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Should we destroy all orgs and have players rebuild following a cataclysmic event?

edited September 2015 in New Ideas
After reading a certain thread, I thought it would be interesting to see an actual poll. Should we destroy all of our old orgs and place all circle members into a small towne setting and allow them to rebuild their empires into the city-states and sponsored guilds that they desire? All player directed and admin supported throughout the entire process. When I read the originating thread I almost started drooling at the thought of it. What do you think? Discuss below the details that you think would make it work - or the reasons why it would not.

Comments

  • edited September 2015
    Yeah, and use Antioch as the test bed as was suggested.  And, honestly, Antioch is in great shape so no one will be too worried about it being a disaster - that said I think when you really need something like this is in a situation where an org is sort of limping along, stagnant, with a few key players holding onto power/position for dear life.  It's actually more of a problem when a game gets slightly bigger than we are, and orgs never get a chance to "die down" gracefully so that some great new people can eventually come along and breathe new life into them.  I mean, I would be all for admin finding a reason to do this every so often in general.  It's dangerous out there!
  • edited September 2015
    I know there were some differing opinions on the original thread. I missed the conversation as I was travelling for work. But my opinion is 100% this will spike population and enjoyment immediately, and "getting in" on the ground floor would help returning and new players stay around.
  • IniarIniar Australia
    No because...

    there'll be a group of middle aged women who click together and have fun
    there'll be a group of PK hungry monsters
    there'll be a group of persons who will fight the good fite good fite

    Tada.

    :D
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • There of plenty of players who care barely run the orgs handed to them. I would be terrified of what they'd come up with when given full reign.


  • And the nays have it! Even if a bunch more people said yes, looks like the support isn't enough. Would have to be pretty lopsided to petition for it haha.

    Curiosity satisfied. Interesting idea though.
  • edited September 2015
    Claudius said:
    And the nays have it! Even if a bunch more people said yes, looks like the support isn't enough. Would have to be pretty lopsided to petition for it haha. Curiosity satisfied. Interesting idea though.
    Maybe on this one.  Other admin helpers mentioned repeatedly in the other thread that Jeremy is a bit gunshy on blowing stuff up (or basically, forcing players to start over with orgs - and I'm sure the reason would be "because it really is a big decision").  That said, I really do wonder what the existing player base at the time would have said if Jeremy had said "yeah, I might maybe possibly consider ditching XP loss if you think it's okay" instead of "I have thought about this for awhile and I am ditching XP loss" (there's a whole thread and everything and it's kind of interesting).  I am pretty sure a lot of them would have thrown an absolute fit if it had been posed as a question, to be honest, and roundly shot down if it had come from a player, because I've been around MUD players for a good while now.  Sometimes, great, sweeping changes that are great for the game have to be decreed from the very top - in hopes that they're making the right decision even though it might be wildly unpopular with many of their entrenched "power players".  Something like this, there is always the chance that he could consider it at length, who knows, maybe even a year or two... or more, and decide "yeah, I've been thinking about this for awhile and I'm going to take the risk of blowing up some orgs" (especially if some seem to have stagnated/bloated/have entrenched power cliques).  
  • I'd like to destroy Antioch and Ithaqua and rebuild something combined. Ithaqua's kind of a crappy ghost town and it's been that way forever, and Antioch's got the problem where the whole anti-magick thing is sort of freaking pointless now. A lot of our population wasn't even alive before the death of the Gods, so there's no attachment there and there's basically nothing to drive any kind of anti-magick idea. You know why we don't use magick now? Because the game punishes us for doing it. It's entirely a metagame consideration and nobody even bothers to pretend otherwise anymore. 

    I think that combining the organizations under a new name would probably be the best bet to avoid hard feelings, and I think that doing it would be a great way to handle the sort of "Well, now what?" feeling that the city of the gods has now that there are no gods. That's part of the reason why we tried to team up with Urzog.

    Probably don't need to blow them ALL up, but I'd like to blow up two of them.


    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • Practically speaking whenever you "blow up" an org you loose the work that went into that org -- the rooms, mobs, quests, coding, and story.  Something the size of a city would be months of discarded work time (spread out over years).  Unless there is something amazing in line to replace all that with, blowing up things can feel like losing years of work for a few days of excitement.  
  • Dec said:
    Practically speaking whenever you "blow up" an org you loose the work that went into that org -- the rooms, mobs, quests, coding, and story. 

    That is true.

    There are two things that need to be taken into consideration, though.

    The first is that keeping something is only important if that something has value and code/rooms/mobs/quests/stories have no intrinsic value. An ugly gold ring that never gets worn is still made of gold, but a 20 room inn that never gets used is worthless. A 30 room village that raises player engagement/involvement is more valuable than 200 rooms of closed off ghost town.

    The second is that stories end and that's okay. It is their nature. Stories are meant to end. If a city is overrun by the Horde or blown up, you're not throwing that city's story away. You're just writing "The End" on the last page and closing the book. That's a good thing, because it means you get to start another one. Antioch's story has been going on for 10+ years now. It's outlived the Gods it once served and any semblance of a real purpose along with them. It's okay to close the book on it. 

    "On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

  • IniarIniar Australia
    I agree w the sentiment of quality over quantity. Stories should also be allowed to end. Seen 'Neverending Story'? Even that has an end.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • IniarIniar Australia
    Wysrias said:

    There of plenty of players who care barely run the orgs handed to them. I would be terrified of what they'd come up with when given full reign.

    Rein.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • MenochMenoch Raleigh, NC, USA
    edited October 2015
    Iniar said:
    No because...

    there'll be a group of middle aged women who click together and have fun
    there'll be a group of PK hungry monsters
    there'll be a group of persons who will fight the good fite good fite

    Tada.

    :D


    How's this different from the status quo again?

    E: Going further, is it really that difficult to save a backup of the world as it is now? Oh hey we were totes wrong and it destroyed the game's activity levels? Let's do the time warp agaaaaaaain

    E2: Edited messed up the quote box? But it still appears correct when posting... let's blow up the forums too, while we're at it.
  • IniarIniar Australia
    edited October 2015
    Menoch said:
    Iniar said:
    No because...

    there'll be a group of middle aged women who click together and have fun
    there'll be a group of PK hungry monsters
    there'll be a group of persons who will fight the good fite good fite

    Tada.

    :D

    How's this different from the status quo again?
    That was the point :S
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • edited October 2015
    Iniar said:
    Menoch said:
    Iniar said:
    No because...

    there'll be a group of middle aged women who click together and have fun
    there'll be a group of PK hungry monsters
    there'll be a group of persons who will fight the good fite good fite

    Tada.

    :D

    How's this different from the status quo again?

    Iniar said:  That was the point :S




    I wasn't totally sure where you were going with this at first, but player clumping really does seem to be a persistent problem in MUDs, or really, the clumping isn't a problem, but the way it plays out is.  I would love to see at least three orgs that are full of "PK hungry monsters" (so three "clumps") and basically nothing else.  Make a fourth faction if you need to so we don't lose the "middle aged women" group as players (hey, wait, I am a middle aged woman) - although, honestly, at one time I thought having an org that was essentially neutral in all but name was a great idea, I've become more and more leery of catering to anyone who isn't at least "pretty interested" in PK, because I've noticed across MUDs that those players tend to not only be disinterested in PK and want to go quietly go do their own thing, but have an entire agenda of how a game should look and feel that runs counter to everything I love about how Imperian looks and feels.  Then again, we probably need them, at least for the foreseeable future.  Or game looks too empty.

    But yeah, the problem seems to be, when you have significant numbers of people who want to play totally different games within the same org, Septus won't even entertain coming to your org, and Eldreth leaves.  We're sort of lucky that demonic is on an upswing right now (because yay, people to play with/fight), but even part of demonic seems to lean heavily towards not being particularly PK friendly - not so long ago we picked up a couple of people for the infamous "omg, you raided and then WE got raided, the horror, you are disfavoured" thing.  Long term, any org is susceptible to that kind of dynamic, and the people who like to PK are going to tend to clump in one org where they feel welcomed and supported (and then not have anyone to fight).  
  • I don't know when this alleged even in demonic happened, but right now anyone who raids Antioch receives Alesei's favor.
  • Well, hey, maybe that's part of why demonic is having an upswing in talented PK-ers.  That is behavior that is going to tend to support them and make them feel welcome ;)  
  • Well, taking a quick look at the recent logs of Khandava, we're generally pretty generous on handing out CFs on things that help Khandava, be it PK-related or no (or just indirectly related, or something):

    2015/09/29 03:35:34 - Caelya favoured Willoughby for: Putting her eyes and ears to good use, benefiting Khandava and Stavenn both. Stay vigilant.

    2015/09/30 13:27:47 - Kanthari favoured Mereis for: Her glorious return was full of fanfare. Also murder. There was that.

    2015/10/01 13:27:17 - Aleutia favoured Skye for: Aiding with ferrying commodities from the townes to the council.


    currently tentatively active
    (may vanish for periods of time)
  • Iniar said:
    No because...

    there'll be a group of middle aged women who click together and have fun
    there'll be a group of PK hungry monsters
    there'll be a group of persons who will fight the good fite good fite

    Tada.

    :D
    This. Summarizes. Perfectly.
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