ada-young.appspot.com is not working for me so here's a very ugly hastebin of an earlier skirmish between @Lynyssa (daibolist) and I(defiler), and @Ohm (mage) and @Galt (bard)
I was going through my old files today looking for something and stumbled across this. I must have logged it at the time and never posted it. All the old names made me sad.
huh. I remember that fight. I also remember that right after the ToC there was a brief resurgence of PVP before everything just died. There were some really fun fights in there.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Longish fight, I like when they end up like this, because it shows effort put in by both sides. unfortunately... defiler tends to a lot of the time... be a train that becomes unstoppable when ramped up.
After a brief review, the single man judge panel has decided to give this duel 4 out of 5 "Mm"s.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
At this point, the potential unforeseen consequences of what is a great idea overall are real clear, and retirement should probably only be doable from a reasonably healthy game. Retirement should be "I am retiring because I played this game out" for whatever reason. Not "my game is dying of cancer". And if your game IS dying of cancer, the game should either be given heroic lifesaving measures (which might include a temporary hold on any and all retirements), or closed and everyone given 100% retirement. If the heroic measures absolutely don't take after a year or two... same thing. Close with 100% retirement (keep in mind you'd still not ever get 100% per se). It should be a clean, clear decision.
EDIT: it's very possibly much too late for this. It should have been considered after the first few big names retired, if anything
Some of those people you were never going to keep whether they retired or just quit altogether. When most of the big names retired there had not been a genuine PK in well over a RL month. Iron Realms as a company benefits much more from letting those players retire and spend money elsewhere rather than just completely quit.
Sure. It's not untrue. However, for the amount that a regular PK-er spends on a single IRE, much less many of the whales that retired, I have higher expectations than that of what they'll do to keep a game I've already invested in healthy and humming along. I just do. Their own pay model pretty much demands it. It would be legitimately hard, if not impossible for IRE to break out of the "whale" model. But the whale model means your customers should really believe in you and your commitment to the product they bought.
The truth is we should never be in a position where retirement is the only option. It also no coincidence that most retirees are PKers.. PKers are the only ones that truly ever feel backed into a corner on retirement. Culture and poor design are the reasons we lost so many players to the Retirement Syntax. To underline this, I am currently considering retirement of Sarrius because I'm out of interesting options. I am only out of interesting options because it is not in my power if I am allowed to pursue the options I truly think might compel me to stay. I am also powerless to enact the proper change on Imperian at a satisfactory pace.
More generally..? Retirement is a commitment to give up half your character's value to go play a new game. IREtirement never means quitting playing IRE games. You don't retire a character to quit the game, so to speak. You retire a character because another game appeals to you or the current one is played out. Often, it is the former.. and often, it has to do with the kind of people running the game you are moving to, as well as the people playing it.
We should never have reached the point where any of our big names felt that the only way to continue deriving enjoyment from IRE games was to go play one that wasn't named Imperian. A combination of factors led to this and they are indicative of the underlying issues in Imperian. Our player population is small and ruled by toxic, grudge-based mindsets that not only avoid conflict or forward progress, but also actively shut out players. This makes it difficult to break the absolute deathgrip a given circle has on the game.
The simple truth is that Imperian's players are as much responsible for ruining Imperian as design decisions or admin are. It's just that, much like watching anything fail in IRE, nobody is interested in taking blame. Nobody is capable of enough introspection (or retrospective consideration even) to realize how they might be contributing to the death of the game.
For proof of this, look at Khizan's retirement post: his character became Too Big. He could no longer pick a side that was not AM, and it was by no true fault of his own. Players held him accountable in the wrong way, forever shutting him out of the other 2 sides in the game.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
@Sarrius I almost wish there were a PK Package that you could buy. Insta-aspect, tri-trans, Survival, Evasion, Miniskills trans. The "all you need" without the "let's waste a couple weeks of my time doing x, y, z that I actually have no interest in so I can do the thing I'm here for." I think people would drop $ on that if say, the Owyn of the area wanted to move, but also didn't want to do other things like... I dunno... throw out his IC relationships. Some of us also either don't have the time or the inclination to go through the process of making a newbie again at all, retirement or otherwise.
spar between myself(Shaman) and Astris(Priest). I still feel like I dunno what I'm doing really xD and I fixed the glaring mistake of my vampirebat trying to predict doom when they couldn't hear it.
Comments
warning: this paste is kinda long.
https://hastebin.com/quresepara.md
DK vs Diabolist
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/D85RnAQ4
key takeaway from my fights so far as been - deathaura and defenses make a difference >.<
https://pastebin.com/T3LMCuej
ToC 4v4. Long ish.
https://pastebin.com/D7uKdmqx
Longish fight, I like when they end up like this, because it shows effort put in by both sides. unfortunately... defiler tends to a lot of the time... be a train that becomes unstoppable when ramped up.
At this point, the potential unforeseen consequences of what is a great idea overall are real clear, and retirement should probably only be doable from a reasonably healthy game. Retirement should be "I am retiring because I played this game out" for whatever reason. Not "my game is dying of cancer". And if your game IS dying of cancer, the game should either be given heroic lifesaving measures (which might include a temporary hold on any and all retirements), or closed and everyone given 100% retirement. If the heroic measures absolutely don't take after a year or two... same thing. Close with 100% retirement (keep in mind you'd still not ever get 100% per se). It should be a clean, clear decision.
EDIT: it's very possibly much too late for this. It should have been considered after the first few big names retired, if anything
More generally..? Retirement is a commitment to give up half your character's value to go play a new game. IREtirement never means quitting playing IRE games. You don't retire a character to quit the game, so to speak. You retire a character because another game appeals to you or the current one is played out. Often, it is the former.. and often, it has to do with the kind of people running the game you are moving to, as well as the people playing it.
We should never have reached the point where any of our big names felt that the only way to continue deriving enjoyment from IRE games was to go play one that wasn't named Imperian. A combination of factors led to this and they are indicative of the underlying issues in Imperian. Our player population is small and ruled by toxic, grudge-based mindsets that not only avoid conflict or forward progress, but also actively shut out players. This makes it difficult to break the absolute deathgrip a given circle has on the game.
The simple truth is that Imperian's players are as much responsible for ruining Imperian as design decisions or admin are. It's just that, much like watching anything fail in IRE, nobody is interested in taking blame. Nobody is capable of enough introspection (or retrospective consideration even) to realize how they might be contributing to the death of the game.
For proof of this, look at Khizan's retirement post: his character became Too Big. He could no longer pick a side that was not AM, and it was by no true fault of his own. Players held him accountable in the wrong way, forever shutting him out of the other 2 sides in the game.
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/sNmnbhti