It's Time To Bring Tuluk Back

Supervillains, or reasons to climb the karma ladder?

edit: to be clear, I'm all for supervillains.   Lets just implement better options to be one.

I'm all for bringing Tuluk back but if they bring it back, would they bring it back well, or would it suffer from the same problems it had before? Part of the problem, that I can only reiterate as many have already said, currently staff don't seem to be doing well with what they've got. What's happening that's fun, interesting, and engaging that people are trying to get in on and be a part of? Very little. I'm not sure if senior staff just tells their people "No, we don't like that" so most proposals get shut down and stifle their creativity making them less willing to try, or if staff just are being passive (responding to requests) and not actively pursuing plot projects behind the staff curtain. Or if something else is happening that doesn't actually create a effective presence in the game, who knows. Obviously some work is happening, they're bringing out new guilds, which is good. This is on the code side of the game, which is good to have. The other parts of the game needs love too, which I'm unsure if this is happening (plots usually go unpublicized so if something is happening there'd only be hints).

The reason to close Tuluk was sort of contrived. One reason given was to consolidate the playerbase, which is fine, but why did they want to consolidate the player base? Was there an active plot reason, like they needed people in Allanak to form an army or something to war against Tuluk? Which would be fine, and I think and fun. If the reason was just for the sake of having players play in more proximity, I think that's a bad reason. The game population, the active playerbase is like a goldfish in a bowl. The fish is going to grow to the size of the bowl. It's great to have people close together and creates great RP but if things get too crowded, people need places to move to to get away. If a bunch of clans are lead by sponsored roles are people disapprove of and don't like, people will attempt to make their own options somewhere else, like Tuluk. If those opportunities aren't there, they'll look elsewhere for those opportunities.

Opening Tuluk, or putting something there in it's place to offer players something different would be good. I think the player base would increase their weekly logs meaning the game would get more active players because something new is happening. If they did open Tuluk, they'd need staff who know how to give players an enjoyable experience support but based on the current state of things, I question if this is within the staff's ability to pull off.

You can assert whatever you want, but if you want to actually persuade someone to your point of view you're going to have to support those assertions with logic. "Mindbenders break secrecy by existing" is a shit argument against keeping them in the proposal for Tuluk I made. I could say the same thing about keeping stealth characters or anyone with listen.

The one given was a crock. Nyr was one of those jackasses who wants to change the game to be the one who changed it since he was a storyteller. He destroyed Tuluk on purpose because, after destroying it on accident and washing his hands of the whole thing, another staffer was put in charge who was actually bringing it back. He got sand up his ass about that and, hey, completely eliminating an entire city is a huge change so he was all about that.

I completely agree with everything except the last sentence. The main thing they need to do is learning to stay out of the way. That may be beyond them, so the next best thing would be letting them practice their meddling in a way with limited damage.

Recreating Tuluk as a place people can't really visit or leave makes it into something of an experimental sandbox. Players can try it out and see if they like what the staff's doing. Regardless of how players react to Tuluk, what's going on there is mostly isolated. They don't have to experience it and they don't have to deal with other players experiencing it.

I definitely think they'd be better off expanding the world instead of shrinking it. The idea that people would play more if they ran into other players more is a an erroneous one. People like to isolate themselves away from other players they can't stand. Reducing players' ability to just go, "You know what? These people are fucking boring. I'm going to go rent a silt skimmer." means the only option they have to get away from people they hate is to quit the game.

After Qoriya, many players know that a psion can read another character's bios.   I've talked to several players who have written bios very carefully to avoid being outed as a mage or other dirty scum.

I similarly know several of us who have been chastised for pking in Tuluk, because a Lirathan "should have seen it coming and reacted".   One of my characters whacked a Tuluki in a blinding sandstorm, on the edge of Tuluki territory, after reports and wishing up, and still got slapped.

Either psionicist overlords have to be fallible with partial coverage of an area, or no rebellion or treason will ever get past the planning stage.  After dozens of pcs killed by Qoriya, I found it pretty lame that a southerner agent made it to consort of a Hlum, and then chopped down the tree of life.   Now that nilazi are removed from the game as pcs, I dont know of any defense against the omnipresent evil eye of psions.   Maybe I am not aware of all options. 

 

Bitter, you're wasting your creative energy on this game.

Who dat? I used to know a guy named topkekm8s, but he vanished long ago... are you his son?

Well I couldn't really keep anything I was describing secret since I'm laying it all out in public. That said, I don't think secrecy fucks up the game as long as it's 1) stuff the players legitimately could figure out IC and 2) only a tiny fraction of the secrets are wannabe-writer behind-the-scenes bullshit and the majority are naturally generated secrets created by the PCs' behavior in various competing factions.

Doesn't seem to be much interest in my idea, though, so I'm gonna take kek's advice and stop developing it. I think it would have been a great way to introduce the staff to the concept of real competition, where everyone has limited resources and has to screw each other over for them, rather than everyone is part of an immortal organization with virtual resources that can feed them and outfit them indefinitely. I was going to have things like "Food is rare outside your faction's distributors and hard to buy. If your faction isn't meeting goals, they don't have food to give you, and you'll be codedly starving for a while." Would they have done it? Probably not. They seem deadset on the mindset that their job is to feed players activity and players' jobs are to be spectators for staff writing, actors in the grand unseen script, and friendly critics.