| Summary: | Clan activity detrimental to the game |
| Violation: | We expect you to play the game as you would play a board game with good friends, and to value fair play above any victory or power. |
| World: | East Island and Dwilight |
| Complainer: | Tom |
| About: | multiple people, see below |
Full Complaint Text:The source of
two recent forum topics as well as a Titan investigation, I've decided to bring this case to the Magistrates as
discussed here. While the anti-clan policy mentioned there does not yet exist and would not be applied retro-actively, the activities mentioned do violate the Social Contract, namely §3:
§2 Fair Play You can not win BattleMaster. Therefore, playing together is more important to us than playing against each other. We expect you to play the game as you would play a board game with good friends, and to value fair play above any victory or power.
The activities in both Fontan and Aurvandil are considered by several players as unfair in this sense. A close-knit group of apparent friends is cooperating extremely close with the intent of victory and power over fun, especially that of others. Investigations in Aurvandil and, to a lesser extend in Fontan, revealed that the military as well as the economy of those realms is working like clockwork with almost no in-game communication. Just one example: There is a clear and (to the dev team with a direct view on in-game transactions) obvious system of gold distribution at work that is consistently and reliably employed by these players with almost no communication. Gold is constantly sent between characters without requests or orders. This makes no sense unless one assumes that the entire system is managed through out-of-game communication.
In the interest of full disclosure, we also found that the alleged clan is not acting aggressively exclusive. We have seen characters join the realm and be welcome. However, to the best of our knowledge, they are not integrated into the alledged clan and receive none of the suspected OOG communications.
I recently sent an announcement to the players of Fontan asking for their feedback on the clan "takeover" that was mentioned here on the forum. The feedback has been mixed, with some saying that everything is fine while others explained in detail what happens and why they are unhappy. As I promised these players confidentiality, their mails will be shared with the Magistrates, but not in public. I have not yet cross-referenced the e-mails with the list of players alledged to be members of the alledged clan.
My concern is that this activity, while not necessarily intended to do so, is causing players who face the clan as enemies, either within the realms they take control of or as war-enemies of those realms, so much frustration, that they are leaving the game. I believe we all agree that "playing a board game with friends" also includes keeping everyone at the gaming table. There is a difference between playing a game of chess at a competitive tournament and playing some board game with friends, and the mindset appropriate for one is not appropriate for the other.
I propose to break up the clan by deporting a randomly selected half of their members from both realms to randomly selected other islands, where they can then join realms of their own choice. I also propose to prohibit them from re-forming within the same realm at a size of more than one third of the number of characters in those realms for the period of one year.
If these players care about the game itself, this punishment would suck a bit, but it allows them to continue playing and lose only very little in stats. If they are still playing after the year, we can be sure of and point out to their haters, that they play even when they can't gang up on others. If, on the other hand, the haters are right and they care more about winning and power-gaming, we will see them leave and know it's a good riddance.
