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Comments
In the case of orgs that don't have active patrons, we are handling these personally for requests that are very simple quality of life adjustments (think locks for doors, fixing errors, adding a name to a plaque, things of that nature).
Anything that requires actual RP to introduce will still be patron only, but this method is specifically designed to help keep the wheels turning in those cases where the patron is inactive.
For reference, this policy started about 3 weeks ago and we are just now getting caught up to date, but is something I hope will help to streamline going forward.
I appreciate the transparency, thank you.
Sure I mean I can keep dying to Mhaldor to protect shrines I can't raise, to then destroy shrines I can't destroy, which isn't really an interesting way to spend the little free time I get in the realms.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
On org rp:
I am all for there being improvements to the patron request process, since previous efforts felt like always being passed down the line. From garden, to patron, only to find out that there was no willing or interested party. This lends to a feeling that we are further punished for not being able to somehow field a factional divine from our own ranks which is a part of game meta that 99.9% of people aren't going to even notice until they're in upper leadership. Speaking from my former position at the top, the silence was deafening, and I was generally left to believe that the administration was either disinterested in helping, or maybe acknowledged the problem felt it wasn't their problem to help with.
On Eleusis:
If what you gathered from my original post was that I believe that the admin favor one faction over another, that was not my intention (though i understand that people may have argued that in the past due to personal or perceptual bias). I would argue that while the gods on the whole do not benefit from one faction winning or losing, that IRE and Achaea benefit from the conflict and excitement around those kinds of events. In essence there have to be winners and losers, victories and conflict in order for the game to feel dynamic. My intuition is volunteers are more interested in 'their' faction, simply because it's theirs and it's the one that they have invested in relationships with. My criticism was to point out that some orgs are stronger due to having active divine patronage, and while volunteering for a specific patron makes sense, if you have a divine who is open to being more than one divine, then encouraging them to serve an under served faction provides a greater sense of balance to the game. Having good and consistent divine are required for modeling the type of RP environment each city state should have. Such a lengthy absence for a place like Eleusis means that for a majority of eleusians there is no such RP culture, which makes it further difficult to field candidates who want to continue to push the story forward.
It is very disappointing that the Village lost the opportunity to have an active patron. While I was made aware of this leak, I more or less dismissed it as hearsay since there had never been an active divine in Eleusis during the entire duration of my time there. Even more disappointing that it is my understanding that someone from an opposing faction who leaked the information to begin with due to their prior ties from when they were a player character. That to me seems like an administratively punishable offense from the outside looking in, and maybe that's already occurred, but metagaming and abuse of seconds continues to be an increasing problem in the game as it pertains to live events and RP.
Other stuff:
Based off of feedback I've received about this line of discussion, I've chosen to respond to the other issues related to volunteering and Celani application with the administration directly, but for the record I'm no longer considering application for Celani (nor might I expect to continue to be considered since even talking about it seems to be a no no).
2) I think claiming that the garden tries to "balance" talismans, then limits the number of people who can own them by making everything random, doesn't actually make any sense to me. If you are limiting who can benefit from them, that's the exact opposite of trying to balance them.
3) I almost entirely refuse to partake in promos which are random, or a gambol, or a gambol inside a gambol, OR the once in every while gambol inside a gambol inside a gambol. I think this is a pretty irresponsible way to treat such a loyal player base. The promos where you get something when you buy credits (like the giftbags), or you get those humgii tickets with your purchases I'm all for, or even the direct artifact sales, bring them on. But things like globes, stockings, talisman caches where you aren't already buying something that doesn't really exist, you are just buying for a chance that you might get something useful, usually with the promise of "and more." is just kinda messed up.
Globe sales are garbage, until you buy enough. And then they are REALLY good.
(Enough being 100+)
With a small sample size, you have a tiny chance of getting a massive reward but should expect to get well below the intended value of the promotion.
The simplest way to change that is to drastically increase the bottom end and decrease the top end rewards. Rather than being able to get rewards between ~10 bound credits and a 500 credit artefact, you'd be looking at say a range of 40-50 credits (either as bound credits or an equivalently valued artefact).
I think that potentially makes globes/giftbags/etc less appealing. It is the chance of opening a globe for a 500+ credit artefact that provides some of the appeal. There'd probably be no reason to run them over just doing a straight up credit sale.
Touching on other topics I personally dislike relating to talismans/promotions:
Everything should have a tradein value. My inventory is full of shit I have no real need for, and that there is no market for, that came from promotions. Give the items an actual value corresponding to their value for the promotion and let us trade it all in if we don't want it.
Talismans aren't really fun to try to obtain. If they're going to be kept (rather than just selling the items outright as actual artefacts), there are two ways this could be massively improved:
1. Allow pieces to be converted to any other piece for the same item. If I have two of the same piece, I can switch one of them so I now have two pieces of that item instead.
2. Allow pieces to be pooled to buy a higher value piece for an item in the same set. If pieces for the lowest value item are 6 credits each, and the pieces for the highest value item are 300 credits each, I should be able to convert 50 of those low value pieces into a single piece for that high value item. This is basically talisman refining but in a reliable way; you input pieces that add up to a set value and then get a guaranteed reward that you actually want from it. The overall credit value gained is the same; it's just one 300 credit piece you actually want rather than 50 6 credit pieces nobody does.
Some of the tradein values on talisman sets no longer make sense. The almost non-existent redeem value on Death pieces sort of made sense given the promotion they were introduced in (you got the pieces as a bonus for buying credits, if I recall correctly), but doesn't make sense if it's a globes promo with caches that open for Death.
People shouldn't need to rely on the small talisman market among other players to be able to get a decent reward from the money they've spent.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
That's absolutely insane. Not sure if it's true or not, but if it is, that's taking it way too far. Why would somebody go through all that trouble?
People like @Ryx , Valory, @Isaeri , @Eleazar , @Kuz , Silvertorch and many, many others are young people who are making the Village a great place to be. I see a renewal of interest and passion. I understand things went poorly before and I don't argue that, I wasn't there and this seems to be a pretty commonly held opinion. However, I have to question how long we're meant to flagellate before being given another chance? I see a lot of passion and it bothers me that it might go to waste or remain unrewarded beyond what we as player-leaders can do to affirm it.
As to why, smear campaigns were fairly common at the time. I was by far not getting the worst of it - Ellodin and Gaia, in particular, got the real brunt. It was a very strong section of the faction that did not want to be told how to play in any fashion, including "x helps define Nature." They wanted things exactly as they wanted them, and any change that deviated from that was hostile and unwelcome.
The post from Accipter covers some good points, but let me add that Makarios has stated y'all got two chances semi-recently for a Patron. One went bad in an OOC manner where a player or series of players leaked information about a volunteer working towards one of the roles and thus tainted the whole process, and the other being the Pandora bit that apparently some IC events shifted to where she went to Ashtan over Eleusis (I have little knowledge of either of these events, so just repeating what has been said). So, it's less that things are being held against you, and more just that opportunities were lost.
The volunteers choose their roles - there's no "penance" to pay. If you want someone to fill those roles... then you need to make the org engaging and interesting enough for someone to decide that it has more pros than cons. You need to make sure the volunteer would be welcomed, encouraged, appreciated. Doesn't mean you have to agree with every little thing they do, but you do need to make sure that the people who were the root of helping chase off the previous volunteers are gone or sufficiently silenced, and that the rest are given a positive mindset about their patrons, instead of "YOU DON'T DEFINE THE REALM YOU OWN, I DO!"
I know I'm making it sound overly dramatic, and yes of course, not everyone was like that. But it was a majority rather than a minority (at the time), and it was very, very, very loud. If you dig through the Eleusis news posts, you can get a small glimpse of the time period.
I'm also super happy to discuss it with you or any current Eleusis players here or in private, because I would much rather see you guys learn from the past, move forward and succeed, rather than just flail about patronless for the rest of forever. Melodie may have moved on in a rather "burn the bridges behind me" manner, but I, the player of Melodie, absolutely would love to see you guys having a blast. It is a game, after all - that's the point of our ventures here, much as we sometimes argue ourselves in circles.
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
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
You'll be surprised at the number of supposedly 'dormant' people (or once-a-weekers) who pop out of the woodwork to vote their friends back into power or start becoming active to reinforce whatever garbage view they originally propagated way back in the day when it looks like things are going to be out of their comfort zone. Especially when it looks like there will be a new god around the corner.
I would never take 'there aren't that many of the old players around' as some sort of hope spot. They're still there, either playing as someone else or hearing about stuff OOCLY from someone who's still playing.
Regardless of who is still "in power" or not, there enough of us newer faces, secure in our positions, that we'd drown out the "old" faction that caused the original issues.
I do feel though if either of them returned, they should scrap thier orders, start fresh, and establish from the start thier desire to guide through those that have passion rather then old positions.
I've never liked the idea of people being able to pop back into the game because ""OMG MY GOD IS BACK"" and expect it all to go back to years ago.
Nature has evolved, but we -Eleusian Council- understand that while we're democratic in government we're still secondary in knowledge to Nature compared to the Gods themselves.
As far as the rest of it, while the holiday season is rough on a lot of us workers, Eleusian culture and community will improve regardless of a Divine, even if we got to pull them kicking and screaming behind us.
(Edit) I say I'm confident cause as long as I'm Hierophant, the first person that disrespected one of the Nature Gods would get a boot, into somewhere else. Ain't gonna put up with no dumb shit like that.
I've had my share of experience with the second to last the rest of my natural life.