07-11-2023, 08:21 AM
My thoughts on the matter!
Antagonists, Unhappiness, and Consent:
When Korvara was announced and everyone declared 'we want IC all the time' I knew this was going to be the inevitable feeling people who wanted to play antagonists would get. SL2 is a game of quiet grinding, random chores, and meandering around. Most people in 80% of their time playing are trying to get from point A to point B or level 60 from level 1 or simply don't have hours to dedicate to random encounters. It goes back to some old problem antagonists had back in the G6. 'Where do we find people to attack? How do be bad people without good victims?' and the solution was, at least in their minds, 'we make them!' Which never went well back then. It doesn't go well now. The fact of the matter is that if I were to randomly get stopped all alone on the road walking to a dungeon, I'd probably just feel mildly inconvenienced unless there was some context I had for the situation. If I was level 1 fresh after a legend extension, I'd probably just keep walking. The game mechanics don't lend well to even a softcore ganking atmosphere.
I've done a lot of wandering monster and random antag stuff on both larger and smaller communities than this. Generally, it's easier to find people by asking permission than it is to ask forgiveness after they express some discomfort. Once they feel that discomfort, asking them to make you leave them alone is just putting more burden on them. My usual go to was a copy paste I have here of, "Hey, my character is generally a bad person and does bad things. Is it okay if I engage with you on that? They are resolutely awful and not likely to get talked down." And it was around 50/50 on who would say yes or no. Some people who said yes were still salty in the end after losing. You can't help that. But I usually found one or two rather agreeable fights a day, and nobody felt bad about getting interacted with. Those settings usually ensured that getting beaten as an antagonist didn't lead to immediate capture and execution. Technically, Korvara also ensures that with a 1 day capture limit and needing to speak with a GM to get character death approval. I'm not sure how easy that is to get.
But my experience with antagonists on SL2 is relatively mixed.
In the G6, most of them were just bad. They were comic relief with 4 man builds made to be stupidly broken against whatever randoms fought against them. And the one instance where I got into a fight where we gave perms for death on loss, one of them on their throwaway antagonist character said 'Finally, someone willing to lose a character.' At the end of the fight, they all got DMed away to safety because the characters were plot important NPCs to the Black Falcon thing. So, y'know, the players behind the characters were a bit weird for expressing some satisfaction over something they themselves weren't staking either.
In Korvara, I'm just not really sure what you're all doing. A few people made it the norm that getting ganked and thrown in prison for numerous OOC days was suddenly acceptable, and I don't think I've seen much in the ways of using the official means of getting a character death approved via the GMs. I just assume that they either loudly or quietly agree to an execution because they feel it's right IC and then either complain about it later or feel bad about it in general. Not saying Sawrock or Polk with this as I've never seen either of you do that, but a couple other people seemingly give consent to things that they then complain about having given consent to.
Conflict, Controversy, and 'I didn't cause an explosion, just a rapid expansion of air and pressure in a small area!'
If you're wondering what Beggar's Hole was all about as an OOC community, you can just take the founder's words for it.
It takes some conjecture to figure out what weirdly toxic thing they mean by 'true' conflict and forced consequences were when random, hostile RP directed at them resulted in various flaming threads claiming they were being persecuted in unfair ways rather than exactly what they felt was proper for the game they wanted to play, but I'll leave that up to anyone reading this to discern their meaning. Beggar's Hole was made by a group of people who were purposefully toxic. They made it very clear that the name Consent Bandits was not in fact a funny play on the rules on the game but instead just an expression of frustration that the rules were not different: That you required some level of cooperation from the people you're playing with. That the game blew up when Dev's character threatened them with IC actions doesn't surprise me. Suddenly you had someone playing the victim spot who couldn't accuse the other side of the usual things because the person they're potentially complaining to is the person they'd be complaining about. That's probably the first time this has happened in the server. They spent the entire time creating non-issues and complaining about completely separate things instead. Like someone emoting getting exploded when an air trap went off. It wasn't an explosion! It was just air! How scandalous.
Yes, Dev's character was the one responsible for the taxing of Beggar's Hole. No, you do not need to know why their character did it. Find out IC if somehow you don't already know. It was easy to convince most people in Geladyne to go along with it because it sounded like fun and someone at some point claimed that Beggar's Hole was Geladyne land when it really, really wasn't. Nobody ever even pointed out that it was the Austung (manager of foreign affairs) doing this rather than the Zivilseher or Premier. The people in Beggar's Hole didn't connect the dots and point out that they weren't 'Geladyne Citizens' when the War Games were going on and they were denied entry. I think. It was antagonism from an antagonizing character. It was rather well done. All the OOC drama did nothing worse than making all of the worst people show their hand and toxicity and out themselves to the wider community. I was glad that I didn't have anything to do with it besides expressing opinions on the forums.
Beyond that, a good number of the people who complain about the war happening now are against it happening at all. Not that it was handled in an improper way or anything. It's just 'I don't like this thing and I don't want to roleplay around it. Please stop having fun over there.' They paint themselves as the victim of something that isn't even happening to them and use that as a way to berate or claim others are doing something wrong.
I think Beggar's Hole was inevitable because there were always going to be a number of people who believed that this community was garbage but still decide to play and they'd make personal connections with people who would inevitably decide to stay once they left after inevitably not getting their way. Fairview was an example of how disagreeing parties could eventually come to a common resolution with GM help. The war in Meiaquar was an example of how two relatively agreeing parties could come up with rules and compromises to make a war happen and COMPLETELY UNRELATED PEOPLE would have concerns that they would use as accusations.
Antagonists, Unhappiness, and Consent:
When Korvara was announced and everyone declared 'we want IC all the time' I knew this was going to be the inevitable feeling people who wanted to play antagonists would get. SL2 is a game of quiet grinding, random chores, and meandering around. Most people in 80% of their time playing are trying to get from point A to point B or level 60 from level 1 or simply don't have hours to dedicate to random encounters. It goes back to some old problem antagonists had back in the G6. 'Where do we find people to attack? How do be bad people without good victims?' and the solution was, at least in their minds, 'we make them!' Which never went well back then. It doesn't go well now. The fact of the matter is that if I were to randomly get stopped all alone on the road walking to a dungeon, I'd probably just feel mildly inconvenienced unless there was some context I had for the situation. If I was level 1 fresh after a legend extension, I'd probably just keep walking. The game mechanics don't lend well to even a softcore ganking atmosphere.
I've done a lot of wandering monster and random antag stuff on both larger and smaller communities than this. Generally, it's easier to find people by asking permission than it is to ask forgiveness after they express some discomfort. Once they feel that discomfort, asking them to make you leave them alone is just putting more burden on them. My usual go to was a copy paste I have here of, "Hey, my character is generally a bad person and does bad things. Is it okay if I engage with you on that? They are resolutely awful and not likely to get talked down." And it was around 50/50 on who would say yes or no. Some people who said yes were still salty in the end after losing. You can't help that. But I usually found one or two rather agreeable fights a day, and nobody felt bad about getting interacted with. Those settings usually ensured that getting beaten as an antagonist didn't lead to immediate capture and execution. Technically, Korvara also ensures that with a 1 day capture limit and needing to speak with a GM to get character death approval. I'm not sure how easy that is to get.
But my experience with antagonists on SL2 is relatively mixed.
In the G6, most of them were just bad. They were comic relief with 4 man builds made to be stupidly broken against whatever randoms fought against them. And the one instance where I got into a fight where we gave perms for death on loss, one of them on their throwaway antagonist character said 'Finally, someone willing to lose a character.' At the end of the fight, they all got DMed away to safety because the characters were plot important NPCs to the Black Falcon thing. So, y'know, the players behind the characters were a bit weird for expressing some satisfaction over something they themselves weren't staking either.
In Korvara, I'm just not really sure what you're all doing. A few people made it the norm that getting ganked and thrown in prison for numerous OOC days was suddenly acceptable, and I don't think I've seen much in the ways of using the official means of getting a character death approved via the GMs. I just assume that they either loudly or quietly agree to an execution because they feel it's right IC and then either complain about it later or feel bad about it in general. Not saying Sawrock or Polk with this as I've never seen either of you do that, but a couple other people seemingly give consent to things that they then complain about having given consent to.
Conflict, Controversy, and 'I didn't cause an explosion, just a rapid expansion of air and pressure in a small area!'
If you're wondering what Beggar's Hole was all about as an OOC community, you can just take the founder's words for it.
Quote:The reason Beggar's Hole exist is because we wanted to be antagonistic and not immediately killed off by the community who openly hate anything that has to do with conflict. This whole issue is a clear example of why conflict on SL2/Korvara is garbage. It is not just the rules but also the community who grew up on a game that rarely had any 'true' conflict where they were forced to accept the consequences. The fact that when the consenting bandits were still just that, the rules stated that you couldn't even rob people with permission, that was the entire joke.
It takes some conjecture to figure out what weirdly toxic thing they mean by 'true' conflict and forced consequences were when random, hostile RP directed at them resulted in various flaming threads claiming they were being persecuted in unfair ways rather than exactly what they felt was proper for the game they wanted to play, but I'll leave that up to anyone reading this to discern their meaning. Beggar's Hole was made by a group of people who were purposefully toxic. They made it very clear that the name Consent Bandits was not in fact a funny play on the rules on the game but instead just an expression of frustration that the rules were not different: That you required some level of cooperation from the people you're playing with. That the game blew up when Dev's character threatened them with IC actions doesn't surprise me. Suddenly you had someone playing the victim spot who couldn't accuse the other side of the usual things because the person they're potentially complaining to is the person they'd be complaining about. That's probably the first time this has happened in the server. They spent the entire time creating non-issues and complaining about completely separate things instead. Like someone emoting getting exploded when an air trap went off. It wasn't an explosion! It was just air! How scandalous.
Yes, Dev's character was the one responsible for the taxing of Beggar's Hole. No, you do not need to know why their character did it. Find out IC if somehow you don't already know. It was easy to convince most people in Geladyne to go along with it because it sounded like fun and someone at some point claimed that Beggar's Hole was Geladyne land when it really, really wasn't. Nobody ever even pointed out that it was the Austung (manager of foreign affairs) doing this rather than the Zivilseher or Premier. The people in Beggar's Hole didn't connect the dots and point out that they weren't 'Geladyne Citizens' when the War Games were going on and they were denied entry. I think. It was antagonism from an antagonizing character. It was rather well done. All the OOC drama did nothing worse than making all of the worst people show their hand and toxicity and out themselves to the wider community. I was glad that I didn't have anything to do with it besides expressing opinions on the forums.
Beyond that, a good number of the people who complain about the war happening now are against it happening at all. Not that it was handled in an improper way or anything. It's just 'I don't like this thing and I don't want to roleplay around it. Please stop having fun over there.' They paint themselves as the victim of something that isn't even happening to them and use that as a way to berate or claim others are doing something wrong.
I think Beggar's Hole was inevitable because there were always going to be a number of people who believed that this community was garbage but still decide to play and they'd make personal connections with people who would inevitably decide to stay once they left after inevitably not getting their way. Fairview was an example of how disagreeing parties could eventually come to a common resolution with GM help. The war in Meiaquar was an example of how two relatively agreeing parties could come up with rules and compromises to make a war happen and COMPLETELY UNRELATED PEOPLE would have concerns that they would use as accusations.
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