Author Topic: Atamara's Fate  (Read 61665 times)

Vita`

  • BM Dev Team
  • Honourable King
  • *
  • Posts: 2558
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #60: May 09, 2016, 07:48:42 PM »
Warnings have been distributed to a few recent participants for violating the First Forum Conduct Rule. 'Be respectful of other users. No insulting or derogatory behavior toward other players or forum users.' Say what you have to say respectfully.

Medron Pryde

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 343
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #61: May 09, 2016, 09:38:24 PM »
I agree that the Ice really did nothing more than break what was the last major nation that stood against Cagil.  I remember thinking that when it happened but I didn't have the power to do anything about it.  Even with all the bonuses the Devs gave Darka, it was never going to be enough to stand up against the Cagilan-Taran alliance.  What I wouldn't have given to have Darka still around when I became Tyrant...but the Devs destroyed them long before my time...:(

As for my activity in the time I was Tyrant...I logged in all the time and I worked all the time.  I didn't talk with Miskel very much because Miskel wasn't one of the smart ones.  He got all up in people's faces and angry and got himself kicked out when the people he was insulting got tired of him.  I talked with people who acted smarter and worked behind the scenes to help change other peoples' minds.

Miskel's approach would have resulted in one nation telling everybody else to frak off and then getting gangbanged by everybody else on the continent.  Believe me.  I thought that one out a long time ago back when he was doing his thing.  Miskel was not a reliable man to work with.  Too chaotic.  Too shouty.  He was simply not a reasonable ally, and from his own admission he did not have control of Cagil.  I could not trust anything he said to be binding.

My (very OOC) goal was not to start a single war and have a single nation wiped out.  That is one reason Tara never wiped out a nation under my command.  We hounded.  We raided.  We looted.  We did not try to eliminate a single nation.  Basically we sowed chaos and pissed people off.  And one by one we caused the alliances that united the entire continent to the Cagil-Tara alliance to fail.

My goal was not to start a short war that would kill a nation and otherwise leave the continent unchanged except for a minor border change and another probable expansion of the federation.  One by one, the actions I and others took shattered the single overriding set of alliances built over a decade that made it impossible to fight a good war.  And THEN we broke the federation that enforced those alliances after talking those old Elders in the League of the Eagle into agreeing it had to be done.

Atamara was sunk before we could find out how the fallout would land, but we completely and utterly shattered the power structure of Atamara and brought in a new age of war.

Noone you know

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 240
    • View Profile

Medron Pryde

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 343
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #63: May 10, 2016, 07:21:00 AM »
Like I said, Miskel was a loose canon who did not have effective command of the nation he nominally ruled.

Quoting South Park "authority" just illustrates that more clearly.

 8)

Noone you know

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 240
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #64: May 10, 2016, 10:55:34 AM »
uhm....you have absolutely no clue what is going on, do you?

Whoops! I meant that it a totally respectful way!

Seriously, though - you're just making !@#$ up to try to match what you wanted to have happened. I think I'm ready to move on from this thread now.

Thanks for showing everyone who was actually there for years and years just how delusional the people running things were.

(Do I have to explain the "Authority" video, or did other people get it?)
« Last Edit: May 10, 2016, 11:03:11 AM by Noone you know »

Sacha

  • Mighty Duke
  • ****
  • Posts: 1410
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #65: May 10, 2016, 03:21:49 PM »
The top brass can make excuses for themselves all they want. Ask anyone who spent considerable time on Atamara as a knight, they can attest that Atamara was 1) boring as !@#$ and 2) run by a select few people who basically controlled the entire island between themselves. I'm talking days without any letters, straight-up being ignored when asking things or simply being told to sit down and follow orders like a good boy. Every time something exciting was bound to happen, the Cagilan block either squashed the attempt, or simply used its power to determine the outcome for themselves. Masterful politics had little to do with it. And if that sounds resentful, good! You few elitists ruined a perfectly good island by your unhealthy desire to win the game, despite being told time and time again that nobody outside the war island is ever supposed to win the game.

Atamara was nothing more than the private playground of a select group, and if they didn't like you, you could forget about having an sort of fun.

BarticaBoat

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 231
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #66: May 10, 2016, 07:45:53 PM »
uhm....you have absolutely no clue what is going on, do you?

Whoops! I meant that it a totally respectful way!

Seriously, though - you're just making !@#$ up to try to match what you wanted to have happened. I think I'm ready to move on from this thread now.

Thanks for showing everyone who was actually there for years and years just how delusional the people running things were.

(Do I have to explain the "Authority" video, or did other people get it?)

As one of the people who backed miskel to become PM of CE, I can confirm he had far greater sway with common nobles and a very select few dukes opposed him. It was all going okay and then the small group said no you're not playing our game right.

It's frustrating because I was PM of CE for 6 months and I managed to not tread on the dukes and position CE towards involvement in the northern war but I was voted out and replaced by a character who proceeded to stagnate CE just as bad as anyone.

Medron Pryde

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 343
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #67: May 10, 2016, 07:47:24 PM »
I am making nothing up.

I have stated many times that the Cagilan-Taran alliance "won" Atamara.  There was no way anybody could beat them after the last major war that broke both the northern and southern alliances.  That is a fact.

And the Ice Age shattered what little was left of the north that was still holding out.

When I first became Tyrant of Tara, one or more members of the Federation was allied with every realm on the continent.  And Carelia was being absorbed into Strombran.  Some might use harsher words, but I will be nice here.  There was no way to fight a good war when I became Tyrant.

Over the next year, we managed to end almost every alliance outside the Federation, and then broke the Federation itself, resulting in the largest war to hit Atamara since the last great war.

That is the pure and simple truth of what happened.  That is what many people worked towards and what I was happy to help get done once I was in a position to do so.

That is what we did in Atamara.

If you are saying that didn't happen, then you are simply not living in the same world that the rest of us worked in.

GundamMerc

  • Mighty Duke
  • ****
  • Posts: 929
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #68: May 10, 2016, 11:02:14 PM »
I am making nothing up.

I have stated many times that the Cagilan-Taran alliance "won" Atamara.  There was no way anybody could beat them after the last major war that broke both the northern and southern alliances.  That is a fact.

And the Ice Age shattered what little was left of the north that was still holding out.

When I first became Tyrant of Tara, one or more members of the Federation was allied with every realm on the continent.  And Carelia was being absorbed into Strombran.  Some might use harsher words, but I will be nice here.  There was no way to fight a good war when I became Tyrant.

Over the next year, we managed to end almost every alliance outside the Federation, and then broke the Federation itself, resulting in the largest war to hit Atamara since the last great war.

That is the pure and simple truth of what happened.  That is what many people worked towards and what I was happy to help get done once I was in a position to do so.

That is what we did in Atamara.

If you are saying that didn't happen, then you are simply not living in the same world that the rest of us worked in.

What we're saying is you never should have been trying to win the !@#$ing continent in the first place, for Christ's sake. They had been told time and again they were ruining the continent, but they never listened. So what that things started to change? It was after YEARS of stagnation in which the only way to have any fun in a war was to either be in Darka or join the CE bloc, and that latter choice was laughable at best.

Medron Pryde

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 343
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #69: May 11, 2016, 02:30:04 AM »
Oh, I agree.

The Cagilan-Taran alliance never should have "won" Atamara.

Or if it had, somebody should have done something to break that alliance.  With 20-20 hindsight I can say that it would have been best to have a "Word of Tom" after the last great war when it became clear that nobody could stand against them.  This issue with that, and probably one of the reasons it never happened, was the way the Cagilan-Taran alliance was formed.  It was an alliance of brothers forged in battle.  Or at least that is how the Tarans saw it.  There is nothing that could cause the Tarans to turn on their brothers.

Anyways, hindsight says that SOMETHING should have been done many years ago to force the alliance to break up for the good of the game.  There should have been an official finding by the devs or Tom that the continent had been "won."  Announcement to the continent.  Then have some roleplaying event that breaks all alliances and returns all diplomatic settings to neutral.  Or maybe have something that caused every city to leave their nation.  Or just inform the League of the Eagle that they had to find a way to break up the alliance or else.  Make it all an official part of the "congratulations you won" announcement and finding.

Nothing like that happened.  Obviously.  And that obviously hurt the game on Atamara.

What I'm saying, from my experience, is that the players did break it up without the devs doing anything like that.  I helped do that after becoming Tyrant so I remember it very well.  We did what needed to be done.  We broke the Cagilan-Taran alliance and started the largest war on Atamara since the last great war.  I choose to celebrate the work we did to make that happen, and lament that we did not get to find out what was going to happen because the devs sunk the island.

Some people say we never did that and that we deserved to be sunk.  I say they are wrong.

Medron Pryde

  • Noble Lord
  • ***
  • Posts: 343
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #70: May 11, 2016, 07:09:16 AM »
I think I do need to be clear on something though.

BattleMaster is a competition.  Everybody is trying to win.

What the Cagil-Tara alliance did was win against EVERYBODY.  They beat all the other players on the continent.  They beat a game engine designed to weaken large nations and to make it hard for larger alliances to march to support each other.  Through diplomacy and military force, the players behind the Cagil-Tara alliance smashed everything and everybody.

I think that is awesome.  And admirable.  Winning is not a four letter word.  They did what all of us wish we could do.

What is best in life?  Or games?

In the words of Conan it is "Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women."

The Cagil-Tara alliance did that.

And I honestly and very happily applaud them for that.


What messed up Atamara after that is that there was no gameplay for "after win" in BattleMaster.  The game was designed to make winning all but impossible so there was no plan for what to do when it happened.  And when it happened nobody came up with one.  That's not something I put on the players.  The devs should have come up with something.  My twenty-twenty hindsight thinks resetting the continent by having all cities secede would have been one way to do that.  But that's twenty-twenty hindsight.  And I honestly really don't fault the devs for not having a plan either.  The game is supposed to stop that.  And they didn't want to be in the position of taking away what players built.  That's why my twenty-twenty hindsight says to congratulate them, give them some virtual medal of some kind, and then reset the island.

The point in the end is that winning Atamara was not bad.  Not having a plan to reset Atamara in case of a win wasn't even really bad.

What was bad was not doing something to reset things.  It should have been done.  And it should have been the devs that did it.

In the end, we players took the bit into our mouths and did something about the problem.  But it should have been handled years earlier.  It shouldn't have been up to us players to fix it.

And once again, winning in Atamara was not bad.  It was amazing that anybody managed to do it.

It was the lack of follow through after the win that hurt the continent.

Vita`

  • BM Dev Team
  • Honourable King
  • *
  • Posts: 2558
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #71: May 11, 2016, 07:11:55 AM »
You do not win BattleMaster. The obsession with it is unhealthy. There is no congratulations for 'winning'. There is more than just our characters dominating each other; there is playing an enjoyable game. That involves playing *with* other players, not *against* them. Our characters playing against each others are element of a story to be enjoyed by the players playing *with* each other.

When Sirion, Cagil, Riombara etc. grew to unprecedented sizes, we should be questioning why that is different than the historical limitations they experienced not congratulating the players on 'winning their island'. And that questioning did happen (eventually, probably too slowly) and solutions implemented to fix the not-working large-realm limitations.

It is wrong to win a continent. It will not be congratulated. It will not be rewarded. It is a bad thing. The War Island is special because it is the only island that is conquered in entirety and reset. Not other islands. The only winning is the experience/story that we weave as players with other players, including the players of our characters' hated foes.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2016, 07:24:24 AM by Vita »

jaune

  • Mighty Duke
  • ****
  • Posts: 725
  • Suck my socks!
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #72: May 11, 2016, 07:44:16 AM »
I disagree here a bit. Winning your opponent is not bad, winning the game, is bad.

My opinion, is that devs should have left Atamara alone. Time will take care all those things mentioned. Like it was going to happen. There was great wars ahead, new realms were about to be born. With that i mean those ice things. It would have definately be handled diffrently, not punish those who had attracted most players and were having wars.

I speak from Darkan view, we had awesome times. We fought against huge alliance, were doing quite well. We had a lot nobles, we had a LOT gold, we had good activity, instead of getting beating, we had grown. Then ice came, we lost big portion of our realm, many good recruitment centers... it kind of snapped the spine. Players and characters start to leave.

If landmass needed to be tuned down, it should have been done there where it was problem(southern and eastern part of Atamara).

I feel bad for this all blaming on players, like we would not have tried to keep game intresting and fun. CE did what was best to their realm and they did it pretty well. Ofcourse if situation was like some mentioned, CE had some real internal problems too, but that all means it was not as solid as it looked for outside.

People talk like this would have been peace master for years? There was big great wars going for years.





~Violence is always an option!~

Ketchum

  • Mighty Duke
  • ****
  • Posts: 1667
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #73: May 11, 2016, 08:33:21 AM »
I think I do need to be clear on something though.

BattleMaster is a competition.  Everybody is trying to win.

What the Cagil-Tara alliance did was win against EVERYBODY.  They beat all the other players on the continent.  They beat a game engine designed to weaken large nations and to make it hard for larger alliances to march to support each other.  Through diplomacy and military force, the players behind the Cagil-Tara alliance smashed everything and everybody.

And once again, winning in Atamara was not bad.  It was amazing that anybody managed to do it.

It was the lack of follow through after the win that hurt the continent.
First of all, I agree everyone of course will try to win. It is in people nature I believe.

Although this topic is about Atamara and what-it-would-be scenarios, do please allow me to share a brief history from Colonies where previously there was also a dominating alliance.

When a realm or alliance of realms grows too big, it is inevitable a domination will be found. Lukon realm used to hold 3 cities: Lukon city(their own namesake realm), Portion city(after they defeated Portion realm), Wetham city(after they defeated Wetham realm). While Oritolon used to hold 3 cities: Oritolon city(their own namesake realm), Alebad city(after they defeated Alebad realm) and Alowca city(after they defeated Alowca realm). Outer Tilog used to hold 2 cities as well: Outer Tilog city(their own namesake realm), Giblot city(after they defeated Giblot realm). The alliance of Lukon and Oritolon managed to defeat alliance of Alebad, Alowca, Portion, Wetham in the wars that follow. While in the north, Outer Tilog defeated its old enemy Giblot.

So you can see from the short summary here, it is possible to dominate an island. I don't think this happened on Atamara island only, my experience in Colonies island can be considered as one too. I think it happens for Arcaea on FEI island as well. But it will have many consequences. As some players already stated here, the players of the losing realms will likely to leave the island. Unless we come out with something or a solution. Either the winning realm absorb the characters of losing realms or we would end up losing characters.

At one point around the freezing of lands time when Colonies island realm was considered among many islands to be freeze, the players from many realms came together and decided upon a set of rules: 1 realm can only hold 1 city. If 1 realm hold more than 1 city, it will be destroyed or attacked by other realms. This is paved to be Colonial Senate guild foundation, besides we trying to establish only infiltrators realm as Assassins. Colonial Senate guild consists of all characters from all realms. Anyone can join up. Call it players manual reset, if you want. We tried to play it IC. At that point when 1 city 1 realm rule come into effect, from 1 city 1 realm we had not enough characters to even attend Tournaments or hold Tournaments successfully. However we realize we must do something to gather players interests. Or all will be lost.

On another note, I think developers realize big realms are starting to become a common occurrence and thus they release the game codes to prevent it.

You do not win BattleMaster.
Perhaps our players need to be reminded by our Uncle at Battlemaster Wikipedia. He says the following:

"How do I win?"

Uncle Freddie gives you a startled look, then bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard he nearly chokes, but finally settles down, grinning broadly.

"You can't win, child. It doesn't make any sense. You can no more win this here life than you can win an earthquake.
But I will tell you this: you can certainly feel like a winner, and it's not hard at all. Look at your Uncle Frederick here. I've got the respect of my peers, I have a good chunk of savings and a title of land, and when I speak, people listen. I've taught dozens of you youngsters the ropes, and watched most of you grow up to be fine, productive troop leaders. I still get letters from some of you, asking how I am and asking advice. If that ain't winning, I don't know what is."

Listen to your uncle. There is only one way to win BattleMaster -- by making friends and having fun. Be magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat. Be attentive and courteous. Remember that even if your characters hate each other, their players can still be friendly. If you do these things you'll be well-liked, and well-respected, and there's no better definition of "winning" than that.

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Introduction/Winning
Werewolf Games: Villager (6) Wolf (4) Seer (3); Lynched as Villager(1). Lost as Villager(1), Lost as Wolf(1) due to Parity. Hunted as Villager(1). Lynched as Seer(2).
Won as Villager(3). Won as Seer(1). Won as Wolf(3).
BM Characters: East Continent(Brock), Colonies(Ash), Dwilight(Gary)

Gabanus family

  • Moderator
  • Mighty Duke
  • *
  • Posts: 1340
    • View Profile
Re: Atamara's Fate
« Reply #74: May 11, 2016, 02:03:46 PM »
You make it sound much, much easier than it was. I had a lot of people agree that Atamara sucked, but weren't willing to "change their characters" to make it better.

I don't think so, if you wish to complain so hard, you should actively try to change things. At the same time, you should consider whether or not your actions can be done reasonable in the first place. You think my move of founding Oligarch for instance was smart? Hell no, I didn't think we'd last this long in the first place tbh, but I did everything to get that power and then split off. Actually, I tried to split up Sirion before that but failed. I am convinced there were options in CE etc for similar things as well.
New account active chars:
Garas: First Oligarch - Goriad: Astrum - Goriad II: Obia'Syela