[Poruku]

I respect your need to step away and I wish you well. But I can't help but feel uneasy that attempts made politely in private have escalated into a very big and public forum post. Though you did not specifically target I, or anyone, and I can imagine it was not your intent.

Nah, of course not my man. I got nothing but respect for you and the other guys over at telegrad for reaching out. This post is something I actually started writing before you DM'd me. It's an overarching issue, and you politely asking to stop, although saddening, is not something I'm angry about or anything. I understand that not everyone wants what we've got to offer. I understand that there's more to ganking than winning or losing. I understand that, even with all the precautions, some people find it not fun, or the echo of a given gank can affect other characters.

You guys are cool, and I'm sorry if the post is seen as a callout. It was never the intention. My feelings about the matter remain though, I'm saddened, but I understand. No disrespect meant towards you guys or anyone who feels frustrated about the way I play. They're all valid ways to see the issue. Sometimes, people's interests just don't align, and there's nothing better than talking about it like we did. I still wanted to talk about that fact in the post though, as it's a major part of my experience with SL2. And again, you guys are totally fine. I appreciate it. Sorry again my man.

[FaeLenx]

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. 

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.

[RedtailPinny]

I feel like the community we have here still has some weird dislike towards talking things out and being transparent. As if talking to people and saying "Hey I want to do this/My character is going to do this/My nation wants to do this" is going to be met with OOC retaliation and potentially a ban at worst, warning at best. And for the most part? I do see that. If people try to voice their opinions or what they want to do they're usually met with "what the heck you can't do that how dare you" if they're considered an "unpopular" member of the community, or a "hell yeah that rocks do it" if they're a "popular" member.

I stayed out of both the Beggar's Hole fight and the Geladyne - Meiaquar war, so I don't have first hand experience with them, only what I've read from other people.

Gonna be honest here, chief(s): The Beggar's Hole fight was a clustertruck of people taking IC things OOCly, people using OOC information ICly, and people harassing and trying to get people on the opposite team banned so they could get a mechanical advantage and "win" the fight. That's shit that you'd hear about and immediately think of DU or some random naruto RP game on byond. As expected, people got banned for it. To this day though? There's STILL misinformation and mistrust going around as a result of that. That's not good, in my opinion.

The latest geladyne/meiaquar war? I have no idea what happened, to be perfectly honest. Marci, Filia, and some others sat in private figuring things out when in my OPINION, something as grand as a WAR between two nations should be something completely transparent for all parties that want to get involved, so that they know what's happening, how to help, what to expect, etc. All things considered, they tried. They told us how things were going to go down. There was still misunderstanding and conflicting information on exactly how stuff was suppose to happen. Nobody knew how to set up minor ops because despite being told they were mostly minor, RP focused things, the only thing people were told is "talk to marci/filia/the gms to set it up". If those two weren't there on a certain time/day, you were SoL in regards to getting something going for the war. Similarly, we were told that after the end of each major operation those two, along with others, would talk it over with each other and announce the winners of said operation. Guess what? That never happened. More confusion. It also didn't help that at the end of each operation there was another week or two pause because everyone was harassing each other over it.


Then the change in harassment policy happened. People got banned for reasons nobody really knows, and that sapped a ton of motivation to continue. Like it or not, intentional or not, the atmosphere of the game from that point forward became one of "don't step out of line, don't try to do anything or you'll get got."

Is this fixable? Gonna be honest, I'm not really sure. Those are my rambles.

[Turadis]

I feel a very strong kinship when I read Poroku's original post. Although my playstyle is very different, focused entirely on heroes, I have felt many of those same feelings. Including being a defender of player housing and generally feeling disapproval towards those who demand others be forced to play the game the same way they do. To say nothing of it's incredible versitility when it came to player-driven RP.

That really gets to the heart of my main issue with Korvara. Player-driven RP is my playstyle. I create groups organically based on IC circumstances and character ambition, I create events based on those groups, sometimes with eventmins, sometimes alone (I remember the pre-eventmin days, we have our methods.) I create stories where half the authorship is an unlikely series of organic circumstances and rapid adaptation to them. That's why a game like this is appealing to me. That style of writing would be impossible anywhere else.

Korvara has not totally killed this playstyle. I'm still getting by. But in spite of more player-driven RP being one of it's selling points, I find it considerably more difficult. The lack of player housing or my ever-desired event map is probably the biggest contributor here, vastly limiting the scope of events that were easily possible in G6. But the far more intense degree of OOC beauracracy, suffocating lack of playable space for long term ventures, and staunchly more limited character options have all also provided additional obstacles to players focused on content creation that just weren't present before.

Anyways, tl;dr upvote my event map thread.

[Miller]

But the far more intense degree of OOC beauracracy, suffocating lack of playable space for long term ventures, and staunchly more limited character options have all also provided additional obstacles to players focused on content creation that just weren't present before.

Anyways, tl;dr upvote my event map thread.

This is the one part that I would emphasize even heavier in my own post if I could, SL2 prior to Korvara has always been a playground for ideas and being able to come up with almost whatever within a relatively loose confines of lore. One of the main reasons I personally stuck to SL2 was this aspect, as the political aspect of roleplay is something I could personally find elsewhere should I desire; the ability to create as freely as we did on the G6 was a rarity.

RedtailPinny
Then the change in harassment policy happened.  People got banned for reasons nobody really knows, and that sapped a ton of motivation to continue.  Like it or not, intentional or not, the atmosphere of the game from that point forward became one of "don't step out of line, don't try to do anything or you'll get got."

I normally wouldn't comment on this, but this genuinely surprises me to a degree. I can understand being initially afraid of being hit with a ban given how many were rapidly doled out in succession but genuine question for anyone feeling this way? Why?

I can empathize and understand the lack of personal trust in the GM team and desire for more transparency on matters but during my time on this game since practically its inception the amount of bans I've seen have been very few and have almost exclusively been reserved for people who were actively duping, ERPing in public and bug abusing, harassment cases prior to this mostly went under the radar unless they really screwed up and years upon years of evidence were piled against them.

This isn't really a valid reference or anything but if we look over at the ban appeal forums, you can see that there's currently 69 (nice) threads in it. Of which, three are GM related posts regarding how to handle appeals or talking about certain matters. This leaves us with 66 ban appeals, the new forums was conceived in late 2014; let's round that up to 2015 for the sake of this point. In those 8 years, there's been an average of 8.25 ban appeals; which might sound like a lot but if you change your perspective to an monthly average that amounts to 0.6~0.7 ban appeals per month, whether that's big or small? That's up to you frankly.

Bans are something that were rarely doled out as far as I'm aware is because Dev has been extremely lenient with them and often any long term bans need a wide array of approval unless its blatant trolling/disregard for the rules, we've had multiple instances in the past where people who duped asago items or bug abused said items and were eventually let off and one of them still comments in this community to this day. (No issues with said player, it's just an example.) 

As far as I'm aware GMs need to agree to some degree on any bans beyond extremely blatant rule breaking, the induction of more GMs into the pile would likely muddle the process... right? As we're all aware, that did not happen; GMs with multiple backgrounds and 'groups' were chosen and things still rolled through, so either my entire deduction/assumptions about the GM team is incorrect or they likely saw the evidence against them presented and came to a collective conclusion. The former is something I heavily doubt due to personal and past experience. With all that said? Honestly, it'd be harder to refute if the only thing that was transparent was how many GMs agreed with a decision. Seeing a banned pop up with 8+ people approving of it is at the very least a bit more comforting, to me at least.

Sorry for going on about this, but this sort of thought process towards current events has me extremely curious. (This might need another thread if anything, I don't really want to derail people talking about their own personal experiences.)

[caliaca]

Snip 

I can shed a little more light here. 

We were talking through with people for minor and major ops. We had several community ones planned and coming up before the motivation was lost so they never ended up coming to fruition.  It's not that we didn't have them, things just ended too soon.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I wanted to continue but we didn't have the motivation on one side and it'd be wrong to continue pushing when they wanted to surrender. 

As for the winner thing?

We generally didn't need to. If you were part of it, you'd have seen that both major ops were resounding Geladyne successes and we talked in ooc channels about the land changes regardless.

For full transparency, I wanted to do a LOT more minor op stuff especially sourced from the community. (We did get Turadis's event done though I guess that wasn't an OP). But, once Marci stopped doing stuff on the war front due to a hilarious amount of harassment without support from the GMs, getting responses from the Meiaquar side was difficult and the reason for a lot of delays. This isn't a slam on Satoshi mind, man is busy as fuck but having multiple days without response from Meia side did make things slower.

We also had literally no support from the GMs and staff for most of the time. Until a lot of people got out and talked when the new policies were enacted, we didn't get much at all. I could go into a lot of detail here but I don't know if it's worth it. I should say people shouldn't have to have mental breakdowns from the amount of OOC harassment they got (this was me, I had a breakdown) before the GMs intervene. That was the *real* war delay cause.

Miller is 100% right on the ban thing.

[FaeLenx]

Basically any time the GMs have actually brought receipts to the discussion, specifically when they were talking about the harassment of the GM team in particular, the examples of what they were talking about as unacceptable behavior was pretty clear. I would find it hard to believe that most people have to worry about getting banned with that level of toxicity being generally tolerated long enough for it to accumulate and a ban to happen.

[Raigen.Convict]

Ahem. I'll place down my few thoughts regarding this as well. I've always been a background character, probably always will be as far as characters I make... I put out a few banger characters that to this day I will enjoy just rping with a little but... I can't recreate that spark when I have an urge to try a seperate build idea... I think I too am suffering burnout but now and again... I find myself coming back. t'is a strange feeling. I've never been affiliated with a town except once on a long dead char... And I still sort of enjoyed Korvara but... I kinda miss the ability to grab a house ticket and go NUTS with a building, multi-floor, all sorts of decor, and use that as an LFG spot... if anything, Korvara removing that has made rp more stale, sure cliques existed but, it honestly feels MORE restrictive playing in Korvara sometimes... You'll never be important... You'll never matter to those running the cities... Just the same as G6... Your build will be much worse and harder due to the lack of options for acquiring items... You'll spend much longer overall just trying to get things right... Which can be nice but also it means you'll struggle vs enemies of your level with worse gear unless you beg and spend money you probably dont even have with other players... Sure many are willing to help but if you need an item that is rare, most times people won't have it. No player shop bots means someone COULD have it but be on a time zone you aren't... We all have lives... Myself included... Every telegrad feast? On a friday... I work overnight fridays... I'd have next to no time to enjoy the feast or festivities if I ever went, so it makes me not want to bother.... While I probably wont quit even I've grown old and bitter at some of the changes, but still try to make the best of it...

[Caboozles]

I saw this post, read through, it, moved on, and read through it again.

My own opinions on G6 aren't really anything I find worth sharing or ground-shattering, but I think in hindsight it's funny how much people (including me!) disliked private housing for people hiding in their own private spaces, when there's a significant amount of that as is in Korvara.

Sure, Geladyne or Meiaquar R&D aren't truly 'private', but you really don't have a way to walk in unless you're being antagonistic or do something to stir a buncha noise. The meta-cost of engaging in these spaces requires so much time, investment, and soft power that really all we've done is limit these private spaces to those with significant power.
Geladyne itself is often considered pretty isolated in terms of public RP. The inn isn't really used much except for events and a few people, there are some in the streets from time to time, and the war honestly provided a lot of good RP with people otherwise tucked away.
Duyuei and Meiaquar have that to a fair degree as well.
Telegrad has it the least of the public nations, but the Guard House and Rider HQ are pretty 'locked up' RP-wise if someone opts to move things to the top floor.

There are some other places as well, but in all of those, if you want RP with people in those areas, you still need to ping/LFG, basically. Very little has changed there since G6.

Is it inherently a bad thing? No. I actually quite like Korvara. I do find it funny though.

[caliaca]

I guess I don't understand that requiring soft power or time or investment.

All you really gotta do is ask someone to join up in those spaces. Takes like 5 minutes.

I generally see places you can ping approach as different than truly private either, but I guess I just have different viewpoints than other people.

I'm not super sure why I bother here actually. I'm kind of doing that thing I said I shouldn't. Approaching threads that are meant to vent I should probably just leave instead.