Fostering an Accountable Community

[erulak]

I'm not going to debate this with you because at the end of the day, it's obvious when people are working together for actual imminent danger/PK (something nobody has ever had a problem with) and when they're just doing it to walk around doing purely opt-in things like smobbing, heralding, ctfs, etc. We're all for the flexible RP when it comes to conforming it to do what we want, but get upset when there's any consequences as a result of that flexibility/latitude being exercised. That's the whole issue.

[Aldevir]

Erulak's first post does a really great job expressing a lot of what I've been feeling. Its that small-scale RP that Feneon mentions that's really lacking right now. In the past you would have people doing more to embrace their clan/role and adhere to the baseline RP that came with it. Its what set clans apart and made everything, including PK, more interesting. It allowed people to take pride in their clan and the people in it. That's sort of gone out the window and as a result its devalued clans to the point where they feel like meaningless vehicles for getting qps.

[Elysia]

So my question is; was he told by an imm, or within his clan hierarchy; or was there an RP element to saying 'really, if you expect your career to advance you should never ever be seen to assist those pisants'. I don't know about you but someone saves my life, or that of my Sedai, from trollocs a few times I don't care what colour his cloak is, I'm going right back to save him. I still won't group him with an accepted though, or if there isn't DS / trollocs / fades whatever, probably SS too, though I'm unsure on that.

Specifics like not grouping with channelers OR gaidin are in the clan handbook AND they were told by an imm. Like, this is exactly the type of thing we're talking about here. Note, this was in fact spotted by players and spotted by imms roughly simultaneously, but it illustrates exactly how it's a team effort to make RJ's world come to life. No, it hasn't been acted on yet, because of my vacation and catching up to a 1 month backlog in my mailbox.

The only exception Staff ever made wrt *oL grouping with Tower was when Sarryn had been repeatedly requesting it around 2015-2016 when numbers were low low. Like 5-7 on LS including statters during peak times low. That was reverted in 2017 when numbers rose and people wanting to leave the clan with honors/ qps intact were allowed to, for a time. That was 7 years ago.

[Ashlynn]

Monitoring Player Violations
With the greatest respect, monitoring and reporting non-IC player violation is not the responsibility of the players. Players can of course and are indeed liable for such breaches. To encourage such things, perhaps a carrot and stick approach e.g (bug) bounties may work better.

I don't like the idea of "bounties" for turning in non-IC player violations. I am not going to give you a history lesson on states that encourage neighbors to report each other for perceived violations. I do not believe that would be a good road to head down. The possibility for abuse and harassment is enough to say "No" to that.

I don't love that trophies are IC without the functionality of any other character being able to view your trophy (thiefbane bonus!?!). But, as was said, this has always been the case - we used to get our trophy checked for joining a fair number of clans.

I have never had any problem with this as part of the requirements to join a clan. What I do have an issue with is if trophy checks are being used intermittently to determine if someone is following roleplay requirements without any other form of engagement. I believe I spoke with numerous people about my thoughts, probably even Elysia. There is a mentality that if no one saw it (no mobs, no players) it did not happen, especially if no witnesses are left behind. I can understand that the repeated offenses from Draz likely tire out the Staff, but I think it would have been much better overall for roleplay and storybuilding if, perhaps, a patrol of Winged Guard happened upon some horse tracks headed to Pahar's lair, and found Draz inside. Give him the choice to try to flee/get warranted or go with them peacefully to explain himself. One example in the past that I felt was handled relatively well was with Ylsa and the merchant mob. Despite how that turned out, I believe that was the right way to handle the notifications. A mob was witness to the allegation and ran away to the White Tower to report the incident. It was all handled in character and with proper roleplay.

Now, for my portion. If there are any other White Tower members other than Draz that broke a banishment, this is the first I am hearing about it. If you saw this, mail me and the rest of the Hall of Sitters group. I try to set clear expectations for the clans of the White Tower and I take these player-driven political scenes seriously. There were definitely mistakes made on all sides with regards to how long this whole scene is taking to resolve.

Diplomacy is handled by a specific group. It often takes a lot of time due to various player requirements (scheduling meetings versus availability, internal discussions, approval process). My understanding is that it was being worked on. As a result, they were given the leeway that was felt to be appropriate and deserved for such a delicate and difficult task. Looking back and knowing what we know and assuming the rest, this could easily take two months to complete (and that would be pretty quick in my opinion).

At some point, someone decided to post the banishment. This was both a good and bad thing. It was a kickstart to a resolution, but at the White Tower's expense. Some time after that, questions were asked. Eventually, we learned more information. Due to various factors, a resolution was difficult at best. It was not until the Staff intervened with the aforementioned ultimatum that what I believe the Staff wanted was actually achieved.

This is what I am trying to illustrate: It is difficult to meet an expectation of resolution within a specific amount of time without knowing the time table. One person might think 30 days is fast, while others think it is slow. Meanwhile, the Staff might want to have the next part of the story begin within two weeks.

Here is an idea at how to avoid this in the future. Should there be parts of the story dependent on players, I think it might be a good idea to produce some sort of event roadmap. This would be a general timeline of the individual parts of the story. There is no need for details. No spoilers here.

• Event One: Fort (1 month - complete)

• Event Two: (2 months - pending)

• Event Three: (1 month - pending)

This might be the most simple way to put it. Having the knowledge beforehand would make it unnecessary to deliver what feels like last minute ultimatums and avoid tense sentiments between Staff and players. This idea could be implemented in other ways with upcoming releases and implementations too.

With regards to player to Staff discussions: I think in these cases, it is natural for players to want to discuss things with Staff. For this recent situation, for example, I reached out to Elysia with some questions about things as did others. Things like clarification or perhaps some hint or help of direction. I would not do this unless I was seriously unsure about something or in need of it. I think what all this boils down to is communication. What level of communication should we receive from Staff? What level of communication should be expected in the clan(s)? I know many people reached out to many other people. I know a lot of people got answers and a lot of people did not get answers in a timely manner. Had everyone communicated better, I think this whole ordeal would have been avoided. What is it they say? With enough time, anything can be talked out peacefully?

[Sarin]

If you want to change how the players respond to RP / IMM interaction you would need to hand hold through some scenarios so people can see what is possible, what is expected and get a sense of the rules and how the roleplay could work regarding immortals.

Many of us have been trained to:

1. Avoid imm interaction as much as possible as it will get you trouble.
2. Avoid all global type quests because they are simply frustrating time sinks of guess the mobile with no actual hints, and an imm friend is going to solve it in 15 minutes once everyone else gives up.
3. Avoid all mob raids, max reward is probably not worth the levels you will lose not to mention those times a random no name loots you and disappears.

hyperbole of course, I've had great times on some of the global quests, but just so imms understand the push back and general uninterested - this is what I would think has to be overcome.

[Draz]

Good posts and ideas all; and definitely I've had that feeling.

Re the HoL who has posts on the warrant thread to not warrant or attack him due to this circumstance, no, it was not sarryn (unless an alt of his), and it was RPd

If their handbook states do not group with tower under any circumstances, including DS pk, then yes sure he's in error. So are the other 10 or so CoL I've grouped with over the years whenever there is DS pk (occasionally only when its clear we will die if we don't, but pretty much without exception that I can think of).

[Stomper]

Despite whatever Draz does or hasn't done throughout his alts that's bad. He does bring a lot of good to the game. He catches boat loads of flack, from all sides. But he's always been very helpful to most anyone. He pkz like a chicken with his head cut off, doesn't care about dying. A loot pinata if you will sometimes. Always doing group things with people etc etc. Not condoning everything he's done, or saying he shouldn't get punished or players shouldn't in general. Just stating, there's a lot more detrimental players then him tbh.

[Kryyg]

Despite whatever Draz does or hasn't done throughout his alts that's bad. He does bring a lot of good to the game. He catches boat loads of flack, from all sides. But he's always been very helpful to most anyone. He pkz like a chicken with his head cut off, doesn't care about dying. A loot pinata if you will sometimes. Always doing group things with people etc etc. Not condoning everything he's done, or saying he shouldn't get punished or players shouldn't in general. Just stating, there's a lot more detrimental players then him tbh.

He’s a modern day smobber version of me! Hero.

[Feneon]

and with respect to the playing field; you have mechanisms to award rp, and mechanisms without, and you've now implemented a requirement for both; why not let that play out? if someone doesn't rp at all and pushes r8,..they've got a rude surprise. If someone RPs plenty, they get r8 that much easier. If someone is rping; totally reasonable and fine to tell someone who isn't immersed they're rping, either they can be invited to join, or go away. If you have an issue with someone breaking rp, you can raise that through rp channels..and if you don't have a problem..why an issue.


If I look at my RP, I don't like murderers, bullies, or bigots. I have a general expectation that CoL will fall into those categories, as well as various others. I'm still going to have DS trump that every single time, excepting murdering crazy mcs, or as per direction from my Sedai or the Tower.
In this particular CoLs case I advised him about a HoL who is specifically unwarranted because they've RPd that and never broken TV laws, I gather he had that possibility removed because he got warranted, but I don't see any issue with that.

Re the comments on collusion; if that were the case everything would line up perfectly within the rules and you'd never see it.
A group of people logging on at a specific time for cityhits, every day, for months, did not involve me. Never got seen by DS.
A group of people logging on to smash Tar every evening, totally within the rules.
There was no need for me to stay on Draz for the Mayene stuff, I stayed on because I had already RPd that it didn't fall within the boundary, and that if I found DS I would pursue them. Re CoL.. so pk ended and we flip a ds fort, when his focus is fighting ds, I see no issue with him being there, bu not grouped. But he wouldn't be invited for Greegan or Pahar, since they're not DS. Unless it was in the middle of some RP session (not run by me, because it would tank), where partnership was being actively discussed. Ala the HoL who has different RP. Or a truce in war to discuss terms or rules of war.

To the first point: We are raising the conversations around the RP requirement and RP in general because we've given players a year to meet the requirements and have seen that us imposing requirements doesn't actually translate to them being seen as good, and we do want people to succeed. We hope the RP requirements will lead to more RP, but we want to have an open dialogue here and our intention is building rapport and also trying to figure out how we can facilitate events that are successful, not obnoxious.

To the collusion point and also similar to the AU time zone comment, if you have someone maniacally farming, who has a predisposition to also cheese things, then we have typically lower drop rates or pull rates because we can't have a 100% pull rate for groups that typically consist of multiple channelers who can blow-up TAR, while also maintaining the rarity of items. And as far as a group of Winged Guards catching Draz, the majority of imms are not in Draz' time zone. At some point you do want rarity to exist and just because people store things does not mean they do not exist. (e.g. heron greatswords, there are a lot in game, but I rarely see them played anymore). TAR is a really cool instance that Korsik put together that shifts, has a time limit, is an interesting thing to discover and figure out, and changes dynamically with resource management at the front end being important.

Ashlynn's post at the end sort of elevates the need for it to some degree, but also the consequences of having a lack of dialogue. If we communicate better then we can probably avoid a lot of the frustration people experience and maybe have a more collaborative relationship. The timeline stuff may be a good idea to give people an idea on how things will play out. We built a forum to try and facilitate more of that, and to Sarin's point, we're trying to be more open and likely we do need to hand hold through some scenarios to let people see what is possible. We have felt the disinterest and general pushback and we want to overcome it because at its core, this is a free and awesome typing game that can really deliver when it's got a group of players all playing together.

I would say that the player violations things is probably at risk of abuse and we have a small playerbase and the more people rat on each other, the more ostracized people would feel, and there's already a lot of ill will between factions that we skirt around. Historically these things don't matter as much in context of PK, but can become a larger issue when it comes to roleplay and clan coordination in general.

[Tomos]

So my question is; was he told by an imm, or within his clan hierarchy; or was there an RP element to saying 'really, if you expect your career to advance you should never ever be seen to assist those pisants'. I don't know about you but someone saves my life, or that of my Sedai, from trollocs a few times I don't care what colour his cloak is, I'm going right back to save him. I still won't group him with an accepted though, or if there isn't DS / trollocs / fades whatever, probably SS too, though I'm unsure on that.

Specifics like not grouping with channelers OR gaidin are in the clan handbook AND they were told by an imm. Like, this is exactly the type of thing we're talking about here. Note, this was in fact spotted by players and spotted by imms roughly simultaneously, but it illustrates exactly how it's a team effort to make RJ's world come to life. No, it hasn't been acted on yet, because of my vacation and catching up to a 1 month backlog in my mailbox.

The only exception Staff ever made wrt *oL grouping with Tower was when Sarryn had been repeatedly requesting it around 2015-2016 when numbers were low low. Like 5-7 on LS including statters during peak times low. That was reverted in 2017 when numbers rose and people wanting to leave the clan with honors/ qps intact were allowed to, for a time. That was 7 years ago.

I didn't see anything about this and actually learned about it today through another party. This is the kind of thing people are talking about. No communication. I admit I have not been playing this character as much lately, but I try to check mails every few days - at least once per week. I don't see any messages about this. If we are talking about the same player, I actually asked them about it and reminded them that they should not do such things. I think Elysia already talked to them if what they said is correct.

It is frustrating, because I would be more than happy to help police these basic roleplay requirements. It is difficult to do so when you do not know about them. If you see a Child of Light doing something that they should not be, please mail me and or the clan as a whole.