What Happened To You Today?

Torrent

I think @Milabar was more exuding general frustration then blame any volunteer.

Adrik said:

Eleusis almost had a Divine. Someone did bad. You lost your chance at a divine.

Yes something that had nothing to do Eleusis or by anyones fault in Eleusis and because someone wanted to be an #%# then it's fine for an organization to suffer and we are just going to be peachy with. Understand things like this happen, but doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows with it.

Ygia said:

Like. If someplace like Mhaldor or Ashtan got yet another I'd kiiiinda understand it? But Targ hasn't had a stable one in ages.

Don't get me wrong, glad Targ has a new Patron. As a theology based on one is a hard game to play. Though I have been hearing from some, of all the troubles that came along with it in that time that they were without one. Eleusis has been like that for a lot longer then Targ has. A lot of people are frustrated considering how long the time is for finding new volunteers and the training of them. So it isn't a snipe at Targ getting a patron. Happy for you all, just bitter that we gotta wait again. 

Ozmatiah

Two people are starving and one person gets food, doesn't make the other less hungry, just shows them there is food.

I don't feel entitled to anything, but when Crusades, Shrine Wars and all of the things labeled patron requests (yes yes there is a new system I have no idea how good it is, but there is a rants section I've read..) are gated behind order membership which means my apathy towards the inability to participate in them shouldn't be a surprise.

While I enjoy the "we don't care because we don't have a Divine" versus the "You don't have a Divine because you don't care" at the end of the day it feels really static, so it's really become a I log in play single player Achaea and hang on to the notion of not quitting Eleusis, to go follow an active divine, like so many more established/effective players have done.

Also maybe we can work out a sweet trade deal, Cyrene gets 2 of our 3 factional classes  and get a Divine, with a third round pick.

Tahquil

I have a theory that when a volunteer graduates from Celanihood and picks Who they want to be it usually falls into line with the city they were perviously citizened. They already have background in the lore they'll need to memorise and already have ideas on how they will want to engage as this God.

It sucks that you're gonna get a bunch of advice from people when all you really wanted to do was have a bit of an entitled rant... but here's some more. Chin up, and look inwards. Don't look outwards and get jealous and dejected. Look at your citizens old and new and be ready to nuture. Not just the few that have the spark that might grow into a want to volunteer but try and instill that spark in others because you have no idea who will want to make one of the ultimate sacrifices to step up.

Milabar

I'm not faulting the volunteer, its excellent we've got another up there.

It was a general gripe after listening to it from fellow villagers.  

And I've always understood where our faction stands, but again it was simply a general gripe.

Carry on.

Vhaith

Tahquil said:

I have a theory that when a volunteer graduates from Celanihood and picks Who they want to be it usually falls into line with the city they were perviously citizened. They already have background in the lore they'll need to memorise and already have ideas on how they will want to engage as this God.

It sucks that you're gonna get a bunch of advice from people when all you really wanted to do was have a bit of an entitled rant... but here's some more. Chin up, and look inwards. Don't look outwards and get jealous and dejected. Look at your citizens old and new and be ready to nuture. Not just the few that have the spark that might grow into a want to volunteer but try and instill that spark in others because you have no idea who will want to make one of the ultimate sacrifices to step up.

As much as Vhaith enjoys Cyrene, I definitely wouldn't volunteer as a Cyrenian God.

@Minifie I 100% wanna be Sartan, but I can't be mean or like ... stoic and I'd never pull it off. Sartan can't be going around hugging people and smiling.

Ismay

Frankly, I don't know why anyone would want to be a god here anyways. Unpaid, volunteer -work-. Working for free, with little to no enjoyment, having to forever give up your chars, etc. I don't blame the playerbase for the undesirable atmosphere for new gods. It's an admin issue.

Minifie

Vhaith said:

Tahquil said:

I have a theory that when a volunteer graduates from Celanihood and picks Who they want to be it usually falls into line with the city they were perviously citizened. They already have background in the lore they'll need to memorise and already have ideas on how they will want to engage as this God.

It sucks that you're gonna get a bunch of advice from people when all you really wanted to do was have a bit of an entitled rant... but here's some more. Chin up, and look inwards. Don't look outwards and get jealous and dejected. Look at your citizens old and new and be ready to nuture. Not just the few that have the spark that might grow into a want to volunteer but try and instill that spark in others because you have no idea who will want to make one of the ultimate sacrifices to step up.

As much as Vhaith enjoys Cyrene, I definitely wouldn't volunteer as a Cyrenian God.

@Minifie I 100% wanna be Sartan, but I can't be mean or like ... stoic and I'd never pull it off. Sartan can't be going around hugging people and smiling.

Even with Dadtan praises me (on those exceptionally rare green moons) I still shit myself and sweat buckets. The man behind the god is shockingly good, summoned me today for like, 5 minutes and already hit pen to paper for newsposts/events/shit talking. I can see how much fun being a god would be, it'd be a unique experience that is akin to DMing, but I wouldn't want to be in that role. 

Pyori

Ismay said:

Frankly, I don't know why anyone would want to be a god here anyways. Unpaid, volunteer -work-. Working for free, with little to no enjoyment, having to forever give up your chars, etc. I don't blame the playerbase for the undesirable atmosphere for new gods. It's an admin issue.

This has been refuted a thousand times before. You do not give up your character if you become a god... You give it up while playing the god, sure. It would be ridiculous if you didn't. Also who says there's no enjoyment? Plenty of people like those kinda roles. You can literally make your own fun from nothing. Unless you play the game purely to bash/pk, then I guess you "won't have fun".

Accipiter

@Pyori Well it is in the collective consciousness that you can't go back so probably a big chunk of people who apply are thinking that if accepted their toons are gone.

Pyori

Except it even says that in HELP 18.8 - It's not as if it's something that's only known by word of mouth.

Keorin

This is the problem with having admin event and org support tied so heavily to IC godroles. They've said the new patron request system might help with that, and so I'll give the benefit of the doubt on that being a little better now, but we'll have to see how that plays out. Though I'll admit that after years of seeing complaints along these lines, I'm skeptical.

A godrole is an IC position, in a very big way. Gods play a major role in their orders, at the very least, and most cities have their gods play a pretty big role in their culture as well. And of course we can't just shove people into the cities that most need the help, because that'd be forcing someone to commit to a pretty lonely rp role (all godroles are) in a place and with a character that just might not excite them. As best I can tell, godroles are a fairly permanent choice, too. It's not like being a player, where if you're not having fun where you are you can just faction hop or reroll. So giving volunteers the freedom to pick where they want to be seems like a hugely necessary part of the job.

But on the other hand, it shouldn't be controversial to suggest that organisations, especially ones the size of cities that are tasked with keeping up a large degree of the game's day to day roleplay and player experience, really do need admin help sometimes. It's certainly true that players have a lot of power on their own, but it's -also- true that many bigger event ideas flat out need a god (especially if you don't have the crapton of credits needed to fully utilise player housing or get custom items made yourself), or are heavily improved by having one helping.

And this is even more true for roleplay arcs. Legitimacy is a concern, because players respond very differently to something entirely player-run, because they know that it may or may not be "real", lore-wise. City denizens can help make any event a little more special, but to my knowledge city denizens can only be animated by a city patron, outside of pretty special cases. The result is that no matter how hard players work, a city simply feels more -alive- when they have a patron, and that's huge for creating a compelling experience in that city. Right now what we have is very circular, where the cities that reliably get divine reliably have interesting rp arcs and better org development, which attract more good players, which then helps keep the city going well until a god can return.

The only real solution to this, in my mind, is that we badly need to see the IC godroles become more separated from the OOC role of supporting a city on the admin side. Even if it was in a limited way, a city having an admin assigned to help them totally on the OOC level with minor mechanical things and occasional (but reliable) denizen support would make a huge difference in letting the player-run initiatives there shine. This wouldn't remove the need for divine to help with roleplay direction and the like, but it would help player leadership do their job a lot better, and improve the average play experience for the large fraction of players that get stuck in patron-less cities and just have to watch for years as other cities get cool roleplay events, fun mechanical things, and the like.

tl;dr: the current marriage of IC godroles and OOC org support roles is bad. It means a huge fraction of the game is left in the lurch while the same few cities reliably get new gods, it makes org leadership an even more thankless task than it already is, which consistently burns out some of the most dedicated players, and a handful of other problems. It is a heavily flawed system, and it badly needs updating.

Sartan

Keorin said:

Lots

Saying this over and over again really will not make it true.  Nicola and Ictinus have stated in various threads that leaders have multiple ways to gain assistance with their event ideas and mechanical changes.

RP event ideas, parties, balls and whatever else, can be sent to RP@achaea.com or through Patron Request. There are also tools like the Delos Messenger which allows you to contact denizens via letter. If you do not have a patron, you can still use these things. Patron requests for example are reviewed multiple times a week.

Lastly, HELP PATRON REQUEST is there for leaders and explains how it can be used. Requests are addressed much faster since the new system has gone into effect and in most cases the delay in implementation is waiting on org leadership to decide on what they wish to do after the initial request is replied to.

I will add one caveat that just because a request is submitted does not mean it will be approved. Every idea is not a good idea and 9/10 things need to be tweaked, modified or fully rewritten to fit the overall org theme. This can also delay things as patrons are responsible for making these corrections in most cases.

Silas

Milabar said:

Just want to randomly state it's bullshit Eleusis got skipped again for a city that's had active Divine.  

I mean, yeah Eleusis made an ass of themselves years (literal centuries) ago, but whatever, at least we got cake, right, and its not as if we're in need of actual factional God, nah not at all. 

Good luck keeping this one around, Targossas

Oh as far as what I did today, I listened to an entire village have a deep settling of lost hope, after hearing we'd been passed over once again.  Volunteering is cool, but having to use secondary concepts in Gods ( @Aegis ) for a entire faction this long is dumb.

Can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to volunteer their time to help Eleusis. Sounds like a great place.

Keorin

Like I started by saying, this new system might be fantastic. I truly hope that everything in my last post was totally incorrect under the new system, and I look forward to being wrong.

I have a measure of skepticism, is all, when "use the RP email address or the patron request system" has been the admin line for all the years I've been paying attention, and one of the most consistent things that leaders of patron-less cities have said is how insufficient it is. And when you hear how everything's working fine for years when it clearly isn't, it's a little hard to immediately trust that now it actually is working. 

Mostly though, my post was meant as a reply to the "just make your organisation fun so that someone wants to play there" argument (which I think is some heavily circular reasoning), as well as the people saying that one city or another really deserves to get a god. I think it's more productive to talk about the structural issues that have made it so difficult not to have one. Hopefully these structural issues are largely solved under the new system, but I still think it's more useful to talk about how we can fix the underlying issues, instead of everyone telling Eleusis for the umpteenth time that it's their fault that they don't have a patron and they deserve it.

Rangor

Too many cities for the amount of volunteer gods the game produces. Bring on Ragnarok.

Vakvyr

Rangor said:

Too many cities for the amount of volunteer gods the game produces. Bring on Ragnarok.

Only if Taika Waititi runs the event.

Chubbs

I wanted to put this in quick combat questions not here... dunno how to move the post, so just gonna edit and re-post there.

In other news, after some testing, the generic Earthlord kill sequence that I've heard people recommend and deem difficult to survive (two leg prep and head prep into breaks and calcify head kill) now feels super trivially easy to survive! Have to stress test in more situations later, but initial testing was incredibly consistent. Test subject death only occurred when adding in an arm break immediately before the two leg and head break sequence, but still feels pretty easily avoidable.

Micaelis

Keorin said:

Like I started by saying, this new system might be fantastic. I truly hope that everything in my last post was totally incorrect under the new system, and I look forward to being wrong.

I have a measure of skepticism, is all, when "use the RP email address or the patron request system" has been the admin line for all the years I've been paying attention, and one of the most consistent things that leaders of patron-less cities have said is how insufficient it is. And when you hear how everything's working fine for years when it clearly isn't, it's a little hard to immediately trust that now it actually is working. 

Anecdotally I can say Targossas has used the Patronless system to great effect very recently. I submitted multiple emails (far beyond what should be a reasonable deadline as the people involved furiously edited since everyone's a critic, hmph!) and the request was approved/finalized within an hour I want to say, and we needed it within two.

I'm sure some things haven't gone people's way, either presently or historically, but I would like to think that the trend we saw during our Patronless time likely carries over to everyone else as well. If it didn't work before, I think it's working now. 

Caelan

Two days in a row, 2 auto-bashers caught.  Seriously.. don't be stupid.

Pyori

Define 'caught'

Caelan

Pyori said:

Define 'caught'

Peppered them w random affs for 3 minutes, icewalled exit(s), they just kept attacking the denizens, tumbling past the icewall when that room was clear -  under attack, and hitting denizens on the other side of the icewall while still being hit.  No words, no defense. Died, auto prayed. Today the one sat at the Cave unresponsive for 10 minutes after praying (then went to Targ, came back, hit me, and called in backup to defend them)

Pyori

Caelan said:

Pyori said:

Define 'caught'

Peppered them w random affs for 3 minutes, icewalled exit(s), they just kept attacking the denizens, tumbling past the icewall when that room was clear -  under attack, and hitting denizens on the other side of the icewall while still being hit.  No words, no defense.

Maybe they just didn't find you very threatening kappa.

Caelan

Lol.  Could be. Hell Im not even afraid of me

Iocun

Now, the question is: if you killed them and got some of their illegally-gained XP, does that mean you now have to die to the denizens they killed in order to return the stolen goods?

Minifie

Iocun said:

Now, the question is: if you killed them and got some of their illegally-gained XP, does that mean you now have to die to the denizens they killed in order to return the stolen goods?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/549878468591091722/687525846696853542/final_5e69c1974313e5001566b56b_568977.mp4

Iocun

Ok, so I made the error of entering something in Mudlet's search bar while already running something quite resource-eating in the background. Mudlet froze for 4 minutes, one of the Yggdrasil rats entered, and I came back to this: 

You are:

afflicted by a crippled left arm.

violently ill.

afflicted by horrible asthma.

afflicted with clumsiness.

losing the bond with the animal spirits.

afflicted by a crippled right arm.

wearied in body.

allergic to sunlight.

suffering from addiction.

afflicted by a crippled left leg.

extremely oily.

afflicted by a crippled right leg.

afflicted by thin blood.

paralysed.

afflicted by haemophilia.

shivering.

frozen stiff.

inspires disloyalty in those nearby.

blind.

reckless.

bleeding for 1276 health.

sprawled on the ground.

Dat thing totally riftlocked me. Would have concentrated/restored (because luckily, those things can't give confusion), but by the time I realized my position, I was dead. 

Atalkez

Has happened to me a few times, get 3-4 on me while alt tabbed or lagged our, come back to every aff in the world haha

Zenui

Got to level 100 last night, hooray. Probably going to stop worrying about grinding at this point and just focus on renown.

Minifie

HUGE thanks to @Czanthria, @Yen, @Mindshell, @Taryius, @Laytron for the help! No idea how I get higher from here, but won't stop me!

Kinilan

Czanthria cheats.