I don’t know but it’s nice they let this thread play out. It feels like everyone is being heard, and people are able to get things off their chest.
Are players leaving?
Re: Are players leaving?
I hope the thread has been cathartic for people. We’ve had seven separate reports registered of posts which people felt were derailing a thread which has been threading between on topic and reactive.
At our core upstairs we know that there are things that drive players away faster, or help them stay longer, and we try to minimize the former and maximize the latter. At the end of the day, people are going to eventually leave (and maybe come back, and leave again). But, we do need to make sure that we (Immortals and players) are doing things to get new players who join the power to dive in easily and get familiar with the game.
There are things that we can do to make changes that take minimal effort and there are things we cannot do. For instance, it is really easy to increase horse regen by increasing their level and then saving them. It is very difficult to modify code that was put into place upon arrival, and often we’re looking to see what adjustments we can make to let it play out before we overcompensate. We can do mobol things, we can do object things, and we can do mob things relatively easy (time allowing). What we cannot do is give a list of when coding changes will take place nor what changes will be prioritized. It is a queue. Any assumption that there is an inherent bias on changes in coding (and I’ve heard all versions of it) is assuming that we’ve got a ranking system to get coded changes out is simply a rumor. There is no world where Flash holds biases for coded changes outside of nostalgia. Aureus and Itesh have been very transparent about what it takes to code and what they control in the process of getting coding implemented.
Aside from impacting the environment or the code, though, it is a difficult task to hold individuals accountable who have packs full of examples of how punishment is dolled out disproportionately or who want to make it a conversation about systemic problems that should be evaluated before behavior is examined or criticized. On top of that, we are volunteers who are not on all the time. We do not track tells nor do we track every conversation in Discord.
A few posts in this thread detail distrust and animosity toward the Staff and a sense of unfair treatment. This is likely true; if we do not witness something then we require a report and often once an investigation starts it only reveals the baggage and nuance in the conversation. If you distrust the Staff then it is more likely that you will not report to them. If you do not report and others report on you then you will continue to feel a sense of unfair treatment which is valid because of the choices you have made.
We’ve been more active on discord giving time-outs. But for all the frustration experienced, what you would have had done in the past was not done. We have been complicit in allowing this to continue in hopes that it would resolve itself. It has not. In the future we will be more vigilant because this is terrible to be around and it has got to stop. We did not punish the things that you consider to be infractions in the past, in the future we can be more strict when we see caustic behavior and conversation in any of the mediums we moderate.
It will stop through expulsion from discord, expulsion from forums, or expulsion from the game. Warnings have proven ineffective because people feel familiarity with the Staff; we are players as well as administrators, and it is easier to play the game (on immortal or mortal) than punish / converse with players about what they’re doing and threaten or hope that their behavior changes.
If you’re looking for a non-partisan player, Austin listens and does not play this game. He is also the ultimate authority in decisions where we are at a crossroads in discussion on what the correct avenue is to pursue.
From my perspective on issues, there are two distinct issues we run as Staff and need help resolving.
1. Grudged Behavior
It is not in the interest of the game to have grudges or feuds influence gameplay. It’s not fun to listen to people yell back and forth when you’re trying to play a game. No matter the conversation. If you hold grudges then keep them to yourself. If you are playing against a character type that you do not enjoy then you are free to rent. People do it often enough against channelers, trolloc rogues, wolf brothers, etc.
There are versions of not renting that are toxic gameplay. Kill someone or don’t kill them. Moderate yourself though, if you can’t help yourself and go out of your way to make another player uncomfortable because they chose to play a style that you do not enjoy then you will be punished. With logging and Discord time stamps you should be easily able to report this and the micro aggressions associated.
We have, in the past, held the stance that the responsibility is on the victim to report their experience of harassment. This stance has not proved to be fruitful because often people who feel victimized, but haven’t been, are frustrated by the lack of Staff action. And people who have felt victimized, but Staff investigate the report, determine a course of action and either don’t share outcomes or don’t punish individuals, then again, the policy has led to people who feel victimized feeling also betrayed by the Staff.
Some examples of toxic behavior that I have noticed: when I’m working on mobol and PK starts or is likely and I’m editing text in a notepad document I like to follow players and see what’s going on in the game. This can be PK related or otherwise.
For several Kajin PK sessions when I first returned where neither party could hit the other and it ended up being a yelling match between leaders that had nothing to do with the game. It generally had to do with the players and how they felt about each other in the worst ways.
I’ve seen a trolloc thief spam spitting on a wolf brother (both players healthy) who then narrated everyone go well and do not PK.
I’ve seen black talon spam spit on a fade and tell them to go firetruck themselves.
I’ve seen people AFK in cities (RK or FD) who come out to fight when the fighting is the on doorstep then complain about the lack of effort the opposite side puts in and talk about how certain players or characters are just no effort and looking for easy outcomes.
I’ve seen one player try to make a joke about a player who is offline and four players login simultaneously, including the butt of the joke, to make fun of that player.
I’ve seen a group of trollocs hit Zuret without checking tracks when a group of Seanchan was hitting Jafar. I then watched the trollocs all die and listened for 30 minutes to a player rage about OOC measures of communication and how bullshit it was and how dung some players are and can’t help themselves ruining the fun of others. All of which could have been avoided by using the track command at docks or all west of the bridge. And Zuret, like all city heads, will narrate within the first few rounds of combat once.
In all of these instances I chose not to engage because it is annoying to me. That means I personally let toxicity slip which directly impacted people’s ability to play the game in a multiplayer game. I’ve ignored instances of hyper-specific frustration because I chose to see it as a reaction to what was happening in the game and not the result of the grudge. The choice to do something and then complain that your opponents are doing the same thing that you are doing, when they are trying and on the enemies doorstep (which often leads to PK dying), is also something that I have ignored. And, I’ve ignored bullying because I did not want to spend my time on the game trying to manage or moderate behavior or communication. I’ve let characters control a narrative that I knew was false and not stepped in because I felt it would just be seen as more bias against Dark Side.
There are many instances that, I’m sure, all immortals have witnessed which are a deterrent to even logging on when you’re there to try and make positive changes and suddenly you’re in some internet chatroom with better socials and longer memories. We cannot fix private relationships, but we must do a better job managing public reactions.
Our approach as stated will be aggressive. In all these instances players should have been confronted. Rhetorically speaking, what would you think was fair if you didn’t want to deal with this and were sick of players on either side being affected by it? How would you tackle persistent behavior from every side that is often triggered by micro-aggressions?
2. PVE Behavior
A very difficult thing to balance in this game is to reward for PVE at a level that makes it worth it when people are active because there are some other coordinated players who will do what is in their power to hit it on repeat and often only what rewards the best at that time (which leads to everything that loads great being nerfed).
Adjustments to Panarch, and overall lost interest in revamping city heads, comes from players using multiple channelers to nuke it once and then kill it eight times in a night when it started respawning without mobs without reporting it. Or various other mechanics that they’ve discovered in order to farm things. Elysia talked specifically to Draz about this in a separate thread. We end up either making things too difficult to cheat, and they likely don’t get hit (RE: Kitiara), or we make them too easy, but they don’t load as well as in the past and players complain about the downing of loads or rewards.
This type of behavior in a player base this small is what often has me convinced that PVE awards, to the detriment of the non-standard player, are too large and must be controlled or nerfed. The problem with adding activities to incentive group hits or making rewards possible is that there is a subset of players who currently play the game that will and have proven that any reward granted that can come from a means outside of PK will be abused at hours when Immortals are not online, on repetition, and will go unreported until we see something like a log where someone pulls 9 gold chains out of a saddlebag and we wonder, “hm. That’s curious.”
So then we check on 100% loads and find that over a four day period Evil Elyas was being hit between 6-8 times a night by three players for a decent time span. The load is now much worse directly because of this and it will likely not get hit because people do not want to grind low % rewards. At some point there is simply a desire for guaranteed results because of the entitlement built off of having them in the past. Even after the changes to IoMM or Jafar, if I watch a group hit and it does not load a weapon, the complaining happens in the room. The rewards have been normalized and now we’re back to being annoyed at RNG.
My own take-away from here is that as much as one player can farm something an infinite amount of times it is probably best to leave it in game and punish that player exclusively. Yet, sometimes those players end up being the one who collect groups to do the thing on repetition (for whatever reason on the lack of leadership). Are the rewards being in the game that terrible? For instance, Toshiro’s post in hindsight explains some of what I saw with Mayene. But, there was no role-play behind it. You never once saw either players involved narrate about what they were doing or what they had accomplished. Often they would suggest that the alarm was just a bug. That it had been buggy recently. No one suspected or checked or would check because they were there lying in an OOC manner. Has it been buggy? No. Is that an IC suggestion to make to light side who were asking if someone had checked Mayene recently? No.
They can’t do it anymore because I added a preventative measure to city heads that prevented projectile use from farming any of them. I felt that two people soloing a city head for turnpoints, deflecting attention by blaming bugs, and then never bragging about their success wasn’t a good thing for the game. The rewards were not leading to more interaction, just more idle time between repops.
One night I caught damane blinding all the guards in Morgase’s room. I wrote mobol that would make the mobs quaff draughts when it happened then gave each of them an initial draught. Then they just had an abser buff while they tried to nuke Morgase dead so I healed her and gave equal damaged to her minions through mobol. I also had the mobol, when they saw channeling happen, reenter the room and attack the channeler. (This was totally overkill and I removed it after one attempt, but they left). Players then accused me of resetting the zone (because the mobs location in the room had moved since they disengaged themselves by reentering to attack the channelers), making it impossible to do, and three players separately threatened to quit on prays because of immortal intervention. Should I have intervened? Likely not, in retrospect them killing Morgase would have not mattered, and then I could have reset the zone and made it so their methods wouldn’t work in the future. I had fun trying to write the mobol fast enough to adjust to their methods, but ultimately it felt like a stupid thing to do when they were annoyed because it wasn’t working as it had, and not thinking of this could be a challenge. I would be annoyed too if there were any humans on whatsoever who had any interest in challenging their freedom to farm whatever they want.
Will other groups suffer because of this? Yes. The original intent behind city head hits was to promote cross-race PK or interaction. We saw it frequently on dark side, however, the flood of players logging on in concurrence with a hit likely was a deterring factor for most light side groups that felt comfortable or confident when they did it. This happens on small loads as well. Gretchen made a post about dodge trinket availability, and I had seen that lack on Dark Side more obviously than Light Side, so I had put a load of a gold ring and an obsidian pendant on shadow master at a relatively high % (around 20). When I announced it one player farmed it on repeat, logging in with the zone reset, killing it, then renting. I saw little variance in who was hitting it while I was online and thought this isn’t doing what it should have done. Those trinkets weren’t going to players online as far as I could tell. So, I lowered the %. A player asked directly, I told them the new % and they spent around 30 minutes complaining on narrates about why it was stupid and how they would never hit that smob again.
I’m still torn on this. I’ve allowed and not punished players for abusing things that I would consider abuse and that, frankly, I am amazed they didn’t and instead were unapologetic about what they were doing. We’ve been looking at smob loads and in conversation about what to do with them for awhile. The governor chunks were a sticking point for me because I continuously saw people swapping from characters with groups to hit it and get the quest points on other groups. I don’t know why I cannot see this as different than a daily except that it seems counter to the point of the inception of the Baerlon CTF.
There is more nuance in this piece. What is the best approach? I’m curious what you would do? I’ve taken the approach of trying to minimize the amount 1-3 players can farm regularly and that has hurt players who aren’t as active because they would be better off with a 70% chance instead of the players farming who can live with a 15% chance. In some changes this has led to the complete disregard of the possibility of a hit even when a group would be sure to succeed. Do we reward for higher player amounts in rooms when smobs die and punish solo players? What is the limit to the number of players required to get a good reward? If you were going to smob then why wouldn’t you hit Jafar/IoMM instead of Paishain / CTFs / Fortress / any other option? (That is rhetorical. The answer is you are going to hit what rewards the best consistently).
As many modifications as we can make to improve balance or loads, it often only exasperates the issues of entitlement to gear, turn points, bonuses, and quest points.
At some point for the game to remain healthy something will need to happen more than simply PK or PVE or new players being told that if they are interested in RP they should join the Tower.
At our core upstairs we know that there are things that drive players away faster, or help them stay longer, and we try to minimize the former and maximize the latter. At the end of the day, people are going to eventually leave (and maybe come back, and leave again). But, we do need to make sure that we (Immortals and players) are doing things to get new players who join the power to dive in easily and get familiar with the game.
There are things that we can do to make changes that take minimal effort and there are things we cannot do. For instance, it is really easy to increase horse regen by increasing their level and then saving them. It is very difficult to modify code that was put into place upon arrival, and often we’re looking to see what adjustments we can make to let it play out before we overcompensate. We can do mobol things, we can do object things, and we can do mob things relatively easy (time allowing). What we cannot do is give a list of when coding changes will take place nor what changes will be prioritized. It is a queue. Any assumption that there is an inherent bias on changes in coding (and I’ve heard all versions of it) is assuming that we’ve got a ranking system to get coded changes out is simply a rumor. There is no world where Flash holds biases for coded changes outside of nostalgia. Aureus and Itesh have been very transparent about what it takes to code and what they control in the process of getting coding implemented.
Aside from impacting the environment or the code, though, it is a difficult task to hold individuals accountable who have packs full of examples of how punishment is dolled out disproportionately or who want to make it a conversation about systemic problems that should be evaluated before behavior is examined or criticized. On top of that, we are volunteers who are not on all the time. We do not track tells nor do we track every conversation in Discord.
A few posts in this thread detail distrust and animosity toward the Staff and a sense of unfair treatment. This is likely true; if we do not witness something then we require a report and often once an investigation starts it only reveals the baggage and nuance in the conversation. If you distrust the Staff then it is more likely that you will not report to them. If you do not report and others report on you then you will continue to feel a sense of unfair treatment which is valid because of the choices you have made.
We’ve been more active on discord giving time-outs. But for all the frustration experienced, what you would have had done in the past was not done. We have been complicit in allowing this to continue in hopes that it would resolve itself. It has not. In the future we will be more vigilant because this is terrible to be around and it has got to stop. We did not punish the things that you consider to be infractions in the past, in the future we can be more strict when we see caustic behavior and conversation in any of the mediums we moderate.
It will stop through expulsion from discord, expulsion from forums, or expulsion from the game. Warnings have proven ineffective because people feel familiarity with the Staff; we are players as well as administrators, and it is easier to play the game (on immortal or mortal) than punish / converse with players about what they’re doing and threaten or hope that their behavior changes.
If you’re looking for a non-partisan player, Austin listens and does not play this game. He is also the ultimate authority in decisions where we are at a crossroads in discussion on what the correct avenue is to pursue.
From my perspective on issues, there are two distinct issues we run as Staff and need help resolving.
1. Grudged Behavior
It is not in the interest of the game to have grudges or feuds influence gameplay. It’s not fun to listen to people yell back and forth when you’re trying to play a game. No matter the conversation. If you hold grudges then keep them to yourself. If you are playing against a character type that you do not enjoy then you are free to rent. People do it often enough against channelers, trolloc rogues, wolf brothers, etc.
There are versions of not renting that are toxic gameplay. Kill someone or don’t kill them. Moderate yourself though, if you can’t help yourself and go out of your way to make another player uncomfortable because they chose to play a style that you do not enjoy then you will be punished. With logging and Discord time stamps you should be easily able to report this and the micro aggressions associated.
We have, in the past, held the stance that the responsibility is on the victim to report their experience of harassment. This stance has not proved to be fruitful because often people who feel victimized, but haven’t been, are frustrated by the lack of Staff action. And people who have felt victimized, but Staff investigate the report, determine a course of action and either don’t share outcomes or don’t punish individuals, then again, the policy has led to people who feel victimized feeling also betrayed by the Staff.
Some examples of toxic behavior that I have noticed: when I’m working on mobol and PK starts or is likely and I’m editing text in a notepad document I like to follow players and see what’s going on in the game. This can be PK related or otherwise.
For several Kajin PK sessions when I first returned where neither party could hit the other and it ended up being a yelling match between leaders that had nothing to do with the game. It generally had to do with the players and how they felt about each other in the worst ways.
I’ve seen a trolloc thief spam spitting on a wolf brother (both players healthy) who then narrated everyone go well and do not PK.
I’ve seen black talon spam spit on a fade and tell them to go firetruck themselves.
I’ve seen people AFK in cities (RK or FD) who come out to fight when the fighting is the on doorstep then complain about the lack of effort the opposite side puts in and talk about how certain players or characters are just no effort and looking for easy outcomes.
I’ve seen one player try to make a joke about a player who is offline and four players login simultaneously, including the butt of the joke, to make fun of that player.
I’ve seen a group of trollocs hit Zuret without checking tracks when a group of Seanchan was hitting Jafar. I then watched the trollocs all die and listened for 30 minutes to a player rage about OOC measures of communication and how bullshit it was and how dung some players are and can’t help themselves ruining the fun of others. All of which could have been avoided by using the track command at docks or all west of the bridge. And Zuret, like all city heads, will narrate within the first few rounds of combat once.
In all of these instances I chose not to engage because it is annoying to me. That means I personally let toxicity slip which directly impacted people’s ability to play the game in a multiplayer game. I’ve ignored instances of hyper-specific frustration because I chose to see it as a reaction to what was happening in the game and not the result of the grudge. The choice to do something and then complain that your opponents are doing the same thing that you are doing, when they are trying and on the enemies doorstep (which often leads to PK dying), is also something that I have ignored. And, I’ve ignored bullying because I did not want to spend my time on the game trying to manage or moderate behavior or communication. I’ve let characters control a narrative that I knew was false and not stepped in because I felt it would just be seen as more bias against Dark Side.
There are many instances that, I’m sure, all immortals have witnessed which are a deterrent to even logging on when you’re there to try and make positive changes and suddenly you’re in some internet chatroom with better socials and longer memories. We cannot fix private relationships, but we must do a better job managing public reactions.
Our approach as stated will be aggressive. In all these instances players should have been confronted. Rhetorically speaking, what would you think was fair if you didn’t want to deal with this and were sick of players on either side being affected by it? How would you tackle persistent behavior from every side that is often triggered by micro-aggressions?
2. PVE Behavior
A very difficult thing to balance in this game is to reward for PVE at a level that makes it worth it when people are active because there are some other coordinated players who will do what is in their power to hit it on repeat and often only what rewards the best at that time (which leads to everything that loads great being nerfed).
Adjustments to Panarch, and overall lost interest in revamping city heads, comes from players using multiple channelers to nuke it once and then kill it eight times in a night when it started respawning without mobs without reporting it. Or various other mechanics that they’ve discovered in order to farm things. Elysia talked specifically to Draz about this in a separate thread. We end up either making things too difficult to cheat, and they likely don’t get hit (RE: Kitiara), or we make them too easy, but they don’t load as well as in the past and players complain about the downing of loads or rewards.
This type of behavior in a player base this small is what often has me convinced that PVE awards, to the detriment of the non-standard player, are too large and must be controlled or nerfed. The problem with adding activities to incentive group hits or making rewards possible is that there is a subset of players who currently play the game that will and have proven that any reward granted that can come from a means outside of PK will be abused at hours when Immortals are not online, on repetition, and will go unreported until we see something like a log where someone pulls 9 gold chains out of a saddlebag and we wonder, “hm. That’s curious.”
So then we check on 100% loads and find that over a four day period Evil Elyas was being hit between 6-8 times a night by three players for a decent time span. The load is now much worse directly because of this and it will likely not get hit because people do not want to grind low % rewards. At some point there is simply a desire for guaranteed results because of the entitlement built off of having them in the past. Even after the changes to IoMM or Jafar, if I watch a group hit and it does not load a weapon, the complaining happens in the room. The rewards have been normalized and now we’re back to being annoyed at RNG.
My own take-away from here is that as much as one player can farm something an infinite amount of times it is probably best to leave it in game and punish that player exclusively. Yet, sometimes those players end up being the one who collect groups to do the thing on repetition (for whatever reason on the lack of leadership). Are the rewards being in the game that terrible? For instance, Toshiro’s post in hindsight explains some of what I saw with Mayene. But, there was no role-play behind it. You never once saw either players involved narrate about what they were doing or what they had accomplished. Often they would suggest that the alarm was just a bug. That it had been buggy recently. No one suspected or checked or would check because they were there lying in an OOC manner. Has it been buggy? No. Is that an IC suggestion to make to light side who were asking if someone had checked Mayene recently? No.
They can’t do it anymore because I added a preventative measure to city heads that prevented projectile use from farming any of them. I felt that two people soloing a city head for turnpoints, deflecting attention by blaming bugs, and then never bragging about their success wasn’t a good thing for the game. The rewards were not leading to more interaction, just more idle time between repops.
One night I caught damane blinding all the guards in Morgase’s room. I wrote mobol that would make the mobs quaff draughts when it happened then gave each of them an initial draught. Then they just had an abser buff while they tried to nuke Morgase dead so I healed her and gave equal damaged to her minions through mobol. I also had the mobol, when they saw channeling happen, reenter the room and attack the channeler. (This was totally overkill and I removed it after one attempt, but they left). Players then accused me of resetting the zone (because the mobs location in the room had moved since they disengaged themselves by reentering to attack the channelers), making it impossible to do, and three players separately threatened to quit on prays because of immortal intervention. Should I have intervened? Likely not, in retrospect them killing Morgase would have not mattered, and then I could have reset the zone and made it so their methods wouldn’t work in the future. I had fun trying to write the mobol fast enough to adjust to their methods, but ultimately it felt like a stupid thing to do when they were annoyed because it wasn’t working as it had, and not thinking of this could be a challenge. I would be annoyed too if there were any humans on whatsoever who had any interest in challenging their freedom to farm whatever they want.
Will other groups suffer because of this? Yes. The original intent behind city head hits was to promote cross-race PK or interaction. We saw it frequently on dark side, however, the flood of players logging on in concurrence with a hit likely was a deterring factor for most light side groups that felt comfortable or confident when they did it. This happens on small loads as well. Gretchen made a post about dodge trinket availability, and I had seen that lack on Dark Side more obviously than Light Side, so I had put a load of a gold ring and an obsidian pendant on shadow master at a relatively high % (around 20). When I announced it one player farmed it on repeat, logging in with the zone reset, killing it, then renting. I saw little variance in who was hitting it while I was online and thought this isn’t doing what it should have done. Those trinkets weren’t going to players online as far as I could tell. So, I lowered the %. A player asked directly, I told them the new % and they spent around 30 minutes complaining on narrates about why it was stupid and how they would never hit that smob again.
I’m still torn on this. I’ve allowed and not punished players for abusing things that I would consider abuse and that, frankly, I am amazed they didn’t and instead were unapologetic about what they were doing. We’ve been looking at smob loads and in conversation about what to do with them for awhile. The governor chunks were a sticking point for me because I continuously saw people swapping from characters with groups to hit it and get the quest points on other groups. I don’t know why I cannot see this as different than a daily except that it seems counter to the point of the inception of the Baerlon CTF.
There is more nuance in this piece. What is the best approach? I’m curious what you would do? I’ve taken the approach of trying to minimize the amount 1-3 players can farm regularly and that has hurt players who aren’t as active because they would be better off with a 70% chance instead of the players farming who can live with a 15% chance. In some changes this has led to the complete disregard of the possibility of a hit even when a group would be sure to succeed. Do we reward for higher player amounts in rooms when smobs die and punish solo players? What is the limit to the number of players required to get a good reward? If you were going to smob then why wouldn’t you hit Jafar/IoMM instead of Paishain / CTFs / Fortress / any other option? (That is rhetorical. The answer is you are going to hit what rewards the best consistently).
As many modifications as we can make to improve balance or loads, it often only exasperates the issues of entitlement to gear, turn points, bonuses, and quest points.
At some point for the game to remain healthy something will need to happen more than simply PK or PVE or new players being told that if they are interested in RP they should join the Tower.
Re: Are players leaving?
I just want to say a huge thank you to Feneon and all of the Imms who work so tirelessly with your volunteered time to make this game a great place. I am awed at your patience and grateful for you.
RE: Grudged Behavior
I am not an expert at this game, but I identify as a behaviorist and have an advanced degree related to understanding human behavior. I agree that immediate and consistent discipline for unwanted behavior -- paired with praise and rewards for positive behavior -- is extremely important for shaping and maintaining a positive culture in a social community.
I want to give a huge thank you and shout out to Austin for awarding me 2 QPs a few weeks back for doing something nice for a new player. I didn't need the QPs (I'm at a hard cap until I can shawl), but it was a kind gesture and I was able to pay that forward to issue some pines for some new players, who in turn expressed appreciation for making their day better. This made me feel good and it added a bright light to my afternoon.
I think it's important that we continue to look for ways to reward or celebrate positive behavior. Maybe that's Imms giving some gold, a crafting token, an XP-related chit, or some QPs to a player when they see something positive happen (while announcing to that player why they're doing it). Maybe we have a weekly or monthly "player of the week" award where people can submit stories on forums about how someone helped them or went out of their way to do something nice to someone else, and the selected player gets a chit or some neat item of their chioce from a pre-approved list.
RE: PvE Behavior
I don't smob as much as I used to because most gear can be readily obtained through gold or PK, and I don't find a lot of smobbing particularly fun for my play style. However, I do really like questing and I think you hit the nail on the head when you commented on consistent rewards. One idea that might make PvE fun and easier to balance gear entering the game would be to implement tokens that can be obtained only after beating specific smobs or specific smob chains, on a maximum per boot, and can be exchanged for an item of their choice from a pre-approved list. You could make certain rares load on specific mobs, or make it part of a rotation or special event, or tune the exchange rate for the tokens to get specific items. You could then control the flow of items and these tokens by changing how many you could earn from each smob or smob chain per boot per character, or how many tokens are needed for specific items. I would probably smob a lot more if I knew that no matter what we hit, it would result in a guaranteed chance to make measurable progress towards a new gold ring or obsidian pendant or something like that, even if it took a while. You could also potentially allow exchange of tokens for QPs for people who prefer those.
RE: Grudged Behavior
I am not an expert at this game, but I identify as a behaviorist and have an advanced degree related to understanding human behavior. I agree that immediate and consistent discipline for unwanted behavior -- paired with praise and rewards for positive behavior -- is extremely important for shaping and maintaining a positive culture in a social community.
I want to give a huge thank you and shout out to Austin for awarding me 2 QPs a few weeks back for doing something nice for a new player. I didn't need the QPs (I'm at a hard cap until I can shawl), but it was a kind gesture and I was able to pay that forward to issue some pines for some new players, who in turn expressed appreciation for making their day better. This made me feel good and it added a bright light to my afternoon.
I think it's important that we continue to look for ways to reward or celebrate positive behavior. Maybe that's Imms giving some gold, a crafting token, an XP-related chit, or some QPs to a player when they see something positive happen (while announcing to that player why they're doing it). Maybe we have a weekly or monthly "player of the week" award where people can submit stories on forums about how someone helped them or went out of their way to do something nice to someone else, and the selected player gets a chit or some neat item of their chioce from a pre-approved list.
RE: PvE Behavior
I don't smob as much as I used to because most gear can be readily obtained through gold or PK, and I don't find a lot of smobbing particularly fun for my play style. However, I do really like questing and I think you hit the nail on the head when you commented on consistent rewards. One idea that might make PvE fun and easier to balance gear entering the game would be to implement tokens that can be obtained only after beating specific smobs or specific smob chains, on a maximum per boot, and can be exchanged for an item of their choice from a pre-approved list. You could make certain rares load on specific mobs, or make it part of a rotation or special event, or tune the exchange rate for the tokens to get specific items. You could then control the flow of items and these tokens by changing how many you could earn from each smob or smob chain per boot per character, or how many tokens are needed for specific items. I would probably smob a lot more if I knew that no matter what we hit, it would result in a guaranteed chance to make measurable progress towards a new gold ring or obsidian pendant or something like that, even if it took a while. You could also potentially allow exchange of tokens for QPs for people who prefer those.
Re: Are players leaving?
Sounds like part of that is already going on Sarinda. We have jewelry making, and tps rewards from smobs makes tokens. What would be great is to load some ingredients for jewelry making spread out over normal smobs.
City heads:
I have always felt there should be some reward for defending your city head. Might be very difficult to automate, but there should be something for the defender, even on death.
City heads:
I have always felt there should be some reward for defending your city head. Might be very difficult to automate, but there should be something for the defender, even on death.
Re: Are players leaving?
First off, great post and thank you for taking the time to make it.
As long as there is consistency, I'm all for a more aggressive stance. I understand it's a fine line on a good day and not all situations are the same, but I think the way I'd do it would be a general:
"Going forward 1st offense (for in-game toxicity): Short-term (maybe around 72 hours) no-shout and a warning.
2nd: Short-term ban.
3rd: Indefinite ban to be lifted at the discretion of staff. Also, for extreme cases, indefinite bans may be given at any time. "
This would encompass toxicity of any kind, and while it may seem like it's not always easy, it mostly is. Point to me the chapter in any WoT book where someone spam spits or yawns at their opponent while in combat and maybe I'll change my mind. To answer your question more directly though, people need to control themselves. Doing something shitty because someone else did something shitty doesn't mean you did the right thing and you should both sit in time-out.
I actually think the PVE thing is a much tougher and nuanced situation than toxicity. Although admittedly because PVErs that abuse things tend to believe that because they invested time in abusing something they still deserve the rewards. With these suggestions please keep in mind I absolutely hate smobbing and don't actually know how most of the smobs in the game work:
I think soloable smobs shouldn't just have total trash loads, but for sure the good thing should be very rare. I also wonder if at this point we just embrace that whatever smob loads the best people will spam hit and use that to draw people to different areas. Maybe once a month (or few months or whatever I know yall are busy) change the load on a city-head or smob in a different area to be great. Announce it, but don't announce what smob it is. Hopefully this leads to a month or so of people getting decent stuff, maybe getting PK'd, maybe not. You could even have like ... smob tiers and could announce "These smobs are meant to be done with 6+ people, these with 3-5, these with 1-2." Then hopefully if someone finds a way to solo or duo one of the 6+ smobs Staff can at least point to the sign and say "You knew this wasn't supposed to be done like this but did it 12 times and didn't report it once. Bad." Also maybe adding to the bug-report reward system that already exists, if someone reports a bug with a smob they get 1 random roll of the smobs load (Not what the smob is currently wearing to prevent things like killing it to get a better load before reporting.) I also understand that someone abusing it will just kill it 12 times and loot it 12 times instead of get the loot once but that's where punishment comes in.
As far as PVE abuse punishments I mean ... If I'm being honest I don't think it's that big of a deal for more loot to be in the game. The problem comes in when the person hordes the loot which effectively removes it from the game. Either way in situations of abuse I think just removing the loot from the person and fixing the smob is the answer. Maybe have the smob point and laugh at them for a few days or something idk.
On that note, and maybe I'm completely wrong on this, but maybe make some sort of announcement or something when people reach the point of being banned for things. If people are going to be shitheads maybe they can also be examples.
To start I'd like to say that this isn't necessarily a response to Feneon as it is an effort to help open up the discussion more. When it comes to punishments I generally just ask myself "What would I expect to happen if someone else did this." and "What would I expect to happen if I did this and got caught." Those 2 answers should be the same, but people are weird.Feneon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 2:46 pmRhetorically speaking, what would you think was fair if you didn’t want to deal with this and were sick of players on either side being affected by it? How would you tackle persistent behavior from every side that is often triggered by micro-aggressions?
Do we reward for higher player amounts in rooms when smobs die and punish solo players? What is the limit to the number of players required to get a good reward? If you were going to smob then why wouldn’t you hit Jafar/IoMM instead of Paishain / CTFs / Fortress / any other option? (That is rhetorical. The answer is you are going to hit what rewards the best consistently).
As long as there is consistency, I'm all for a more aggressive stance. I understand it's a fine line on a good day and not all situations are the same, but I think the way I'd do it would be a general:
"Going forward 1st offense (for in-game toxicity): Short-term (maybe around 72 hours) no-shout and a warning.
2nd: Short-term ban.
3rd: Indefinite ban to be lifted at the discretion of staff. Also, for extreme cases, indefinite bans may be given at any time. "
This would encompass toxicity of any kind, and while it may seem like it's not always easy, it mostly is. Point to me the chapter in any WoT book where someone spam spits or yawns at their opponent while in combat and maybe I'll change my mind. To answer your question more directly though, people need to control themselves. Doing something shitty because someone else did something shitty doesn't mean you did the right thing and you should both sit in time-out.
I actually think the PVE thing is a much tougher and nuanced situation than toxicity. Although admittedly because PVErs that abuse things tend to believe that because they invested time in abusing something they still deserve the rewards. With these suggestions please keep in mind I absolutely hate smobbing and don't actually know how most of the smobs in the game work:
I think soloable smobs shouldn't just have total trash loads, but for sure the good thing should be very rare. I also wonder if at this point we just embrace that whatever smob loads the best people will spam hit and use that to draw people to different areas. Maybe once a month (or few months or whatever I know yall are busy) change the load on a city-head or smob in a different area to be great. Announce it, but don't announce what smob it is. Hopefully this leads to a month or so of people getting decent stuff, maybe getting PK'd, maybe not. You could even have like ... smob tiers and could announce "These smobs are meant to be done with 6+ people, these with 3-5, these with 1-2." Then hopefully if someone finds a way to solo or duo one of the 6+ smobs Staff can at least point to the sign and say "You knew this wasn't supposed to be done like this but did it 12 times and didn't report it once. Bad." Also maybe adding to the bug-report reward system that already exists, if someone reports a bug with a smob they get 1 random roll of the smobs load (Not what the smob is currently wearing to prevent things like killing it to get a better load before reporting.) I also understand that someone abusing it will just kill it 12 times and loot it 12 times instead of get the loot once but that's where punishment comes in.
As far as PVE abuse punishments I mean ... If I'm being honest I don't think it's that big of a deal for more loot to be in the game. The problem comes in when the person hordes the loot which effectively removes it from the game. Either way in situations of abuse I think just removing the loot from the person and fixing the smob is the answer. Maybe have the smob point and laugh at them for a few days or something idk.
On that note, and maybe I'm completely wrong on this, but maybe make some sort of announcement or something when people reach the point of being banned for things. If people are going to be shitheads maybe they can also be examples.
Re: Are players leaving?
Thanks for posting. I appreciate and respect what you had to say. I was wrong, specifically in my post in this thread when I brought up qualifications. Thank you for taking the time to educate us on how things look from your end. As well as for showing humility and the drive to move forward.
I haven’t kept up with this thread (I’m a skip to the end kind of guy) so if you’ve posted more I apologize, I’ve missed it. But I wanted to post because a few different people reached out and commented on your post. Things like this are heard and appreciated.
Re: Are players leaving?
Been around for awhile, and it is nice to have this kind of back and forth with Immortals in the last few years. Nice to see a conversation instead of just things happening in the background, though I never personally had large gripes... its still nice...
I can only respond from my own perspective, I cant talk much about solo smobs or even sub <4 people hitting a smob but I would imagine that I have fallen into the category of big groups with FCs 'abusing pve' from time to time? Being one of the FCs with gate that would often get a group and hit the same rotation of smobs over and over...
I guess my thought is... why is this bad? At my most farmy, I along with Ominas and whoever else we could gather (usually a mix of the same ~10 characters, occasionally a new name/player if there were any around. I rarely (maybe never?) gathered folks from discord, it was always whoever was around) would hit Silvak, IoMM, Jafar. Back when all the Heralds were 'retro' we would run those a lot. But so what?
Honestly it was nice, we would get a group, hit some smobs for guaranteed gear (jcuff and shield from Silvak) Those two items would then get split between the group of 5-7 characters... often Ominas wouldn't even roll for an item, and if I had not recently ripped and had the gear I also did not roll occasionally. I don't think I ever accumulated more than 1.5 backup sets.
So then over a few days we have accumulated some gear, maybe some tps, and depending on the rotation some qps. Almost always once a bit of gear had been had then I would try and pk for a bit... Inevitably RIP, lose it all, regear with what I had stored, RIP lose all that... and thus the cycle repeated.
How is that a bad thing? To me its players consistently playing and engaging with other players. I'm not sure why there is a feeling that something like Silvak needs to be buffed/nerfed when hitting it required at minimum 5 players working together to get 2 nice items and some chunks that could be turned in once a day.
Even gating in 1e of Silvak... first off, i get why that was taken away, and honestly am not upset about it... but for the sake of the discussion... now there is one less risky thing for me to do... it usually meant Kitiara would at some point solo run into Falme scared out of my mind hoping I didn't get caught on a patty and chased to death... especially if any SS were on... and ripping meant I lost all the gate codes. And idk, I worked really hard to get Kitiara to rank 5, and eventually to rank 7... so I feel like I earned Gate and all the risk that comes along with it. (not to mention the reduced weave options)
Or maybe my experience is not the problem, I am told not everything is about me but its the only perspective I have
. But if it is part of the problem... why... what makes this abuse and why punish players playing the game by making it less rewarding?
Lastly
I can only respond from my own perspective, I cant talk much about solo smobs or even sub <4 people hitting a smob but I would imagine that I have fallen into the category of big groups with FCs 'abusing pve' from time to time? Being one of the FCs with gate that would often get a group and hit the same rotation of smobs over and over...
I guess my thought is... why is this bad? At my most farmy, I along with Ominas and whoever else we could gather (usually a mix of the same ~10 characters, occasionally a new name/player if there were any around. I rarely (maybe never?) gathered folks from discord, it was always whoever was around) would hit Silvak, IoMM, Jafar. Back when all the Heralds were 'retro' we would run those a lot. But so what?
Honestly it was nice, we would get a group, hit some smobs for guaranteed gear (jcuff and shield from Silvak) Those two items would then get split between the group of 5-7 characters... often Ominas wouldn't even roll for an item, and if I had not recently ripped and had the gear I also did not roll occasionally. I don't think I ever accumulated more than 1.5 backup sets.
So then over a few days we have accumulated some gear, maybe some tps, and depending on the rotation some qps. Almost always once a bit of gear had been had then I would try and pk for a bit... Inevitably RIP, lose it all, regear with what I had stored, RIP lose all that... and thus the cycle repeated.
How is that a bad thing? To me its players consistently playing and engaging with other players. I'm not sure why there is a feeling that something like Silvak needs to be buffed/nerfed when hitting it required at minimum 5 players working together to get 2 nice items and some chunks that could be turned in once a day.
Even gating in 1e of Silvak... first off, i get why that was taken away, and honestly am not upset about it... but for the sake of the discussion... now there is one less risky thing for me to do... it usually meant Kitiara would at some point solo run into Falme scared out of my mind hoping I didn't get caught on a patty and chased to death... especially if any SS were on... and ripping meant I lost all the gate codes. And idk, I worked really hard to get Kitiara to rank 5, and eventually to rank 7... so I feel like I earned Gate and all the risk that comes along with it. (not to mention the reduced weave options)
Or maybe my experience is not the problem, I am told not everything is about me but its the only perspective I have
. But if it is part of the problem... why... what makes this abuse and why punish players playing the game by making it less rewarding?Lastly
This feels like a good way to change things without it feeling like things were lost... and also a decent way for players to know (ie not have an excuse) if something should or shouldn't be possible with what they are doing.Khaster wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 6:47 pm
I think soloable smobs shouldn't just have total trash loads, but for sure the good thing should be very rare. I also wonder if at this point we just embrace that whatever smob loads the best people will spam hit and use that to draw people to different areas. Maybe once a month (or few months or whatever I know yall are busy) change the load on a city-head or smob in a different area to be great. Announce it, but don't announce what smob it is. Hopefully this leads to a month or so of people getting decent stuff, maybe getting PK'd, maybe not. You could even have like ... smob tiers and could announce "These smobs are meant to be done with 6+ people, these with 3-5, these with 1-2." Then hopefully if someone finds a way to solo or duo one of the 6+ smobs Staff can at least point to the sign and say "You knew this wasn't supposed to be done like this but did it 12 times and didn't report it once. Bad." Also maybe adding to the bug-report reward system that already exists, if someone reports a bug with a smob they get 1 random roll of the smobs load (Not what the smob is currently wearing to prevent things like killing it to get a better load before reporting.) I also understand that someone abusing it will just kill it 12 times and loot it 12 times instead of get the loot once but that's where punishment comes in.
Re: Are players leaving?
@Kitiara:
Generally speaking, that type of farming isn't that much of a problem. It's the difference between the casual player and the person who makes it their life's mission to hit xxx every time they're on, sometimes multiple times a day (and sometimes for 8 hours a day for weeks on end) if they are very active, having the repop times down pat. Stuff that works in moderation is out of whack with obsessive dedication, pretty much. E.g. the first iteration of heralds, where they could be done several times a day, which lead to a few people gaining hundreds of qps in a matter of weeks.
While I wasn't part of the Falme changes and only know of the no-Gate thing, I think I can offer a bit of perspective.
Imagine you're a Seanchan and a group like the one you're describing comes and hits Silvak every day. It may be a Draz group during one time of the day and an Ominas group another time. You're one or two Seanchan on and... you can't even fulfill your roleplay of protecting that member of the Blood. While it may be a fun activity for LS, the gain is ok and the danger fairly minimal, the danger to a Seanchan fulfilling their roleplay is far greater. Their chances of killing one of you are slim to none. The risk of losing time, exp and eq are pretty substantial and the potential of fun is essentially non-existent. You can only butt your head against a brick wall (Tower group, usually) so many times before it becomes unfun.
We can't magically conjure Seanchan or players in general out of thin air, so in order to remove a point of frustration for Seanchan players... things were changed. In this light, have you noticed that you won't hear any complaints about something like Baerlon or Jehannah switching between the various factions? These are "their" mobs getting hit too. But not in their home city. Not their head mob that they should be defending RPishly and that... they can't. Seeing that too often just leads to resentment, bitterness and sometimes even worse.
The same happened with the Tower, in a way. There had been small tweaks to its mob strength after the new layout was put in. We had the occasional new player, but as long as they weren't griefed, it worked for the most part. Then we got a whole bunch of newbies prior and during the TV show and a bunch of people picking on those.
Really, a key take away for the game at large is, ironically, to think of it like the Pattern. How does your thread, your actions, affect someone else? Sure, you have a right to hit that cityhead with a group every day, just like players have the right to kill a level 16, just like players have the right to gank, or play xyz setup that is generally considered unfun, but is it conducive to a good and fun environment for all involved?
Obviously there are a lot of things that go into this. Some of it is actual balance, e.g. is it too easy for this type of setup or group to do this or that. Some of it is flagged under balance but more realistically is changing the board to allow players to roleplay their character without too much frustrations. And sometimes, that means making it harder for others. The problem then is people complaining that their fun activity gets made harder, without ever a thought for those SS, DS, or whomever who continuously have to compromise their RP. It's a multi-player game, meaning what you do will likely affect others in some way. Positively, or negatively? - that is the question.
Generally speaking, that type of farming isn't that much of a problem. It's the difference between the casual player and the person who makes it their life's mission to hit xxx every time they're on, sometimes multiple times a day (and sometimes for 8 hours a day for weeks on end) if they are very active, having the repop times down pat. Stuff that works in moderation is out of whack with obsessive dedication, pretty much. E.g. the first iteration of heralds, where they could be done several times a day, which lead to a few people gaining hundreds of qps in a matter of weeks.
While I wasn't part of the Falme changes and only know of the no-Gate thing, I think I can offer a bit of perspective.
Imagine you're a Seanchan and a group like the one you're describing comes and hits Silvak every day. It may be a Draz group during one time of the day and an Ominas group another time. You're one or two Seanchan on and... you can't even fulfill your roleplay of protecting that member of the Blood. While it may be a fun activity for LS, the gain is ok and the danger fairly minimal, the danger to a Seanchan fulfilling their roleplay is far greater. Their chances of killing one of you are slim to none. The risk of losing time, exp and eq are pretty substantial and the potential of fun is essentially non-existent. You can only butt your head against a brick wall (Tower group, usually) so many times before it becomes unfun.
We can't magically conjure Seanchan or players in general out of thin air, so in order to remove a point of frustration for Seanchan players... things were changed. In this light, have you noticed that you won't hear any complaints about something like Baerlon or Jehannah switching between the various factions? These are "their" mobs getting hit too. But not in their home city. Not their head mob that they should be defending RPishly and that... they can't. Seeing that too often just leads to resentment, bitterness and sometimes even worse.
The same happened with the Tower, in a way. There had been small tweaks to its mob strength after the new layout was put in. We had the occasional new player, but as long as they weren't griefed, it worked for the most part. Then we got a whole bunch of newbies prior and during the TV show and a bunch of people picking on those.
Really, a key take away for the game at large is, ironically, to think of it like the Pattern. How does your thread, your actions, affect someone else? Sure, you have a right to hit that cityhead with a group every day, just like players have the right to kill a level 16, just like players have the right to gank, or play xyz setup that is generally considered unfun, but is it conducive to a good and fun environment for all involved?
Obviously there are a lot of things that go into this. Some of it is actual balance, e.g. is it too easy for this type of setup or group to do this or that. Some of it is flagged under balance but more realistically is changing the board to allow players to roleplay their character without too much frustrations. And sometimes, that means making it harder for others. The problem then is people complaining that their fun activity gets made harder, without ever a thought for those SS, DS, or whomever who continuously have to compromise their RP. It's a multi-player game, meaning what you do will likely affect others in some way. Positively, or negatively? - that is the question.
Re: Are players leaving?
Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful post, Feneon. As one who in her prime did a ton of solo and small group smobbing, (I certainly hope not to the point of abuse, but absolutely targeting based on risk-reward-difficulty!) I do understand your concern with incentives, and the difficulties of rewards good enough to encourage people to do things but not so much that they efficiently farm the pants off it at best or abuse bugs and break rules at worst. I don't have a great answer for the best approach to "high yield" PVE content. Putting in a bunch of work for a % load and low rolling can be very frustrating, even on relatively small things. Consider for example Callesa's thoughts on the gemstone mobol. But even if no cheating is involved, solo folks or fixed groups hitting an abnormally well loading smob 100 times in a row might not be the best design if that forecloses other more varied activity. Every activity has an opportunity cost, after all. I'm not quite sure how best to handle the reward side of the equation, as I think there is still value in having lucrative PVE content, but I respect your efforts!Feneon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 2:46 pmThis type of behavior in a player base this small is what often has me convinced that PVE awards, to the detriment of the non-standard player, are too large and must be controlled or nerfed. The problem with adding activities to incentive group hits or making rewards possible is that there is a subset of players who currently play the game that will and have proven that any reward granted that can come from a means outside of PK will be abused at hours when Immortals are not online, on repetition, and will go unreported until we see something like a log where someone pulls 9 gold chains out of a saddlebag and we wonder, “hm. That’s curious.”
But in a previous thread about an influx of darkfriends I wrote a fairly lengthy post that was probably doomed to tl;dr hell. "Sorry my brief was so long, Your Honor. It would have been shorter if I had more time," etc. Tangential to the discussion of darkfriends, I mentioned that one tool the game doesn't always use optimally is that of *risk*. There are lots of activities that are "good for the mud and building the playerbase" that historically didn't reward very well. Teaching a newbie game mechanics. Random roleplaying in the town square. Taking an inexperienced but decently-leveled character smobbing to gather gear for a proper highbie kit. To the staff's credit, there's been a lot of effort to incent this type of activity. But the tool used has almost always been upping rewards. "Here, have a chance of a qp when smobbing in a group! Have some rp qp! Killing smob x now gives tp," etc. I feel that for things like hitting basic smobs, these sort of incentives often encourage the behavior you discourage, efficient farming by min-maxing players hunting the pushed rewards, rather than people taking newbies with them and teaching them to regear.
My (somewhat inchoate) suggestion is that for a lot of "helping" behavior, a better approach might be to focus less on moboled rewards and instead consider ways to lesson risk. The more ways there are for an ugly group to appear suddenly and painfully on the scene, the less likely I am to stick my neck out to help someone get a full set of abs. Talking a person carefully through the smobbing technique all while constantly locing, where-ing, tracking, spamming and the like gets really wearisome! Balancing against the critical "no place is fully safe" ethos is tough, but at the very least, I think some consideration of the relatively recent spate of "helping people find enemies" changes may be useful. One example is the mobol % reporting tower members entering any smob room to active CoL and Seanchan. (I believe this is still in game, but with the spate of changes, perhaps I've missed a removal) With even one hostile type on who makes a habit of hunting tower members, I'd be extremely wary of helping anyone in a typing intensive way while there's a chance our location is being broadcast. That goes double with my paranoia about a darkfriend or "ICQ spy" (dating myself with the phrase, but oh well) sharing that info to ds.
From a balance perspective, it totally makes sense to discourage solo farming of abnormally well loading smobs, and from an RP/geographic perspective, there's similarly fair reasons for certain smobs to continue to include reporting mobol. But it may be counterproductive to have the boring bread-and-butter smobs that just load good solid gear, and not farmable rarities, sending out automatic reports. These are smobs that are usually going to be hit only for an outside reward (automated qp) or for a very good reason (helping someone regear), and I think reducing the risk may be a better way to encourage the helping people side of things while not turning these smobs into a farm off for some automated payout. I'd similarly consider reducing the prevalence of rats and such around these "help folk regear" sorts of smobs, but at least with shadoweyes, the risk can be mitigated with alert play, and depending on location, the report range limit can minimize the danger. So totally fine for something like Tall Thief to have an increased risk of discovery. Much less so for Wolfie or Ragnar or the like.
I recognize this is lengthy, and as Elyse is my primary alt, my critique of anti-tower MOBOL probably feels a bit self serving. And to some degree I'm sure it is. But it was meant primarily as an example. The bigger point is that though a careful hand is needed in our "nowhere is safe" world, reducing certain risks rather than upping rewards may be a good tool for promoting the kind of PVE activity you like, while not increasing extreme farming behavior, Feneon. Thanks for reading!