A number of people have asked me about my departure from Eleusis, either out of their own curiosity or care for my personal well-being. While there were things about the leadership of Eleusis that were frustrating and ultimately led me to step down, a large part of my disinterest in continuing in the position has to do with the interactions that I had with several divine on behalf of seeking a patron for Eleusis, and trying to produce RP content for the Village. The opinions expressed in this post are my own, and while not everyone will agree with what I have to say, it's important for me to express my experiences because I believe they are indicative of a broader decline in the game as a whole. For context, I have played Achaea since around 2001 off and on, and have left for stretches of time. I've served in various capacities of in character leadership across Ashtan and Eleusis factions.
In recent years, I've noticed a staunch decline in interest in engaging specific factions in meaningful RP experiences as a whole. Thinking back to the old days of Achaea, each of the City-states had some active RP through-line that made sense within the context of its' faction, each exciting and engaging in a way that provided purpose and added to the meaning for the player as being a member of that faction. With the exception of Mhaldor and Ashtan who seems to be able to keep a high level of activity for their divine, I think there's a wholesale lacking of this for the other factions. The two factions that I believe have suffered the most from this lack of story development are Cyrene and Eleusis. I cannot think of a single recent RP event that highlights the true proactive RP of either faction. More specifically, Eleusis has been seemingly eliminated from consideration from the last major roleplay event, the re-emergence of the black wave, and their alliances with Hashan and Targossas.
As I took leadership in Eleusis, and while working hard to overcome the lack of directive leadership created by mismanagement by previous in game administrations and far further exacerbated by a lack of divine presence, I became aware of just how difficult it is to engage a large organization from a position of leadership. Even with efforts to push roleplay devices and with regular consultation with some of the garden, it seemed as though the garden was unwilling to do anything other than act in a consultory role. Whether this was the case or not, it seemed as though they were paying lip service to helping Eleusis while not actually seeming interested in the Village's story or promote any new RP within the Village. From my vantage, and even after having talked to several divine on the matter, it seemed the Garden were completely divested from Eleusis having any RP significance. This opinion was further solidified during world events where the divinely controled NPCs would shout derrogatory remarks about eleusis or certain villagers, and not being given an opportunity to contribute to the story in any meaningful way. When Eleusis made attempts to become involved, further remarks from NPCs about Eleusis's involvement were biting criticisms about it's lack of relevance. These types of comments only contribute to the toxic sentiments within and without, about lack of direction of the Village. Lady Pandora was the first to actually take some time to work with the Village towards fixing some of the damage done by the garden as a whole due to lack of attention and guidance. Even then, this commitment has been severed once more as Pandora moved on to patron Ashtan (a city with 2-3 active divine already).
As I considered my options for moving forward, I even considered Celanihood, trying to apply for a position (and giving the garden the benefit of the doubt) because perhaps they don't have the manpower or the right person to work with Eleusis. In addition to two RP events that I sent into the garden (who solicited these types of events in the Leadership clan) and no response was given. I sent messages to the administration for even an acknowledgment of receipt, but they couldn't be bothered to respond to any of these. Even if they outright didn't like the ideas or feel like they would fit within the theme or other ongoing storylines, a simple 'thanks or no thanks' would have gone a long way to demonstrate that they cared about the time and effort that went into putting it together. It seems that as long as the tried and true victimization narrative is alive and well, then nothing else need be done to push the RP throughline forward for Eleusis. This lends to the feeling that the garden has certain factions that it favors over others in terms of pushing roleplay forward, at the cost of other factions just 'being along for the ride'.
One such RP event that I suggested was one that put Eleusis in the seat of the antagonist (something I don't think has been seen at all in the history of Achaea), pushing forward the 'expansion of nature' throughline and giving some of the traditional antagonist factions an opportunity to be a protagonist for once. As it stands, the current tropes of 'large invading force from some far off land' or 'evil or chaos are at it again', feel unoriginal at best, and gone are the times where an individual guild/house had a sense of specific identity other than that of just being ancillary to that broader faction. It lends to a blandness that each house while stating a specific aim or goal still feels like .. general combat or non combat styled house of each faction. (At least it certainly feels that way to me.) Much of this was caused by the renaissance (but that's a different conversation altogether) as much of house lore was abandoned in lieu of thematic shifts to this new model.
I've encountered other issues with garden responsiveness that have led to an erosion of my confidence that the administration is committed to the player base. The move away from monthly or holiday events towards almost exclusively purchase-oriented events, as well as strictly content expansions that do little to enrich the general richness of the game as a whole, gives the impression that the administration is more interested in squeezing every last penny out of the playerbase rather than creating an experience that keeps the person coming back for something unique and new. The addition of numerous items whose actual in game value is arbitrary, as well as the rampant market deflation and recycling of certain talisman sets and legend deck cards shows an lack of concern for quality across the board. Numerous systems have been left obsolete or undeveloped over the years, for example the talisman market, Village Relations/feelings villages, legions, and more lend to the feeling of a game that feels bloated and clunky in certain areas, and feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities to create something meaningful to the overall game play.
I have ideas about how to change and fix a lot of these problems (which may be better left for another post), but this rant is not meant to be the complaints of an ungrateful player, so much as an opportunity for us to revisit the golden days of Achaea where every action felt like it meant something.
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The numerous talisman, cards, lootboxes and stuff that we see are pushing out new content for a short term fix without thinking about long term player happiness. There seems to be this underlying feeling that the Admin just don't care aslong as their credits bought target is hit this quarter. That hurts to say as knowing Icth, Mak and Nicola as I do just seems off, which leads me to believe this is coming from above them. We've asked, repeatedly, for tweaks to be made to talismans and the lootboxes and the answers always appear small enough to say they've done something without addressing the real problem. The new gems are a prime example as they would have been literally perfect for adding in as talisman piece drops from hunting. This constant feeling that we are no longer players as part of community but more a constant on going cash cow to be milked with shiny stuff is one I can't shake. I get that IRE is a business, but at what cost?
Also, you have no idea how fucking livid I was to see Pandora patron Ashtan. Although I'm sure there are some who would take pleasure in my frustration there.
The point i'm trying to make is that you shouldn't have to go to one of those factions to engage in a flavor of RP that doesn't suit you. Spread the wealth already!
There is a large subset of Eleusians who would love an opportunity to gain a sense of relevance within the context of Nature faction RP. The garden holding irrelevance over Eleusis' head might as well be blaming the victim.
When I initially asked about certain types of patron requests, a lot of the feedback I received was that you need a patron to do most of everything. Which then led me to seeking out a patron for the Village. When I sought out patronage on behalf of Eleusis, much of the feedback I received from specific divine was so vague that it was hard to tell who was serious about the possibility of patroning the Village at any rate. This led me to exploring Phaestus as an option for a time. In the end, it became clear that none of the potentially viable options were really interested in the undertaking to begin with, so why jerk us around and waste my time?
It is good to see that Hashan is getting some love these days. They had gone so unattended to for so long.
edit:
I always remember Achaea as having such a strong spirit of independence and community collaboration earlier, and that there are a lot of opportunities to integrate feedback from the community into creating something if only the Garden sought out mortals more readily to partner with. In some ways it leads to a steady drift from Achaea feeling like an open RP game to an on the rails adventure game where nothing meaningful happens for long stretches of time and folks are waiting around for divine to take notice the value of the work that they're doing. That could easily be done by partnering more with leadership of houses and cities, but it's something that (from what I'm seen) is simply not happening. The tangible effect of this is Achaea slipping steadily down the top muds boards, which to them leads to less new players coming on board, smaller population, less revenue, and then your older players get bored because they're fighting the same people over and over again. And cross faction fighting begins to feel like a pointless bait and kill, retaliate gank cycle.
Even for volunteers there is a right to call them out if something isn't working, even more so considering how ludicrously expensive Achaea is.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
We all know how much they do, but when someone has explored other options and getting nowhere, why not put it here? The RP side I'm not really having a say in as in Hashan we see a fair bit of Twilight so I don't have the same frustrations as Andraste does (You'd have seen this, had you stuck around) but for the other frustration I have? That is 100% down to someone in IRE who gets paid to be there and imho the billion new shiney things and steadfast refusal to address the shitstorm that are lootboxes has drained the heart from this game.
Edit - Also, who is responsible for putting the volunteers there? Why would a game that sells lootboxes at $129 EACH still have to rely on unpaid staff with very stringent entry requirements to run their game? That person no longer cares for the players.
It is the unfortunate state of being a radicalized city-state that your going to get dismissed by other Divine if you seek their patronage, instead of the Divine that literally represent your cause. Eleusis is so heavily invested in Gaia and Artemis it feels incredibly metagamey to try and abandon their patronage in favor for a more "active" Divine. It is sad that there hasn't been a Gaia or Artemis for several years, but again, IRE doesn't force volunteers to take on specific roles, the problem doesn't lie with the administrators on this.
As per ideas submitted, the helpfiles are pretty clear that you aren't guaranteed a response. I can't imagine how busy the incredibly small Achaea team is, this is why patrons take the wheel for city-based events instead of the admin. I don't think its fair to claim that shouts and banter about Eleusis is any kind of malicious, or attempting to make Eleusis insignificant when every other faction endures the same. They call them taunts for a reason.
But anyway, I'm sorry if the situation in Eleusis is getting worse, I'm not entirely convinced a patron will entirely fix your game experience, but hopefully a volunteer will come along to play Gaia or Artemis sooner rather than later, and the volunteer and faction will mesh well and breathe life in.
And I certainly wouldn't volunteer again.
Edit: I can also guarantee more than Eleusis has absolutely hammered shit onto divine, they are just the ones whom -always- cop the flack for it. I don't want to divulge because MUH SOURCES, but it is still a major problem through all orgs, some are just a small minority while others are constantly in full-brawl "fuck you, god!" mode.
It's not an RP role in any way, shape, or form. It's just a way to get the hardcoded things taken care of that can't be handled by mortals.
It could revolve around ruling council members being in unanimous agreement, or some kind of quorum in popular referendum, or whatever. Just to make sure a City Leader can't run away with a faction by themselves. But it should be possible for Cities to take care of business even if there's no active God role assigned to it as patron, honestly.
I have experienced the hardship of CL and HL multiple times. Apologists be warned, I have vastly more experience in dealing with multiple administrations and admins than you or most other people do, period. This is both a contribution to the thread and a rant.
Back in the day, I would have an open OOC dialogue with whatever patron was in the position at the time, be it via email, PT, or in messages. We shot ideas back and forth with one another with the understanding that we were co-GMs trying to make the game better and more fun for other players. I didn't get all the secrets and the admin in control of the patron was the one doing most of the creating (so that I could play too, though I would almost always give the greater, lead role to a lower-ranked member), but we did have an open dialogue with one another.
During my most recent time as both a HL and a CL before I retired, I didn't get that dialogue. I was in the dark. I was having the story told to me, rather than me being able to give suggestions because I knew the organization and the people better, having spent real life years there.
Even before I became a CL, I was HL and didn't get any scrap, couldn't make suggestions or ask for help on an idea. I couldn't even get a reponse on whether something was possible. I was ignored. It's not a good feeling to know what an organization wants or needs and not being able to do anything about it because a godmin feels the need to flex.
Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. Here, let me paste my original message again: "How much orgs need a patron to do even basic stuff is honestly an utter failing of Achaea."
The reliance of Achaea's supposedly player-run orgs on a heavily IC god role to take a leadership position in order to handle mechanical administrative tasks and changes is absurd.
They've added an org request system for stuff like this, but I've never seen a leader even hint that it's actually useful.
I consider this a failing of the game as a whole.
I think I have more power over my silly cafe than any official org has over their own space or anything within.
Edit: I would take on Gaia and just fucking zap everyone who wouldnt fall in line. Im pretty sick of the piss-ant attitudes in Eleusis. I would literally be fine being patron of a city with 1 citizen if they were zealots for Nature.
I'd be fair and drop the warning zaps but I assure you I would lag the game with a goddamn Artemisian meteor shower of zap warnings
Ultimately the garden is responsible for the RP environment of each city state. If what you're asserting is true, would you want to play a game where your org is being punished for 2-3 or more real life years for what someone or a group of people did that you never met. While I've heard they have had to put up with a lot of nonsense from past eleusians, I can't point to a single situation in the past 2-3 years where that's been the case. The ones that came up I did the best to address. (Not going to point out individuals, again, since that will take us off topic.)
I worked really hard to try to change Eleusis and appeal to the Garden that Eleusis was ready and open to working positively with them and that I wasn't going to tolerate the petty BS, singling folks out for correction as needed. (which had gone mostly undone up until i took office because the council was allowing certain people to get away with murder). The fact that despite best efforts there was radio silence on the part of the administration just demonstrates that Eleusis or Nature faction RP isn't on their priority list.
On Celani:
Firstly, I'll begin by stating for the record that delays here are typically why we have defined celani application windows. It gives the team time to discuss and look into a candidate post application without it feeling like there is a major delay between filing said application and hearing back (since most of the work on our part can be done by the end of the application window, or a few days after depending upon when we receive the application in question). There are typically a lot of red flags we watch for during that time that have historically proved that someone wouldn't be a good fit for the team, but I am not going to go into those here because I feel it would overshadow the rest of what I will be looking to convey. If the op does want to discuss what might have gone wrong in his case, I'm happy to discuss that with him in private via messages or emails.
So that leads onto the next thing that has come up: what makes someone a good fit for the team, and why are our rules so stringent when we have such a niche game already? There are a lot of small things, but the three big ones here are being a team player, being able to take criticism, and being able to keep things to yourself. I'll address each and why:
Team player: we are a very small team and a lot of work goes into projects that players will never see. This translates to often being a lot of stressful long nights come crunch time, be that events or mechanical systems. Its important that we're all able to work together, because we definitely will have those "fight me irl" moments even then.
Criticism: we all have millions of ideas. 99% of them are terrible and crash and burn along with our dreams the moment we voice them to the team. Being able to accept that and move on is vital: if a candidate lacks that they will never get through the process.
Being able to keep quiet: I'm sure this feels outdated to a lot of you, so I'm going to address it via relevant example below. See the Eleusis section for details.
To summarise however, applying outside the Celani window is never going to get you a quick response. We are very careful about who we select and do not rush this process, and that is unlikely to change.
On org rp:
Firstly, Achaea does not have a paid RP lead. This was Nicola's position prior to becoming producer, but producer is a full time job. RP direction is a collaborative process at present, though org patrons typically spearhead their particular areas of the game. Having an RP lead is always great, but it is a very hard job and those that are qualified to undertake it typically either prefer to focus on their subsection of the game, don't have the large amounts of time necessary to devote to the position, or are already paid staff with full time responsibilities.
We do agree there is room for improvement here, though. We've spent a good bit of time over the last few weeks working on smoothing out the patron request process (and the new format should benefit those patronless orgs, since they were a bit out in the cold previously). That wouldn't be known to a lot of people since the announcement was posted to the leader board so relevant parties would be sure to see it. This is an ongoing process though, and we're definitely open to ideas. I appreciate the comment regarding a more open dialogue with patrons: perhaps that is something the admin team needs to talk about, since I do tend to agree it facilitates an easier unified direction.
On sales:
Sale format is decided by IRE management, yes. We will adapt those formats to Achaea as best we can given player feedback and criticisms, but the formats themselves are unlikely to go anywhere. I will note that we do everything we can with promo releases to make them balanced: this in fact takes up the majority of the sale dev time, as we have to throw out the vast majority of ideas. I'm not going to claim we get it right every time (I can think of a couple of specific examples where we have got it wrong on the balance front), but not breaking the meta with promo releases is of paramount concern.
I will rebuff the idea that the admin's primary concern however is hitting targets. Does that matter? Absolutely, we need to keep Achaea running. Every paid member of staff currently on Achaea however could be making more working a 9 to 5. If we didn't love Achaea, we would not be working on it. Making Achaea the best it can be is our primary concern, and always has been.
On volunteers:
Volunteers will always have the choice of who they patron. That isn't up for discussion: volunteering is quite often a thankless job as it is, so we do our best to let volunteers control those aspects of their time that they can to derive the most enjoyment from their experience. This benefits players in the long term because a volunteer who isn't having fun no longer volunteers, and though I'm sure a minority will disagree: I think most of our players can agree that more gods is always better, regardless of who they patron. In Pandora's case specifically though, I will note that it was very up in the air which organisation she would patron. This is simply how player driven events transpired.
On why we still need volunteers:
Achaea is an expensive game to play, and its a reasonable assumption to make that this translates to Achaea making a lot. This assumption is also incorrect. I obviously won't disclose financial information without company management's go ahead, but suffice it to say we pay everyone we can without closing down.
On Eleusis:
I'm going to begin by saying that the administration and volunteers want every organisation to succeed. We've all heard the admin bias thrown around, but to be blunt: gods gain nothing from an organisation winning or suffer from them losing. Players gain satisfaction from beating their enemies because that's the foundation for conflict gameplay: but gods aren't players and do not derive any such enjoyment from that aspect of the game, as they do not get to partake in it. Strong orgs means more people invested in playing, and more people invested in playing means Achaea is more successful. Achaea being more successful lets us hire more staff, and more staff lets us improve Achaea easier, etc.
Concerning the event in question, this was not an admin disdain for Eleusis. The npc pcs in question have a deep loathing for Eleusis due to their ties to their polar opposites, the Tsol'[aa|dasi]. We probably could've made that clearer since its fairly obscure lore, but that's the explanation for that!
So as promised earlier, I'm going to disclose something since at this point it is a fairly open secret in certain circles as it is. Eleusis was lined up with a new patron some months ago, then the volunteer's former character was leaked along with the full details concerning their upcoming role. The volunteer felt given said information they could not take up the role, and Nicola and I agreed given the context (which is unimportant for the purposes of this discussion). Is that fair for Eleusis? Not at all. But there are attempts to get you a patron, and this is just one reason why we vet Celani so carefully and are so picky about who we select, because if we get it wrong it is the players who tend to suffer for it.
People can respond here and I'll try to check back, or to me in messages. My presence will be a little sporadic since I'm doing my best to cough up a lung at the moment, so if you want a quick response messages is probably best!
The one part that gets me is just how much everything costs. You currently have 29 Lootbox items for sale on the Website ranging from $5 to $635. Every single one of those gives no guarantee of what you are actually getting, it's all pure luck. Six Hundred Dollars! There are two standard Credit Packages over $1000.
If you are not making money from this over and above just making sure bills get paid there seems something wrong. Honest question, have you done any research on where the line could be that reduced cost of Credits / Items could lead to more sales?
I know setting a standard on the economy credit pricing has been denied multiple times, but I think continuing to hold this stance is detrimental to the long term options for people. Bound credits don’t do anything to get all these promotion items, and the rotation of the Delos shop (plus the increased price on items that ARE put there) still mean more and more waiting for items that exist, for no other reason than scarcity it seems. Someone needs to bite the bullet here, and it can’t continue being the players asked to do it.
Edit: That last bit came across more rude than I meant it to. I’m firmly on the side of spending money on the game. I think I spent something like $1700 in September alone. I just find the concept of denying a customer who is willing to pay the option to even do that incredulous, and that’s what happens with all of the currency layers we have now.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
One thing I will say- there's a fairly good bit of wisdom I like that states that if you want to get the true measure of a person, see how they treat people they have authority over, not people who are their equals, or people they have to pay lip service to.
In Achaea, I think there is no better barometer than how a faction treats the people it fights again. I'm not accusing you or Eleusis of anything in particular; consider, for your own sake, if you'd like, your own attitudes and what you've heard people in that faction say about those that rub them the wrong way. Those they are in an antagonistic relationship with.
I've personally gotten some pretty intense OOC comments from Eleusians lately. That's in itself fine, Mhaldor and Eleusis have a contentious relationship that leads itself to moments of stress. If that's just solely about myself as a single person, no problem. But if you look into the behaviours, attitudes, and comments that you've seen, and you notice that perhaps they border on the kind of thing that no one would possibly want to endure, particularly as a volunteer trying to help people with that attitude, maybe Eleusis has not changed as much as you seem to think it has.
You know your faction much, much better than I do, at the end of the day. I have no idea how different it is now, compared to how it was before. But you might be able to gauge that accurately.
That said, I was Eleusian for about... 7-8 months during that particular period people refer to when talking about Eleusis and its behaviors towards its admin. I was not present for Artemis (I had gone to Mhaldor by then) nor her interactions with Gaia, but I was present for when Gaia was the sole Patron for the city and its (previous) Houses. While I had my own motivations for going to Eleusis, I took my time in my selection, speaking with Rangor, Penwize, Ellodin, Yae, and a few others about being a citizen. Ellodin was the only who gave me any kind of warning of what to expect, but despite that, I decided to take a chance and make the plunge.
And at first, it was great! Probably the first one to two months were quite exciting, I met a lot of people, I really pushed into (group) combat hard for the first time, I got exposed to different roleplay and culture. It was pretty exciting.
Then Ashadra started playing again, and between her and a few other voices who thought like her, that eventually drove hoards of people into a fever pitch, all of that changed. People started to steadily watch my every movement, who I was with, and questioning me. Because I was friendly with Gaia (who had also given me a small push to join), and I watched her release of the Viridian Charter among many many other new things she added, and supported her, people also took to claiming favoritism (... except I was Nereian, so, yeah). When Gaia got branded by Cresil, and I watched her take it graciously (this was shortly after the Eleusis vs Mhaldor war), and the amount of outrage people had against HER, not against Cresil, absolutely blew my mind. People were bringing up the old old old event about Gaia going "crazy" (back before events had the standards they do now) due to Twilight and how we can't trust Gaia or anything she says because of that event having taken place, and we need to rise up and tell the GODDESS OF NATURE ITSELF what Nature means and we'll decide how Nature is to be represented. You cannot make this shit up.
The mud slinging on the news boards, the building drama, people going crazy when Logistics was branded as a traitor, it just all got so much worse as the months dragged on. The amount of both IC and OOC bitterness aimed at me for being supportive of Gaia and daring to have different opinions was surprising, and eventually, I had enough, made some plans, and off to Mhaldor I went. I later found out, OOCly, that Eleusians had been hiring Hashani serpents to spy on me, take things I said out loud, and twist them a bit to send anonymous letters to the then-Speaker and leader of the Sylvans (Ravien and Ainia, respectively) in an attempt to see me ousted. Who knows what else happened that I still don't know about.
Suffice to say, it was an extremely toxic experience that taught me the standards I should have for my fellow peers and whom I play with. It also made me genuinely appreciate Mhaldor and stick it out, despite the wild ups and downs that course has led me down.
Should the admin hold that period of time against Eleusis forever? Of course not. And it's clear they don't. But instead of blaming the admin, Eleusis should work on bettering their city and the kind of people they allow to represent you, both roleplay-wise, combat wise, and attitude wise. I think some improvements have been made, but from some of the things I hear are messaged to Mhaldorians just for playing our role as the bad guys, there remains plenty of room for improvement.
Also, don't take anything I said above as a slight to you, or current Eleusis. I'm just offering a first-hand story as someone who was there.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
B ) I would not be a good team player for the Divine, but would make one sick ass Gaia. Think hellfire and dire consequences...like a Green Sartan.
C) Eleusis has the same core that ran other divine off, and they are still actively fighting ANY change brought to Eleusis. Some now do it through proxies, but they are very much still there. One saving grace is they seemed to slowly be getting outnumbered.
D) My biggest beef w the game is what @Sobriquet and @Antidas mentioned. If I knew I would actually get something from a promo that I wanted (even if cards meant after you buy 10 you get the rare or that I could buy them for gold IG) I would be spending cash. But when I buy promo spins (because the website said "vastly upgraded prize list") and get 6 consecutive Bound Credits for 11, I feel cheated and makes the game feel like a money grab. Especially when one of the few times I did a free spin I got a rare mineral and the next I got 45 bound credits. Free.
That is not the fault of the admin behind the scenes, they would be doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, not out of any kind of obligation. There are so few actual admin and so much always going on in just a single organization that those requests are just left alone.
I probably bugged the hell out of Nicola asking questions about it while the patron was MIA (dormant) so she explained how it worked.
As a side note, I found an email chain with an admin dating back to 2010, so that was going on at least up until then.