We can grow a little Wyrden enclave there! And, depending on actions, it grows / shrinks. Woo.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Folks IRL are unwilling to make short term sacrifices for long term benefits, why would folks in a game be different? I keep hoping someone'll be brave enough to try it though. It'd be so interesting!




That could be the difficult thing that Serenwilde would have to agree to, maybe. Some part of their forest being Wyrded. Then, during the peace, Serenwilde pulls out all the stops on battle training, influence training, bribe known fighters to join their cause, drag folks out on hunting trips to Demi em up, they have rousing speaches and build themselves up into a frenzy, then, they overthrow their evil oppressors and return their forest to normal! It'd be more interesting than being pecked at over and over and over and over non stop, wouldn't it?

Conquest needs tweaking or deletion either way. It's too much effort for too little effect. Or, rather, demands too much raiding to accomplish the similar degrees of village feelings, while risk and stress are amped up way higher.

Unless it's to help tank guards or assist in similar large effort hits, I don't feel inclined to participate in Conquest. It's poorly implemented.

Conquest's gains are intentionally very small from raiding - the passive gains are (obviously) markedly high for 0 effort. And if the gains were higher for raiding, I suspect it would only encourage raiding.

Uh... when did this change? When this started we were told that a mob killed in a conquest raid was worth 8x if it was influenced. I know influence was strengthened (see: Seren's huge positive feelings) but I think I missed it if the potency of conquest raiding was lowered at the same time. Also, you said the other day that we were intended to use the force of the iron fist, etc. Mixed messages....

This should probably go into another thread starting now, not so much because of potential aggro as because it's likely to clutter up the thread if it persists (which it looks like it will.)

Can you splice pls Shiri :3

muhhh fine

EDIT: snappy thread title, oh yeah

Keep it calm!

It is a snazzy title!

But moving the posts killed the conversation!

I don't remember saying 8x. It was several times (3x originally, I believe), but since then influencing and commodity quests have gone up and killing has not increased nearly as markedly.

I completely agree with you. Finding creative solutions like that are more fun than the endless raiding cycle which, actually, offers a 0% chance of actual victory, since the mechanics of raiding produce no real lasting effects (except maybe people ragequitting, but I'm not sure that's a great lasting effect to shoot for).

But, yeah, it's just very hard to even get an individual to be willing to RP the "loser," even temporarily. Much less a group of them. That's not a commentary on Serenwilde at all - that just seems to be the case across the board in virtually any game. I think it's because:

1. People have a hard time having fun while playing the losing condition. Personally, I think these situations can be fun, but for a lot of gamers, fun = victory, and I get that.

2. You have to see yourself as playing -with- the opposing players instead of -against- them, at least to an extent, which is a very difficult mindset to get into in a highly competitive game.

3. You have to put some value into the "bigger picture" over and against your individual experience at a given time, and for a lot of people who just have a limited amount of time they can play a game and detox, that's a pretty unattractive option.

Once again, I'm not saying those are insurmountable issues. Nor am I saying that it's wrong or somehow deficient if someone doesn't think playing for a while as the losing side isn't fun. Everyone is different and gets something different out of their game. But those things may be why you don't see it a lot.

I wouldn't mind RPing a "personal" loss or defeat (Magnagora's twisted and awesome intrigues come to mind), but surrendering on behalf of a bunch of people is likely to be way too much to handle without the stress spilling to OOC as well.

Plus, this is Seren we're talking about. The Serenwilde, Grace of Epic Drama.

It's nearly impossible to justify a losing condition, and every time someone tries, there are external forces -- gods, NPCs, etc. -- that oppose it. But the real problem is there's not anything the winners can ask for that the losers can give up that isn't worse than enduring.

That said, we're coming up on the one RL year anniversary of the current beat-down (clearly it's not losing its appeal to Glomdoring either, though some days I wonder how much fun it can be to keep beating us down so much and preventing us from offering any challenge -- then I remember people like Nienla). A month ago I thought we were finally starting to see a slow shift away, but right now, the demoralization, the fatigue, the sense that there's never enough bodies and enough time to get upkeep things done, and the certainty that we can never decide what to do today, only react, are at what feels to me like a peak.

I really don't think "negotiated surrender" is the solution. In previous political imbalances, events often broke the momentum of the conflict, but that's not happening now; the minute the event ends the raiding just resumes right where it left off. I don't know why it's different this time, and speculating would probably go in unproductive directions. The only long-term solution is to make the conflict more punctuated, so we have time to breathe and recharge our morale and even engage in some of the other 90% of Lusternia in between. The admins used to be big on that, but after turning off nexus world conflicts, they seem to have forgotten the lesson.

Oh, I'm not trying to disparage anyone or say 'you suck!' or anything either. I just see people complain about the cycle, about the pointlessness of raiding, about how tiresome being constantly raided is, about how it is hurting morale and it bugs me a little cause there are viable options other than perpetuating the same routine, if people would step outside the box and try them. And sure, it might not work as expected, but half the fun is in the trying.

Didn't Celest at one point attempt to surrender and sell itself off to Serenwilde and Glomdoring? I don't remember that going very well, except for I got a good laugh out of 'plant a tree in their pool'.

Peace is not going to work without an epic shift in Serenwilde. Surrender would not be a way to build up our fighting force and come back. I can't confirm Lendren's comment that it's been an RL year now it's been going on, but I don't doubt it. If constant raiding over that period hasn't taught us how to effectly fight in a group, peace time is not going to do that.

Currently, when people get fed up with this, the first thought I see from many of them is "I'm going to go to Glomdoring. They're powerful, they get stuff done, they're winning. I want to be on the winning side for once." It perpetuates the imbalance of people. We were where Glomdoring is now, then people flocked to them (many from Serenwilde) and now they're stomping. I honestly think it just comes down to the fact that Glomdoring is better equipped with people who know what to do, how to do it, and like to do it. Serenwilde has people who eventually just turn loyalsays off and shrug.

Add to that the fact that unless you have a really well coordinated group, one guy can slaughter an entire village even with five people chasing him, then dfire out. And when we respond to one village, two people hit another village. And when we go over there, they switch. We simply do not have the means of stopping it unless our fighters magically get better overnight to the point where one or two guys can catch an ascendant who doesn't want caught.

I would love more 1v1 conflict. I'd love if I could go steal a geomycus back without an entire group coming to kill me, or a massive counter raid. I'd love if people that raided by themselves would stand and fight. But no one will, and for good reason. Who wants to die in enemy territory? You either bring a massive group that we can't touch, or you run away at the drop of a hat.

At this point, personally, I've honestly given up. If I'm doing something else, I turn off loyalsays, because I play this game to have fun, and being repeatedly beat down is not fun. I like fighting, but I'm not that good at it, so there's little point in me wasting my time chasing people around all day for no benefit. I simply don't allow Glomdoring to choose what I do with my time.

That's also good advice to follow.

Except if many people do that, it means we lose.

Well, from the way you sound here...

You know, why do you guys go for villages if they're this much trouble that it's making you "hemorrhage players" (though I note Serenwilde has a higher population than Glomdoring)?

That's what I don't get, there were so many rants from that first village getting raided that Serenwilde went and got four more afterwards; I'd think you'd be sending a stronger message that you don't like it by saying, "See, we won't even bother" rather than "Yes, it's really worth it for us to get villages but we'll just mutter and complain as we get them".

Hmm. With 5 villages, I don't really see Serenwilde is losing that much. In fact, you had equal the amount of villages Glomdoring had until we got Dairuchi from Celest. You're down on combat, but not on other places. Culture Center comes to mind (we have to chase your score daily).