Retroactive punitive policies

[Kryyg]

I’m all for people playing however they want and enjoy just having the who list larger.

That said, this game was created as a PK mud. I forget what MUD all the original players/immortals abandoned before making this one. The roots of this game are PK and the staff has gone above and beyond to accommodate non PKers in the last 2-5 years. Honestly, this is the result you get when you do that.

So much whining over 25 kills. Most PKers who make AS don’t like the RP and nonsense of it (along with having to deal with some of the players who think they are AS in real life) but they do it because of advancement. It goes both ways.

I’m now convinced allowing RP and non PK ways of advancement has just created some players with some incredible entitlement.

Maybe a good compromise is to just let players who don’t get the PK requirement keep rank but no bonuses. These are all PK bonuses anyways. I’ve been around awhile as well and I’ve never seen such a disdain between playing factions. There has always been the non-PKers who preferred PVE but they never seemed so vehemently against it in all forms. The PKers are far more well behaved now than in the past, in my opinion. Sleep stab, incinerate, murderers, this was like 1000x more common at peak wotmud.

In conclusion, Keep rank for them and remove all bonuses since that is the main issue? Makes sense to me. Bonuses aren’t really relevant for PVE or spam emoting.

[reil]

This thread's jumped the shark pretty hard, even for how it started to begin with, but this is pretty funny:

Over 4K qps was removed for transferring legitimately farmed potions from DS to LS. This kept the LS broker stocked. I hear the broker is empty most days now.

The legitimacy of the vials themselves was pretty clearly not the issue. I don't think it's any sort of validation to have "kept the LS broker stocked" with stuff farmed on DS -- as we found out, duped vials kept the DS broker stocked too. It's still pretty much the exact same thing as transferring scalps on one character to advance another, which is something we have a pretty solid track record of punishing over the years.

I recognize every moment is an opportunity to rehab and rewrite, but let's be real here, that's not being "screwed over". Instead of acting like a victim who did nothing wrong, encourage people to not do stuff like this and if you know people have done stuff like this or doing stuff like this, encourage them to self-report and take whatever they get as punishment for it instead of gambling and hoping that nobody bothers to notice.

And in a thread where there's plenty to laugh at (with Rig at the top of the list for me), the idea of Erulisse being someone who got screwed over manages to be the funniest thing I've read so far.

[Taziar]

Well, if anyone really wants to get back on track on this post it boils down to: Why do people protest?

This post started out as protesting a policy change, because a group of players feel marginalized by the policy.

Now in true WoTMUD fashion the people who don't like the protesters on a personal level railed against the protesters more than what was in protest, which then spiraled down into how many times can we count Rig's net positive behavior over the years.

Not a shred of empathy or open mindedness was put forth in response to the OP view point to construct meaningful dialogue, it was American style politics 101: attack the other person and not their policies.

[Kryyg]

Well, if anyone really wants to get back on track on this post it boils down to: Why do people protest?

This post started out as protesting a policy change, because a group of players feel marginalized by the policy.

Now in true WoTMUD fashion the people who don't like the protesters on a personal level railed against the protesters more than what was in protest, which then spiraled down into how many times can we count Rig's net positive behavior over the years.

Not a shred of empathy or open mindedness was put forth in response to the OP view point to construct meaningful dialogue, it was American style politics 101: attack the other person and not their policies.

Go to hell boomer!!!

Now we have really gone all out American style!

I think what’s even more American style is that a minority of the player base is just being very vocal and loud.


I made multiple great suggestions!! I’m kind of a big deal PKer who wishes he could secretly RP so I am an excellent bridge and negotiator between these two parties.

[Roryn]

I very clearly brought up arguments about the policy. Still lots of ways to enjoy pve rewards either in full, or for 75% of the rewards. Those are really good numbers.

The immortals have stated why the change has why through and what they would like to see.

Players continue to act like they're being targeted and downtrodden. Talking about immortals picking favorite sides or people, about foxes in hen houses or other such crap. I don't like this change so I'll just quit!

Those threats and stuff get old. People are tired of hearing it from one side or the other. This is a good middle ground and probably the best solution. The pvp crowd still think that pve rewards are bad. The pve crowd still don't want to pk. This is in the middle, leaning to the side of pvers.

I made the analogy in wotcord earlier, but where were all the people defending ss closing down? Threatening to quit? Lots of people enjoyed that side. Shouldn't they be able to play the way they want? What's that, they still can you say? They just can't create new Seanchan. Oh ok, yeah that makes sense. You don't see those guys raising hell and losing it, at least i don't see any posts about it.

Just relax. It's a game. One that most of us have played way too long lol. Dabble in pk, get your scalps, go back to farming pve qps. Move past this so immortals can focus on new and exciting things instead of rebalancing the same things over and over again in an effort to please one side or the other.

I'll leave you with a quote from a recent super successful video game dev. "A game for everyone is a game for no one". You can't please everyone, so sometimes you just have to pick a direction and run with it.

[Roryn]

Oh yeah, i also have nothing against any of you personally other than i see the same names making the same kind of posts and it gets irksome. Again nothing about you personally so much as the behavior.

[Taziar]

Now for my first real response to all the support for this policy.

1. "It is so easy to get xx scalps why complain"

Easy/Hard is not in question when having to obtain a certain number of scalps for character advancement. The very reason that alternate QP awards were implemented was to give players that did not focus on PK a way to progress their characters. Of course there is going to be push back to change, this is the human condition, just as there was push back for so long to give other opportunities to players to advance other than PK. But using this as an argument for the policy is purely subjective.

2. "It has always been a PK mud"

I was here for the 200+ weekends back in the day, I have been reading forums and playing the game since 1998. As I recall back then it was maybe 25% of the mud was PK'rs and the other 75% were players that fulfilled other aspects of the other traditional play styles. The majority were drawn to the game because it was a "Wheel of Time" game and not a PK game. I would argue that if FLASH and them had named the game PKMUD instead of WoTMUD then this game would have died out before we hit Y2K. I would argue the only reason for the longevity of this game lies solely on the coat tails of the book series and the open sandbox it offers to play in. Every ad and mention of this game on the other sites like Mudlet and Mudconnector states it is a fully faceted game.

3. "This only affect 1-2 characters in 1-2 clans"

From a policy stand point, when you make fringe policies that affect so little but create substantial work load you become inefficient. If so little of the remaining player base is affected by this, why create an inefficient policy? Why risk marginalizing any portion of the player base.

Conclusion:

Most if not all issues the game has in a "balance" sense is lack of players. Does this policy address that? No, it in fact undermines that.

[Roryn]

Nothing about these changes, change the fact that it is a fully faceted game that you can advance by lots of different ways.

[Taziar]

Nothing about these changes, change the fact that it is a fully faceted game that you can advance by lots of different ways.

As I read the policy you CANNOT advance without a certain number of PK scalps. What are these "you can advance by lots of different ways" you speak of? The word cannot stops advancement no?

[Roryn]

If you earn 75% of the qps you need by pve, are you not advancing toward your goal by doing pve?

Or for other clans, 100% pve advancement is still a thing.