Forever Lost Players

Well I think we can be honest and say a number of people who were creators or brought life to the game were harassed out of it by former and quitting players in September 2022. That is probably a big catalyst point that the game is still trying to recover from.

This is something that I have been thinking about for the past year or so.

I am not aware of players who were harassed out of the game. At least, I am not personally able to bring to mind any specific occurrences of that happening. That said, I will believe that it happened.

Around the same time, a large(?) number of active players (6+ ??) were (permanently?) banned from the game for cheating and/or IC / OOC crossover.

While removing them from the game was likely the right choice, I do believe that there has been a permanent shift in the essence of the community since then.

There's a saying that goes along the lines of, "If you're not willing to cheat, do you really have what it takes to win?"

I bring that up because it feels like most, if not all of the players who were banned had an intensity to them that is lacking. A real, in your face, up in each other's business, constantly in conflict with each other kind of energy.

The way that they competed and resorted to OOC communication to get an edge is clearly an example of taking things too far. It is not the kind of "cooperative competition" that this community has placed a strong emphasis on. So, let's accept that and not derail the conversation with that piece of it.

I just don't see that level of… I don't know? Drive to win? Win at any cost? type energy.

Is it gone forever?

I bring that up because it feels like most, if not all of the players who were banned had an intensity to them that is lacking. A real, in your face, up in each other's business, constantly in conflict with each other kind of energy.

The way that they competed and resorted to OOC communication to get an edge is clearly an example of taking things too far. It is not the kind of "cooperative competition" that this community has placed a strong emphasis on. So, let's accept that and not derail the conversation with that piece of it.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Because it is hard for me to not interpret it as "the behavior of the players who were clearly cheating on multiple levels were an asset to this game".

That is too meta and ambiguous for me to understand right now.

What do you mean by "highly aggressive"? Can you give examples without exposing IC details?

What "resources" did "cheating provide"? Again, can you give some details?

I didn't cheat. I don't know people who cheated. Or at least, I didn't know that they were cheating and didn't know that my character benefited from cheating. Like, I can't say "My character got X and Y because that other character was cheating."

There are individuals in the game, through one PC or another who drive conflict, aggressively. You may not have experienced it, and that's fine, but they're there. They do this without support for their actions and simply because it is their motive of gameplay, or because they believe it will result in some sort of culmination of resources.

Ever interacted with a character who more or less told you to 'fuck off' regardless of your position in relation to theirs? One who survived more than a month? One who continued to piss off half the game? One who died repeatedly and continued to play? One who didn't die, but played smart and continued to build up anticipation toward their inevitable downfall? Pay more attention to these individuals, and not necessarily the ones who choose only to make big moves because they know they can fall back on something.

But why does the game need to how it was in the PAST?

Everything evolves, everything grow and everything changes.

It's the very nature of games/rp/DnD/whatever.

I get the nostalgia hits of days bygone.

We all grow older and some of us who has been here a very long time might long for a time due past, but for newer players, it might be too much how it was before.

We need more players, and as I remember it the past was extremely harsh against new players constantly beating down and bullying to the point where many left.

As this topic is about, do we need to baby? No, but I think just because you/I/we are thickskinned and stayed during brutal times, dosn't mean john doe and joanna doe will.

I feel the past 3 weeks have been a massive complaints only on forums/xooc constantly, nothing but complaints, and honestly it's getting tiring.

I think the frustration and complaints you're seeing are the mixed results of a lot of effort being spent by players to breathe new life back into the game. Efforts are made but the results have been lackluster for many. The result is many of us asking, "Why do I bother?"

So, we go to OOC-Chat or the BGBB for a sanity to ask if anyone else is running into these walls and the sentiment seems to be an overwhelming yes.

I don't have the solution to this and I recognize the complaints are frustrating. Ideally, we can all be more constructive, but I like to think everyone is trying to their best of find a consensus on realistic expectations, efforts, and a solid path forward.

The game has been in a constant state of trying to recover from several significant losses in September 2022. Which, again, was the entire point of my original post in a different thread that has been taken out of context to talk about banned players from that time. Which was much more than six and I have said the sudden, abrupt loss of those players led to multiple factions losing a large chunk of characters and that also is still being recovered from.

I personally have no issue with the players who were banned for a time and for reasons other than harassment. And I wish my comment had not been taken to make a new entire post about banned players and to discuss them.

There has been recovery. And improvement from that very low post-September 2022 period. But we still haven't fully recovered

I might be one day mourning for the loss of Macabre but I wouldn't mean it to discredit other staff.

It's okay if he gets his flowers now I think.

1: Idolizing past cheaters: This happened a bit before I started playing again (I came back when Arm went down the first time, and didn't go back when it came back cause I aint illiterate, I can read the writing on the wall) But, you may want to consider that they could do all that awesome shit, because they were cheating.

2: What happened to playing to lose?: What happened to the economy? What happened to being able to make an extra 20k chy a week and pay for gear, clones, and put shit aside for a rainy day? And none of that requiring much conflict, so you can safely recoop from your loss.

3: Pushing plots: As someone who came to this game with an energy to create plots and push other peoples plots, and having done that since around my first month back… It's fucking exhausting. It's loss after loss after loss. The only real money going around is PK, the other ways of getting money have been nerfed pretty badly. So, if you dont have the means to recover from a bad op, you cant really take those PK jobs. You can say 'play to lose!' but if the claw machine is broke and wont grab that stuffed animal, why put a quarter in?

4: Collaborating ooc: The amount of brand new characters I see that come in, and immediately get adopted by big bad-asses who will damn near perm out anyone that fucks with their baby immy... Is dumb. I literally watched new immies 'fall in love with and marry' 20 year old characters within weeks of coming IC. They come out the gate and run to their preferred badass faster then the coyote goes off a cliff after the roadrunner. How this is OK by the rules, is beyond me.

By SmokePotion

As someone who came to this game with an energy to create plots and push other peoples plots, and having done that since around my first month back… It's fucking exhausting. It's loss after loss after loss.

I can empathize with this a bit. I had a lot of creative ideas when I came back to the game that I wanted to put in motion, but for one reason or another never actually got them off the ground. The primary cause was definitely the feeling that the game was essentially a second job, though. The other would probably be that the ideal PCs I wanted to involve kept perming out.

4: Collaborating ooc: The amount of brand new characters I see that come in, and immediately get adopted by big bad-asses who will damn near perm out anyone that fucks with their baby immy… Is dumb. I literally watched new immies 'fall in love with and marry' 20 year old characters within weeks of coming IC. They come out the gate and run to their preferred badass faster then the coyote goes off a cliff after the roadrunner. How this is OK by the rules, is beyond me.

This is a weird one. On the one hand, I see a lot of hints that there's probably OOC collaboration taking place across the game. Probably not as blatant as what you described, though. On the other hand… I don't want to spend my time on the game pointing fingers and making accusations.

I do wonder how big of an impact this is having on the game as a whole though. How many finite or outright unique resources are being controlled via OOC cliques? How many resources are essentially being inherited by alts through these means?

I don't know what super pacts there though. I could guess, and probably be wrong, so I won't waste my time. If I think someone is in a group like that I just plan to have to mess with all of them if I mess with one and proceed (or not) accordingly.

It's fine to be friend with lower and higher places, this should in no way suddenly extend to being ready to go to mattress for them, especially not for free. I get the instinct of doing so, but it's just bad for RP to mix power like that. Save it for more uneven exchanges.