T Minus 28 Days

[Chenier]

That is not currently in our plans.

I didn't think it was, but I do think it will be the next big step, as what was done, alone, is unlikely to "solve" the long-term problems, despite being a necessary measure.

[Eduardo Almighty]

As I can see, in this model of event some realms would be pushed against old behemoths. In EC, the south will have another excuse to march on Sirion. In Dwilight, Asylon will have to be used to live as a Mongol horde. The problem is that if the old realms like Sirion and Morek could resist against the first waves, in fact we will have realms "winning" some maps. Definitely.

While I agree to reduce the maps, the entire process with monsters is a little boring for me. I cannot interact with them. I cannot roleplay with them. They're just numbers. I just hope to have a fast transition.

[Roran]

Speaking from the perspective of a player who has all his characters affected, I think considering the circumstances the devs made the right decision. I see in most affected people a short-sightedness and a selfishness that quite surprised me. Whatever island that'd be sunk, there'd always be a lot of angry people. Even those players I talked about the devs decisions of this I found red-handed on saying 'sink any island but mine' in one way or another.

Remember that in a good compromise noone is happy. Instead of nuking a single continent and erasing a giant chunk of history and culture and whatnot created on that continent, the devs decided to let some 'natural disasters' strike every continent. This way you are allowed to RP it out and still keep your continet's history. Entire realms being wiped because of it is true, but that happened in history too.

Now, imagine that in the real world this would be happening and you'd be forced to move or die. What would you do? What would your characters do? Just erase the devs from this image, and use that in thegame to write and play your characters through this time.



Thumbs up for the devs.

[Stabbity]

My only problem with the whole thing is this:

We held polls for some of the islands. The half of the continent that got the most votes is now to be covered in ice. However, nobody knew what they were voting for at the time. If I present you with a choice between Coke and Pepsi, and don't tell you what you're choosing, you're going to pick the one you like the best.

The most popular ends of the islands where the votes were held are the ones being frozen. Dafuq?

[Ossan]

I'm starting to wonder if any armed migration will actually be possible, I hope the changes to morale for the migrating nations comes soon, as well as a way to pay our men without having any significant tax income (if any, I just about had my region fixed up when 60 more monsters showed up, wiped my unit out, and will probably wreck it before tax day). Not too mention how badly most armies need to march back and refit after one or two battles, plus the many days of time that takes.

Starting to wish we had an ice age on Dwilight too, monsters are a bit faster than ice!

[Indirik]

The idea of the polls wad not to provide a popularity contest where people try to run up the votes in their favor. All we needed was a random answer in a public setting.

And you guys ended up destroying my realm. Grrrr. 

[Bendix]

Speaking from the perspective of a player who has all his characters affected, I think considering the circumstances the devs made the right decision. I see in most affected people a short-sightedness and a selfishness that quite surprised me. Whatever island that'd be sunk, there'd always be a lot of angry people. Even those players I talked about the devs decisions of this I found red-handed on saying 'sink any island but mine' in one way or another.

Remember that in a good compromise noone is happy. Instead of nuking a single continent and erasing a giant chunk of history and culture and whatnot created on that continent, the devs decided to let some 'natural disasters' strike every continent. This way you are allowed to RP it out and still keep your continet's history. Entire realms being wiped because of it is true, but that happened in history too.

Now, imagine that in the real world this would be happening and you'd be forced to move or die. What would you do? What would your characters do? Just erase the devs from this image, and use that in thegame to write and play your characters through this time.



Thumbs up for the devs.

I have mixed feelings about this perspective, so I'm going to give my rebuttal to this:

Yes, we would all like to believe that all everyone wants is a game filled with rich roleplay, politics and cultural intrigue, and let the dice fall where they may. But on the other hand, we are humans, and humans usually like to succeed at things. They also usually dislike failing. Not everyone plays for the same reasons, and when your developing a game you have to take into account the fact that humanity is a vast kaleidoscope of personalities, all with a myriad of differing goals and complex desires.

You can't choose the type of people that play the game, or there wouldn't be a game at all. I think it is a bit arrogant to pretend that everyone in the game is a perfectly virtuous player with only good intentions, who are all playing the game "the right way". There is no wrong way to play the game (unless you're cheating). If a player truly has a stake in their character's success or failure, it is a sign that the game was well craft, and shouldn't be held against them. That's just a natural part of humanity. It's like veganism: perfectly fine if someone wants to take an ethical approach to their eating habits, but completely inappropriate to try and force them on others. You just can't ignore the human element.

But I think the biggest problem is that this idea seems too unfair. They were talking about sinking an entire island, but instead they went for the middle ground, which was what I was afraid of. If they had done away with a whole island, no one would end up with an advantage or disadvantage. Yes, some people would be angry, but not enough to want to quit, because if their island sinks, all their enemies sink with it, so no one "wins" due to dumb luck. It's all about perceived fairness.

And by the way, this also isn't really fair to the "winners"- the people who just happen come out on top due to these new circumstances. For instance, I have a character on Far East Island who benefits IMMENSELY from the ice age in the South. This character has been working for years to fight against his enemies down in Kindara, and now I don't even feel like playing this character because the game is making his job too easy. I feel like all the hard work I put into fighting the war was a complete waste of time. I could have just as easily got drunk and watched Monty Python. Hell, I wish I had. It's like if you spent a year working on a project for work, only to have the company decide to scrap the project in favor of contracting it out to someone else. It's like "Sure, I'm still getting paid, and the project is still getting done, but now I have nothing to be proud of". You can't be proud of a victory you didn't earn.

Finally, the fact that this is an event that is happening over time is possibly the worst decision of the entire process. Players are going to be stuck in limbo wondering when the laws of reality are going to return, so they can continue to play on an even field. It would have been much better to enact the changes all at once, like ripping off a band-aid. Slow = excruciating.

Something needed to be done, and so they did something. At least we can say that. I think it is worth mentioning that the dev team are unpaid volunteer hobbyists, as opposed to a team of paid, trained professionals with a 40-hour work week. And for what it's worth, this event is both more interesting and (relatively) more realistic that just simply sinking an entire island.

I think the devs did the best they could, and even if every decision they made was wrong we need to give it a chance.

[Indirik]

But I think the biggest problem is that this idea seems too unfair. They were talking about sinking an entire island, but instead they went for the middle ground, which was what I was afraid of. If they had done away with a whole island, no one would end up with an advantage or disadvantage. Yes, some people would be angry, but not enough to want to quit, because if their island sinks, all their enemies sink with it, so no one "wins" due to dumb luck. It's all about perceived fairness.

I think you don't really understand the mindset of quite a few of the players. If we had outright closed Atamara, or Dwilight, how many people would be on the forums flaming away about how we screwed up, and they are quitting "RIGHT NOW!"?

In a game like this, shrinking is a hard decision. No matter how you do it, people will complain, people will swear, and yes, people will even quit. There is simply no way to do it that makes everyone happy.

And by the way, this also isn't really fair to the "winners"- the people who just happen come out on top due to these new circumstances. For instance, I have a character on Far East Island who benefits IMMENSELY from the ice age in the South. This character has been working for years to fight against his enemies down in Kindara, and now I don't even feel like playing this character because the game is making his job too easy.

Declare victory via divine intervention, retire the character, and make a new one to fight against the tyrannical oppression of the empire.

[Anaris]

But I think the biggest problem is that this idea seems too unfair. They were talking about sinking an entire island, but instead they went for the middle ground, which was what I was afraid of. If they had done away with a whole island, no one would end up with an advantage or disadvantage. Yes, some people would be angry, but not enough to want to quit, because if their island sinks, all their enemies sink with it, so no one "wins" due to dumb luck. It's all about perceived fairness.

I am 100% certain that this is false.

If we closed an entire island, many people whose "main" characters are on that island would quit the game. Not only would everything they have worked for be destroyed, there wouldn't even be an island around anymore to remember it by, or a chance of getting it back.

Closing an entire island doesn't give us the freedom to open it up again until and unless we see a huge boost in player numbers.

Glaciating parts of several islands lets us monitor the player density numbers on those islands, and if one of them gets above certain thresholds and remains there for a while, we can begin moving the glaciers back. Land can be returned bit by bit, rather than all or nothing.

You talk as if closing an island would have had people saying, "Well, gosh darn it, I lost everything that made BattleMaster fun for me—but so did my character's enemies, so I guess it's OK! I'll keep playing!" That's obviously unrealistic. I am still convinced that we made the right call by not closing any of our continents, and doing this instead.

Again: There was absolutely no solution to the problems at hand that could be implemented without pissing anybody off.

[Bendix]

I am 100% certain that this is false.

If we closed an entire island, many people whose "main" characters are on that island would quit the game. Not only would everything they have worked for be destroyed, there wouldn't even be an island around anymore to remember it by, or a chance of getting it back.

Closing an entire island doesn't give us the freedom to open it up again until and unless we see a huge boost in player numbers.

Glaciating parts of several islands lets us monitor the player density numbers on those islands, and if one of them gets above certain thresholds and remains there for a while, we can begin moving the glaciers back. Land can be returned bit by bit, rather than all or nothing.

You talk as if closing an island would have had people saying, "Well, gosh darn it, I lost everything that made BattleMaster fun for me—but so did my character's enemies, so I guess it's OK! I'll keep playing!" That's obviously unrealistic. I am still convinced that we made the right call by not closing any of our continents, and doing this instead.

Again: There was absolutely no solution to the problems at hand that could be implemented without pissing anybody off.

I cannot help but disagree entirely (except with the last part; you're right- there was no perfect way to do this).

The entire idea of sinking a whole island comes with the obvious caveat that you would tell people which one it is, so they can emigrate if they so choose, thus bolstering the numbers on other islands and allowing players to bring with them their own personal history; the tales of a lost world, etc. I know it's more fun to be secretive and mysterious about these things, but at some point pragmatism has to play a role. If players can simply move their favorite characters, your entire dilemma is avoided.

And I think you're overplaying that dilemma, by the way: for the most part, players tend to spread over multiple islands. I have seen very few family pages where all the characters inhabit a single continent. I don't think people would quit as long as a thorough explanation is given as to why the island was sunk (just tack it right up there above the player's Family in big, yellow letters). That doesn't leave any room to interpret favoritism on the part of the devs, whereas now we are all left to deviously speculate behind your backs.

Yes, people would be pissed, but it's a different kind of pissed. Picture two companies: one is destroyed by a natural disaster, and the other one is destroyed by an inept CFO: either way, the employees are going to be pissed, but at least with a natural disaster there is no one to be angry at. Eventually you just accept your fate and find a new job, instead of going all mental, tracking down that inept CFO, and force-feeding him a tire-iron.

Removing certain parts of certain islands appears to show favoritism, and that does a lot more damage to the players' trust than the original idea of just sinking an island. When people do not feel they are being treated fair, they tend to fight back. If you've had an opportunity to read Malcolm Gladwell's latest, "David and Goliath", you'll know what I'm talking about, and how huge the difference is, sociologically speaking.

Also, hoping that the player base expands back up to levels where islands can be re-opened is unrealistic (in my opinion, at least). With the remarkable advances in gaming graphics coupled with the exponentially expanding field of free-to-play online games, text-only games like Battlemaster will slowly continue to dwindle as game-seeking youth gravitates more and more toward the "modern" gaming experience. It's an uncomfortable inevitability. I don't even like saying it. You're hoping we can save the limb, when we clearly need to amputate.

Anyway, I've always been skeptical of "middle-ground" solutions, especially when it comes to conflict resolution, which is my forte. You would think that compromise would be the best solution for most interpersonal conflicts, but the reality is that everyone just feels like the losing party, and resentment builds, which creates more problems than you had in the first place. That's just humanity, I guess.

[Myrosh]

There was something you could of done as I stated a few posts back, start the game a fresh giving everyone a new start and a new beginning, or create new smaller continents and put everyone there with there current characters so everyone has to emigrate with their history still intact. Also I am confused why you had to do anything at all the game was good as it was...

To carry on how this is unfair and pretty much daft, by simply destroying half the world gives an unfair advantage to half the populace, with no tax coming in, being hunted by monsters, how are we supposed to go to the other side of the continent and start a fresh where most of our enemies are or others in this scenario? Like they will just welcome us in with welcoming arms.

I understand what you do is volunteered and I respect that, but in my opinion this could have been dealt better rather then annoying half your player base...

[Indirik]

There was something you could of done as I stated a few posts back, start the game a fresh giving everyone a new start and a new beginning, or create new smaller continents and put everyone there with there current characters so everyone has to emigrate with their history still intact.

A "reset" of the game is a death sentence. BattleMaster was never intended to be a game with regular resets. (With the exception of the two now-gone south islands.)

Like they will just welcome us in with welcoming arms.

Have you tried asking? The answer might surprise you.

[Glloyd]

Honestly, I think that reverting the western continent of Dwilight to the monsters is going to have a much more negative effect than you think it will. You realize that most of the newer players that are starting to enjoy the game are in places like Asylon, Barca, and Nivemus, while the east is completely dominated by the old elite?  Barca is pretty much the one thing keeping me in this game, and I've seen more roleplay going on in that realm than any other that I've been in for the past three years. Besides that, the way Dwilight was split into two continents is what made it special. In this way, you could be assured that one realm couldn't possibly control the politics of the whole island. Compare that to Atamara, East Island, or Far East Island. Atamara has the Caligan Empire, East Island has Perdan, Far East Island has Arcaea. The politics of those islands revolve entirely on those realms, which leads to rather boring, stagnant, linear diplomacy and wars.

Compare that to Dwilight. We have the war between Asylon, Nivemus, and the SA bloc that just finished, and at the same time, we had a war going on with Barca, D'Hara, and Fissoa facing off against Luria Nova. These wars were completely independent of each other, and both involved relatively equal sides. Tell me the last time you saw that? On Atamara, the CE, if it so chose, could intervene in any conflict with relative ease. The same with Perdan or Arcaea. If we were to take away one of Dwilight's continents, what do you think would happen? It would just become another Atamara.

This is my opinion as well. Taking down Western Dwilight to a dull mechanic like enforced massive monster spawns strikes me as an imperfect solution, entirely unfitting with the tone of the game. BattleMaster encourages us to roleplay, and to create our own history. Hell, the main selling point of the game is its vast user created history. The devs have said that there's next to no way that we can fight them off, which I think is a less than optimal solution, considering that western Dwilight is much more interesting than Eastern at the moment.

I'm part of Niselur, and basically, we're forced to either run off towards Eastern Dwilight (which isn't optimal due to the amount of men we'll lose fighting rogues along the way, plus Morek is so entrenched, it'd be hard for us to remain Niselur with the current game mechanics) or remain in Niselur and die, no matter what we do. I don't know, the forced nature of this event doesn't fit with the spirit of the game in my opinion. And really, I joined Battlemaster as Niselur, because the realm (and game) sounded like it would interest me, from what someone said on another forum. And I've enjoyed it quite a lot over the last year I've been playing. But to almost assuredly lose Niselur to something we have no control over? I don't know, it really takes away my desire to continue playing.

If the devs arbitrarily enforce massive monster spawns on Western Dwilight after the migration, which don't even remotely allow recolonization, I sincerely doubt I'll be sticking around at all.

[Wolfang]

Maybe the realms of Asylon, Niselur and Barca should organise the emigration together, as it will be hard enough as it is?

[Eirikr]

I have not followed recent player/character count, but atleast in Darka we didnt have that much problem with lack of nobility... What i try to say, were Atamara somehow troubleous with lack of nobility?

AA @ BT sure could use some nobles... but this thing doesnt seem to directly effect BT, but ofcourse if half of Atamara is frozen, sure some will move to BT.

-Jaune

I know the character count has been rather low in many of the realms across Atamara; the CE, Tara, and Darka are really the only ones (maybe ML too) that I know to have high counts. While I think it's too early to say half Atamara will be gone, I do think Darka will get hit on the upper edge... It's just unfortunate that the pole (a logical choice for a glacier) isn't necessarily aligned with the density problems.

On a slightly different note, what's going to be the protocol for realm mergers? I don't think any of them would be truly voluntary and land won't be involved, but I can see all of Lyonesse's nobles sticking together and heading to Rieleston or somewhere down South. I'm too lazy to go look at the fine wording of the rule, so sorry if it isn't really an issue, but I figured I should ask.