Ramping up conflict

Iocun

Inability to harvest doesn't make so much sense for a forest-excom from a RP perspective. Being able to pick plants is no supernatural ability that requires access to some kind of mystical force. If anything, it would make more sense to prevent the gathering of sunlight energy, a sentinel summoning animals, or metamorphosis.

Aktillum

Aepas said:

As much as I do enjoy seeing discussions about things, This is an argument from years and years ago. The admin know what you all think about it, so just hold on. I'm sure it will be fixed, but only after weapons (hope)

Dude the thing is this conversation extends so far beyond Mhaldor / Eleusis forest conflict. This is about the supposed stagnicity of the PK mechanics Achaea was built on, and how a group of players, no matter what faction, always seem to get into positions of leadership through some boring emote-ritual stuff, and starts hampering the progress of faction-v-faction conflict while everyone who is genuinely interested in PK groans and rolls their eyes, or ends up joining Ashtan. Then, said group of ritualists sit around fairly defenseless (except for the few combatants who feel bad for them and prefer playing the underdog) with their thumbs up their butts when they get raid-smashed, complain about how dull PK mechanics are, and offer virtually no solutions. This has happened countless times to Mhaldor, Ashtan, Shallam, and I don't think it's ever not been that way in Eleusis, except when Rangor & Co. were highly active.

Shirszae

Aktillum, you are starting to remind me of someone else. You would not happen to be an alt, right? Also, emotes =/ boring. Except perhaps for idiots and people who for some reason dislike reading yet are playing a text-game. 

Aepas

Aktillum said:

Aepas said:

As much as I do enjoy seeing discussions about things, This is an argument from years and years ago. The admin know what you all think about it, so just hold on. I'm sure it will be fixed, but only after weapons (hope)

Dude the thing is this conversation extends so far beyond Mhaldor / Eleusis forest conflict. This is about the supposed stagnicity of the PK mechanics Achaea was built on, and how a group of players, no matter what faction, always seem to get into positions of leadership through some boring emote-ritual stuff, and starts hampering the progress of faction-v-faction conflict while everyone who is genuinely interested in PK groans and rolls their eyes, or ends up joining Ashtan. Then, said group of ritualists sit around fairly defenseless (except for the few combatants who feel bad for them and prefer playing the underdog) with their thumbs up their butts when they get raid-smashed, complain about how dull PK mechanics are, and offer virtually no solutions. This has happened countless times to Mhaldor, Ashtan, Shallam, and I don't think it's ever not been that way in Eleusis, except when Rangor & Co. were highly active.

Aaand you're wrong.

Aktillum

Shirszae said:

Aktillum, you are starting to remind me of someone else. You would not happen to be an alt, right? Also, emotes =/ boring. Except perhaps for idiots and people who for some reason dislike reading yet are playing a text-game. 

I've been playing since '01. If you think Aktillum has been my only char in those 12 years, you're hysterical, but I don't get what point you're making other than you've encountered the same opinion from nameless people before, which lends credibility to my statements.

I'm sorry, but long-winded, ritual-based emotes = boring, perhaps not to a certain section of players, but I and others tend to roll our eyes and see it as self-masturbation when someone gets on their emote high horse. Some of us play a text-game like Achaea because it offers PvP mechanics far more complex than Q-W-E-R games like League of Legends, and while reading admin-sponsored events is fun, reading self-important player rituals that are little more than circle-jerks with candles and daggers make us groan.

While normally in a larger game we could just stay the hell out of echother's way, Achaea's factions seem to become controlled by one sub-group or the other (combatants vs ritualists), which creates a huge stagnation when neither groups work together. In my experience, combatants yell at the ritualists / non-coms for being useless in city defense, and ritualists / non-com whine and cry that they just want to emote but feel a part of the game too because "not everything revolves around conflict". In a PK-mechanically conflict-driven game.

Jovolo

Red fog doesn't cover half of Achaea while simultaneously attacking anyone enemied to Mhaldor. Apples and oranges. The discussion will never get anywhere if it takes the same trend as class balancing discussions of tentacles/piety/gravehands. I don't even really know why it exists, but it's quite difficult initiating conflict with a group as hesitant as Eleusis and then serves only really as a mechanic to grief them.

Dolomar

@Aktillum, I don't really know Achaea or mechanics or factions or game politics enough to speak either way about the forestal conflict topic, but what you said about emotes and such is something I'm more familiar with. You're right, and also wrong--the cool thing about MUDs is that they can be RP centric, PK centric, PvE centric, and politically centric all at once!

Some people play for interaction, others for mechanics, and most for some combination of the two. While, again, I can't really comment on your primary arguments, throwing out points like 'emotes are dumb and you should feel dumb for doing them' (I exaggerated, sorry!) tends to turn people against your argument, well-founded and rational or not, simply because it discredits you as the speaker of it. A little consideration can go a long way in pushing your points or at least seeing them well considered!

All of that said, I've been playing MUDs for a while, and I find that I get the most enjoyment when I'm actively participating in multiple aspects of them instead of just one--PK, RP, economics, politics...it's loads of fun. Maybe instead of begrudging the fact that people who favor one over the other are the 'incrowd', an attempt might be made to diversify interests, engage those people in PvP, and in turn maybe toss them a little emote bone afterward. I don't know! Just some idle thoughts to consider.

Tvistor

My CoD team always judges me when I want to RP a civilian, so I am always reluctantly forced to take up arms against foreign boots on Islamic soil (because I'm also always forced to play OpFor because Marines look cool). It is quite tragic.

Lilley

Aktillum said:

Shirszae said:

Aktillum, you are starting to remind me of someone else. You would not happen to be an alt, right? Also, emotes =/ boring. Except perhaps for idiots and people who for some reason dislike reading yet are playing a text-game. 

I've been playing since '01. If you think Aktillum has been my only char in those 12 years, you're hysterical, but I don't get what point you're making other than you've encountered the same opinion from nameless people before, which lends credibility to my statements.

I'm sorry, but long-winded, ritual-based emotes = boring, perhaps not to a certain section of players, but I and others tend to roll our eyes and see it as self-masturbation when someone gets on their emote high horse. Some of us play a text-game like Achaea because it offers PvP mechanics far more complex than Q-W-E-R games like League of Legends, and while reading admin-sponsored events is fun, reading self-important player rituals that are little more than circle-jerks with candles and daggers make us groan.

While normally in a larger game we could just stay the hell out of echother's way, Achaea's factions seem to become controlled by one sub-group or the other (combatants vs ritualists), which creates a huge stagnation when neither groups work together. In my experience, combatants yell at the ritualists / non-coms for being useless in city defense, and ritualists / non-com whine and cry that they just want to emote but feel a part of the game too because "not everything revolves around conflict". In a PK-mechanically conflict-driven game.

I understand where you are coming from, but understand that Achaea is not centralized around it's PvP. It is POPULAR because of the combat mechanics, but the combat in game is a direct result of the Roleplay. Not everyone is expected to know how, or even want to learn how, to fight in Achaea. Each person has their strengths and their weaknesses, some more than others. But you have to understand that some people get discouraged with the complex mechanics of combat, and would much rather cultivate their creative expression through ritualism. Some people get a high from combat IG, and others get a high from the Roleplay. It's not too complicated to understand, especially if you take a breath when you get angry about it, and try to look at it through someone else's eyes.

I know that you specifically mentioned "ritualists," and it is understandable if you do not want to sit there and read a drawn out ritual. Hell, I can't sit there and listen to an hour-long lecture in real life. And you don't have to! You can skim, read it thoroughly, ignore it, pretend you are paying attention, whatever. The point is that this game is a ROLEPLAY game, our characters are just that... characters. With their own life, their beliefs, and their strengths and weaknesses. You don't expect everyone on the street to be A+ in karate, taikwondo, math, literature, painting, -ing, and talking to other people. Some people play solely for the Roleplay, and some people play solely for the combat: both evoke a certain high, and both are a general "escape from reality."

Just as the combatants roll their eyes at the ritualists on their "emote high-horse," the ritualists roll their eyes at the combatants that act like Achaea is high school and that being able to beat somebody up makes you tough and gives you some kind of status. While it is admirable, especially to those who can't do it, it gets just as annoying when a combatant walks around like they own shit as it does when a ritualist does it. Don't get mad at another person's short-comings, because their strengths make the game that much more fun, if you let them.

I do agree that there needs to be more of a balance of power between the two extremes, but that is life in general. You can only do what YOU can do... and if you don't like it, I suggest you do something about it.

Hasar

Guys. Just join Mhaldor and have fun exterming. There, problem solved!

(Give me holocaust exterm back plz, I won't go Cain? and kill 3000000 rooms flying, and not fight.)

Alrena

Hasar said:

Guys. Just join Mhaldor and have fun exterming. There, problem solved!

(Give me holocaust exterm back plz, I won't go Cain? and kill 3000000 rooms flying, and not fight.)

But if everyone joins Mhaldor, then we'd just be exterming without having anyone to fight, then it wouldn't be real confl... oh right.

Sylvance

Who wants to hear my idea for a new theft system?

Mishgul

Attack of the Daleks.

Katzchen

One bandaid fix I'd like to see is replanting reworked.

Someone explained to me how the hell it's done, and it's seriously retarded. Simplify it.

Kyrra

Replanting isn't that harsh unless you've fried every single plant in an area.

I think the costs for rejuvenating forest rooms is pretty harsh for the ice cost, and despite rooms now fixing themselves after X amount of time, 99% of the forestal community will do it right away so they can replant for harvesting.

It's pretty one sided and detrimental to forestals, and pretty much time consuming. No other sort of destruction in the game really compares or matters (city rooms slow movement, big deal).

I really do feel bad for the people who have lives, come home from work and put off whatever else they intend to do to fix things. It's a choice but most feel the obligation more than anything, and I doubt they get so much as a thank you for doing what is expected a lot of the time.

Would be really nice if there were a different avenue of conflict for the Mhaldor vs Nature crowd that inspired both sides to want to get involved.

Aktillum

Kyrra said:

Would be really nice if there were a different avenue of conflict for the Mhaldor vs Nature crowd that inspired both sides to want to get involved.

Yeah, like Icons, city raids, defending allied territories, uprooting totems, infiltrating House halls, defiling shrines, controlling sea harbors, and making the opposition want to join your side because you smash them so hard.

Now before you whip out your dislike button, as much as I enjoy racking those up, I need you to pause and think - is Achaea mechanically able to provide the kind of "conflict" you're seeking? Can you emote your way to victory? The answer is clearly no, and so I think no matter what new mechanic they put in, you're always going to find it stale because mechanically, Achaea is built on PvP warfare between factions.

As much as you want to pretend that "Achaea is not centralized around its PvP. It is POPULAR because of the combat mechanics", the truth is quite the opposite. A faction's place on the totem pole is directly based on its military strength. Maintaining Icons is a symbol of military strength. Capturing the Effigy is a symbol of military strength. Not being extermed / griefed is a symbol of military strength.

I'm not saying RP doesn't have a place in the game, and my earlier post comparing rituals to circle-jerking was just me being inflammatory. But the in-game combat is not a direct result of roleplay. Combat would exist in Achaea with or without roleplay. Achaea was a combat-focused game long before roleplay was taken seriously. Achaea used to be so incredibly OOC, yet people still enjoyed bashing eachother's faces in.

The problem of most people who focus solely on RP with little regard for PvP, is that they find the mechanics Achaea was built on to be stale and outdated because they don't pander specifically to their interests. And while they have their own avenues of deriving enjoyment from the game, such as designing clothes, or emoted rituals, they really just want to be completely left alone to enjoy those things they find precious, and anything that resembles PvP is a chore. Just admit it. It's a chore to defend your organization because you have no interest in PvP conflict.

"It's pretty one sided and detrimental to forestals, and pretty much time consuming. No other sort of destruction in the game really compares or matters"

Sure, it's one sided and unfair to forestals. It sucks they have to replant rooms with no mechanical retaliation. I don't think you're correct in saying no other sort of destruction in the game really compares. Do you realize how long it takes to replant city totems? Do you realize how expensive it is to re-raise Icons? You're looking at this through the spectacles of "people have to come home from work and fix forest rooms based on mechanics they don't find enjoyable". If Mhaldorians didn't find it enjoyable, don't you think they would cease to exterminate?

So again, the problem is stemming from one faction who enjoys instigating PK conflict has to try and goad a faction that has more non-coms than combatants into fighting them. Here's an idea; don't engage them. When Mhaldor raids Eleusis, just go into your journals. Then you never, ever have to deal with the mechanics you find so boring and stale.

And I'll also point out that nobody has actually offered a solution worth implementing, because as Eurulis puts it, "its easy to complain but hard to offer solutions". So complain away, complainers. Complain that the game doesn't cater specifically to your game-play style, complain that you want new avenues of conflict. But don't lie, you don't really want new avenues of conflict. You just want to be left alone to frolic and play and emote rituals.

Khalil

Aktillum said:

I'm sorry, but long-winded, ritual-based emotes = boring, perhaps not to a certain section of players, but I and others tend to roll our eyes and see it as self-masturbation when someone gets on their emote high horse. Some of us play a text-game like Achaea because it offers PvP mechanics far more complex than Q-W-E-R games like League of Legends, and while reading admin-sponsored events is fun, reading self-important player rituals that are little more than circle-jerks with candles and daggers make us groan.

While normally in a larger game we could just stay the hell out of echother's way, Achaea's factions seem to become controlled by one sub-group or the other (combatants vs ritualists), which creates a huge stagnation when neither groups work together. In my experience, combatants yell at the ritualists / non-coms for being useless in city defense, and ritualists / non-com whine and cry that they just want to emote but feel a part of the game too because "not everything revolves around conflict". In a PK-mechanically conflict-driven game.

I love coming home from school and hearing about this game. I love it even more when it's a topic that initially irks me, but then renews my hope that the game will someday fix itself. These sorts of comments dissuade me, however.

I would like to go on the record as stating that PvP in a text game is about as pure of a form of intellectual masturbation as you could hope to achieve. It's not a test of typing skills, or wits, or quickness. Instead, it's a test of who is better at scripting (or who paid the better scripter. My money is with Vadimuses, but I might be biased, as his system allowed my alts to actually, you know, level on their own. Novel concept for me), which is fine. But the ultimate tipping point? Das was the living example of it, in my time. Disposable income dictates who will ultimately win. 

I have my handy-dandy Vadi system, with the helpful "Hey, dumbass, you can't do that!" popups and the counters to various poisons and tricks. Neat. But I haven't wasted too much money on credits to Trans all of my subskills to get that extra 12% frost resistance, or whatever, and I sure as hell don't have any artifacts beyond Khalil's mother's blanket and a vial that I honestly don't remember getting, but have been assured that it was a freebie for buying credits that one summer, seven years ago. But trust me, I can understand the desire to min-max your character. I played EVE Online enough to know that the extra 5% can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

So, since I have a system, but I don't have artifacts, I am going to lose every single time. I would love to get into PvP, but I can't justify spending hundreds of real dollars on credits. Nor do I feel particularly compelled to negotiate opening a shop, or selling to shopkeeps, or any of the other extracurricular crap to earn gold to buy artifacts in-game. But I don't particularly care to be ranked number 1 in PvP. If that's your thing, fine. I still have a buddy that loves to go on PvP servers in Minecraft, because breaking other people's stuff really means that much to him.

But trying to claim that a game that was fundamentally designed from the onset to be a primarily roleplaying game is simply a PvP game is asinine. The fact that you've apparently been playing since near-inception would imply that you inherently know that, but perhaps not.

So, while I continue to slumber and hope that this game will shake off all of the confines that it has built up around itself, both for PvP and RP, and get back to what the game was years before I ever even started playing, the game that I was sold when I joined up and quickly realized was already gone, I hope that I have at least given you a differing viewpoint that you won't just tl;dr and resume acting like PvP is literally the only thing that matters.

Someone has to roleplay the reason for your city to hate the other city, or else it really is just as pointless as Call of Duty or Halo. Have you heard of them? They don't factor in scripting, or pay-to-win, but they still give you the joy of wrecking someone else's night.

Aktillum

What the hell version of Achaea did you used to play?

"It's not a test of typing skills, or wits, or quickness. Instead, it's a test of who is better at scripting"

Actually, it's a mixture of both. Sure, SVO changed the whole game up and now everyone can be a basic combatant. Nobody is purely automated, lots of PvP still boils down to reflexes and knowledge. Just because you paid for your system doesn't mean I can't exploit it.

"Disposable income dictates who will ultimately win."

Sure, the micro-transaction system imbalances the playing field for 1v1 combat. Personally, I don't care about combat spars. I only have a few artefacts and find much more enjoyment in group PvP, where the playing field is dictated by teamwork and communication, not disposable income.

"trying to claim that a game that was fundamentally designed from the onset to be a primarily roleplaying game is simply a PvP game is asinine."

Oh wow, you're totally right. I forgot how much fun we had roleplaying in 2001. All that talk about Xboxes, Playstations and rap battles on Ashtan CT, those were some great, fun times. I sure wish the people of today could roleplay up to the standards that Achaea was built on. Let's totally ignore how lawless Achaea used to be when it came to PK rules, and how North of Thera was pretty much an endless free-for-all.

"Someone has to roleplay the reason for your city to hate the other city"

Uh, no they don't, because the reason for cities to hate eachother is hard-coded into the game. Good hates Evil. Chaos hates Good. Forestals just wanna be left alone. Now, people roleplaying does enhance the atmosphere, but that depends on the roleplay. For example, I thought Andelas & Co. abducting Sentinels into stockrooms, loading them with afflictions and holding them hostage was pretty "evil" roleplay.

The only thing your post serves to illustrate, besides your skewered memory of the old Achaea days, is that non-combatants see PvP as a waste of money that does little else than allow the participants to stroke their e-peen. But like I said, I personally don't care about 1v1 combat and prefer to get involved in group PvP where strategy and coordination matter more.

Your references to CoD and Halo aside, I enjoy League of Legends immensely, but none of those games offer the complexity that are Achaea's combat mechanics. In League of Legends, I'm just one of 40 characters, playing the same old 30 minute map for that quick "Victory!" high. In Achaea, I'm a character, with a unique personality, fighting for my faction's ideals. So yes, there's roleplay involved, but the PvP advances that roleplay because without it, we're just sitting around emoting.

Sarapis

Aktillum said:

 But the in-game combat is not a direct result of roleplay. Combat would exist in Achaea with or without roleplay. Achaea was a combat-focused game long before roleplay was taken seriously. Achaea used to be so incredibly OOC, yet people still enjoyed bashing eachother's faces in.

For the record, I largely (if not entirely) agree with your post, though you could have stated some of it a lot more diplomatically.  

 A comment in response to the above though: Achaea was fairly OOC (not even close to as OOC as a MUD like Aardwolf or Batmud though, where you might go from bashing the Little Mermaid to bashing Metallica fans in a parking lot), and people enjoyed bashing each other's faces in, but that was also a long time ago when the options for free online games were a lot more limited than they are now. There are a -lot- of free online places to kill other people now. They might not have the complexity of Achaea's combat, but there are still a lot of options. I don't believe Achaea would survive as an on-going commercial concern without RP today (it definitely wouldn't survive without PK). Even back in the earlier days of Achaea, the RP portion of the game is what made combatants actually care about combat much of the time. People would not have fought much (or even stuck around) if we just gave them IM screennames and gave them a bunch of empty, descriptionless connected boxes to move around in and bash each other's faces in. If we removed all RP from the skills, would you even find them interesting? I we could just remove all the flavor messages from combat and give you messages like "Health -3", "+Paralysis" etc. I'm pretty sure even the most hardcore combatants would not have gotten hooked in that situation. 

I think your point about the different avenues of conflict available is a good one though: Eventually, all avenues of conflict are going to be around PK, because ultimately, the decision to employ force is the most fundamental decision you can make in a conflict. It is a unilateral decision and nothing trumps it (heh, well, except maybe issues!).

Khalil

I've attempted to participate in city defense, on this character. Since I'm in my mid-60's, and have no artefacts, I am generally one-shotted, and then someone has a nice Khalil head for a pike. Even when we coordinated, and all met up in one room, coordinated through party chat, or whatever, I still get one-shotted. I'm told that I wouldn't, if I had artefacts, but I refuse to go down that road.

But I've given up on advocating for artefacts to be taken out. I understand that it's apparently super lucrative, especially with the "great deal" that is the Iron Realms Subscription, or whatever we're calling it. There is simply too much money to be made by people with disposable incomes to remove credits and balance the game. But I bet it would make PvP a hell of a lot more enticing to new players. I was fascinated with the PvP system when I first started. I loved the idea of matching wits with another character. But then I realized that it was mainly scripted, and artefacts always won out, so I just gave up and decided to roleplay for awhile.

And as a last swing to defend roleplaying, you and I both started in a time before Babel was a thing. Even in the Mythos, despite what people try to claim now. So roleplaying does serve some purposes, yeah?

Kyrra

Lol. I come home from work and empower an entire city and sewers worth of totems. I empower totems on Nishnatoba. I maintain spark tanks. I've uprooted over 80 totems in a weekend, I've probably implanted over a thousand now.. easy to lose track when you are implanting an entire subdivision on your own. Should I mention it only takes two hours to fix the runes on every single totem in a city? Don't ever preach to me about totems.

I am thoroughly in my element and love the work.

Anyone that knows me knows I don't care that much for pvp. I don't raid or defile, but I will still drop what I'm doing to go and defend my city even if it's just me verse 8 other people. I die, so what? I took up most of history deathsight the other month when I went hunting. You embrace and go on your way.

I really ought to praise the people who actually raid, as well. They are all decent people and at any time I've had enough or didn't want to pulled into something, I sent a tell or a message and said so. Being polite and respectful (ily Cyrene) goes a hell of a long way to dealing with people and as I've said before, as long as you're not being whiny, obnoxious, threatening to issue their entire family line or goading people into continuing, they will almost always listen to you.

People get bored, they want something to do. Half the player base lives for conflict and will attempt to generate it. Most people want to be involved and participate in a group activity, and exterminations are an option for one group of people to do that. Sometimes they get defenders, sometimes they don't, they stop when they get bored and someone else has to clean up the mess. Welcome to the world of Achaea not being single player and things impacting other people.

I only care for things to be more balanced and less one sided. Look at Mhaldor before Earionduil and Thiev joined them. They were the underfed, scrawny mongrel stray that everyone kicked to the curb. They were struggling, people were quitting left and right and people were burning out trying to keep things together. Now they are on par with Ashtan and Targossas for a military front and they are pulling off galas and awesome city-wide rituals.

Forest conflict isn't going to get magically fixed because it's going to take both effort from players as well as reworking behind the scenes. The admin have already said they are working on things, but don't forget how much a minor introduced band-aid fix solution was absolutely slammed and rejected by players. There is code in place for rooms to fix themselves after a while but it doesn't help the player orgs who are unwilling to accept any sort of change.

Achaea used to be strictly RP with any OOC stuff pretty frowned upon. At least it was so during my first few years of playing.

Echald

I don't know about everything else, but I can't imagine a combat system being high in complexity is much of a good thing, at the very least as far as being a commercial concern goes. Lowest common denominator and all that.

Aktillum

Sarapis said:

though you could have stated some of it a lot more diplomatically.  

Totally. Just frustrated because this is a very old conversation that goes in circles, for years.

I'm spending too much time bashing roleplayers, because I've given people the impression that I'm anti-roleplay. I'm not, I love roleplay and Aktillum is very much a unique character to my own, IRL personality. My frustration stems from people acting like they want some new, revolutionary form of conflict, when they really don't want any conflict at all. You can't sit there and say "shrine defiling sucks, extermination sucks give us something new" when the reality is you just hate PvP in all forms, and you'd just hate the shiny new avenue.

What really irked me is when Eurulis basically said "we're allowed to complain without giving any solutions". How is that pro-active? What kind of changes do you expect if that's the mentality around here? It's already hard enough to please this particular player-base because of the nature of MUDs, and the entitlement people feel from spending money on micro-transactions. 

Khalil said:

Since I'm in my mid-60's, and have no artefacts, I am generally one-shotted

And as a last swing to defend roleplaying, you and I both started in a time before Babel was a thing. Even in the Mythos, despite what people try to claim now.

Being a dragon makes you a badass, artes or no artes. And yeah dude, I totally remember (and sorely miss) that old chaos Goddess that came before Babel. I wonder what her mythology was based on..I've always wondered why Ashtan's guards are called the "Golden Apple Corps". Hmmmm.

Khalil

Aktillum said:

And yeah dude, I totally remember (and sorely miss) that old chaos Goddess that came before Babel. I wonder what her mythology was based on..I've always wondered why Ashtan's guards are called the "Golden Apple Corps". Hmmmm.

And now you're being intentionally obtuse. I figured you knew the story, but perhaps not. Yes, we all remember Eris, and we know that she was intentionally based upon the modern interpretation of Eris, via the "Principia Discordia," published in the later half of the last century. Babel, however, was the mad ramblings of one Flair D'ischai. I know this, because Flair is Khalil's older brother. I remember when he first started roleplaying a God named Babel, and how he was Babel's prophet, and we all laughed at him like he was crazy. In character. Out of character, I thought it was neat, but figured it wouldn't go anywhere. Sure enough, just a few years later, someone mentioned Babel in passing, and it turned out that He was totally written into the game because of one roleplayer. Fancy that!

Fitz

Khalil said:

Aktillum said:

And yeah dude, I totally remember (and sorely miss) that old chaos Goddess that came before Babel. I wonder what her mythology was based on..I've always wondered why Ashtan's guards are called the "Golden Apple Corps". Hmmmm.

And now you're being intentionally obtuse. I figured you knew the story, but perhaps not. Yes, we all remember Eris, and we know that she was intentionally based upon the modern interpretation of Eris, via the "Principia Discordia," published in the later half of the last century. Babel, however, was the mad ramblings of one Flair D'ischai. I know this, because Flair is Khalil's older brother. I remember when he first started roleplaying a God named Babel, and how he was Babel's prophet, and we all laughed at him like he was crazy. In character. Out of character, I thought it was neat, but figured it wouldn't go anywhere. Sure enough, just a few years later, someone mentioned Babel in passing, and it turned out that He was totally written into the game because of one roleplayer. Fancy that!

Uh, not to be obtuse, but are you claiming that Eris, Her personal mythos, and inspiration are the only Order that was unoriginal? Cause if so....I've got some news for you...

Jurixe

I don't understand why there's a need to 'defend roleplaying' at all. The mindset that RP and combat are somehow anathema or polar opposites is a flawed one and for me, I find that the biggest problem is the continued perpetuation of this idea that you must have one without the other, or that those that are good in one must be terrible at the other, thus encouraging the RP/combat factional division. Why can you not be a combatant that gives sermons, or a ritualist that leads Icon raids?

I had a long post explaining why, but in the end for me, everything - the roleplay and the combat - combines to create a compelling story that draws people in and makes them come back again and again. Having one without the other would.be immensely dull and people should atop trying to separate them because Achaea wouldn't be what it is without either element.

You can have personal preferences as to which activities you personally enjoy and which you would rather/do abstain from, but deriding the choices of other people and acting like they are somehow second rate to your own is ridiculous from either side. These 'boring' rituals and 'uncultured' combat all have a place in Achaea, and the stigma from both sides needs to stop. Achaea is a combat-focused roleplaying game. It's not just a combat game nor is it just a game for emotes. You can play it that way if you want to, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it is not designed that way and not everyone is going to play like you. In the end, it's about telling a great story, and that wouldn't be possible without either one.

Khalil

No, Fitz. I was merely responding to the one example cited. But congrats on completely missing my point and interjecting with a waste of time.

Aktillum

@Khalil

Ah, I didn't realize precisely what you were alluding to, since your post was also a bit obtuse. Yes, some awesome stuff in Achaea has happened because the staff ran with something the player's started. Shoot, the whole Vertani event didn't go anywhere near what the admins thought it would, but they still ran with the wild, crazy things players did. I don't think a lot of players realize they can get the ball rolling on mini-events by simply emailing and coordinating with a Divine via email. YourGod@Achaea.com works for most of them. I used to try and plan all sorts of stuff with Vastar, but sadly, they're real people with real lives too, so coordinating can be difficult.

My point, despite my undiplomatic ranting, is that there exists 3 sub-groups of players in Achaea. The PKers who focus mostly on PvP, the roleplayers who focus mostly on writing rituals, and the very rare, elusive combination of both. When one of these sub-groups gets into power, they tend to make the game unenjoyable for the other group. Like I said in another post, when your city is losing a raid badly, knowledgeable combatants tend to yell at ritualists for being useless meat-shields. When ritualists get into power, the combatants tend to flock elsewhere, and the cities defenses just really suck. Think of Imyrr's Ashtan. 

Mhaldor is sort of an exception because they've always combined both.

Ashtan, with the whole Babel crew, has only recently managed to mix RP with PvP, since it's always been a "combatant" city, but Babel's crew has flavored them with RP. Shallam got blown up because the two groups could never come to terms, so the staff literally had to step in and delete everything to give them a purpose.

So when I say I hate rituals, it comes from the viewpoint based on experience that when people who focus on rituals are in power, they make the game boring for people who want to get involved in PvP conflict by trying to find "alternative" forms of conflict, that don't really exist because military action is always going to be the end-all.

@Jurixe

"Why can you not be a combatant that gives sermons, or a ritualist that leads Icon raids?"

Dude I just really, truly find sermons boring. I don't go to church IRL because it bores the hell out of me. The idea of someone preaching to me makes my skin crawl. I don't need to participate in a symbolic ceremony that supposedly brings communities closer together to feel a part of the ideology, when I can just as easily hack someone's head off and offer it to my chosen God. Not IRL, of course.

Fitz

Ah sorry, cause see I read it as you using it as an example of roleplay, and how Eris wasn't conducive to roleplay. And through the roleplay interactions of Flair, and several others backing him Babel was introduced, so we could eventually remove Eris from the pantheon. Ofcourse I was on sabbatical from Achaea from 05-09 so I don't really know everything that happened.

But to get back to your main contention about credits being needed, and trans skills being needed, and you not wanting to spend income on them. That's all well and good. There are many other ways to obtain skills in game as I'm sure you're aware. Now, there have been things that made it easier to trans stuff that have been gotten rid of, like gambling for credits. (Bad move imo, I enjoyed it and transed a skillset or two on several of my 9 characters back in the day with it.) But you could hunt for gold and buy credits in game. Double plus bonus to that, you'd also get more hit points, so you won't get one shotted in city defense. I have no defensive artifacts, and no one one shots me. And I'm a notoriously bad fighter. Just my two bits. 

Further I agree with @Jurixe. Combat and roleplay are not mutually exclusive at all. Most of the frequent fighters for all the cities also pursue lots of roleplay.

Frankly, it just looks like you're trying to be a carebear, and pass off a cop out.

Eurulis

Aktillum said:

What really irked me is when Eurulis basically said "we're allowed to complain without giving any solutions". How is that pro-active? What kind of changes do you expect if that's the mentality around here? It's already hard enough to please this particular player-base because of the nature of MUDs, and the entitlement people feel from spending money on micro-transactions.

What I -ment- is that people aren't under and obligation to come up with new solutions in order to criticize something. When you start demanding people come up with solutions, that means that people who -can't- think up a solution will either just throw something crap out there or won't comment at all. Adding crap ideas is just distracting. We want to focus on -your- idea. We want comments. We want criticism. We want them to be constructive, and quite frankly, sometimes the best move is to not make a move. There's no need to make people jump through hoops because you're tired of all the complaints. I understand the feeling, and it's frustrating. But if your idea is found to be lacking, well, sometimes you just have to put it down.

Instead, try encouraging better responses, or heck, even just ask for help. "Hey, I've seen your comments, and this is true. But I still think something needs to be done. What do you guys think?". Perhaps I simply misread the tone of your post, but the second time you asked just came across as irritated, and perhaps a bit entitled. If nobody responds, well, it sucks, but they're not required to give you ideas.

In this case, I simply believe that the best move is to not play. I feel as if the entire thing needs to be packed up and forgotten somewhere to rot. I would rather have a more generic war system where the factions can duke it out, where it's easier to figure out what's wrong due to more input, rather than the current system, which is heavily imbalanced in favour of the offense.

A little bit of imbalance is fine, but when your goal is just so blatantly wide, well, there's your problem. Add in a roleplay obligation, and the general skewed perceptions from both sides, along with everything else I've said earlier, and the entire thing's just ripe for abuse. I don't feel giving the forestal side the ability to retaliate in the same way will fix anything, as it will, at most, simply escalate the extermination raids from both sides. Which means everyone hates everyone else now.

Extermination is not a problem on it's own. Extermination is a problem when combined with the numerous other factors that are present.

Edit: Think I found what I was trying to say. Demanding that others come up with a better idea is a kind of "Shifting the burden of proof". Been a while since I studied up on that kind of thing, though.