I honestly could not see an entire organization who is already "winning" ever agreeing to not "win" in a roleplay situation unless the tables turned and they weren't able to "win" on their own any more. That's not a jab at any org in particular, I think it would hold true for all of them if they were in that position. I'm not saying everyone would be averse to this, but it all seems very idealistic.

Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

Although I think if some agreements were made it would at least ease the tension, like...no raiding more than..five times a week when there are less than x amount of people around (I just pulled that out of nowhere as an example). But of course, that's assuming you could actually police the people who do this, which is really hard to do. If someone's raiding when they can just kill as many defenders as possible with no opposition, chances are they aren't looking for some good "raiding combat".

I'm sorry but that sounds like..no fun whatsoever. I mean the question is what do orgs that are really successful do and the answer is to work out scripted events where people take turns winning or losing? Could anyone maintain that kind of thing for long? We're not talking one or two people, we're talking entire organizations here. Can someone go to an org without it being completely OOC and say "Okay so this thing is going to happen but eh, don't try to do well too much because regardless of how you do, we already decided the outcome and today we're losing."

Your conversion was a perfect example of this. You decided OOCly that you wanted to move to Magnagora. You involved everyone in Celest who was on at the time in this. The Celestian players had *nothing* they could do in order to rescue you. Even when you did get rescued you just had to get captured again because it didn't fit with the pre-planned finish you had in mind. It's quite possible that event was a lot of fun for you but for the people not in the know, it was just frustrating because our characters were being compelled to care about something that they were honestly just observers for. Perhaps I am just the kind of goal oriented person that does not find this kind of thing entertaining but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

I guess I'm just skeptical about the entertainment value or probable success of that kind of thing on any sort of large scale.

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but the solution is crystal clear to me.


Everyone move to Magnagora!

It has to be OOC at some level, yes, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. And you don't have to script out an outcome, either. That's just one possibility in certain scenarios. It doesn't have to go that way. The choice between "no planning" and "scripting out everything" is a false dichotomy.

Yesterday, I and some co-workers were discussing some software to use for automated builds. I made a recommendation, and another co-worker said, "I don't think we can use that. I don't think that'll work with our structure."

"It does," I said. "I did it at home three weeks ago."

"I don't know. I don't think it's going to work."

"I'm telling you, it works. I actually did it."

"I just don't think it's going to."

You can imagine how frustrating this conversation was. My co-worker was postulating a theoretical failure, when I had experienced an -actual- success.

That's sort of how I feel in this thread. People are saying, "I don't think anyone would do that. I don't think it'll work. I don't think that'll be fun. I don't think that's plausible."

Well, I'm -telling- you, it absolutely can work, does work, and is fun. The only thing that would keep it from -not- working would be yourselves - the one factor you can control.

It just doesn't sound like you all trust each other very much.

I proposed that same solution back when Magnagora ruled the Basin! Surprisingly no one took me up on it then either.

Bingo. We as a collective can think as highly of ourselves as we want and consider ourselves a cut above other playerbases but when you boil things down, we're still just a group of people playing a multi-player game and the same inherent problems that face any other multi-player game are going to apply here.

Having the enjoyment level in any game dependent almost entirely on players choosing to act in a certain way rather than in a way that is completely permitted by game mechanics is not sustainable. Is this because the players are jerks? No. They just choose to play the game as they see fit and as it's designed.

Being squashed isn't fun and not having anything to do isn't fun. Players simply not raiding as much is not a solution because those players that like to raid, well what are they going to do when they're not raiding? Log off out of boredom. So you have the people getting stomped logging out because they're sick of being stomped or you have the people who are trying to be nice about it logging out because they have nothing to do.

I agree with Eldanien. It's all fine and good to say that mindsets need to change but that's not an easy thing. If it can be done in the game, someone is going to eventually do it. And while with a lot of things this isn't a huge concern, when it's part of the actual game design, it can quickly become a problem. (i.e. The game is designed in a way that encourages raiding. So people are going to raid!)

And I don't think it's really fair to say that the solution for orgs that run out of things they can feasibly do without driving off other players is to just start arbitrarily fabricating things to keep themselves busy. I don't know about other people but I play a mud, not a mush. A PvP mud to boot!

I just really think this is a fundamental flaw in the game and it's going to keep cropping up again and again. Everyone says there is a cycle to org dominance but do we ever stop to really think why? Most of the time it's not because all the players from one org move to another org! It's because they just stop playing. Mag's fighters just stopped playing. Celest's top players will eventually just stop playing. This all seems like a Very Bad Thing.

ugh, double post. But I'll respond to Demetrios here:

Is there some reason players *should* trust their gaming experience to one another? I think it's safe to say that most players have had experiences that would make them leery about trusting other players. I will flat out state that I do not! I am certain the idea can work in theory. I am far less certain that it will work in this particular scenario or if it even SHOULD work. We're talking end game play here and we're basically saying that players should make up their own game at this point. I dunno.

Except it is completely sustainable, and other multi-player games that we're just like have demonstrated this.

But, I think you're beginning to convince me that it won't work in Lusternia, but not for the reasons you specified.

Let's all just keep doing the same things we've always done and hope that, somehow, it produces a different outcome. Enjoy your raiding.

Let's not forget the other option: expand your enemy list.

Currently Celest is focusing mainly on Mag, but you guys are having the exact situation that every single great empire in history has suffered--stagnation.

Kingdom A rises to become Empire A by fighting and conquering their long-term rivals Kingdom B. However, once Kingdom B has been put down, there is little left to do, people grow bored and incompetent, at which point Kingdom C comes in and bashes the now weakened Empire A.

How did Empires of old avoid this? They attacked Kingdom C first, in order to expand their empire.

You've got both Serenwilde and Glomdoring which can also be attacked. If Magnagora is crushed, the simple answer would be to turn your main focus on someone else!!!

Its stupid of you guys to complain that you can't raid much because you feel bad about punishing Magnagora when you have two other orgs that you could declare war on.

And that is how you spur growth and the continuation of the cycle. Celest takes out Mag then turns on Serenwilde, which drives Serenwilde and Mag to bring down Celest, at which point Mag and Seren turn on eachother like they always do, and Celest and Seren team up, bring down Mag, Seren rises to the top then turns on Celest, Celest and Glomdoring team up and take out Serenwilde, Celest rises to the top and redirects its efforts back at Mag.

See how that works?

This isn't supposed to be a static situation where there are two sets of 1v1 conflicts. If you're big enough to crush one org, then turn your attention to another. Its that simple, and it would work to give the sides that need relief relief, and the sides that need activity activity.

You would have to give some concrete examples of this working on a large scale. Right now you're just saying "I know it would work!" well, do you have an example of it working in Lusternia? Or a game a lot like Lusternia? One of the other IRE games? Give some actual concrete information and stats instead of just saying you know it will work.

You're getting upset because I'm saying that I disagree with your feasibility assessment and disagree with your assessment that even if such a scenario is possible that it would be fun or solve the problem as laid out.

You're probably right. It needs to be more dynamic and while an organization might pride itself on having managed to isolate its primary enemies, it is going to lead to stagnation or quitting at some point. This is a non-mechanics fix anyway. I'm not sure it fixes the underlying problem here (i.e. what if some org eventually gets so powerful they're regularly stomping all three other orgs into the ground?) but it's a start.

Ancient Rome didn't require alchemy from Carthage.

But there are two forests, and they don't like each other. So, if you fought one, the other'd prolly stay friends.

If Rome did, it would have just pounded Carthage into the ground and extracted the knowledge with torture, etc. Can't do that with alchemists, that's called griefing.

First off, there are 2 communes. Picking on Serenwilde, if anything, would earn you more support from Glomdoring, and vice versa.

Secondly, Ancient Rome did not have every resource known to man in their original lands. Where did they get what they needed? Via tribute. On top of that, the Romans also would have stock piled their stores, which is more possible than ever now given the new keg artifacts.

Aaand, on top of that, there's the fact that there will always be agents within enemy factions willing to make a profit on the black market.

And more still, so you wage war on Serenwilde and alchemy gets a bit harder to find.. so? A couple vials of each thing aside from health/mana/bromide should keep each fighter able to go for quite some time, in all honesty. And even if you went to war with both communes, and even if you could only last for a few OOC weeks before running short on supplies, that gives you a reason to make peace with the communes, aaand that would have given Mag a bit of time to recover and given the alliances and stuff time to shift.

If you aren't willing to expand your view as a military power, you will stagnate and your fighters will go elsewhere or become old and useless, as you're already seeing. You're playing Aetolia, others are going inactive. Its what happens when you refuse to change your targets in a way that will give you a bit of excitement. If one enemy isn't a match for you, make another.

If you play it right, you can turn away a bit from Mag, fight a bit with Seren, then call it off with Seren and turn back to Mag later and not get knocked off the top. But I assure you, if you stay on the top with only beating down Mag, you'll get toppled for sure, because sooner or later the fighters migrate. That is, after all, how Celest got a lot of its power in the first place.

How hard would it be to have any two orgs arrange to have a 'tournament' or 'challenge', each put forward x champions for y fights of z fighters each, to 'prove their superiority' over the other group?

It could even be spontaneous. But, again, it involves player mindset.

Actually, technically, Ancient Rome didn't have "alchemy" (naval knowledge, except the occacional defence against pirates), so they fought Carthage in a few naval battles, lost horribly, somehow managed to sink one or two Carthagian ships (or found stranded ones), brought them to Rome, analyzed them, built a large fleet, fought against Carthage, lost again a few times, invented a special mechanic and from them on kicked Carthage in the ground.

At the time of the first war, Rome didn't have much to take tribute of. They didn't even have all of Italy up to the Alps under their rule. They traded with gallic tribes, Carthagians (which they lost), Syracusians (Basically the ubermofos for some time) and a few other tribes.

So let's burn the Serenwilde down and steal their potion-making skillz!

Or recruit some Alchemists over to your side then do raids on the Seren alembic, hold it for a few minutes and let your alchemist do their thing, refill your kegs, and then you all flee!

Come on, you knooow that would be entertaining! Aaand there would be a reward for raiding!