Cities

Keorin

Hashan definitely isn't functionally anti-conflict, but it's lost several key group combat leaders who were interested in pushing conflict on the world stage. That -is- a problem, and I personally suspect it has as much to do with not having many people skilled in combat -and- gung-ho about their faction and ideology. But to say that it's people avoiding pvp, even group pvp, definitely oversimplifies things.

Calira

Mathilda said:

When I was in Hashan, we would have a CWHO of 15+ but only maybe 5 of those would show up for defense. But when I moved to Targossas, our CWHO barely broke 10 but like 7 of those would easily come for fights.

What you just described are non-coms. Hashan has plenty of those, and plenty of people who are occasionally interested in fighting, but don't want to do it every single day.

Mathilda said:

In that case, the solution should be the other way around: get the anti-combatants to an anti-combatant city, and allow Hashan to finally thrive as the Night faction.

If these are the people you're referring to, then I vehemently disagree. I would -much- rather have a city of 5 combatants and 10 non-coms than 5 combatants and nobody else. Non-coms don't make a city anti-conflict just because they don't participate, or don't participate as much as other people. People don't become worthless baggage just because they're not interested in group combat.

Mathilda

Nevermind, you're right. Hashan is fine and does not need to change its attitude in anything at all.

Armali

No one said that. You're being a bit unduly sarcastic and not really arguing in good faith, @Mathilda.

Calira

Mathilda said:

Nevermind, you're right. Hashan is fine and does not need to change its attitude in anything at all.

Very helpful. No, despite what you've been saying, Hashan doesn't need to be burned to the ground. Hashan doesn't need to oust its non-coms or force people to raid when they don't want to. What Hashan needs is an identity and a purpose, which is, unfortunately, not something that will come fast or easily. If there was an easy fix then it would have been fixed ages ago.

Athroseilon

Mathilda said:

Nevermind, you're right. Hashan is fine and does not need to change its attitude in anything at all.

That you are so obsessed with your own solutions to a problem that you view any negative response to them as a wholesale denial of the problem's existence is sort of telling.

Mathilda

Now if only there was an ideology that is available for the Court of Shadows to embrace..............

There have been multitudes of soluions offered by many, many people across plenty of channels. Yet the remaining Hashani players are still more ready to blame literally everyone else -- people who left, people who have experience with building factional identity, people who are trying to build factional identity, the godmin volunteers -- instead of thinking, "hmmmmmmm, maybe we're in the wrong".

Edit: Solutions have been presented. You don't like them. So just live with the fact that Hashan will continue to be Cyrene 2 because of this.

Ahmet

Calira said:

Mathilda said:

Nevermind, you're right. Hashan is fine and does not need to change its attitude in anything at all.

Very helpful. No, despite what you've been saying, Hashan doesn't need to be burned to the ground. Hashan doesn't need to oust its non-coms or force people to raid when they don't want to. What Hashan needs is an identity and a purpose, which is, unfortunately, not something that will come fast or easily. If there was an easy fix then it would have been fixed ages ago.

Ousting non-coms and ousting people who actively oppose conflict aren't tehe same thing.

Calira

We're not laying blame on anyone, @Mathilda, not on you or anyone else who left. I'm sorry that your coup didn't work out, I'm sorry that the Darkwalker order was effectively purged by Twilight as a result, and I'm sorry that you apparently still hold a good amount of animosity towards Hashan as a result, but I assure you that this animosity is entirely one-sided.

Ahmet said:

Ousting non-coms and ousting people who actively oppose conflict aren't tehe same thing.

I agree, but Hashan does not have people like this. Nobody actively opposes conflict, at least in any open forum or channel.

Asmodron

Nazihk said:

The other thing you have to consider is that cities like Hashan that go long enough without a conflict-centered ideology behind them tend to accumulate a certain critical mass of people who are not just non-combatants, they are anti-combat in general.

These people don't resent Twilight because of a clumsy failed coup; these people resent Twilight because other factions hate Darkness and Hashan's association with Twilight brings those other factions into conflict with Hashan. They resent him because Darkness is one of the Big Three enemies of Targossas, and that causes Targossas to raid Hashan. They resent him because the old-school forestal hate for Twilight brings Hashan into conflict with the more militant members of Eleusis. 

These people would abandon Twilight in a heartbeat, not because of anything Twilight said or or did to the city, but simply because Twilight has enemies and they desperately want to avoid having enemies, because enemies inevitably lead to conflict and conflict inevitably leads to combat.

There is nothing Twilight can say or do to win these people over. There is no avenue of RP that will convince them to side with him because these people are not opposed to him for RP reasons, though they may come up with RP justifications.

These people are just flat out opposed to PvP and anything that might cause it, and there is no realistic way to overcome that opposition.

This sums it up quite nicely. Well done

Anze

I don't think any city should avoid raiding because they're going to lose. Ashtan loses all the time and we seem to have a blast. Any experience you lose comes back with just a few kills anyway. (I die a LOT.)

Athroseilon

Anze said:

I don't think any city should avoid raiding because they're going to lose. Ashtan loses all the time and we seem to have a blast. Any experience you lose comes back with just a few kills anyway.

That does limit raiding to people who are of a certain level of experience--if you're too inexperienced to get kills, offensive raids are just a ticket to low-level town. There are a lot of inexperienced Hashani right now.

Armali

Ahmet said:

Calira said:

Mathilda said:

Nevermind, you're right. Hashan is fine and does not need to change its attitude in anything at all.

Very helpful. No, despite what you've been saying, Hashan doesn't need to be burned to the ground. Hashan doesn't need to oust its non-coms or force people to raid when they don't want to. What Hashan needs is an identity and a purpose, which is, unfortunately, not something that will come fast or easily. If there was an easy fix then it would have been fixed ages ago.

Ousting non-coms and ousting people who actively oppose conflict aren't tehe same thing.

No one actively opposes conflict, though. We just don't like getting into it when we don't perceive we have a reasonable (50/50) chance of winning, by any well-reasoned metric of winning. Will gladly breathrain a group of raiders raiding another city (and I did, and so did @Calira and @Kryger and @Ajoc) if I think there's a reasonable chance of winning, wherein winning here is defined as 'getting at least one kill OR getting out alive if I'm becalmed'. @Mathilda is, however, conflating the two in her post, which is where Calira takes issue - basically she's saying that if you're a non-com, you're anti-conflict.

Jonathin

I solo defend sometimes. I'm at probably 25% success rate thanks to guards.

Mathilda

Anze said:

I don't think any city should avoid raiding because they're going to lose. Ashtan loses all the time and we seem to have a blast. Any experience you lose comes back with just a few kills anyway. (I die a LOT.)

You don't lose all the time now! In fact, Ashtan is moving up fast.

Cen

Anze said:

I don't think any city should avoid raiding because they're going to lose. Ashtan loses all the time and we seem to have a blast. Any experience you lose comes back with just a few kills anyway. (I die a LOT.)

Dying is definitely the most fun part of the game. Not raiding because you might lose is like not skiing because you might fall.

Tysandr

Skye said:

The general pattern you can expect in these threads is:
- Outsider criticizes X city
- Citizens of X city defend their state 
- Former citizen of X city chimes in saying that this is why they quit the city
- Citizens vehemently deny there is any such issue and sling mud at former citizen (or vice versa)
- Some outlier citizen tries to address some problems that the city faces
- General forum notes that such problems can only be fixed if the city as a whole is willing to make concessions with regards to certain issues (usually patron related)
- Citizens of X become rabidly defensive over their rights to do whatever they want. They want admin to do *something* but don't want to make the sacrifices necessary for that to happen. Admin give up, patron of the month goes dormant after dealing with the same issues over and over. 
- repeated ad nauseum until Shallam'd

Think we're up to step 4

Mathilda

Athroseilon said:

Anze said:

I don't think any city should avoid raiding because they're going to lose. Ashtan loses all the time and we seem to have a blast. Any experience you lose comes back with just a few kills anyway.

That does limit raiding to people who are of a certain level of experience--if you're too inexperienced to get kills, offensive raids are just a ticket to low-level town. There are a lot of inexperienced Hashani right now.

This whole post is full of misconceptions, probably and understandably due to lack of raiding experience (offense and defense).

Defending isn't some first step, with the second bring offense raiding. Do them both, and learn from them both. You don't need to be dragon (ex, Kasa and Cen), already be a PK god (ex. Erick), or have a tonne of artifacts (ex Armali, me) to do this.

Athroseilon

Mathilda said:

Defending isn't some first step, with the second bring offense raiding. Do them both, and learn from them both. You don't need to be dragon (ex, Kasa and Cen), already be a PK god (ex. Erick), or have a tonne of artifacts (ex Armali, me) to do this.

It's not a question of defending being a first step. It's a question of defending against raids not conferring massive losses of experience upon death, while attacking other cities conferring those losses. If you are not skilled enough to reliably get kills--I've participated in defending the city quite a bit and still have yet to kill someone--going on the offense is going to destroy your levelling without any reliable way of recovering those losses.

Jonathin

You don't have to be a dragon, but it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier to stomach the xp loss when you know you can make it back in like 10 minutes.

Mathilda

1% at level 110 is definitely not 10 minutes of bashing.

Jacen

I thought XP loss was capped at level 99?

Kiet

It's capped at like level 80, which makes it trivial at higher levels.

Mathilda

What I mean is, even dragons can take some time to recoup experience losses.

The overarching idea, though, is that you shouldn't let the idea of textp loss hinder your raid game. Paging @Kasa, are you even level 80 yet?

Kiet

You don't lose 1% at 110, though.

Mathilda

In a raid? I usually do!

Edit: ohh if you mean 1 death, it's not a full 1%. But...I die a lot of times that it's usually 1 or even 2% per raid.

Sobriquet

Who dragged me into this? I’d successfully ignored 350 posts

it is very interesting to read some of the comments on Hashan from the outsiders though.

Mathilda

Opinions and ideas from outsiders aren't any less valid than those from inside Hashan. Similar problems can crop up in all cities, so you'd do well to actually listen to people who have continued to provide input despite your stubbornness.

Kiet

never listen to bitter people, tho.

Mathilda

I am quite bitter, because Darkness remains to be my favorite factional idea and I am sad it got stuck with a place like Hashan.