Third Black Wave: Electric Boogaloo

Atalkez

@Lenn they literally unenemied anyone that wanted to help. If they will unenemy Jinsun, I’m sure they would have you too.

Synthus

Skye said:

Atalkez said:

I get not liking what’s happening and feeling helpless, but we’ve never been helpless. We don’t do the things we need to do, largely because people don’t listen. The admins have a win condition, and we have every ability to stop it. When we don’t, shit hits the fan. 

Last night everyone was so busy trying to kill guards, we didn’t even notice what they were doing in the city. By the time we noticed it was too late. The opportunity was there for us to win, we missed it.

The guards turning against us made narrative sense. From a player pov honestly it just made things so chaotic, it was difficult to get a grasp of the situation. Like, I saw them grabbing corpses, and then they started dropping shrines. But you couldn't walk anywhere because of the guards, and you couldn't see what they were doing. And nobody mentioned they were raising Tlalala shrines until much later. By the time I tried erecting, they already got sovereignty.

Basically I'm just a dumb. But honestly with the way it was coming apart I'm not sure it'd have done more than delay the inevitable for another few minutes. as far as I can tell, their 'win' condition was probably the sovereignty, but then what was the 'lose'? They were still beating people's asses in. Would they have withdrawn just because we held the place for a little bit longer? Their advantage was still pretty clear.

I mean, considering how things played out last night and what all they brought against Cyrene, I seriously doubt they had a lose condition.

Skye

I do want to add that I do generally favour narrative sense over other things. I understand that it's so hard to tell a cohesive story when things are contingent on an unknown factor like player reactions!

The overwhelming disadvantage made sense, the loss also made sense. I honestly would've gratified as a player, but puzzled as a spectator if they suddenly withdrew just cause I or any other high ranked Order member inconvenienced them with another shrine or two for a few minutes. >_>

Lenn

@Atalkez I should rephrase that.

Because the situation that got Lenn enemied, helping Cyrene was never her intention.

It may have been different if, at the time, someone had made such a proposition to her.

However, it was brought up afterward that it slipped their mind, so by then it was too late. Totems got me killed a couple times I might have survived, and I withheld vital strategic information that I may have learned early (but also may not have, since I was acting alone and had no contact).

Zbaco

The guards turning against us particularly stung because I (and others) put so much work into that particular aspect of the city over the last year or so. To have that happen was just adding insult to injury, IMO.

Lenn

I think the problem a lot of people have with these events is no one really understands the "rules" until it's too late.

On one hand, it's great for those clever few who pick up on things, but on the other hand, it does exclude most of the playerbase.

I think it's fine as long as there's a balance with other events being very upfront about what's expected.

Veldrin

What confuses me the most is why that genesis divine could mind control the guards without Phaestus stepping in to stop it. Isn't that the IC reason to why cities should have a divine patron? To prevent other divine from screwing them over like that? Soon as Tlalaiad got involved the Cyrenian divines should have had free hands to curbstomp the rear ends out of the invaders. It mostly just makes the Gods seem incompetent in my book

Nicola

Had Tlalaiad done anything in the Cyrene invasion, for sure Neraeos, Phaestus and others would have stepped in, but Tlalaiad was never involved. Gods don't tend to weigh in on mortal affairs.

Taryius

Veldrin said:

What confuses me the most is why that genesis divine could mind control the guards without Phaestus stepping in to stop it. Isn't that the IC reason to why cities should have a divine patron? To prevent other divine from screwing them over like that? Soon as Tlalaiad got involved the Cyrenian divines should have had free hands to curbstomp the rear ends out of the invaders. It mostly just makes the Gods seem incompetent in my book

The Pantheon has a plan, sometimes they act in mysterious ways, but have faith in Their plan.

(But really, Tlalaiad did nothing there, the Tsol'teth did as His order. Just like other Divine orders have done, when Mhaldor killed Blu, a bunch of Cyrene's guards, and took sovereignty there the Gods didn't intervene, just like they didn't now.)

Veldrin

Wasn't he specifically the one that mind controlled every single guard of Cyrene? 

The one that did this?

Primal terror is all you know as the indomitable tones of The Dark Hate thunder throughout Creation, "Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! Kwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! In the name of the eternal darkness, you will all obey ME! Turn on your brethren! Turn on those you love! Slay them all! Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl..."

Lenn

The litany is a tsol'teth weapon. Depthswalkers can use it too, just not nearly as well.

Nicola

Veldrin said:

Wasn't he specifically the one that mind controlled every single guard of Cyrene? 

The one that did this?

Primal terror is all you know as the indomitable tones of The Dark Hate thunder throughout Creation, "Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! Kwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! In the name of the eternal darkness, you will all obey ME! Turn on your brethren! Turn on those you love! Slay them all! Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl..."

The Dark Hate is Ama-maalier, the Tsol'teth leader of Tlalaiad's Order. Mortal not god.

Taryius

Veldrin said:

Wasn't he specifically the one that mind controlled every single guard of Cyrene? 

The one that did this?

Primal terror is all you know as the indomitable tones of The Dark Hate thunder throughout Creation, "Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! Kwarak alshamar osang rach haahl! In the name of the eternal darkness, you will all obey ME! Turn on your brethren! Turn on those you love! Slay them all! Hwarak alshamar osang rach haahl..."

The Dark Hate is Ama-maalier, His Hand and the super big Tsol'teth bad.

Edit: GDI @Nicola keeps sniping me

Torinn

The Dark Hate is another name  for Gattan'Bahar I think

Jinos

I personally loved how things went down, because I knew the Tsol'teth were going to strike brutally. I just didn't know what they were going to do.

My jaw dropped as they turned our guards against us. It's brilliant, it's efficent, and it's the penultimate potency of a true Tsol'teth Litany.

For most of Cyrene at the time we were already prepared for something going down. We were communicating on every avenue we could. City, the former coalition clan, and a joint party with other cities.

The Tsol'teth again did the most efficent thing, and disrupted some of our communication while simultaneously sieging the city.

For those citizens out of the loop, logging in after a long break, or just trying to spectate within the city got the short end of the stick. Unfortunately it was unavoidable. It's an invasion. It's cruel and nasty, and we're all scrambling just to get a foothold to fight back.

Now, I love Cyrene and seeing it beseiged by an overwhelming opposition is crushing, but this is the first time something this big has ever happened to the city while I've been playing, and I'm ecstatic to be a part of this piece of history.

I'm also ecstatic at the prospect of getting back at the Tsol'teth by whatever means we can come up with.

I know it can be disheartening, but let's dust ourselves off, get back onto our feet, and raze the opposition until they lose the will to deal with the crazy swarm that is the people of Sapience. 

Nicola

Torinn said:

The Dark Hate is another name  for Gattan'Bahar I think

Check their honours, GB is the Secret Storm.

Veldrin

Ah, such shouts that invoke any sense of feeling just usually only belongs to Divine, hence my confusion.

Especially when mortal shouts also has their actual name and not just a title (one you even have to search for in the honors instead of just looking at the name)

Synthus

Makarios said:

@Synthus: we definitely hear you here. Unfortunately we really can't answer anything at this juncture without potentially either giving away things or influencing people's actions. After the event concludes though we'll happily revisit these concerns and explain what lead to what.

I can say everything that has happened so far has been directly influenced by player actions (the entire Cyrene invasion was plotted and implemented over the course of Wednesday). We definitely missed a couple of things like the log in though, and I agree that cave teleport could use a message. Unfortunately its typically the price we pay if we want to be responsive - we have to crank out the reactions very quickly, so occasionally things do get overlooked. We can plan out everything in advance, but typically people are less a fan of those.

@Makarios: I understand. I don't wish to give you the wrong impression, I appreciate you guys keeping an ear to the forums about these kinds of things and taking the time to revisit them after the events. I also appreciate the scale and ambition of the event, and I can only imagine all the planning, testing, and logistics that go into executing an event like this. What you guys do for the game puts it leagues and miles above and beyond others.

I can only imagine how hectic it must be working on the fly for events, especially when dealing with several players. There's a reason so many jokes exist about how a Dungeon Master's plot does not survive the first encounter with their players after all. I think I may have been a bit too critical of the admin team handling the event in that regard, for that I apologize, but I also do hope that bringing those oversights up help with future events.

If I may, I'd like to put two questions forward for consideration when the admin team revisits this.

• From a mechanics perspective, what led you guys to decide that cutting off Cyrene from the players was an option on the table?
  
  
• With so much tied to cities mechanically like banks, shops, House estates/facilities, and some tradeskill and class facilities, was there any discussion about implementing alternatives for those that couldn't be accessed at other cities?

As upsetting as this event has been, I still want to say thank you to you and the rest of the Admin team once more for everything you do. Achaea is a great game, and you guys help make that possible.

Doriel

Torinn said:

The Dark Hate is another name  for Gattan'Bahar I think

The Dark Hate is the translation of Ama-maalier, just like the Secret Storm is the translation of Gattan'Bahar

Zbaco

@Makarios or @Nicola ,

Out of curiosity, if you can disclose this - were Cyrene's guards (specifically, the stationary, non-constable types) specially buffed/augmented for this event? I ask because we so rarely see them in action - attackers tend to avoid them and go after our knights instead.

Just wondering, because they *were* incredibly effective last night, and if nothing else I can take solace in the fact that I did a reasonably effective job as Chief of Security when I reorganized them all those years ago

Nicola

@Zbaco The guards weren't changed at all, other than to be aggressive. Same damage, attacks, everything as they had before.

Shub

honours shub
Shub(male Grook)
He is 135 of 276th
He is the Confused Frogman
His strain is of 2% potency
He has begun to exhibit instability
He has been deemed a non combatant by Kaama'lier
He is considered inadequate for processing beyond standard nutritional reduction

Torinn

Lol confused frogman

Armali

Man, there's some savage Cyrene roasting going on in that post by Hycanthus.

Lenn

It's super dorky, but I want to see a whole forum thread of people making up tsol'teth honours for themselves.

Telendrieth

Just got home from some work and was peeking here before I hopped in. While I will and do respect that each individual player has different experiences in this game and around this event.. if your response to these events is along the line of "Oh well, you can just move to another city." then please kindly go subject yourself to watching "The Room" because you deserve it. 

Some players here have been investing in a city and bonds formed there for ages. For Telendrieth and I, I've been a part of Cyrene for literally thirteen damn years. If I was suddenly railroaded with "find something else" after the way I experienced the event, my answer would be "sure" as I looked for a different game. 

Zbaco

Nicola said:

@Zbaco The guards weren't changed at all, other than to be aggressive. Same damage, attacks, everything as they had before.

Thank you, that does reduce the sting a little

Tahquil

Shoulda scattered.

Synthus

Telendrieth said:

[snip] then please kindly go subject yourself to watching "The Room" because you deserve it. [snip]

"Oh hai, Ama-maark!"

Keorin

I've got a lot of feelings about all this, and I need to save my writing energy for all the IC stuff I've gotta be handling, so I'll try and keep this short.

I can definitely understand why people might be feeling frustrated about this event so far. Cities are the centre of most of our gameplay experience, and losing one is at best disorienting, and at worst just sucks. That's especially true when things can feel a little railroad-y, which they often do with things like the tsol'teth. Really, I dunno if there's much that we could have done in the moment. We knew they were after shrines, but by that point, we were having trouble just getting into the city. The warping us out at the end probably didn't help here either, though I understand that at some point, the admin can't keep humouring our endless train of incursions.

Overall though, I'm pretty excited for how things are going. I know that can ring a little hollow coming from someone in leadership positions, since we tend to get more agency during events, but I'm hoping that this will turn out to be fun for everyone. Too often in events like these can feel like they don't have serious stakes, since everyone knows things'll just go back to normal. This changes that, and it makes for a meaningful escalation over the events of the last wave.  It's an opportunity for a unique chapter in all our characters' stories, and getting to play roles that are usually pretty impossible in this game. I'm sure (or at least I hope) that at the end of this everything will go back to normal, but this gives us a chance to tell a memorable story in the meantime.

But a lot is gunna depend on how things pan out in the coming days. I don't know if the admin have anything in particular planned, or what they might be amenable to, but what comes next will really determine if it's fun and cool or boring and frustrating. Cyrenians will need something to do, that makes them feel like they've still got agency in their own stories and that we can make concrete progress towards making things better. Really, I think that one of the most potentially exciting parts of this is that it gives us a chance to come up with what happens next, outside the bounds of what's usually possible. I hope that everyone playing in Cyrene right now will do their best to help come up with ideas, and that the admin will be amenable to suggestions. It's times like these that we have the most agency to do something interesting and outside the box!