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  • Mathilda said:
    I always did find it hilarious that you can basically flip Twilight as a Hashani and actually be praised for it.

    edit: 'hilarious' = 'hilariously terrible'
    The reaction is largely negative. Hashan tolerates freedom of thought, but it does demand respect of its Patron. And not every city needs to be, or even should be, a theocracy.
  • See, that's where the disconnect is. You're right that not every city needs to be a theocracy in every sense of the word. And officially, at least, Hashan 'respects' Twilight. But this 'respect' is more in the sense of "Yeah, we'll tolerate you because there's literally no other choice." It's terrible. I don't blame at all that Twilight keeps going dormant. Hashan has a horrid track record with how it treats its volunteers.

    You don't have to be a theocracy. But you do have to embrace the factional identity you were meant to be -- or form a new one, if you so wish, but be consistent about it.
     <3 
  • HataruHataru Midwest USA
    Hashan, as evidenced in this thread, has a real problem understanding the difference between a theocracy (Mhaldor/Sartan and Targossas/Bloodsworn) and a guiding principal you don't have to personally worship the divine of but understand and respect its relationship to your city (Ashtan/Chaos Court). No one, literally no one, is saying Hashan should be a rigid theocracy.
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Melodie says, "Get rekt scrubbbbb."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): You say, "Scrubbbssss."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Trey says, "Austere was hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, apparently."
  • I gotta be honest, at this point, it doesn't even sound like Hashani players know what they want.

    What is it you're looking for? My opinion doesn't matter, since I don't play there. We've heard tons and tons aboit what Hashan doesn't want, what Hashan isn't/shouldn't be, so: what do you, as players, feel you need to make Hashan the place you want it to be? 

    Jacen seems to want a light nuke, if I understand correctly? Not sure how that'd work, but okay. It's something. Everyone else who plays there- are you arguing everything's fine and nothing needs to change, or are you looking for something from the admins?
  • Shall we call it the Near-Shallam index?
    "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

  • Reyson said:

    Jacen seems to want a light nuke, if I understand correctly?
    I don't necessarily want a light nuke, I was just saying I wouldn't be opposed to one, if it fixes the problem. 

    My current best case scenario would be the City of Darkness.

    Darkness is the one true reality, the unbiased core of everything. The Bloodsworn, Sartan, the Nature goddesses, etc are all either deceiving their followers, or are blind to the true nature of things. Its Hashan's job to reveal Darkness to those followers, to subvert their attempts to impose false ideologies on the rest of Sapience. Nature, Good, and Evil are all perversions of the true reality, they're all needless impositions that prevent us from realizing our true nature. Chaos is a different beast, the ruin of everything. They must be stopped because they can prevent us from achieving our goals.

    Twilight and Ourania fit well under that umbrella, I think, though the secrecy/deception of Twilight's realm should either be filtered out, or focused entirely externally, never to be used within Hashan. That ought to help foster a lot more trust betweek the Darkwalkers and Hashan.

    Other tidbits, Alchemy and Astronomy are both considered the chief portals through which we discern information about Darkness. Think Achaean quantum physics.

    Maybe the Wellspring is a font of Dark power. A Darkfire nuke, or something. Something to learn about Darkness from.

    --
    That's a rough draft of my thoughts, probably lots of holes to consider, but at least it something.


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  • HataruHataru Midwest USA
    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
    Excuse you I'm just here to remind people that Hashan used to not be this way. Excuse. You. You know, WE WERE ENGAGED WHEN I WAS HASHANI, SKYE.
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Melodie says, "Get rekt scrubbbbb."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): You say, "Scrubbbssss."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Trey says, "Austere was hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, apparently."
  • Hataru said:
    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
    Excuse you I'm just here to remind people that Hashan used to not be this way. Excuse. You. You know, WE WERE ENGAGED WHEN I WAS HASHANI, SKYE.
    I just wanted to say .. And I don't know why, but this made me lol. Thanks @Hataru & @Skye <3
  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    edited October 2017
    I've always envisioned Darkies to be that person you see every day bagging your groceries or shelving your books, except that they're filing all this information away and getting to know you personally (but not necessarily sexually as the Darkies of old inevitably all resorted to), and then funneling it back to the unseen faces behind the curtain. They don't have to do anything, they don't have to dramatically demonstrate overtly insidious behaviour or wax philosophical or theological rubbish. They're just people who get involved in your lives so that nothing actually remains secret, they get into other cities too and just be perfectly normal citizens except for that thing where they're just taking notes of everyone. That's how they get to you. 

    A big problem with Hashan is that the Darkie path has always been associated with the long con. Ideally you would give the city a particular 'face', like the whole pursuit of knowledge/alchemical experiments/astronomy whatsits, and then subtly indoctrinate and let players into the 'fold' as they progress. 

    Unfortunately the nature of the game is such that the long con doesn't work any more than it does tedious and time-consuming house requirements. Eventually, as people slack on their involvement in the city and would rather just stand around at Crossroads swapping saliva and finding potential saliva swap-ees, you can't find people suitable for bringing into the fold. They don't want there to be a 'behind the curtains' cabal anymore because that (potentially) gets in the way of their bodily fluid exchanges (Note: It doesn't) and being let into the fold requires work. God forbid there be any sort of work or contribution involved while being in a city. The mask becomes the reality and that's how the city dies or becomes wildly successful (like old Ashtan under the "Chaos = Freedom" banner).

    The current player culture, unfortunately, does not allow for subtlety, you either have to leap with both legs or not at all :/ 


  • So...Shallam it, is what you're saying.
     <3 
  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    edited October 2017
    You could potentially destroy Hashan as a whole and still not make a dent on the Darkwalker agenda if the players and God were so inclined. 

    To be honest, I think the most epic event would be for half an Order to reveal themselves to actually be Darkie in spite of their Oaths and corrupt their patron with powerz of darkness, potentially overthrowing a city or Order (at least for a time). It would be like Superior Spiderman kind of epic. I like Superior Spiderman. 


  • I dunno, I don't buy into this 'the playerbase has gotten worse!!' thing, it's just oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg, imo. Hashan might've gotten worse, for sure, but a lot of the best players I've met have been relatively new to Achaea.
  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    edited October 2017
    They only stay good if the city engages them though, they either go with the flow and start slacking or move to another city otherwise. And the city itself isn't a sentient being per se, it's made up of other players whose continued interaction and efforts at retention directly correlate with wellbeing and activity of the city. You can't exclude the playerbase from the equation even if it is the existing population. Because even for existing citizens, after a while they can just get tired of the city's shit and quit. 


  • I mean Hashan's playerbase definitely got worse, but I'm more objecting to you making it sound like it's worse across the board!
  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    But I was talking specifically in context of Hashan. :/ calm your tits, your city is fine. Geez. 


  • But if the playerbase overall is fine, then Hashan's not hopeless! The problem is that the people in Hashan have to realize that they have to do something to bring in the other, actual quality new players the game's got.
  • Two things: first, people are overthinking factionalism in Hashan.  @Rangor made a really good point about @Neraeos - you don't necessarily need a philosophy as such to be a great faction.  You don't need to be communism, or capitalism or whatever - you can just be The Red Team, provided that the Red Team has a cool and interesting identity.  If, as the person behind your characters, you think about all the factions this way roleplay actually becomes a lot easier and more sensible.  Darkness should, for the most part, be a set of tools and tropes that Dark-aligned characters can use to advance the interests of Team Darkness.  The philosophy of Darkness is great for rituals and RP and what-have-you, but let's remember: Darkness claims to have the secret knowledge that unlocks the universe.  Are people really expecting that if you get to OR8, an imaginary sect in a text game will reveal the truth of the universe to them?  Just jump in and go with it. 

    Second, the one thing that Darkness and @Twilight need to remember once and for all is this: no shitting where you eat.  As a player with a huge interest in there being as many great factions as possible, I was incredibly disappointed to see that the Darkies were playing aggressive politics in Hashan again.  People forget how soiled and hopeless the Darkwalker brand was once Original!Twilight went dormant for x hundred years.  You couldn't RP because everyone immediately assumed you would fuck them.  "Let's be friends!" ("Haaaaa, I'm not falling for that, I know how you people go!"), "Here's some information I found" ("Haaaaaaaa, you're all such liars"), "I'd like to run for office, be a secretary, whatever"  ("Haaaaaaaaaa, and then find out you betrayed me two minutes later?").  Darkies in Hashan have so many ridiculous RP advantages - you don't even need to play politics.  You ARE the city.  It doesn't really matter if an Aegean or an Ouranian or a Sartai or whoever is Seneschal or Regent.  Control should be spiritual rather than temporal.  It's... demeaning for Twilight and His order to play politics in Hashan - because sometimes you lose.  The only winning move is not to play.  The Patron has a dozen different opportunities to weave themselves into the fabric of a city and that's how they "control" things. 

    Way back when, Keresis tried to boss Mhaldor around and @Khoraji was Tyrannus, and he refused to comply on CT, and basically said This is Mhaldor, it's Sartan's city, and it always will be.  And every single Mhaldorian on CT replied with "Hail Sartan, Hail Tyrannus" (or similar) - no co-ordination, just instinct - because of course it was.  Mhaldor was Sartan, everyone knew it.  (It was pretty fucking cool).  And yes, that's easier with a dictatorship but it's not something you achieve by winning an election and getting a majority on the city council.  It's a long term, subtle, roleplay based move. 

    Darkness is so potentially cool, it's a shame when it's done badly.  A big part of fixing that is just chanting over and again: "No shitting where you eat, no shitting where you eat".  Cos again, the Darkies are having to clean up the turd they shat on to their own plates, and Hashan is going to spend another few decades  obsessed with internal strife instead of playing on the world stage.

  • edited October 2017
    The problem, though, is that it's usually going too far the other way.

    Yes, you can be Aegean or a Pandoran in Hashan -- you can even be a Regent if you do well enough -- but you should recognise that Twilight and Ourania are the Patrons of the Night, and that their word regarding the faction is final.

    Except that's not how it rolls in reality. You have citizens, some high ranking citizens, who openly and proudly diss one god or the other (or both). This is something you should not be allowed to do, because at the end of the day, Twirania (Oulight?) are the embodiments of Night. They are the Night.

    So there is a need to first drill into people's heads that dissing one of the two Night gods is not something that will be tolerated. If there had been non-Darkwalkers willing to do this and put their foot down, then sure, then the actual Darkwalkers could have stayed in the background. But no one did, not with any real intensity.
     <3 
  • Eh, I dunno.  That's now how I'd play it personally.  Forcing someone to recognise something that obviously is usually just ends up with both parties looking a bit dumb.  You don't need someone to recognise that Twilight and Ourania are patrons of the night, or patrons of Hashan.  They are.  You already won.

    The open dissing, that's a problem I agree, but usually if you haven't been busy SHITTING WHERE YOU EAT you can almost always get a good majority of people to oppose actively being disrespectful to the city patron.  If you can't, the patron probably fucked up. 

  • Daeir said:
    Having a faction that rejects Divine hegemony over mortals also makes perfect sense from every perspective of Achaea's narrative - and also affords a distinctive identity that many people who have previously served in theological cities can relate to.

    It's the ticket. I'm convinced it's the ticket.
    It sounds nice on paper, it does, but Achaea has long been rooted in mechanics based on divine and player interaction. Issues are bound to appear.

    Just for kicks, let us try and set the picture of what this Hashan would be:

    -----

    Hashan embraces its independence, claiming that through sheer will, science and the mind, mortality can reach great heights of power. It rejects the 'stunting' concepts of faith and religion, proclaiming itself free from such services that yield no true growth.

    Hashan has a massive reform in the city, its people becoming devoted to the "great cause" of Hashan's ascension. The city becomes industrial and provides several research facilities focused upon different tasks.

    The Dome of the Triad is remade into a facility focused upon accumulating and experimenting with Divine Essence. Deep within the facility you will find divine items of power, including one of Indrani's swords, as well as Thoth's mask and other such relics. A special program will be developed within to attempt to empower 'chosen soldiers' to ascend with god-like strength...so far the results have led to nothing but disintegration into ash.

    The Academy becomes a hotspot of ritual construction, forbidden magical study, and on the side a tinker that sells odd items such as collars used to enslave the spectres (free for citizens). At the end of the hall, a giant constructed orb stands, watched over by 4 channelers. The orb empowers a massive shield around Hashan, as the people no longer depend on the Gods to save them from destructive events...for clearly the Gods cannot even save themselves.

    A resource team will be found to be in charge of a group of workers seen chopping at the trees in the Ithmia, harvesting the lumber to fuel Hashan's efforts.

    The Menagerie is transformed into a testing facility upon the wildlife of Achaea, attempting to capture and analyze as many as they can. They seek to understand the makeup of these creatures and discover their secrets. Within the facility can be found experiments to augment and transform these creatures into powerful forms, seeking to bolster Hashan's strength with these monstrosities.






  • HataruHataru Midwest USA
    The above should have read "quantity over quality" whoops.
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Melodie says, "Get rekt scrubbbbb."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): You say, "Scrubbbssss."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Trey says, "Austere was hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, apparently."
  • @Hataru, oh don't do the "I don't know how long you've played" thing.  I'm not going to showboat my qualifications in order to justify having an opinion.  I'm fully aware of the potential, and sometimes actual, shittiness of the playerbase but I'm making a distinction between people engaging with the admin as roleplayed characters, and as volunteers.  As volunteers, Divine can get treated appallingly, and I think we, as players, owe them an enormous obligation to be civil and constructive.  As roleplayed characters though?  We owe them nothing, but to respond to them in a way that is consistent with the world of Achaea.

    And, in that context, the Divine have enormous advantages.  Patrons, particularly.  I stand by the statement that if, as a Divine (not as an order, but as the Divine Themselves), you are being actively, directly insulted by members of an organisation that you patron, then you have probably screwed up in some way.  You have misplayed the RP advantages available to you.  It is a laughable misreading of the situation to say that Divine have little recourse available to them as roleplayed entities.  The recourse available to them is enormous, if it is wielded well.

    I think the number of situations where characters, as characters have really gone up against a Divine, as a character - is really very small (like the Khoraji thing I mentioned upthread), and of the examples I can think of, whenever it has happened, I think a mis-step by the player behind the Divine has been probably the key contributory factor.  And we shouldn't be afraid to say so.  Constructive, civil criticism is important and, if you review the forums for at least the last two years, there is exceptionally little criticism of the RP from the Garden so I wouldn't want to overstate the "The Divine are being DRIVEN away by the HORRORS of OPINIONS on the FORUMS!".  (NB: I said "overstate" on purpose.  I do think people are awful and unfair sometimes, and that is a terrible thing.  I'm arguing for a balance).

    Also, to be clear, the fuck-ups I'm describing re Hashan and the Darkies upthread are player mistakes, not Divine mistakes.  I'm not close enough to the current Hashan thing to unpick how much is Order criticism, how much is Divine criticism, how much is player specific etc etc .

  • HataruHataru Midwest USA
    1) How long you've played is actually relevant. Someone who has played through something like, oh, Caspian. Or the previous treatment of other Twilights. Or what happened in Eleusis and has seen the result of those sort of things can definitely make a difference in how you view a situation. If you don't like that, tough titties, what you've played through and seen is relevant whether you like it or not. No one is 'showboating' qualifications. But a person who has played 1 or 5 or 8 or 10 or 15 years will all have very different exposure to these issues. That's just how that works.

    2) Divine do not have the advantage you think they do. Being Divine isn't a "whatever whatever I do what I want!" card. You are literally just not correct, there are literal examples of this having happened before. I've seen it happen here and in other games. I'll repeat: that you think automatically that the playerbase being crappy to a Divine automatically means the Divine fucked up and not maybe that the playerbase is being shitty and refusing to change because wah wah snowflakes (and I can and will say snowflakes here because the amount of 'BUT KERESIS ISN'T EVIL' ALIGNED when her whole origin is based off of being Shaitan's in the Elder Wars still gives me nightmares of having to deal with) says a lot.

    3) I didn't bring up forums. Why would I bring up forums? The Divine actually have more power on Forums to shut shit down than they do in-game. The Divine can and do ban people for going over the top on forums. A Divine can't shrub a player to stop dissent because that player is being shitty and trying to run a coup (etc.) and players have consistently and without much possible recourse turned on Divine for trying to punish people for being shitty because the playerbase is who spreads rumours and combats them, a Divine isn't here to have a sit down with Hashan and be like "listen this person is a son of a bitch, I know I'm right, here's some logs, read them" where as a player can do exactly that. I really don't think you know much about the reach and power of Divine in Achaea if you think this is the case (especially outside of the theocracies, it could be argued its definitely more possible withint them but still not unfailing - Divine after all can't just shove everyone else, they have to think about retention and the situations, like with Twilight's order and Keresis' where whole orders have been shoved out have been with good IC reasons).

    4) Constructive criticism is important. Your "if your city hates you, you fucked up" opinion is neither constructive or civil.

    5) Seriously, if a Divine does something major, especially involving their mythos (which is, in my experience >90% of the wah wah) - its probably for a good reason. Like game balance or need. That's why Keresis was switched from neutral-Evil to Evil. I can guarentee you it is likely why you saw some of the more hardlined stuff that happened with Nature Divine that pissed certain parts of Eleusis off.  Nothing is done by the Divine without shittons of planning and for good reason for the game. Sometimes its for events, sometimes its to fill a niche, this shit happens.
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Melodie says, "Get rekt scrubbbbb."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): You say, "Scrubbbssss."
    (Mhaldor's Next Top Model): Trey says, "Austere was hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, apparently."
  • I haven't played in a while but I still procrastinate by reading the forums and this caught my eye. I created a character in Hashan a couple weeks after I made Saea, because I wanted to see what other classes were like. It was just boring. The problem with Hashan as I see it is that there's no sense of community, that we're all in this together. As new player, you want to feel involved. This isn't a single player game. I've gotten several people to try Achaea and I tell them that they should join either Mhaldor or Targossas. Full stop. The difference in the new player experience between those two and the other four is staggering.  I don't think it's coincidence that those two have the most clearly defined identities. 
  • @Illarion

    I think you're underestimating a couple of things. One, people's tendencies to exaggerate the negative and diminish the positive. Twilight's/Darkwalker's mistakes will always have a much greater impact on perception than their successes. See the "coup," which was literally business as usual for Hashan in every sense. How do you even coup a government where you already have a majority?

    Anyways, second underestimation is some of the culture that developed in Hashan throughout the years of hanging in limbo. There are neutral parties in Hashan that are going to oppose any remotely factionalized divine interacting with Hashan. They don't have to screw up, that's just the culture of a portion of Hashan.
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