I stand with Khandava absorbing Stavenn being the easiest option. Treat it like a guild merger, and have one org absorb the other. You have said that Stavenn has been fairly dead. Khandava has several active citizens who are pushing for positive change. While creating a wholly new organization would be apt for some councils/cities, I do not think that would work well for the reasons below:
Khandava transitioned from a magick org to a demonic org in 2011. No redescriptions were made of the council and the onus of altering the council's roleplay was placed upon its active members. Many of the same people involved in the initial changes are still active and have tirelessly worked over the course of the last five years to see substantial change to the council's guilds and role in the world.
Creation of a new organization is asking us to do this a second time. We have already done it once. Merging citizens into Khandava would be an easy transition and allow us to see who is active and who is not, and add to our active population and leadership.
If we keep the layout of the council and merge into a new joined organization, it opens up another problem. Stavenn is fairly dead for a reason. Likewise, the majority of Khandavans keep ring off for a reason. Merging their leadership could easily turn Khandava into Stavenn 2.0, which risks losing a much larger portion of the active population.
I am certain that merging Stavenn into Khandava as Khandavan citizens would mean that everyone would be afforded a fair chance regardless of their former status. Caelya is not unreasonable. Undesirable behavior (think less disagreeing and more lengthy public space discussion of an explicitly sexual nature) could be dealt with without much trouble, and at the end of the day, both demonic and our new player population would benefit from an increased population in an organization with a strong, established role.
I hope Jeremy just listens to Juran's last post (and it looks like he did). There are even more reasons we need to keep the orgs (but possibly merge a circle), but his post is a great example of why we need them. In each of the circles, there is always one org that is more PK friendly, or less PK friendly. More "RP focused" or more "let's have the RP fit our goals as players" focused. And yes, one symptom of that is that there is always one org that is incredibly restrictive about citizening, and one that is... at least less restrictive. If you get rid of those orgs, you will force people to do that sort of self-selection by -circle-, and that would be bad.
I'd like to also take a brief moment to say that Khandava is not now nor has it ever been against PK or PK-oriented players. What we are against are people who have a long history of psychotic breaks or unsavory behavior (these are extreme cases). If you don't fit this criteria, you will be given a fair chance. You don't have to be the most blight-loving forestal there's ever been, and you don't even have to like trees. We do really encourage roleplay and acting in an in-character fashion, but we're not going to take you out back and shoot you if you're not dropping 5-line emotes every few minutes.
The biggest thing is that we want to cultivate an environment that people of all playstyles want to be apart of. We're open to serious suggestions, and we will do our best to work with you if you bring them to us.
So, whatever happens going forward, if you've ever had real doubts about Khandava, give it a try. Make an alt if you want, or talk to us in-game. Like @Etienne said, we're not unreasonable.
I'd be fine with keeping organizations if those organizations are willing to work with the Garden on changing up conflict and their role in the world.
My problem with Khandava, historically, is that Khandava looks inwards towards everything and it tends not to really engage with the world. This is fine when they're the secondary circle organization and you've got Stavenn out there waving the flag. This is less fine when you're the single organization in your circle. With Khandava, my problem is that I am afraid they will look at one of your events, decide it isn't up to their RP standards, and take their whole faction home with them.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
TBH your best bet right now is just merging Stavenn and Antioch. Everybody hates Stavenn, even Khandava. Everybody hates Antioch, even Ithaqua. Smash both of your problem children together into a new organization and we can be the hyperexpansionist empire who plays the bad guy in all the events. We already do every crazy "ally with the Blood God" and "ally with Legion" thing that Stavenn should be doing. The only major difference between Antioch and Stavenn right now is that Antioch wins fights.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
In the most recent events, Khandava actually proposed and enacted an alliance with Kinsarmar that, while it did not ultimately work out, did offer opportunities for magick and demonic to interact outside of their circles. Stavenn tagged along and hilarity ensued, but yeah. Khandava has been an active part of every event, actually, because we love opportunities to interact with and influence the world. We may not have been interacting with absolutely everyone, but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing things and participating.
TBH your best bet right now is just merging Stavenn and Antioch. Everybody hates Stavenn, even Khandava. Everybody hates Antioch, even Ithaqua. Smash both of your problem children together into a new organization and we can be the hyperexpansionist empire who plays the bad guy in all the events. We already do every crazy "ally with the Blood God" and "ally with Legion" thing that Stavenn should be doing. The only major difference between Antioch and Stavenn right now is that Antioch wins fights.
This will just make the game even more lopsided and dead than it already is and if you don't understand that I am just absolutely floored. Who is this new awful, horrible, terrible, clearly utterly and completely PK-driven org/circle going to FIGHT?
EDIT: That said, we should do it, for like 2 weeks, because it could be hilarious.
Khandava has been involved and most often been the primary demonic component in a number of events since I started. If I review the events of the last year or so, I can only find a handful that we did not participate in and almost all were small, inner-org interactions for a particular guild.
We had solid interaction in the 'egg wagon' and ice golem/Alekhmanhahla events, the shade ritual and nightmare plagues. For the tenth monolith event, Khandava reached out to Kinsarmar to form an agreement and worked to relax unwelcome statuses afterward to continue interaction with them. Caelya is prominently listed in the recent diabolist release.
Making a sweeping change based on the fear that an organization that has been active in events might not participate in a future event isn't sound. It certainly has not been my experience as an active Khandavan.
I could make the same argument in reverse of Antioch, and state that if an event was not up to their PK standards, they would turn around and leave. That doesn't make it accurate.
I could make the same argument in reverse of Antioch, and state that if an event was not up to their PK standards, they would turn around and leave. That doesn't make it accurate.
No, that's really pretty accurate.
The major difference is just that PvP is easier to wedge into things. Most events can be turned into PvP events simply by showing up and killing people who disagree with you or have things that you want.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
This is not Imperian specific but I think having some form of cross-promotions between the IRE games could allow for more population in all games. One example would be Elite memberships giving lessons every month that are available to be transferred to another character in another IRE game. This will allow more people to try out the different realms and see if they like it or not.
@Iluv, when I initially signed up to IRE Iron Elite, I thought this was the case... imagine my surprise when it wasn't...
We have said this before about memberships, but because not all the game are owned strictly by one individual, accounting for memberships across games would be insane.
It seems like most people are aware of the fact that Imperian's sharpest downward trend in average population was after the god death event. Big uptick during the event, easily observable lower average totals on QW after the dust settled.
It also seems like @Jeremy is aware that you'd get a lot more people leaving, probably for similar reasons, during a city merge.
So, ostensibly you want to increase the population of your game. Your proposed method of doing this is listening to the forum users, which are the definitive vocal minority of your already small population.
Why are you against asking players how they feel in game? What hurt would a game wide account restricted (so as to avoid multiple votes) referendum cause, exactly?
Every single time there's an event in game, the forums are filled with complaints of "why weren't we asked" or "there's nothing to lose/no reason to participate/this isn't engaging me".
If you want more players, diversity is required. If you want more players, ask the entirety of the playerbase what to do in game, instead of just the loudest players on the forums with highest post count. If you want more players, don't repeat the mistakes of the past and ruin what remains of your diversity.
You guys have control of what passes for divine mandate in this setting. You don't like the way Antioch is being run or find that certain cityleaders are relishing in being that guy during the D&D campaign who showed up purely to ruin the planned setting? There are tools already hardcoded in for you to take advantage of this. No one wants a storyline completely on rails, but pandering to the few people who remain is not how you attract new blood or get old blood to re-up that Iron Elite.
I feel like asking the general playerbase isn't that helpful and can actually be harmful. I mean, let's say you are absolutely not happy with the state of things. The population is too small and too inactive. You need to change something, because what you are doing is not working. You ask your playerbase what their thoughts are. They go "I like this, we don't want to change anything." Welp. Now what. You're still not happy with things and you're in a position where you have to tell your playerbase "Uh, about your opinions? We sort of decided we didn't care about them and we're changing things anyways."
Anyways, players absolutely positively should not be the ones who make major design decisions, for the same reason that children don't get to make medical decisions; they have too much emotional investment and not enough knowledge about the subject. If you left medicine up to kids they'd never be vaccinated, and if you leave design decisions up to players, you end up with 6 cities of 5 people each.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
You guys have control of what passes for divine mandate in this setting. You don't like the way Antioch is being run or find that certain cityleaders are relishing in being that guy during the D&D campaign who showed up purely to ruin the planned setting? There are tools already hardcoded in for you to take advantage of this. No one wants a storyline completely on rails, but pandering to the few people who remain is not how you attract new blood or get old blood to re-up that Iron Elite.
Maegohr, I actually tend to lean against player leadership having as much control over things (storylines being only one of those things) as they actually do, but in all fairness, all of the times that Antioch was "the bad guy" it was literally because if we hadn't been, everyone would have been on the same side. I hope we can all agree that that would have been boring as hell. So the question is, why did things get to that point? Where either those horrible Antiochans who are just the worst RP-ers assume the bad guy mantle, or we all watch absolutely nothing happen.
I don't think that Maegohr meant at all that the playerbase as a whole should get to make the decision. They should be allowed to give some kind of input, however, whether it's heeded or not. Like, if the overwhelming majority respond with something along the lines of 'will quit if this happens,' that's something the administration needs to be aware of. Polling the very relative few forum participants isn't going to cut it when it comes to making such huge decisions as destroying or merging things.
I am not stating that the results of said referendum should determine exactly, to the letter, what is done. I am also not suggesting that one of the results of the referendum be so canned as to state "Do nothing at all". I am saying exactly what @Caelya was easily able to pick out, and for some reason that I'd rather not speculate on further, certain people completely kneejerked away from the idea and started talking about what could go wrong.
Nothing can go wrong. If it's a bad poll/referendum or filled with troll results, that fault lies with the options given, the questions asked, and other basic priorities of accurate polling. If it is conducted properly, even your outlier troll answers will show for what they are, and you have widespread anonymous feedback from the active population that logged in to see the poll. Maybe you feel asking the community at large about the direction of their community is a bad thing @Khizan, but asking on forums equates to asking one person and hearing the reverbs in the echo chamber. Your way, asking one person, is less effective at determining public opinion, and if the vast majority of the playerbase disagrees with what you want, looks like you are the minority, no matter how loudly you claim to be representing the wishes of every single other person.
@Jules - Your point is tangential, and your proposed solution doesn't actually fix anything. We are not speaking of general RP problems with on rails v player choice driven storyline, or I am not, so you need not be so specific and defensive. Your question of "why things are how they are" is equally ineffective at addressing my proposal or any solutions for the problem.
The problem, in case anyone has forgotten with the tertiary discussions, is that there is an implied desire for more players. The problem with doing anything mechanically to fundamentally alter the Imperian landscape for certain, very specific, sections of the playerbase, is doing it without their input. The problem is the only place @Jeremy is sourcing that input is from the few players who visit the forums and even fewer who comment regularly, and the people doing the commenting do not even main their characters in the orgs potentially being effected.
You ask your playerbase what their thoughts are. They go "I like this, we don't want to change anything." Welp. Now what. You're still not happy with things and you're in a position where you have to tell your playerbase "Uh, about your opinions? We sort of decided we didn't care about them and we're changing things anyways."
Not every respondent will select that answer, and the answer from leadership is not limited what you proposed in your strawman hypothetical. If this hypothetical was carried out in this exact fashion, then it would demonstrate poor polling practices, and abysmal leadership qualities. The real question is, why are you so against other players having a voice in what they do, even if that voice gives an answer you personally disagree with? This isn't about you. It's about everyone that logs in to play, and getting more people, other than you, to log in and play. Thank you for your time and input, I've found it very useful in shaping my opinions on this subject.
I mean, I was just clarifying that we're not just "that one D & D jerk", and that there are actual reasons for what has happened. What did you really expect when you make a post painting an entire faction in such dismissive terms with your uninformed assumptions? >.>
Anyway, the rest of your point is valid, btw, but there's just not really anything new there. Forums are never, ever the place to conduct a poll that you are going to rely on as the sole source, and, I am also not against polls. That said, admin does seek input from other sources, and seems to understand that you can't just look at forums. But for some reason, it hasn't been translating into results, especially in the events.
I think a referendum isn't the greatest idea, just because this isn't really a vote. I'd worry that in a referendum you'd see very scued (and unhelpful) data, because most people aren't going to want their city to get changed drastically. You'd see a lot of trends by population rather than particularly useful information, I suspect. We as players are great at short term stuff, but generally speaking not so much at long term.
That said, I do agree that more exposure to this discussion would be better. A lot of people don't usually visit the forums. Maybe a news post would help there, just so people know where to go to get their viewpoint heard.
I don't really think it should be a referendum, that implies a finality in the decision making process. Poll would be the more pedantically accurate term and I should've replaced referendum at all points with the word poll. Sorry about that, colloquial usage of the term and the way that referendums are implemented in game might not always mesh the best with Oxford definitions and any lack of eloquence I have in conveying my ideas rests solely upon my shoulders... though I do not feel it discredits the idea in any way.
I also don't really think it should be a one off deal. Asking for feedback from players that are actively logged into the game is useful for far more than just grandiose plot development a la poorly planned out organizational mergers born of desperation. I know this was the case eight years ago and I have seen it to be true even now: people do not like forums, nor do they want to be on forums with some of the carrying on that happens here, nor should any player expect their only method of input or feedback to be posting on these forums.
There is nothing to be lost by gamewide polling, and you gain far more perspective than sounding out ideas on the forums.
The real question is, why are you so against other players having a voice in what they do, even if that voice gives an answer you personally disagree with?
I'm not against this at all. You can voice your opinion all you want. The more the merrier. What I am against is using polls to help direct design decisions.
Firstly, I'm against polls because polls are the wrong tool in this situation. They're very much like a vote and people tend to interpret them as a vote, and this situation doesn't call for a vote. A situation like this needs more of a discussion where you can voice your opinions and get answers. I think a public announcement of "Hey, we are thinking on major changes, give us feedback in the forums or by email" would be good, but I think that a poll, by its very nature, will not give worthwhile feedback.
Secondly, I am against using opinion polls to help direct design decisions because people are generally fairly bad at making decisions like this. Too much emotional investment. Too attached to their cities and their houses. Too attached to the power structure they've already climbed to the top of or to an RP line. Not willing to let go of anything.
The bottom line right now is this: We have too many organizations and too few people in them, and we desperately need to cut some organizations and consolidate the playerbase into the remaining ones. The problem here is when you ask people what organizations should be cut, the general answer is usually along the lines of "Well, they can make sacrifices and join us, but don't cut us because we have all this cool stuff we really like and don't want to get rid of and I worked really hard to get this cityrank". Combine this mindset with the tendency of voters to vote in blocks and it's very difficult to get any sort of worthwhile information out of a poll. Most of the information you end up with is either useless or skewed to the point where it might as well be useless.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
All of those things about players are true. So true.
Even so, just consolidate circles, not because you're caving to players kicking and screaming about "mah rank", "mah authoritah" (as true as all of that is), but for a totally different reason.
Consolidating the circles puts more people on the same "teams" without subjecting hard core RP-ers to Antiochan standards on the one hand, or subjecting hard core PK-ers to Ithaquan/Khandavan/Celidonian reticence on the other.
In fact, I really like the idea of 2 circles, with 3 orgs in them. It even allows for the possibility of a middle porridge! And it matters less if the orgs themselves are smallish, I think, because they are on the same team. And as much as Antioch bitches about Ithaqua, and vice versa, I do think it's easier for us to tolerate each other when we're not constantly grappling to determine what will be the dominant playstyle in the same org. So this would be a continuation of that.
I do think that self-selection, and really, outright self-segregation WILL become even more of a problem than it already is if we winnow down to one org per circle. People will self-select based on circle even more than they have. It will make a problem that is already kind of persistent in a game like this, you know, WORSE.
EDIT: note, I think self-selection can be a good thing, but it's not good when it piles a bunch of players who lean heavily towards PK in one circle, and a bunch of people who lean heavily towards RP in the other. Because then what...
EDIT2: I do think something eventually needs to be done about entrenched leadership btw. But that is for another day.
In fact, I really like the idea of 2 circles, with 3 orgs in them.
No, this doesn't work. The organizations feel too empty and no organization has the kind of critical mass that lets it really get moving. If you want to do it this way you need to basically have one overarching organization per circle and treat the cities like they're townes, and you need to push that over-org hard.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I feel like ring deals with a lot of that. And just about anyone who is going to go do stuff that requires coordination is going to end up in a ring.
But seriously, if there were just 3 orgs in the game, two of them could very well end up the kind of org that says "no way" to a guy like Juran being a citizen, and would probably irritate the hell out of him even if they did let him in (after making him jump through a bunch of hoops/wait a couple of RL weeks of course), and then there would be Stavioch, standing around wondering why there was no one to fight.
EDIT: another small tweak that could help is a "circlewho" command, so that if you're looking for friendlies with gems/veils you'll see them if you aren't always in a ring together, which I know some people aren't.
I feel like ring deals with a lot of that. And just about anyone who is going to go do stuff that requires coordination is going to end up in a ring.
But seriously, if there were just 3 orgs in the game, two of them could very well end up the kind of org that says "no way" to a guy like Juran being a citizen, and would probably irritate the hell out of him even if they did let him in (after making him jump through a bunch of hoops/wait a couple of RL weeks of course), and then there would be Stavioch, standing around wondering why there was no one to fight.
EDIT: another small tweak that could help is a "circlewho" command, so that if you're looking for friendlies with gems/veils you'll see them if you aren't always in a ring together, which I know some people aren't.
Definately second the "circlewho" command, trying to recruit for an Ithaquan guild is hard when 90 percent of the AM population is in Antioch.
Secondly, most of the conversation seems to revolve around consolidating the population that we have into more "populated" areas. I havn't seen much talk about expanding the player base. Obviously there's still plenty of players that play MUD's(at least certain ones, look at the population of Achaea.) I also know Imperian has always had alot lower population than Achaea, but it seems to me Achaea has really weathered the storm when it comes to game population, and the rest of the IRE MUD's have been slipping away.
Third-Whatever happened to the news system being utilized? The last public news post was in May, and it was a mis-post for heavens sake. The last ACTUAL public news post was in March, and that was by an NPC. Nothing to me speaks to the population being very insular more than that. Nearly 6 months without a player-written public news post? If I'm a newbie logging into the game for the first time and I notice this, what am I going to think? Dead game is what I would say.
Like someone said(sorry, forgot who, think it was Khizan?) Imperian over the last few years has constantly felt like WoW between expansions, constantly waiting for new content that takes WAY to long to arrive and is very underwhelming when it does.
If you want to think about population, well, unless you get more new players, merging orgs together is just a band aid to the main problem. You'd be better off merging games together(like cross-server realms in WoW). Would be pretty cool to bash some Aetolian hunting grounds or PK with classes from a differant game.
I also know Imperian has always had alot lower population than Achaea, but it seems to me Achaea has really weathered the storm when it comes to game population, and the rest of the IRE MUD's have been slipping away.
This is mostly a matter of population. Once you reach a certain critical level of population it's fairly easy to keep it and it's fairly easy to expand. People have lots of people to interact with. RP, fighting, mudsex... whatever floats your boat, you've got a pretty good chance of getting out to sea. This is good for player retention and it is great for getting new players to stick to your game.
Without that level, it's easy to bleed players who get bored with the small population and it is hard to get new players to stick. Achaea's lucky in that it was first and that it's old enough to be from the glory-days of MUDs, so it always had a pretty solid population and it's been able to maintain it very well. And the population keeps the producers paid, which keeps their development and events active, which keeps the people playing...
It's one of those things where it's way easier to make 2,000,000 out of 1,000,000 than to make 20 out of 10.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Third-Whatever happened to the news system being utilized? The last public news post was in May, and it was a mis-post for heavens sake. The last ACTUAL public news post was in March, and that was by an NPC. Nothing to me speaks to the population being very insular more than that. Nearly 6 months without a player-written public news post?
PUBLIC NEWS #3542 Date: 8/25/2016 at 10:57 From: Iniar Nullheart, Eighth Proselyte of the Gray To : Everyone Subj: Hello
Comments
I stand with Khandava absorbing Stavenn being the easiest option. Treat it like a guild merger, and have one org absorb the other. You have said that Stavenn has been fairly dead. Khandava has several active citizens who are pushing for positive change. While creating a wholly new organization would be apt for some councils/cities, I do not think that would work well for the reasons below:
Khandava transitioned from a magick org to a demonic org in 2011. No redescriptions were made of the council and the onus of altering the council's roleplay was placed upon its active members. Many of the same people involved in the initial changes are still active and have tirelessly worked over the course of the last five years to see substantial change to the council's guilds and role in the world.
Creation of a new organization is asking us to do this a second time. We have already done it once. Merging citizens into Khandava would be an easy transition and allow us to see who is active and who is not, and add to our active population and leadership.
If we keep the layout of the council and merge into a new joined organization, it opens up another problem. Stavenn is fairly dead for a reason. Likewise, the majority of Khandavans keep ring off for a reason. Merging their leadership could easily turn Khandava into Stavenn 2.0, which risks losing a much larger portion of the active population.
I am certain that merging Stavenn into Khandava as Khandavan citizens would mean that everyone would be afforded a fair chance regardless of their former status. Caelya is not unreasonable. Undesirable behavior (think less disagreeing and more lengthy public space discussion of an explicitly sexual nature) could be dealt with without much trouble, and at the end of the day, both demonic and our new player population would benefit from an increased population in an organization with a strong, established role.
The biggest thing is that we want to cultivate an environment that people of all playstyles want to be apart of. We're open to serious suggestions, and we will do our best to work with you if you bring them to us.
So, whatever happens going forward, if you've ever had real doubts about Khandava, give it a try. Make an alt if you want, or talk to us in-game. Like @Etienne said, we're not unreasonable.
My problem with Khandava, historically, is that Khandava looks inwards towards everything and it tends not to really engage with the world. This is fine when they're the secondary circle organization and you've got Stavenn out there waving the flag. This is less fine when you're the single organization in your circle. With Khandava, my problem is that I am afraid they will look at one of your events, decide it isn't up to their RP standards, and take their whole faction home with them.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
EDIT: That said, we should do it, for like 2 weeks, because it could be hilarious.
We had solid interaction in the 'egg wagon' and ice golem/Alekhmanhahla events, the shade ritual and nightmare plagues. For the tenth monolith event, Khandava reached out to Kinsarmar to form an agreement and worked to relax unwelcome statuses afterward to continue interaction with them. Caelya is prominently listed in the recent diabolist release.
Making a sweeping change based on the fear that an organization that has been active in events might not participate in a future event isn't sound. It certainly has not been my experience as an active Khandavan.
I could make the same argument in reverse of Antioch, and state that if an event was not up to their PK standards, they would turn around and leave. That doesn't make it accurate.
The major difference is just that PvP is easier to wedge into things. Most events can be turned into PvP events simply by showing up and killing people who disagree with you or have things that you want.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
It also seems like @Jeremy is aware that you'd get a lot more people leaving, probably for similar reasons, during a city merge.
So, ostensibly you want to increase the population of your game. Your proposed method of doing this is listening to the forum users, which are the definitive vocal minority of your already small population.
Why are you against asking players how they feel in game? What hurt would a game wide account restricted (so as to avoid multiple votes) referendum cause, exactly?
Every single time there's an event in game, the forums are filled with complaints of "why weren't we asked" or "there's nothing to lose/no reason to participate/this isn't engaging me".
If you want more players, diversity is required. If you want more players, ask the entirety of the playerbase what to do in game, instead of just the loudest players on the forums with highest post count. If you want more players, don't repeat the mistakes of the past and ruin what remains of your diversity.
You guys have control of what passes for divine mandate in this setting. You don't like the way Antioch is being run or find that certain cityleaders are relishing in being that guy during the D&D campaign who showed up purely to ruin the planned setting? There are tools already hardcoded in for you to take advantage of this. No one wants a storyline completely on rails, but pandering to the few people who remain is not how you attract new blood or get old blood to re-up that Iron Elite.
Anyways, players absolutely positively should not be the ones who make major design decisions, for the same reason that children don't get to make medical decisions; they have too much emotional investment and not enough knowledge about the subject. If you left medicine up to kids they'd never be vaccinated, and if you leave design decisions up to players, you end up with 6 cities of 5 people each.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Nothing can go wrong. If it's a bad poll/referendum or filled with troll results, that fault lies with the options given, the questions asked, and other basic priorities of accurate polling. If it is conducted properly, even your outlier troll answers will show for what they are, and you have widespread anonymous feedback from the active population that logged in to see the poll. Maybe you feel asking the community at large about the direction of their community is a bad thing @Khizan, but asking on forums equates to asking one person and hearing the reverbs in the echo chamber. Your way, asking one person, is less effective at determining public opinion, and if the vast majority of the playerbase disagrees with what you want, looks like you are the minority, no matter how loudly you claim to be representing the wishes of every single other person.
@Jules - Your point is tangential, and your proposed solution doesn't actually fix anything. We are not speaking of general RP problems with on rails v player choice driven storyline, or I am not, so you need not be so specific and defensive. Your question of "why things are how they are" is equally ineffective at addressing my proposal or any solutions for the problem.
The problem, in case anyone has forgotten with the tertiary discussions, is that there is an implied desire for more players. The problem with doing anything mechanically to fundamentally alter the Imperian landscape for certain, very specific, sections of the playerbase, is doing it without their input. The problem is the only place @Jeremy is sourcing that input is from the few players who visit the forums and even fewer who comment regularly, and the people doing the commenting do not even main their characters in the orgs potentially being effected.
Anyway, the rest of your point is valid, btw, but there's just not really anything new there. Forums are never, ever the place to conduct a poll that you are going to rely on as the sole source, and, I am also not against polls. That said, admin does seek input from other sources, and seems to understand that you can't just look at forums. But for some reason, it hasn't been translating into results, especially in the events.
That said, I do agree that more exposure to this discussion would be better. A lot of people don't usually visit the forums. Maybe a news post would help there, just so people know where to go to get their viewpoint heard.
I also don't really think it should be a one off deal. Asking for feedback from players that are actively logged into the game is useful for far more than just grandiose plot development a la poorly planned out organizational mergers born of desperation. I know this was the case eight years ago and I have seen it to be true even now: people do not like forums, nor do they want to be on forums with some of the carrying on that happens here, nor should any player expect their only method of input or feedback to be posting on these forums.
There is nothing to be lost by gamewide polling, and you gain far more perspective than sounding out ideas on the forums.
Firstly, I'm against polls because polls are the wrong tool in this situation. They're very much like a vote and people tend to interpret them as a vote, and this situation doesn't call for a vote. A situation like this needs more of a discussion where you can voice your opinions and get answers. I think a public announcement of "Hey, we are thinking on major changes, give us feedback in the forums or by email" would be good, but I think that a poll, by its very nature, will not give worthwhile feedback.
Secondly, I am against using opinion polls to help direct design decisions because people are generally fairly bad at making decisions like this. Too much emotional investment. Too attached to their cities and their houses. Too attached to the power structure they've already climbed to the top of or to an RP line. Not willing to let go of anything.
The bottom line right now is this: We have too many organizations and too few people in them, and we desperately need to cut some organizations and consolidate the playerbase into the remaining ones. The problem here is when you ask people what organizations should be cut, the general answer is usually along the lines of "Well, they can make sacrifices and join us, but don't cut us because we have all this cool stuff we really like and don't want to get rid of and I worked really hard to get this cityrank". Combine this mindset with the tendency of voters to vote in blocks and it's very difficult to get any sort of worthwhile information out of a poll. Most of the information you end up with is either useless or skewed to the point where it might as well be useless.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Even so, just consolidate circles, not because you're caving to players kicking and screaming about "mah rank", "mah authoritah" (as true as all of that is), but for a totally different reason.
Consolidating the circles puts more people on the same "teams" without subjecting hard core RP-ers to Antiochan standards on the one hand, or subjecting hard core PK-ers to Ithaquan/Khandavan/Celidonian reticence on the other.
In fact, I really like the idea of 2 circles, with 3 orgs in them. It even allows for the possibility of a middle porridge! And it matters less if the orgs themselves are smallish, I think, because they are on the same team. And as much as Antioch bitches about Ithaqua, and vice versa, I do think it's easier for us to tolerate each other when we're not constantly grappling to determine what will be the dominant playstyle in the same org. So this would be a continuation of that.
I do think that self-selection, and really, outright self-segregation WILL become even more of a problem than it already is if we winnow down to one org per circle. People will self-select based on circle even more than they have. It will make a problem that is already kind of persistent in a game like this, you know, WORSE.
EDIT: note, I think self-selection can be a good thing, but it's not good when it piles a bunch of players who lean heavily towards PK in one circle, and a bunch of people who lean heavily towards RP in the other. Because then what...
EDIT2: I do think something eventually needs to be done about entrenched leadership btw. But that is for another day.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
But seriously, if there were just 3 orgs in the game, two of them could very well end up the kind of org that says "no way" to a guy like Juran being a citizen, and would probably irritate the hell out of him even if they did let him in (after making him jump through a bunch of hoops/wait a couple of RL weeks of course), and then there would be Stavioch, standing around wondering why there was no one to fight.
EDIT: another small tweak that could help is a "circlewho" command, so that if you're looking for friendlies with gems/veils you'll see them if you aren't always in a ring together, which I know some people aren't.
Secondly, most of the conversation seems to revolve around consolidating the population that we have into more "populated" areas. I havn't seen much talk about expanding the player base. Obviously there's still plenty of players that play MUD's(at least certain ones, look at the population of Achaea.) I also know Imperian has always had alot lower population than Achaea, but it seems to me Achaea has really weathered the storm when it comes to game population, and the rest of the IRE MUD's have been slipping away.
Third-Whatever happened to the news system being utilized? The last public news post was in May, and it was a mis-post for heavens sake. The last ACTUAL public news post was in March, and that was by an NPC. Nothing to me speaks to the population being very insular more than that. Nearly 6 months without a player-written public news post? If I'm a newbie logging into the game for the first time and I notice this, what am I going to think? Dead game is what I would say.
Like someone said(sorry, forgot who, think it was Khizan?) Imperian over the last few years has constantly felt like WoW between expansions, constantly waiting for new content that takes WAY to long to arrive and is very underwhelming when it does.
If you want to think about population, well, unless you get more new players, merging orgs together is just a band aid to the main problem. You'd be better off merging games together(like cross-server realms in WoW). Would be pretty cool to bash some Aetolian hunting grounds or PK with classes from a differant game.
Without that level, it's easy to bleed players who get bored with the small population and it is hard to get new players to stick. Achaea's lucky in that it was first and that it's old enough to be from the glory-days of MUDs, so it always had a pretty solid population and it's been able to maintain it very well. And the population keeps the producers paid, which keeps their development and events active, which keeps the people playing...
It's one of those things where it's way easier to make 2,000,000 out of 1,000,000 than to make 20 out of 10.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."