T Minus 28 Days

[Glloyd]

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

I'm of half a mind to attempt to call the three of us together to organise a spirited defence of a specific part of the western island under a new banner... The United Kingdoms of Western Dwilight, or something of the sort. However, I feel like the devs are too intent on clearing Western Dwilight that it would all be for naught.

[Wolfang]

So, if I understand this correctly, Eastern Dwilight has no massive monster spawns atm?

Are the islands of Dhara and Fissoa affected or is it only the mainland? Where does the spawning stop?

[Lubomirski]

It is good that the Devs are looking into the mechanics to make it easier to ‘immigrate’ and establish new realms and that at least gives me some hope of continuing. 

That hope may however be mute for many of us in Western Dwilight for in looking at the constant spawns of monsters of multi thousand CS points it is debatable whether many of us will even be able to concentrate our forces and fight our way to the coast let alone be in any shape to ship out and conquer new lands. 

[sharkattack]

If they want western realms of Dwilight  to invade east continent, devs gotta do something to make sure armies of the west can properly land to the east. Without morale penalties or something.

[Foxglove]

My thoughts, for what it's worth.

I tend towards agreeing with those who say it would have been more accepted by the players if an island had been closed. Way back when all of this was first starting to be discussed, someone (possibly Tom?) came up with the idea that the players on the island or islands that were to be closed would be given a chance to invade other islands to try to keep their realms alive. That was a much better idea. It would have created a more exciting and dynamic event for the whole game. Imagine FEI's military powerhouses, the Arcaean Empire and Kindara, invading the EC (for instance).

On the other hand, if the freezing was the only workable thing in terms of Dev time, the freezing should have been more evenly distributed so that it didn't disproportionately effect particular realms. It would have been wiser to come up with some sort of other magical mcguffin that took regions from around the coasts of the islands (flooding, etc). Due to the larger expanse of coastlines in terms of numbers of regions, you'd probably have been able to get the desired results without hugely damaging or destroying specific realms. The code needed to give the effected realms an advantage in migration should also have been in place at the start of the event too, in order to give a boost to player morale in the face of the otherwise negative impact of the event.

The idea that the North or South polls were a random selection technique is nonsense. If you'd have wanted a really random result you could have put a poll up saying "1 to 3 or 4 to 6" to simulate the throwing of dice (or something else that couldn't have been interpreted as being directly linked to the events or geography on the map). Most people probably interpreted North or South as who they prefered in the wars that were going on on each island. Or, simply, which end of the island they liked best.

As has been said, in order for the players to have confidence in this move, it needed to be broadly perceived as fair. Perception is everything in this situation, and the perception of fairness hasn't been good.

My own feelings on the whole thing are a bit "Meh". I don't think it'll improve the situation in any way, as was the intention. But these days I also don't have the emotional attachment to the game to be really annoyed by the bungled (in my opinion) 'Event' either.

[Chenier]

Here's what I think must happen:



This game needs more neighbors to be more lively: more neighbors within (realm mates), and more neighbors beyond (other realms). Cutting out chunks of some continents will partially help with the former, only, but unless we fix something, I do not believe it would be enough to halt the player decay.

[Indirik]

The idea that the North or South polls were a random selection technique is nonsense. If you'd have wanted a really random result you could have put a poll up saying "1 to 3 or 4 to 6" to simulate the throwing of dice (or something else that couldn't have been interpreted as being directly linked to the events or geography on the map).

That would be pretty pointless. If people picked 1-3, and then we announced that 1-3 means that the north gets frozen, then everyone that plays in a northern realm claims that no matter what the answer would be, that we just claimed that the winning answer meant north because we wanted the north to be frozen.

We debated many different methods for selecting the direction of the glaciers. Let's face it, there really is no manner of easily and transparently selecting some criteria for selecting the direction that someone can't claim is biased in some manner.

[Indirik]

Here's what I think must happen:

I hate it. Your modified map still leaves my realm dead.

[Foxglove]

Although I agree that finding a transparent random selection technique was difficult, asking the question "North or South" was just an extremely bad way because it should have been pretty obvious that people would connect the question to the ongoing wars considering they all have north/south splits.

[Indirik]

What? Tim announces in Feb 1st that some big event related to sinking the islands, and that the increased monster spawn is related to that. Four days later I start a poll on two islands asking only "North or South?". Do you honestly think  that people didn't connect the poll to the "T Minus 28 Days" event? Hell, some people even posted ideas that were exactly correct as to what the poll was about. .

[Zakilevo]

I think there was no way to do this without upsetting people. The matter was who do you upset.

If people had known what the polls were about I think people would have just picked whichever side they hate. That means the results are affected by political standings of those who have voted which the dev team tried to avoid.

[Foxglove]

What? Tim announces in Feb 1st that some big event related to sinking the islands, and that the increased monster spawn is related to that. Four days later I start a poll on two islands asking only "North or South?". Do you honestly think  that people didn't connect the poll to the "T Minus 28 Days" event? Hell, some people even posted ideas that were exactly correct as to what the poll was about. .

In the thread you link to, only one person raised the possibility that it was connected to the sinking. Others asked for clarification on what they were meant to be voting on, expressed a preference for one end of the island based on the realms (or lack of them), and one said linking it to the sinking would be deceiving the playerbase. There's nothing there to support the argument that the bulk of voters "really" (wink, wink) knew what they were voting on. The majority of the replies indicate the opposite to be true. Maybe if the poll had been launched by Tim, it would have been different.

[Velax]

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.

I can tell you now, if FEI had been sunk, I'd have quit. It wouldn't have been a "You sunk my favourite island so !@#$ you" ragequit, but it would have been a "I've put 99.5% of my BM time into FEI, and am not prepared to start over again from scratch" quit. Which in turn would have taken out my two character on other islands.

Given, I am the ruler of the largest federation on FEI so possibly have more time investment to lose than others, but I find it difficult to believe no one else at all would have felt the same way should their island have been sunk.

[Foxglove]

Yeah, but that goes for realms as much as islands. Some people will have put 99.9% of their BM time into a particular realm they like, and they'll quit if it goes under in a way they consider to be unfair. I know this to be true because over the weekend some people have told me they'll do exactly that if the particular realm they like is killed off due to a game event.

[Velax]

No doubt - it sucks. I wouldn't have been very happy if the FEI frost came from the north, I can tell you. But at least this way you've got a chance to push north and carve out some new territory for yourselves rather than "BAM, you're done; now find a different island".