I've put this reply off since the very beginning of this thread...I apologize for length and repeated points.
My thoughts are more general towards the history of the continent and not about whether or not the last few months were or were not improving. It is not about blaming anyone, but trying to look at what happened. I apologize if my words may become more pointed, but I do mean them neutrally. I think some of the participants may have been discussing separate time periods and venting their own frustrations with others upon each other who were not there for the time period they are venting about.
I started playing in the Cagilan Empire in fall of 2005 where my 'main' character was for at least two years, almost becoming Prime Minister by the hair of a vote, and have interacted OOCly and played ICly with people on various sides of the conflicts over the years. I have played a character recently that was screwed by both Cagilans and Darkans in their own POV.
Seriously, the way the game pushes things to degrade in time and everything about it is designed to break up large realms and alliances. But through ingenuity and determination and a lot of smarts the alliance BEAT EVERYBODY ELSE. They literally beat the system. That is what some people didn't like about the continent. There were clear winners and losers in a game that is supposed to stop that from happening.
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.
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.
The problem is that the game was not effectively degrading realms. The solution is not to celebrate these players, but to stop and look around and say 'hey, something is wrong, we should look into what changed'. That happened eventually, but took way too long. When continents were begin 'won' by realms vastly larger than used to even be possible, we should've stopped and figured out why. Not celebrating players who thought of nothing but their own characters. I am reminded of
My Guy Syndrome.
The game has a long cultural history of players self-policing. Atamara refused. Since you mention it, there was a time when there was a Word of Tom given to realms after East Continent's Great War. It was exceptional and players would probably not like it. If I remember correctly (and I confess to a degree of fuzziness), the realms of EC adamantly refused to war another post-war until Tom threatened to lightning bolt every ruler who was not at war by a certain date. Perhaps we should have done this much much sooner for Atamara, but again, long history of self-policing players and decreasing admin game intervention from the earliest years. And Atamaran history of gangbanging wars. Admittedly we have increased intervention since last December with the Invasion, density-based spawn rates, and Portal events, but this is exceptional for the last decade of game history.
In the case of Atamara it took the players to self-police and break the alliance up.
The idea that it should 'take the players' is wrong. That has been and should be the natural way the game has and should operate. As players, we are all responsible for the condition of our realms, religions, islands, the game atmosphere as a whole. This is important. We are a community. All of us, players and devs, together. The devs are only devs because they are players who volunteered their time, just like any player can do. Same as wiki editors, forum mods, those contributing to the Age of Wonders maps effort, and probably other aspects I forget. And the input, criticism, suggestions, contributions of players in community discussion. So, this thread is good, minus the occasional hostility. But I really want to emphasize that the players were supposed to self-police Atamara and the fact we did not, is a failure we need to avoid. You and I have discussed before the idea that religion/priesthood as a means of conveying OOC atmosphere player interests via IC roleplay.
Atamara was crashing and burning into a continent-wide civil war when the Devs nuked everything. Years of gaming and scheming on the best map the game has just deleted and taken away from the players.
The timing was unfortunate for those players that put an effort into fixing Atamara. But frankly, it came too little too late. The Freeze event that occurred was done instead of sinking Atamara. Atamara had more than a year and three-quarters where its players could have taken action to improve the continent, because we wanted to avoid taking it 'away from players'. I would have preferred to sink Atamara sooner in the year than we did, and then you would not have wasted your effort, but we were not going to delay
yet again because it looked like something might be different now. Looking back, I wish we had gone ahead with sinking Atamara instead of doing The Freeze, but history cannot be changed. The same effort done on AT still needs done in a lot of places, even if not as critical. We do not want to get as critical as Atamara had gotten.
I personally think the Ice Age was a fine idea, but it was lacking in how it was carried out. You clipped Atamara's fingernails when you needed to amputate at the elbows.
As for the Ice age, I was.excited to see this event carry out, until it stopped just barely over the land to the point that it only effected the realms that were already dying. This only made that Federation stronger and the game less fun.
The whole Ice Age shenanigans must have been the worst thing I have ever witnessed in this game to the point that I started to think that the devs just wanted to end the whole war and destroy all realms opposing the "Alliance".
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.
I agree we should have kept the ice pushing and not stopped. I hope we do not make the same mistake with monsters. This is another example, as mentioned above, where it is important for players to speak up. You did have the power to do something. Perhaps some did, but I do not recall any particular suggestions that the ice should've kept moving, just arguing about whether it should have happened or not. Much like this thread is arguing about whether AT should have been sunk or not, or who was or was not responsible for Atamara etc., instead of the original Monster thread and contemporary concern.
Final decision to sink atamara i understand, but i think dev's didnt understand how it had just gotten lively again.
We understood, but it came after the decision had been made, after many months of discussing it and failing to come to a decision. And in consideration of the entire game atmosphere, with each of the islands compared. Atamara and the Far East had a long history of performing the most poorly. Sometime later came the OOC discussion in the League of the Eagle, which I clearly remember thinking 'now they get it...after we finally decided to sink AT, couldn't they have done this any sooner?'.
and we no longer have two character in continents
While they may appear initially contradictory, there were a lot of aspects going into the set of December changes. In terms of the character per continent change, Atamara is yet another example. Atamara had a particular habit of solidifying their alliance via silent doubled characters either both in one realm or one each in two realms. Not good for a dynamic continent, for one reason one char per continent was implemented. But also, it meant highly similar experiences between those two characters and one character quite often being played more as a glorified NPC than an actual full-fledged character. As opposed to exploring a different continent with its own style and feeling more engaged to interact because its a separate situation than your other characters. And thus helps ensure realms and islands are more engaging to new characters and players than a realm who is 1/5th silent double characters.
I took one look at the diplomatic situation on the island from the eyes of a ruler who is supposed to give his players a fun time and realized that it wasn't setup that way.
At first I just did whatever it took to stabilize Tara and make her stronger. I had never looked at Atamara from the slightly-OOC perspective you need as a ruler. It took a few days or maybe a bit more than that.
I commend thee. And this should be more encouraged in more government members, religious elders, and the playerbase as a whole.
As a player, I wanted it dead. Gone. Buried. But at the same time I (and especially my character Regstav) were loyal to CE. Regstav fought when Tara had three regions and it was CE that saved our butts time and again. So there was no way that Regstav would just drop them. He owed them way too much for that.
I had a lot of people agree that Atamara sucked, but weren't willing to "change their characters" to make it better.
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.
Again I think of My Guy Syndrome above. But also the previous quote. This particular situation/objection/concern between staying true to a character's nature and not letting that fictional creation of ours ruin the game is why I often suggest religion as a means to remain both IC and to incorporate OOC concerns into our characters. That is, using religion, a character could have a religious epiphany that allows a character to shift their viewpoint. Not even drastic change, but enough to justifiably explain character development (as no one stays the same all their life anyway). And with religion there's so many roleplay explanations for inspiration with meditation, visions (dreams, drugs, otherwise), prayers, priest conversations etc. And I think its the responsibility of religious elders and/or priesthood to think about the continent's atmosphere, in terms of 'spiritual health', with their membership and using their position to improve it. Pursuing those without virtue (silent gov members, rulers locking island in alliance/federation blocks that stagnant island, vulgar folk etc.), giving characters goals that may not be aligned with their interests but (and this part is difficult and crucial) follow because they respect the Divine.
that we deserved to be sunk.
Not deserved. Simply there used to be more players in the game to fill the land, now there is not. Atamara persistently performed poorly compared to other islands.
I think I do need to be clear on something though.
BattleMaster is a competition. Everybody is trying to win.
What messed up Atamara after that is that there was no gameplay for "after win" in BattleMaster.
That's not something I put on the players. The devs should have come up with something.
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.
BattleMaster is not pure competition between players. The Social Contract discusses playing around a boardgame as with friends. Most times I play Risk or Monopoly I play to defeat the armies of their 'character ruler-general' or buy the properties of their 'character businessman' not smash my friend over the head with a hammer. As players, we need to recognize not just our character's interests, but how that affects others' enjoyment of the game. I fall short at times, we all do; we improve. Again, I think religion is a good medium for having IC versions of these conversations.
There was no gameplay for after-win, because there is no winning BattleMaster. It is up to the players and not solely upon the devs to provide answer for players who will not do for themselves. It is my view that devs coming up with something/intervening/'Word of Tom' happening is a last resort and indicative of a deeper issue amongst playerbase. Devs should be focused upon providing tools to tell stories not the story itself.
'Winning' Atamara was bad. Only the War Island is reset. That's part of BattleMaster, is the continuation of history. The devs are not around to reset continents that are won. BattleMaster is not a game about winning continents to be reset by devs. That is why the War Island was specifically created to do just that. It should not have been up to the players to create the situation in the first place; it should have been up to the players to resolve it, years sooner. This idea that we are all playing against each other to win and require the devs to step in and fix it afterward is absolutely foreign to what BattleMaster is. This is why I commend those who pushed for the Colonial Senate after Lukon dominated the Colonies.
And once again, winning in Atamara was not bad. It was amazing that anybody managed to do it.
I would say disappointing.
Winning your opponent is not bad, winning the game, is bad.
Agreed. In-character rivalries can be awesome. But we must remember that the rivalry won't exist if the player behind the character is not enjoying the experience. I think it helps to seek out and play alongside the characters of players your characters oppose on other islands instead of always the same crowd.
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.
If landmass needed to be tuned down, it should have been done there where it was problem(southern and eastern part of Atamara).
I agree about this. At the time of Ice, we were quite focused on trying to be impartial and so chose the locations as neutrally as possible, with vague forum polls affecting the locations. While we may have meant well, I think it was a mistake to not choose areas based upon factors like wars and attracting players. I have tried to keep that in mind in more recent events now, particularly the Invasion on BT.
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.
There was old code limiting realms, but it was not done effectively as it was only relative. So if all the realms on an island grew bigger at roughly the same time as various smaller realms were eliminated, no one was penalized or the penalties were light. Last December we implemented more absolute limits in addition to the relative limits.
They were playing to win. That is how we play games so I don't fault them for that.
They beat the other players and even the code of the game that is meant to discourage that. Awesome. Congratulations.
Except the Social Contract we all read and agree to play the game says quite clearly "You can not win BattleMaster. Therefore, playing together is more important to us than playing against each other." Quite clearly, trying to win Atamara is breaking the rules of the game, the very Social Contract of our Community as players together. Congratulating players for violating the Social Contract is not awesome.
The devs are here to deal with odd things like this and should have done something effective. They did not. The players did it in the end, but they shouldn't have had to.
This is not an odd thing. This is against the very social fabric of the game that you can 'win an island'. The players should not have created the situation that required the devly intervention you now desire. The players absolutely should resolve it by going to war, not having war delivered to them. That does not mean there is no place to reach out and have a discussion of your concern too. Both have their role. Concerned about an island? Figure out how to fix it yourself in-character AND create a thread that says 'This Bothers Me, What Can We Do As A Community?'. Every situation is different in terms of degree of player and dev involvement (bugs for instance).
To whatever degree we were involved or not in the Stagnation that was Atamara, I think we can all take a lesson from it for future gameplay. Many have made great points at various times I could not exhaustively endorse or this post would be twice as long. I suppose I would highlight Elegant's post previous to this one and Ketchum's explanation upon the Colonial Senate. I hope this has been helpful in furthering understanding. Sorry for the length and repetition. Tried to be somewhat thorough as I had not yet thoughtfully contributed to this thread.
