I, for one, will tell novices/lowbies/midbies that they are fodder. Mag rarely expects those that can't fight to fight, but when it does happen, it's greatly appreciated. I am very much having pro-webbers . The point is, both the leaders and the new people need to realize the limitations. In the past week, I've had many young Ninjakari ask how they can be useful in combat. I've told them that right now, the best they can do is keep bashing, start sparring those around their might, and realize that if they do choose to fight, they'll probably die. If they still come, hinder, because more than likely the won't get the kill.







That being said, perhaps one way to show restraint from ANY org is to not respond to deathsight. It's a common occurrence from anyone to see that their org is raiding and to go join in. Sometimes the defending Org needs to successfully repel the attackers even if they need to take 15 people just to get one or two out.

The entire discussion aside, as I really haven't paid much attention to it (nor how often raiding is done), but I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we thought the latter point would cause decreased raiding. If nothing else, I can remember back to when conflict quests were far more affecting that they are now, and people were literally doing them 24/7. Making conflict more "meaningful" just diverts that focus to the "meaningful" venues - which tends to go hand-in-hand with "important" from a roleplay perspective, making the damage dealt moreso than it already may be. Frankly, if nothing else, one could make an argument not to have 'more' meaningful conflict, or actually to reduce the meaning of existing conflict.

Archways came into existence because of Visaeris, if you recall. Three different levels of entering / leaving, all into a common centralized area, that have since then been re-adjusted but have never been fully removed (can you imagine what it would be like now if they weren't there? Heh)

As to the last part, I've got a very different view on that than you do, while actually having been there. You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to mine; which is that Estarra was over-reacting to slanted statements, and that reaction ended up killing Glomdoring's culture and identity from which the Shadowdancers still haven't recovered in full, and which Glomdoring as a whole just kind of floundered for quite some time (that's when we lost the whole Library thing).

Estarra's viewpoint is that she did the right thing.

That's just the way it is, but I can definitely state that as a member of the Glomdoring who experienced it post and prior, Glomdoring languished for quite some time after with nothing at all really happening.

That is quite true, if all sorts of 'meaningful' conflict got introduced the next day, we super griefers would just do that all the time instead.

I've often wondered what would happen if their was no OOC incentive to doing certain conflict quests. Would people still do them if there were only RP consequences?

There ARE no OOC incentives to doing certain conflict quests.

Isn't there still power drain? If there is, I call harming your enemy a mechanical incentive (in addition to an RP incentive).

edit: Good point from RD. Changed OOC to mechanical.

Before this derailment is derailed further, it would probably be more clear to others if you called them "mechanical incentives" rather than "OOC incentives".

Better yet, make a different thread for the topic!

... power drain is still an in-game incentive? I don't understand how you're separating that.

I yield to Akui's ninja powers.

In that case, every conflict quest has an OOC incentive, since that's kind of the definition of 'conflict'. It will cause some kind of harm.

Allow me to elaborate. As a note, I revised my use of the term OOC to mechanical.

Currently, the quests give the player an incentive to perform the action as a means of either benefiting themselves or harming their enemy. I understand that this is the meaning of "conflict", but the incentive is appealing to the player in a tangible way (either "my side gets cool stuff" or "their side loses cool stuff"). By RP incentive, I meant that the outcome of such a quest would not give a benefit (or a punishment) to a player, but solely their character.

An example,

mechanical incentive:

Player A does quest. Quest completes, and Player A's org steals 500 power from Player B's org.

RP incentive:

Player A does quest. Quest completes, and Player B's org gets vandalized in some way. Using Hallifax and Gaudiguch, perhaps Halli would be left scorched, with charred corpses lying about.

To me, that's still harm though... so yes, people would do it.

As a Player, I would find the later MUCH more frustrating then the former.

Possibly, but at least it would not limit you as a player. That's better, right?



Really? Why is that? Edit: If it's the numbers, pretend they are higher.

Mostly because -500 power is about annoying as a sneeze and I know there are people who would do their best to make sure the 'RP' only punishment would be in effect as much as they possibly could.

And honestly, I'd say that a lot of players that wouldn't see a punishment on their character as NOT a punishment on them as a player.

There used to be a perfect example - the Sea Battle. People still did it, especially lowbies (as it was that level of difficulty), when it was unimportant. There was a certain thrill from knowing you were acting dangerously, even if there was no mechanical (and little enough RP) boost for your org.

I don't see a problem with people doing the quests (that's the point of them, obviously). The second point is surprising, though. Would it be preferable to have the RP punishment if the mechanical punishment was fairly severe (or the RP punishment fairly minor)? -- edit: In other words, if the severity of the two was fairly close.

Restraint won't work because even if the first ten people learn it there's always an eleventh person.

To Eventru: Yeah, we complained about the conflict quests. But as I posted upthread, a lot of us now look back longingly to those days. Ah, for those sweet, sweet times of only having our faces ground into the mud and wallowing in misery, once a week. Those were the good old days.

More seriously, there was a period in between conflict quests and now. It was a time when we had structured conflict with specific objectives, but it was also mechanically forced into a punctuated rhythm. While I would love to get back to the days when a raid could force us to spend 30 hours rebuilding something, I would love even more getting back to when raids like that could only happen every time Papaxi was in the ascendant house of Pancakes, or whatever it was.

Sojiro: I agree that the impossibility of a "surrender" outcome isn't Glom's fault. I may have poked fun at how over-the-top some of the ideas were, but really I was poking fun at the idea -- possibly not a real one -- that those proposing them thought those ideas would seriously help. It's just part of the whole "we're not fighting about anything" that there's no way to concede that isn't as bad as or worse than what we have now.

(That said, we could probably brainstorm on concessions that are more practical and less ideological. You guys are all commercial now, right? I saw it in the news. How about charging us tribute, like the Vikings did -- some amount of gold or comms per month of peace and protection? Every month we pay, you don't raid, and for an extra amount, you offer to protect us from other raids. You get to sit in shadowy chambers saying "muhahahah, secretly we're using the gold to prepare our armies to destroy them later!" and cackle. We get to sit in moonlit glades saying "muhahah, secretly we're using the time of peace to train our armies to destroy them later!" We both get to pretend that the betrayal the other one is planning isn't screamingly obvious.)

The problem with expecting conflict quests and other avenues of conflict to prevent existing conflict is that the problems with the existing conflict are still there. Sure, you might get an hour a day or so when all of Glom, instead of raiding Etherseren, is sitting in your nexus world focusing on your constructs ... but after that, nothing's stopping them from going straight back to Etherseren (note: this conflict example was just randomly picked).

Hey now what did I do to provoke anything?