Losing characters left and right.

[Gustav Kuriga]

I've seen several characters get paused indefinitely, and an account deletion. Considering you can only have one noble per player on Dwilight, this isn't a good sign. Barca used to be growing at a rapid pace when it came to number of nobles, but now we're slowly shrinking. Honestly I think the devs should have paid more attention to which realms were densely populated, rather than relying on vague polls or arbitrarily deciding to nuke the west because it started out uncolonized.

[sharkattack]

Like they said "Whats done is done", no point in talking about it and get this thread also closed.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Don't really care at this point. Many of the players in Barca and Asylon do not visit the forums, so what can I do but help show the frustration that many of them feel.

[Indirik]

If we can keep the thread objective and constructive, there's no reason it needs to be locked. If it devolves into arbitrary accusations and unfounded paranoia, then it will get locked.

[Indirik]

When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."

Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.

So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.

You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.

[Graeth]

We've had a net loss of about 6 nobles since we began leaving the West.  It seems a decent amount were account deletions, but without looking back I can't be sure.  I believe most of these were players who enjoyed playing the game without investing too much time.  For the most part we've kept all of our involved players.  To be honest, I'm surprised at the amount we've been able to retain without any real regions.

[Atanamir]

Indirik, in all calmness, I believe that most players do not argue what you say and especially not those who are not of the forum.

I think - from what I hear right and left - that most players are actually unhappy about the solution at all because of instead one realm, many realms of them are affected and would just hear from the dev team an honest "ok that didn't work out as we wanted, we should just have done better something else".

While I agree on the other hand that it might be too early to have final results on how this will end, I believe the dev team should develop as well a failure management and accept that possibly some decisions may have not been the best in case that at some point it will turn out that more players left due to this current decision instead of another.

Questions like from Foxglove about a count on deletions vs new accounts in these phase should be monitored and also answered.
I wonder actually that you are not doing this.
That is more important than repeating in everythread the same thing. This is exhausting for you and for the players its sounds like they are not taken seriously or listened to.
It's very important to evaluate and monitor such changes in order to improve.

I think that in general that would make many discussions here avoidable.

Sometimes it's ok to be wrong - if you are wrong, that is not decided yet, but for most, with the limited information given, it sounds like this. That is the bias of the player, but you have to take it seriously, cause without the player  there is no game. That is the dependancy here.

[Anaris]

I think - from what I hear right and left - that most players are actually unhappy about the solution at all because of instead one realm, many realms of them are affected and would just hear from the dev team an honest "ok that didn't work out as we wanted, we should just have done better something else".

Yes, that's always what people want you to say when they think you're wrong.

But what about when they're wrong—or, at best, very premature in their assessment?

An event like this is guaranteed to produce those feelings in a large number of people, no matter how we choose the regions to remove. And the other alternative—simply doing nothing—is also not viable. Sure, it doesn't piss lots of people off and make them leave now—but it also doesn't make the game engaging and exciting in the future, which will, over time, cause a lot of people to leave nonetheless.

if you are wrong, that is not decided yet,

This is the key here.

but for most, with the limited information given, it sounds like this.

Limited, biased, non-scientific information—and, ultimately, however accurate it is, all of it is simply giving the result we knew would happen: Some people who are being affected by the ice and the monsters are leaving the game. During the event and a period immediately following it, I would be shocked to find that account deletions did not outpace account creations.

The point is not, and never was, for the shrinking itself to create more interest and bring in more people. We tried to come up with ways to fluff and manage the shrinking that would help to mitigate the damage, but there's no way we can completely eliminate it.

The point of these actions was never about making things better now. It was always about making things better in the future.

The sooner you all realize that, and stop looking at the results in the present as "proof" that our actions were wrong, the sooner you can all get back to playing the game, and we can get back to improving it, rather than having to spend vast amounts of time on the forum each day refuting the same tired arguments over and over again.

[Graeth]

Wasn't one of the main ideas behind Dwilight that density would always be low and that the map would never be fully conquerable?  I thought people were upset that so much land had been taken as it was.

[Anaris]

Wasn't one of the main ideas behind Dwilight that density would always be low and that the map would never be fully conquerable?

Not really. If it's "never fully conquerable", then once you cut off the "unconquerable" part, all you really have is a smaller map that is fully conquerable.

No, Dwilight was just another new continent, that happened to be quite large, and thus take a lot of nobles to fully conquer. It went through a "frontier" period like every other new continent, but that's not inherent to the island. The only "main idea" behind Dwilight that was ever intended to remain fixed is SMA.

[Gustav Kuriga]

When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."

Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.

So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.

You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.

Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account. Where have I said that? Point to it, and I will admit it, but I do believe that I never, ever asked that it be judged by politics. Now I want you to read this carefully, because repeating myself is getting very, very tiring.

What I was saying is this: If we must remove a part of Dwilight, or any other Island for that matter, we should look at ways to ensure that you remove land with as little affect to your player base as possible. This means cutting out swathes of land that are not densely populated by nobles. Until recently losing several regions from what I assume were monster attacks, Morek had what I have to believe is the worst population density of a major realm in the entire game. They only had 1 noble per region. Probably because of recent events Morek has been getting a couple of nobles from the west, but they still are spread entirely too thin.

I want the main factor to that is taken into account to be realm noble density as compared to amount of regions, not politics, or an arbitrary reason that is no longer relevant (the realms in the west were just as stable as those in the east, so that kind of reasoning is just flavor text for a !@#$ situation).

Does that make more sense now Indirik? Can we please stop assuming I'm infuriated because the political situation was inconvenient? (I'm looking at you Glaumring)

[Penchant]

Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account. Where have I said that? Point to it, and I will admit it, but I do believe that I never, ever asked that it be judged by politics. Now I want you to read this carefully, because repeating myself is getting very, very tiring.

What I was saying is this: If we must remove a part of Dwilight, or any other Island for that matter, we should look at ways to ensure that you remove land with as little affect to your player base as possible. This means cutting out swathes of land that are not densely populated by nobles. Until recently losing several regions from what I assume were monster attacks, Morek had what I have to believe is the worst population density of a major realm in the entire game. They only had 1 noble per region. Probably because of recent events Morek has been getting a couple of nobles from the west, but they still are spread entirely too thin.

I want the main factor to that is taken into account to be realm noble density as compared to amount of regions, not politics, or an arbitrary reason that is no longer relevant (the realms in the west were just as stable as those in the east, so that kind of reasoning is just flavor text for a !@#$ situation).

Does that make more sense now Indirik? Can we please stop assuming I'm infuriated because the political situation was inconvenient? (I'm looking at you Glaumring)

Take some of your own advice there. While he stated politics specifically, he also said determining it by any other realm trait because you are still asking for realms to be targeted.

When the dev team sat down and decided to make a determination of how to achieve our goals, we set out a clear policy that we would not consider political boundaries when setting policy. There was a suggestion or two that perhaps the event could be used to help reshape the politics of some islands. We quickly, and almost unanimously, decided that this was not desirable. We do not want to sit down and say "These realms are good, and we should preserve them. These realms are bad, and should be destroyed." This subjective decision process is bad for the game and the players. Who wants to be the player that has the dev team come down and say "For the good of the game, we have decided that your realm, specifically, has to be eliminated."

Part of the assumption that you're making is that, if we would have tried to use political boundaries and specific realm traits to determine which realms should die, that we would have of course agreed that your realm would be saved. You have no guarantee that this is the case. Perhaps we would have closed the north. Or the south. Or the outside of both halves. Or pared the north and south down by 25% of the map size. Or maybe we would have blown a huge hole in the middle of both the eastern and western halves. Who knows? In any case, there's no guarantee that Barca, or Asylon, or Niselur, or Astrum, or any other specific realm would have survived the decision process.

So in the end, we decided to go with island history, and revert the western half to a monster-riddled wilderness. I'm sorry that some realms had to be destroyed in the process. But at least, in the end, every player knows that what was done was not done in an effort to specifically target any individual realm or alliance. This is true of the decisions made regarding all islands.

You have my personal promise on that fact. And if the personal promise of the dev team is not good enough for you, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to convince you of how things were done, and why they had to be done that way.

Specific relevant parts have been added bold.

[Anaris]

Indirik. Please, for the love of god, read my posts before you try and assume I wanted politics to be taken into account.

Gustav,
You are misunderstanding what Indirik says when he talks about "taking politics into account".

Looking at any aspects of actual realms occupying the land that is getting removed is taking politics into account.

Furthermore, if you want some actual data on noble-per-region density before the event started...Asylon was definitely below the average. Niselur and Barca were high, true, but so were Swordfell and Fissoa. The density definitely does not paint a clear, convincing picture that says, "The West must survive!"

[Zakilevo]

Well people chose which part to freeze without knowing. So partly, players had some input in the matter.

We are not really losing nobles any faster as far as I know. We've been losing 20 players per month and that hasn't changed so the change should increase the noble density once the ice stops though with us constantly losing players the ice might advance even farther.

[Marlboro]

To be honest, I'm surprised at the amount we've been able to retain without any real regions.

Grimrog gives a hell of a speech.