Player of Atanamirs account lock.

[Anaris]

I personally have a cousin who played in Perdan, and I have long found that realm to be in denial about anything wrong its players do.

I have seen this pattern, too—it's not unique to Perdan, but Perdan has shown it pretty strongly in the past.

This is, indeed, part of the problem, and not an insignificant part. Unfortunately, in my experience, any of the direct methods one could use to attempt to reduce this attitude within the realm are much more likely to make it worse than better.

So if anyone has any good suggestions as to how to address this sort of attitude, in Perdan or any other realm, I'm wide open...

[Indirik]

There is a culture that has developed that any time something happens that you don't like, the instant reaction is to attribute it to bug abuse, or misuse of game mechanics by people on the other side. The longer a particular conflict goes on, the more likely this is to happen. It may have always been there, but IMO it seems to have gotten stronger over the years.

I've seen this in just in the past couple weeks on EC, with players in both the northern and southern realms blaming the other side is abusing bugs. People in the north say the southerners are abusing the looting mechanics by looting in 2 hour increments, while people in the south say the northerners are abusing a no-battle bug by moving *one unit* into a region the turn before a big battle in order to make sure everyone gets there. It doesn't even have to be a bug, either. Just a clever way of using a game mechanic is attributed to "abuse of mechanics". f.ex. the recent forum thread about how people who protest every turn are abusing the protest mechanics.

Perhaps the reason is that the game is balkanized into small groups of people who's only interaction is constant conflict. You develop an inherent hostility toward "the enemy". This attitude is reinforce by playing with the same players in realms on different islands. Thus you tend to be on the same side as Alice on every island, and fighting against Bob on every island. For example, there was always a strong correlation between players in Darka on AT and in Perdan on BT.

It promotes an "us vs. them" mentality, I think. An idea that the other side will use any method that it takes to win. Both sides get ingrained in this way of thinking. When the popular Sirion general Hinamoto got a public warning, then flipped out and ragequit, the outrage in Sirion was that "They are using OOC tactics to get us! They are using the Titans to win!". And now the general of Perdan gets locked and the outrage in Perdan is essentially the same thing: "They will do anything they have to do to win, even if they have to get the Titans to do their dirty work!" Both sides scream "They're out to get us!" But no one knows who this "they" is.

IMO, this is a significant problem. How do we prevent this attitude from settling in and perpetuating itself?

[Ravier Nebehn]

I personally have a cousin who played in Perdan, and I have long found that realm to be in denial about anything wrong its players do.

Including sacrificing other realms so that they might survive. I feel, at least on an OOC level, he played to win and one of the core concepts of BM is you cannot out-and-out win. Certainly in the halls of the Church of Humanity if anything was said against a Perdanese priest or follower he'd tell you to STFU.

Anyway, I don't have any ideas for how to reduce this "group mentality" problem because my only idea would actually prohibit the idea of playing with one's friends - specifically, if you try to join a realm that has several other players you already play with, something would block it.

[Anaris]

Broadly (and at the risk of stating the obvious), I would say that the way to get players to stop viewing other players as The Enemy is to get them to either work or play together at something.

Tournaments were meant to work toward this goal, but I'm skeptical that they could ever have either prevented or reversed the kind of attitude we're seeing today, and from what I've seen, they've also become much less common over the years. I suspect that this is a symptom of the same thing: people don't want to throw a tournament when there's a risk that The Enemy might get the prize money, not to mention the danger of distracting your own men from the war effort.

The next obvious answer (to me, at least) is to give them all a common enemy they need to fight against. Unfortunately, given the way BT invasions have gone in the past, I don't have any confidence that this would actually get them to either work together during the invasion, or see each other more kindly afterwards.

I suppose it might be possible to create another island like the War Island, that gives a free character slot to everyone, and lump all the players there into one big player realm, fighting against the impossibly strong forces of the Netherworld, or some other PvE scenario. However, I'm not sure how well that would work, either, even ignoring for the moment the feasibility of it from a development perspective.

I think the ideal thing would be to have some kind of big BattleMaster get-together, where everyone can actually meet the players on the other side, and learn to see them as real people. I know small events of this nature have happened in the past, but I'm skeptical that one could be organized that's large enough to ensure that it reaches enough of the prominent players on opposite sides of these entrenched conflicts.

More ideas are welcome. And if someone wants to try to persuade me that any of these ideas I'm rejecting are more workable than I think, I'm willing to consider it, too

[Eirikr]

May want to point out that at least one of those pauses was because the player got sick of all the OOC complaining against the Titans.

Thanks, always saving me some words.

[Zakilevo]

Meeting players in person do change a lot I think. I've met a few players living in my city. Gotta say talking about battlemaster in RL is pretty good.

[Stabbity]

Broadly (and at the risk of stating the obvious), I would say that the way to get players to stop viewing other players as The Enemy is to get them to either work or play together at something.

Tournaments were meant to work toward this goal, but I'm skeptical that they could ever have either prevented or reversed the kind of attitude we're seeing today, and from what I've seen, they've also become much less common over the years. I suspect that this is a symptom of the same thing: people don't want to throw a tournament when there's a risk that The Enemy might get the prize money, not to mention the danger of distracting your own men from the war effort.

The next obvious answer (to me, at least) is to give them all a common enemy they need to fight against. Unfortunately, given the way BT invasions have gone in the past, I don't have any confidence that this would actually get them to either work together during the invasion, or see each other more kindly afterwards.

I suppose it might be possible to create another island like the War Island, that gives a free character slot to everyone, and lump all the players there into one big player realm, fighting against the impossibly strong forces of the Netherworld, or some other PvE scenario. However, I'm not sure how well that would work, either, even ignoring for the moment the feasibility of it from a development perspective.

I think the ideal thing would be to have some kind of big BattleMaster get-together, where everyone can actually meet the players on the other side, and learn to see them as real people. I know small events of this nature have happened in the past, but I'm skeptical that one could be organized that's large enough to ensure that it reaches enough of the prominent players on opposite sides of these entrenched conflicts.

More ideas are welcome. And if someone wants to try to persuade me that any of these ideas I'm rejecting are more workable than I think, I'm willing to consider it, too

Battlemaster Con 14!

Do I get a booth? And a personal security detail? I feel like, despite my forum name, the only thing getting stabbed would be me :p

[Lorgan]

Indeed. The root of the problem is the "us vs them" mentality that develops between players who have successfully teamed up and, very often, came out against all odds. They have faced great adversity, learning that what they need to do is bound together as a close team, and then literally nothing or no one can stop them, in game. It's no surprise this kind of thing gets out of hand more often than not when players get very strongly attached to their team and the people in it. These people, and what enables their team, a realm, very often come under threat in this game. Threats not from within the team, but from outside... thus the us vs them mentality.

In my opinion, it basically stems from the isolation that can befall a realm such as this, bristling with team spirit but oblivious to everything outside the limits of their own group. You can't respect what you don't know and as these realms experience the outside world through military confrontation, which they excel at because of said team spirit, no respect will be earned through the very few contacts. All at the edge of the sword. It's very easy to say that all of that IC and OOC we can all be friends but time and time again that has been proven to be an imperfect assumption. An IC rivalry evolves at the very least to OOC distrust, except in those rare roleplay cases where it's orchestrated between friends.

I don't see a way to solve that issue than through more communication between players of different IC background. As it can't be forced upon them OOG, though it's good that there is a forum, and truly IRC has very often opened my eyes to another perspective on a situation in the game, but I guess it's not for everyone. Would get a little busy too.
The point is isolation is the breeding ground for this kind of behaviour and there should be more ways to break through it provided in game. More ways to communicate with people from outside your team, getting to know who your enemies are. In fact historically, medieval nobles weren't at all concerned about their nationality but much more self-interested. Nobles from distant places would marry, ally, befriend eachother because it would benefit themselves and their family. Ties of interests were a spiderweb over europe, crossing kingdoms and empires. This is what we should try to simulate in stead of just the introverted messaging options we have now were only those in charge are in regular contact with the outside world and isolation is forced on a nobility that should be far more cosmopolitan warriors than nationalist soldiers.
In other words: Communication Revolution baby!

[Eduardo Almighty]

We lost Ryu/Juan in Sirion and he "failed" just one time... he decided to leave, but it was "because of the Titans". We also lost Dobromir, and that's was a direct fault of our friend Alex. I like him, but I have no reasons to defend him when he's wrong.

We continue fighting, since I know he would like to know we won the war. Do the same for Alex, if you love him so much. Do something better for Perdan. When he decided to leave, we lose some players too... it's normal, I think.

[Blue Star]

Oh for gods sake, for all the people who are whining about Atanamir getting his account lock, please, PLEASE, go look in the courthouse part of the forums. There were several cases where he attempted to harass and drive away players.

I personally have a cousin who played in Perdan, and I have long found that realm to be in denial about anything wrong its players do. This has been a LOOOONG time coming, and I'm personally glad. I'm willing to bet that most of the people who are angry are only angry because their realm is suffering a setback, not because a player has been perma-locked.

Why don't you shove that... your glad someone left get real were fighting to retain anyone we can. Your experience with him does not warrant such a statement and as a player to another you sure probably haven't been playing as a friend either it seems with that.

I'll tell it how it is, anyone who knew Alex could care less about the fact Perdan will suffer we care about the fact that a player who we trusted and did more good than harm in this game is gone. You realize only in the past two years this became a issue for him and others. Geez we have become so soft skinned.

Titans I don't agree and I rarely will with such unless multi or clans. I can say I honestly if this is the way others play by playing the victims I should just not speak in realms. Dobby was a good player but he was not perfect, neither is Alex. OOC is toxic and and I'm glad he did not renew his donation.

He unlike many who play this for free don't support this game though it may be just a little help we at least did. I see that I would have to agree with him. Our community is toxic and it's just underneath the surface of the players...

[Anaris]

The point is isolation is the breeding ground for this kind of behaviour and there should be more ways to break through it provided in game. More ways to communicate with people from outside your team, getting to know who your enemies are. In fact historically, medieval nobles weren't at all concerned about their nationality but much more self-interested. Nobles from distant places would marry, ally, befriend eachother because it would benefit themselves and their family. Ties of interests were a spiderweb over europe, crossing kingdoms and empires.

This is absolutely true. I have, at times, dreamed of a new family system, that would make nobles part of much larger families, and remove the 1:1 player:family ratio.

Imagine, if instead of your characters just belonging to the realm, they also belonged to a family that encompassed another 3 dozen nobles, played by twenty or thirty players, some of whom are the kings and queens of other realms on this and other continents. In a system like that, we could actually have marriages to seal treaties, and titles inherited by blood, and honest-to-goodness familial claims on regions and even realms.

Unfortunately, while the coding wouldn't be terribly difficult (far from trivial, though; it would probably take a few weeks at least to get written and tested), implementing this system would require one of three things:

• Abandon all our existing characters and start fresh.
• Retcon everyone's RP so that their characters "always" belonged to these new dynastic families.
• Just make all the existing families in the game the seeds for the dynastic families, even though each of them starts out with no more than a handful of nobles in it.

None of those are particularly good options for it.

Also, I'm pretty sure Tom has expressed opposition to abandoning the 1 player, 1 family principle, so that kills it right there

[Eduardo Almighty]

A code would be good, but nothing something so new... not for me. I can quote the Serpentis/Tandaros and Serpentis/Blakeshadow lineages.

I had more family ties in the past and I'm working in new ones, but family was always important for me in the game's context.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Why don't you shove that... your glad someone left get real were fighting to retain anyone we can. Your experience with him does not warrant such a statement and as a player to another you sure probably haven't been playing as a friend either it seems with that.

I'll tell it how it is, anyone who knew Alex could care less about the fact Perdan will suffer we care about the fact that a player who we trusted and did more good than harm in this game is gone. You realize only in the past two years this became a issue for him and others. Geez we have become so soft skinned.

Titans I don't agree and I rarely will with such unless multi or clans. I can say I honestly if this is the way others play by playing the victims I should just not speak in realms. Dobby was a good player but he was not perfect, neither is Alex. OOC is toxic and and I'm glad he did not renew his donation.

He unlike many who play this for free don't support this game though it may be just a little help we at least did. I see that I would have to agree with him. Our community is toxic and it's just underneath the surface of the players...

Bold are all the points which are highly hypocritical.

In italics is the point I would like to state that I have personally donated several times towards this game. In addition I have provided a guide for using the different types of troops that is now on the wiki, though I would like to state that it is outdated because of game mechanic changes.

[jaune]

Geez we have become so soft skinned.

This. This is global(western?) RL problem as well. People get butthurt for next to nothing.

[Anaris]

This. This is global(western?) RL problem as well. People get butthurt for next to nothing.

There is a two-way rule that I think is very important:

Do not be unnecessarily easily offended. Do not be unnecessarily offensive.

It's important to follow both sides of the rule.

It's also important not to get so caught up in the first part that you forget that it is possible to be legitimately offended for good reasons. If you go through life assuming that everyone who files a Titan report, or complains about being offended, is just "getting butthurt for next to nothing," you're certainly no better a human being than those who go through life whining and complaining that everything isn't immediately handed to them.