Kronibas 2.0
Displaced Tuluki
this account will go inactive once I hit 420 posts
Posts: 389
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Post by Kronibas 2.0 on Oct 15, 2014 18:16:44 GMT -5
The first Rez can be found by going to the orc board and looking through old threads. Not going to paste it here. Basically, autist gets PKed. Tard staff member who didn't play Atobement rezzed autist. People go crazy and elder staff slap tard staff on wrist and enforce no Rez policy.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 19:09:23 GMT -5
The rez policy was always weird. They knew there was a high likelihood of snafu deaths but still decided "no rez ever."
I never understood what was up with the hillman clan. Was it something that staff intended to be in the game all along or did they just allow it when someone apped it in? All the stuff and privileges they got was mindboggling and it seemed like everything staff did was aimed squarely on that small group of players. Considering how hard they worked to exclude others, it really puzzled me that staff even wanted to help them with anything.
There basically was no economy when I quit. The only way to make money was to sell meat to some NPC in the inn, and there was one armorcrafter in town so nobody really had any gear. I recall someone making a fortune looting newbie corpses in the forest and he had nothing to use the money on. Even if you managed to buy armor, there was only leather armor and nothing else, not even different kinds of leather armor but a single set.
I had been looking forward to some LOTR roleplay but really never found it on the new SoI. It didn't feel anything like Tolkien, and there was just nothing to do in the game. They also put the human and orc towns so close together that people were constantly ganking the shit out of eachother because there was like 40 rooms between them and everyone can hide with 100% success in that game for some reason.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,451
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Post by Jeshin on Oct 15, 2014 21:54:46 GMT -5
My mistake, when I said 1st person rezzed I meant the last person before the no rez policy was removed. To me it was the 1st person rezzed since the policy was put in place and the reason it was changed was to accomodate event/storytelling staff in case of fuckups.
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Post by anoobarak on Oct 16, 2014 8:04:37 GMT -5
I attribute drop in player numbers to butthurt too many butt hurt forum goers.
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Kronibas 2.0
Displaced Tuluki
this account will go inactive once I hit 420 posts
Posts: 389
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Post by Kronibas 2.0 on Oct 16, 2014 8:35:34 GMT -5
Butthurt over what?
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,451
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Post by Jeshin on Oct 16, 2014 8:50:11 GMT -5
Staff and others keep referencing how 'negative' and 'hostile' the SOI forums are but honestly they don't appear that bad pre-censorship. I've always been a fan of let players talk about what they want to talk about and lock a thread if they turn a game topic into religion, sex, or hitler debate (politics). There were some pretty productive threads over there and complaints are pretty common if the game is supposed to be in an alpha state and a complaint is more like a hey this needs to be balanced and looked at. Not that it's received that way, but it should be.
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Post by anoobarak on Oct 16, 2014 14:51:55 GMT -5
Terran op Leapstrick too strong Me no plot this guy plot I am leabing and feel free to leab too Etc
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mike
staff puppet account
Posts: 24
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Post by mike on Nov 16, 2014 14:44:15 GMT -5
I tried SoI and had a very negative experience, all due to poor staffing.
First character died after just a couple log ins. Staff created this "singing ghost" for my character to hear. So she hears it, get's together a group of other PCs to go investigate. As soon as we do, some monster jumps out of nowhere and kills my character before I can even know what's happening, much less respond to it, even while there are a number of very senior players in my group. (Oh well, shit happens, I think.) Why use staff powers (not the regular, automated coded responses to player actions) to entice a new player into such a situation if not for pure sadistic joy?
So I create a new character. As you can read from others above there is some group of "hill people" that got created, got their own little fort, which created jealousy and friction in the game. Staff decided to eliminate this just after I brought in my new character. They describe a visit of a troop of soldiers, the hill people leadership being killed for putting up resistance, the rest of the community (vNPCs?) being marched off under guard for 'resettlement' far away.
This is a Tolkien based game, where one should expect some pre-conceived notions of right and wrong out of the Tolkien fantasy world. This elimination of the hill people seemed an act of evil, and my character expresses that in the game. Staff are UPSET with my character expressing that. They don't take me aside OOCly and ask for my help, though. But when my character speaks privately to another character of how wrong that kind of collective punishment is, she suddenly gets 'stomach aches.' Word spreads "magically" from character to character and my character is shunned by the others. Within a day or two my character is confronted in the tavern and put under arrest for "sedition." I want to post something on the tavern gossip board about it, and I'm told OOCly not to. I do anyway and my character is killed. They think again about that-- they realize their actions have actually brought MORE attention to an issue they wanted swept under the rug-- so they rez my character, and put her in a cell with no chance of role-play. All that I figure in hindsight. To me-- at the time-- I was playing a character that found the IC actions of whoever ordered the elimination of the hill people despicable, and the characters complicit in it collaborators.
What really bothered me about all that is how willing they were to 'redefine' good and evil to their liking-- players' understanding of Tolkien (and ethics in general) be damned. In essence, I wasn't permitted to ICly play a character that saw something that appeared to be evil (in terms of the Tolkien setting and in terms of today's culture) as wrong and objectionable, simply because it reminded the staff of past blunders. As a new player I felt to play SoI I was obliged to set aside my knowledge of Tolkien, and my own personal ethics, because it was easier for staff to demand that of their players than to come up with storylines consistent with the Tolkien setting.
Folks here a posting different complaints about SoI. But I think I have a better (and bitter) overall picture now of a staff that is so fragile and afraid of criticism that they preceive it, and respond clumsily to it, even when it isn't there; from people who are ignorant of their issues and just trying to role-play a character consistent with the setting.
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dorksun
staff puppet account
Posts: 42
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Post by dorksun on Nov 16, 2014 18:58:55 GMT -5
i tried soi a few yrs back. it was ok for what little i played, but suffered problems. the staff were fairly supportive and active, but the code was frequently busted and command syntaxes non-intuitive. i kind of feel bad abt never logging in after a while cuz i met a couple real decent folks there, but it just wasnt for me.
the chance to temporarily be a no-name nobody in an orc arena fight thing was a cute option to have in the "lobby" of the game, i have to say. maybe there would be a lot more arena fights to watch in armageddon if that kind of thing was available
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2014 20:07:02 GMT -5
This version of SoI was plagued from the start by really bad staffing. Once players started to complain about various issues (often similar to what you describe), staff revealed that they were in fact not working together or pursuing any unified vision, nor even really communicating very much. A lot of incredibly awful decisions were made because of that. Then a lot of them quit and some new ones were hired, so now they're also dealing with a lot of newbie admins who are figuring out what to do. I no longer play, but judging by their forum which I look at occasionally, it seems these new admins are largely the only ones left. That hill people crew made a lot of people quit the game and really fucked with the town's early development, so if staff were a bit heavy handed about getting rid of them, that's probably why. It must have happened since I quit as they were still there when I left, but things were building up to them being forcibly integrated into Utterby. I think staff might simply have decided to get rid of them root and stem, no matter how jarring it might feel (i.e. your point about evil actions). I would honestly not blame them for just amputating that whole part of the game, though they should have done it much sooner--or rather, they should never have allowed it in the first place, but staff seemed deaf to reason at the time and painted themselves into a corner. That whole ordeal made the game so unpalatable for the first couple of months, and when they finally acknowledged the problem and started to do something about it, it had already driven the game over the edge.
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mike
staff puppet account
Posts: 24
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Post by mike on Nov 17, 2014 3:17:47 GMT -5
No. I too don't 'blame' them for just amputating that whole part of the game. Folks make mistakes and I recognize that fixing them can be traumatic. What makes me so disappointed is how they try so hard at so many different levels to pretend it wasn't a mistake, leading to confusion and that "jarring" feeling you describe.
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elali
staff puppet account
Posts: 11
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Post by elali on Nov 19, 2014 10:02:58 GMT -5
I get the impression that what (a) staff were trying to accomplish oocly, (b) what is actually supposed to have happened icly, and (c) what staff accidentally made it look like happened via clumsy board announcements and excessive ic secrecy are three different things. Mistakes were made, as they say.
Something like this:
(a) close the camp and re-integrate the pcs of willing players into Utterby (presumably, this is why we didn't see the camp razed by orcs - who indeed would have killed everyone - or an accidental fire, equally indiscriminate) (b) wanted fugitive and those characters who refused to surrender him without a fight killed in said fight (say 6-10 people, give or take); all children, elders, and others who did not take up arms (say another dozen individuals) either resettled in Utterby or graciously assisted in moving on to another campsite outside the currently implemented gameworld (c) genocide, insofar as the word can be applied to the deaths (and, if one is optimistic, forced relocation) of some twenty persons
Some of the fallout is, as has been surmised, likely a result of the usual human reluctance to admit mistakes, but a lot of it is probably that staff, vividly aware as they are of (a) and (b), above, find it difficult to put themselves in the shoes of a player without insider knowledge and see (c). For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if staff were also fuzzy on the nature of the camp's vnpc population and corresponding improbability of their continuing on to set up a sustainable encampment elsewhere w/o pc support.
Hilariously, they've now repeated the same mistake in having your PC disappear off-screen, Mike - instead of it looking like there's one moron pc guardsman trying to use a longsword to arrest unarmed women, it looks like nothing so much as that those same Laketown soldiers stole her away and murdered her in secret.
Oops?
Basically, SoI's still got solid admin/oversight/organization staff, respectable coding, and very good crafting support, plus a handful of newbie builders. What they don't have right now are active, experienced, and thoughtful RPAs whose primary duty it is to RPA. And it shows, unfortunately.
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mike
staff puppet account
Posts: 24
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Post by mike on Nov 19, 2014 12:55:58 GMT -5
I believe you have most of that right Elali. The one exception I would point out is that through out human history, after something like that happens, the remaining non-combatants were never "graciously assisted in moving on" what they described ICly has always been a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. They even described them as being marched off "under guard."
Another exception is your conclusion that the admin oversight is "solid" and the blame lies with the RPAs (Role Play Admins?). Here are messages to me from the two "highest" admins:
This final line refers to when I initially decided to set my character down the path of having mis-givings and objections to the treatment of the hillmen, and I sent them a 'heads-up' on it.
And seriously, can anyone familiar with Tolkien imaging Gandalf deciding to wipe out a settlement of humans because they were crafting without permission or whatever IC justification the staff provided? OOCly I understand their dilemma. But I thought I was obliged to react ICly to IC events and announcements. And vast majority of what they lectured me on was how I should have reacted ICly to their OOC issues and past errors. If they wanted that, they should have said so when I wrote to them initially giving them a head's up as to my planned course of action for my character. (As referred to in the last line of Frigga's response.)
The "one moron pc guardsman" was actually the guard sergeant/clan leader. But you are absolutely right about the "longsword." Apparently you have first-hand knowledge of the incident. Do I believe that sergeant was acting with at least a wink and a nod from the admins? Yes. Do I trust the admins now when they claim it was just PCs acting on their own initiative? No.
And so at Nimrod's urging, I'll find somewhere else to play.
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Kronibas 2.0
Displaced Tuluki
this account will go inactive once I hit 420 posts
Posts: 389
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Post by Kronibas 2.0 on Nov 19, 2014 13:23:19 GMT -5
13,000 hours? Lol ouch
Nimrod y u so mad? It just a gaem
Btw, no, SoI has never had and doesn't currently have a good head staff. That is where the problem lies. Good head staff means centralization and organization behind the scenes , which means RPAs who aren't always tripping on themselves and pissing people off because they aren't adding up. SoI didn't fail because the staff are complete morons. It failed because they didn't have their shit together and lacked a unifying vision. Could that be considered moronic? Sure.
Give SoI an active and dedicated head staff and a restart with a viable setting and it'll be smooth sailing again. SoI had that for the few weeks prior to launch and a week after launch. Then, shit died off. I can't seriously name a single staff member who stood out as a champion of nerds. They were all friendly enough. Icarus had a good eye and knack for policies, that unsurprisingly conflicted with a few other admins. That's all that comes to mind.
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elali
staff puppet account
Posts: 11
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Post by elali on Nov 19, 2014 15:10:36 GMT -5
Oh, I absolutely agree that there was a whole lot of tone-deafness to RL history, politics, and tragedy in the posted story. It was terribly chosen, it really didn't make ic sense, and it was suspicious as all get out. Say rather that the blame lies with the lack of RPAs (and the fulfillment of RPA duties by other, mostly senior, admins), which, yes, is ultimately the responsibility of the top-level game management. Think "solid" in terms of "dependable, honest, and well-meaning", rather than "stellar in every way and in every role". I haven't the faintest idea what they're thinking when they claim the vnpc population was "created out of thin air without staff approval", though. The camp had an ic board. Like the ic board in the inn, it was made of ... you guessed it, vnpcs. And obviously, such boards are admin-created. Not only that, but there was a plot early on in the game's history that involved a sickness affecting - guess who - vnpc hillmen, complete with an admin-created craft to treat it. The original idea and rp about those vnpcs might have been player-generated, but it was absolutely staff-supported (over a period of months!), and for them to suggest otherwise is patently ridiculous. This, again, looks to me like staff (a) assuming that what's obvious from their perspective will also be obvious from a new player's perspective, which is plainly false, and (b) staff conveniently ignoring the existence of vnpcs whose existence they had previously supported. One Beorning PC died; one Hillman PC lived. (They're two different backgrounds.) The remainder of the PCs present (all killed, I believe) were of other, mostly Dalish, origins. But all of the relocated vnpcs (which, again, staff have agreed existed in their own board post) were Hillmen. (And, again, staff seem oblivious to the RL connection between this sort of relocation and ethnic cleansing.) But given that everyone in Utterby talks about 'the Hillmen camp' and the main gossip post about what happened (in the oh so trustworthy voice of the perpetrators) gives no details to the contrary, your pc's reaction was entirely reasonable, and staff should have foreseen it. They'd have done much better to put a gossip post in the voice of one of those vnpc survivors - it might still have been offensive from an ooc perspective, but it would have been infinitely more plausible ic. Even a relatively neutral vnpc townsperson's voice would have helped! mike: The "one moron pc guardsman" was actually the guard sergeant/clan leader. Not mutually exclusive! Mostly second-hand knowledge, some third. Some pure speculation on my part. I'm neutral on the question of whether or not admins might have had a role to play in giving said guardsman the idea to arrest your pc. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd nudged him to pay attention and get involved, but I highly doubt they were happy to see weapons drawn. I doubt they wanted your pc arrested, too, honestly, although I do think they wished she would shut up about the whole thing. And I do think that there is staff favoritism (for a long-term player and clan leader) behind the relative lack of ic consequences for the att ... I mean, ah, excessively violent arrest, though. And I think staff are being willfully blind to that favoritism. Most pcs simply couldn't whack somebody with a sword in a highly public location and get off scot free, although a few less important guard pcs have gotten away with far more than they should have in the past.
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