I have 200+, then infused all at once with the 70-90 hulkings I'd manage to get by then. Had it down to a science by the third chain hitting Antioch because I had to sleep/work), and there was that matter with the entity dying at the end. I had no idea that was even another entity, truth be told. BUT, as @Sumie pointed out, in the future can implement having Entity-deaths become part of the Sect they are involved with, some gain/loss, like opening the way for a new entity to step in (since I did see that was a hinted concern, 'what happens to us now' with it being the only active Demonic sect) at some point later. Even if it's some other volunteer playing the role for the end if the actual player has already poofed, it'd be something. Change of behavior chalked up to the stresses of the RP leading to their deletion, whatever.
Major events are always going to have kinks to work out. Be it the coding of it, participation going as planned or not, pre-planned surprises or aspects of the event not going as people would've liked...best we can do is look at it as a learning experience, figure out what can be done better next time, and there's usually a next time, and move on for bigger and better.
People deciding on their own this was a city-ending event, and people in that said city despairing and agreeing with it, then giving up...that was the biggest problem with all of this for me, personally. I'll admit it put a fire under me to keep me going, but there was zero proof it was the case. But also little can be done for that when people are going to put their own spin and desires on things. Just leaves consequences for afterwards.
...realized this is getting a bit long, was an emotional trip for me a bit during all of this >_> I hope I've made a few good points though..sorry for the lengthy post. Best we can do is the best we can do, and there's always room for improvement is the TL;DR point. Let's make the next event better, and please no one left to fend for themselves...even if it was my choice to do so and will do it again if I must.
As for the event, I don't have the full picture (I turned up for the ending and got randomly mobbed by Kinsarmar and then got recruited by Khandava), but a couple of thoughts:
- I think its important to give established characters a bit of hype when they do die. I suspect people would've cared less about Esmyrsia getting smashed if it'd been a bigger send off.
- Liked that we got to decide who would die when it came to the lichs.
- Like the thematic changes to death.
- Sad we lost Lhortae because he's easily one of the toughest bosses in Ire and has some of the best(griefiest) mechanics. It takes a special kind of boss to only die twice to players in half a decade.
- Obviously, I liked the pk chaos. Do think some more things to do for the rp types while they were being defended would've been good, and would've added an additional sense of urgency.
Re Grashella saving Antioch: going to disagree with the people who said it shouldn't have been allowed. I understand their side (that Antioch is struggling and a logical org to kill if one has to die), but most of the reason to play a mud in 2017 over typical multi player games is you get to tangibly influence the direction things go. Just look at the last few posts to see how people react when they feel they lose their agency to influence something they think they should've been able to.
That frankly annoyed the hell out of me through all of this, I don't know where the rumour came from, but the minute someone thought of it and then flapped their lips (fingers) about it all the wind went right out of Antioch's sails. Org deletion is gonna be on rails, there's going to be some notice, there's going to be a very obvious announcement the day of It is going to happen exactly like Stavenn in every possible way because Stavenn is what has set the precedent for deletion from here on out. In the Twitch stream a couple days before the event Jeremy and Eoghan were adamant that no one was going to be deleted any time soon, then the event fired up, and a week went by. To watch a one-time powerhouse ally just suddenly give up was extremely irksome despite all this information to the contrary.
Yeah I outlined my IC reasons, but I neglected to flesh them out at the time due to the event being active and I didn't wanna lay bare ALL my logic (also I'm notoriously bad at explaining my thinking both IC and OOC) to prevent getting metagamed into oblivion. People wanted it to be an org deletion event because it meant that the 'looming grim reaper' feeling would go away for a little while. This playerbase is inevitably going to treat every event as a possible org destruction event - even if it is repeatedly stated in announcements, in forum posts, shows up as a note in their stockings while those are still around -until we get down to 3 orgs.
As the leader of your 'allies' it was super annoying to see your players just give up or not care because 'well, we're going to die anyway, what's the point' is not a quality I'd like to see in the people I can expect to save my frozen bacon if it really came down to it. That my irrationally rational choices to say 'no, get your own apparitions' whilst simultaneously picking through Antioch when players were either not looking or not around wasn't met with any tangible pushback? Also upsetting. Granted that was probably partly due to the feeling of futility in the org, the weird reaction to conflicting opinion in this game (ie: i'm meeting resistance, therefore i should stop and discuss it with someone else in an OOC method, and before anyone snarks me back about this: i do the same but it's more running commentary on the situation vs me and/or headsup that i'm about to do something possibly stupid) and doing so probably fed into it somehow. Basically, I wanted you guys to start turning into Cave Johnson with some goddamn lemons. I wanted you to get mad, or to at least realise that no announcement was made ANYWHERE that Antioch or any other org was going boom. Instead you folded your cards and left the table.
I would rather we just delete a side than a city. I think the game can't support the way we are going and our binary approach to any event or conflict management seems to agree with that. We turn the game in to a two side affair anyways, just at the expense of 'values-based' roleplay. We don't have the population for three sides. We don't have the PKers, especially, which creates a pretty lopsided environment where one circle completely dominates. We used to have this issue with more people, but then it was about people playing with their friends. The game needs to take a turn and I wish this event had been the way to do it. Please consider the deletion of Anti-Magick or Demonic as a circle. Demonic's actual population is deceptively low, it is basically the same 8 people every day. Anti-Magick and Magick can only fill out one of their two orgs.
If this complaint continues to ring true, I will consider going out of my way to establish a fake two circle paradigm instead. I am tired of population issues creating tremendous imbalances.
Now, I don't think the notification was so black and white as to say 'we aren't deleting one'. I recall that Eoghan took great strides last stream to insist that, if needed, they would delete an org, tears or no tears. Jeremy had said they were deleting an org by the end of the year a few streams ago. The proof was all there, we just took it IC as a collective... and Antioch's attitude didn't help.
I would like to see the end of Antioch because it has very few places to go from a narrative perspective. Years and years of events, infighting, poor leadership, etc wrote it in to a corner. The death of the Gods robbed it of a lot of purpose and players have refused every role that leaders since then have thrust upon it, aside from one. That role, by the way, was 'Killing You Guy'. Furthermore, I think that role was taken up by the necessity of being the global powerhouse it was at the time. Proof of this is that the city has since become irrelevant since the internally arranged diaspora of PKers. Maybe this has to do with the hands that held the reins after that great scattering/dispersal, but I'm not ruling anything out.
IC, my character had no reason to support Antioch. They'd refused his kindness the past four or five years (citing 'magick use'), had demonstrated a clear lack of worth to his new home, etc. Coupled with the clear historical basis for poor decisions established in his absence (see: their Legion alliance, working with Urzog), there was never any doubt that he was going to sell Antioch out and convince as many people as possible to do the exact same. Thankfully, that task did not require much effort as Ithaqua consists partially of people that the previous leadership pissed off.
I'd love to see a circle go, and I said as much about a year and a half ago (just for different reasons, but I like the new reasons too). An additional benefit, and my reason at the time was that two circles means a lot of cheese goes away eventually, and while a little cheese can be fun and S-tier players tend to like that cheese, the (three) circles are always balanced with the assumption that they are separate, and yet... it is not that infrequent for there to be "demogick" or "Team Templar plus Septus RG" and so forth.
Also... There is a very serious problem with entrenchment in orgs. This is actually IRE wide, and some people seem to be at least aware of it, whether they're stuck on solutions or not. Sometimes, it is because no one truly wants to lead. That does happen. So it would be a mistake to simply get rid of every leader that's "been there a long time".
That said, this is another area (besides PK-er distribution) where it would be really nice if admin occasionally picked up the box and shook it, or simply tried to rethink how we manage factions. One reason I do like Sarrius' idea of a shift to sects is that, with some tweaks (the one that immediately comes to mind is the current need to build very large shrine networks), sects would hopefully be very ephemeral. Sects would rise and fall. They'd have a life cycle and they'd die off, despite the best efforts of a few players to cling to life.
It would mean that despite the best efforts of a certain sort of player to maintain voluminous enemy/do not citizen lists going back RL years (even decades)... they'd just... fail. And resets would happen on many fronts. Felons would eventually get out of jail... And this game needs its felons. I will say that that does mean I'd also hope for a more critical eye on actual, sustained griefiness that is of the PK variety, because there's not really a way to do this without taking away one of the biggest tools that non top-tier PK-ers can use to "punish" players who truly are griefy, barely within the limits of what IRE will allow (which is actually quite a lot - in a word, Ahkan, and in his case, the player base failed to sufficiently sanction him as well). In short, I don't want to stop punishing players that really do deserve some sort of smackdown and who need to modify their behavior or end up effectively banished from the game, I just want to be able to trust admin to do that instead of players with personal grudges and deep-seated emotions from being directly involved (and possibly simply having a very anti-conflict mindset to begin with), and who sometimes use these tools in fairly griefy ways themselves. After all, not all griefing is PK... PK is just the most visible and theoretically the easiest to spot and police. In short, I am cautiously hopeful on that front that the cure would not be worse than the disease.
Clearly, this did not happen that way. While the majority of us believed this to be true - it did give 4/5 of Imperian the sense of urgency to try to ensure they weren't the one - which I think overall boosted the amount of participation in the Event.
Everything returns to the status quo at the end of the day. Not sure what everyone's on about with Antioch, I still see almost no one around again now, presumably since their neck isn't on the chopping block anymore.
Well, it also came out of a post made in January or something about the 'future ahead' in which they said 2 orgs would be deleted
Edit: I guess they were pretty nonspecific about it.
http://forums.imperian.com/discussion/819/the-2017-post
Specific enough, imo.
As for the event, I'll admit my extreme confusion and frustration at most of it. Being a semi-newbie to Imperian itself, my part of the event consisted of 60% killing apparitions, 20% flying and watching for enemies inside Ithaqua who were apparently stealing our apparitions or bones (?), 15% rp'ing with @Dimitri or entities about how to stop Legion, and 5% dying because I thought I was clever to wyrm track to magickers in Antioch/Ithaqua who could apparently get back to their city faster than my wyrm can get to them.
If I buff Ithaqua, how much is it screwing Antioch? Isn't this part of our "pack"? Shouldn't we at least make a token effort not to alienate them, even if the city is mostly empty? Is this whole event a ploy by the entities to gain power? All of these things ran rampant through my mind.