Colonial Master!

[Vita`]

First off, its not about blaming players at all. We've all done things that have been beneficial and suboptimal for the game. The concern is more confronting an attitude that BattleMaster was ever intended, or is acceptable, to try to win BattleMaster, and that is something to be congratulated. Willfully ignoring that BattleMaster is not a game about winning, and then doing just that, and patting oneself on the back for it is not a good sign. And I say this as someone who started playing BattleMaster in CE, Cagil is near and dear to my heart. But the whole situation seemed every much that "we had fun while it worked for us even though over the years lots of players expressed concern with the island's direction, and we only realized we need to change when it began affecting us by loss of players" and even now in your argument, that seems to be the case. I'm glad players stepped up to make changes, but they were far too little too late and should've happened years earlier.

[Medron Pryde]

I do agree it should have happened earlier, but I don't blame the players for not realizing it.

They were playing the game the way they knew to play the game and doing it to the best of their abilities.

And those abilities were very great indeed. 

Of course the abilities of their enemies were very great indeed as well.

I doubt Cagil and Tara ever would have become as strong as they were if they did not have enemies the caliber of Falasan and Abington that drove them to become stronger to survive.  It truly was the best of times in one of the greatest continent-wide conflicts ever seen in the game, and the fact that someone truly did "win" and gain effective control over the entire continent was amazing.

I should have been saved for all time.  I'm honest here.  It should have been enshrined as one of the crowning moments of the game and saved so anyone could log in and look at it to see just what things were like.  The database forever paused and never moving another day so people could pop in and take a look whenever they felt like it.

And then Atamara should have been reset on an active server like every war island ever was when someone WON THE GAME.  But that wasn't on the players to decide to do.  The admins should have done that.  I don't blame them for not doing it either.  They kept hoping if they tweaked something they could force the players to change how they played and do something different.  But the players were stubborn and didn't cooperate because they didn't see the problem.

I didn't see the problem when I was just another player on Atamara.  I didn't see the problem until I became Tyrant of Tara and looked around and thought...well...frak.  This sucks.  What do we do with this pile of crap?  I've always assumed that is why the last Tyrant before me stopped playing.  He couldn't figure out what to do.  Honestly, neither could I.  But I did know one thing after my third day as Tyrant.  The Cagil-Tara Alliance had to die if there was too be any future on Atamara.

In the end, we did it.  The players broke the alliance and started the biggest war since...well...the LAST big war on Atamara.  And it was shaping up to drag the whole continent into it with fractured alliances that were going to blow the kittens out of the rafters.

Then the admins sunk Atamara on us.

I don't blame the players for winning on Atamara.  And I don't blame the admins for failing to figure out how to fix it.  I do credit the players for figuring out how to fix it with the powers they had bringing life back into the continent.

And I blame the admins for sinking it after the players did all of that hard work.  They proved that they would punish the players even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do.  And that object lesson was not good for the game.  A lot of players left over it and never returned.  And that's just a bloody shame in my mind.

[Anaris]

...even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do.

Well, the only reason there was such a big problem to fix was because those exact same players ignored many years—RL years—of nearly everyone else telling them, over and over again, "This is bad! This is a problem! You are killing the game! You are making people stop caring about Atamara!"

But no, you were having fun because you were in charge. So you didn't listen until everything we warned you about came to pass.

The fact that, once everything was stagnant and broken, those players were able to turn around and come up with ways to make them dynamic again is not, as you seem to think, a laudable thing that proves they were Right After All.

What it proves is that they could have made that choice any time, and instead they chose to make things awful for years while they got their jollies.

So there is one thing I agree with you on. We, the devs, should not have sunk Atamara in 2015.

We should have deleted or broken up the Cagilan Empire in 2010.

[Vita`]

They were playing the game the way they knew to play the game and doing it to the best of their abilities.

No. The game, from the beginning and especially more prominently in the beginning, was very clear that BattleMaster IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON.

It truly was the best of times in one of the greatest continent-wide conflicts ever seen in the game, and the fact that someone truly did "win" and gain effective control over the entire continent was amazing.

No, it is *not* amazing to have won and gained control over the entire continent. It's not what was ever intended for BattleMaster. In fact, I would go so far as to say this is a violation of the Social Contract by playing against fellow players to win an island instead.

Also, you probably weren't around for it, but EC from 2003 to 2007 was a much more dynamic conflict than the Atamaran conflicts.

I should have been saved for all time.  I'm honest here.  It should have been enshrined as one of the crowning moments of the game and saved so anyone could log in and look at it to see just what things were like.  The database forever paused and never moving another day so people could pop in and take a look whenever they felt like it.

And then Atamara should have been reset on an active server like every war island ever was when someone WON THE GAME.  But that wasn't on the players to decide to do.  The admins should have done that.  I don't blame them for not doing it either.  They kept hoping if they tweaked something they could force the players to change how they played and do something different.  But the players were stubborn and didn't cooperate because they didn't see the problem.

ABSOLUTELY NOT. How can it be made any clearer? It was one of the most disappointing, shameful moments in BattleMaster history and should never repeated. Nobody won the game. If anything, trying to win the game caused many people to lose the game by pushing players out of the game due to some players' selfish desire to play against other players in an attempt to win. If anything, these players were not playing BattleMaster, but playing their own game in BattleMaster. The continents are about the living history and are not to be reset.

What the admins apparently should have done is to punish these shameful players for their despicable actions, but it should be noted that claims of 'winning' the game didnt begin until after their dominance was a fait accompli.

I didn't see the problem when I was just another player on Atamara.  I didn't see the problem until I became Tyrant of Tara and looked around and thought...well...frak.  This sucks.  What do we do with this pile of crap?  I've always assumed that is why the last Tyrant before me stopped playing.  He couldn't figure out what to do.  Honestly, neither could I.  But I did know one thing after my third day as Tyrant.  The Cagil-Tara Alliance had to die if there was too be any future on Atamara.

I'm sorry you as a regular noble experienced such !@#$ty rulers. All the more reason we need to address the !@#$ty rulers still around the game, because I doubt all those other regular nobles know any different than you did, especially newer players being introduced to the game and joining realms ruled by those more concerned about their titles, positions, character history, continental dominance, and 'their' fun, rather that experience a new player receives.

In the end, we did it.  The players broke the alliance and started the biggest war since...well...the LAST big war on Atamara.  And it was shaping up to drag the whole continent into it with fractured alliances that were going to blow the kittens out of the rafters.

Then the admins sunk Atamara on us.

Actually, we decided to sink it and *then* the players started doing something. Too little, too late. But hey, we need this *same* thing done across BattleMaster, not only Atamara. Maybe not specifically in terms of mega-alliance, but in terms of realms engaging one another actively.

I don't blame the players for winning on Atamara.

NOBODY WON ATAMARA. EVERYBODY LOST ATAMARA.

And I blame the admins for sinking it after the players did all of that hard work. They proved that they would punish the players even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do.  And that object lesson was not good for the game.  A lot of players left over it and never returned.  And that's just a bloody shame in my mind.

No players were punished for doing the right thing. Players lost Atamara because of all the hard work they put into playing against their fellow players by attempting to play a different game than BattleMaster and trying to win an island. It's absolutely in the governments members' job description to fix it, the state of their realms and the continent as a whole has always been their responsibility. A lot of players left the game thanks to those players with complete disregard for their fellow players and never returned and that's a bloody shame in my mind. Meanwhile, thanks to various changes that included island sinking, the playerbase loss was stemmed and a relatively more positive experience for new players was created. If the players had done the right thing at any point in the years they had the opportunity, Atamara would have not needed to be sunk. Atamara's closure is entirely upon the rulers of that continent forgetting their responsibilities to the game.

Finally, anyone attempting to win BattleMaster is to be adamantly discouraged and shamed. This is not, and never has been, what BattleMaster is about and most of the rules and policies that have been added over the years tend to be specific limits to prevent exactly the attitude of trying to win an island.

In fact, this is one of the core rules from the Social Contract - "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. " So as far as I'm concerned, all claims to have won the game are a claim to have cheated and broken the rules.

[Zakky]

I think you are too emotional about the issue here Vita. It was up to those players to choose to listen or not. The game should have limited mega alliances. 5 realms all allied to each other sitting in the center was definitely not fun for those not in that mega alliance.

As much as Tom had hoped  to see people play as a group of friends playing a board game, it is not possible for a game of BM's scale. Do you honest believe hundreds of  people can be close friends playing a board game? A typical board game is for 1~4 players. Even then you see friends fight and argue. Be realistic here. That rule can only go as far as making people not be an a-s-s-h-o-l-e to each other. It can't make people go 'oh I think our realm has been too dominating. Maybe we should cut back on being too dominating.'. People will always to try and strive to make their realm more successful over others. That is just how people work. You can introduce mechanics to encourage different behaviours but you will always have people trying to win the game.

As for CE dominating AT as being a celebratory moment, well it was for them and not for those out of it. Half of the continent had fun while the other half suffered. It is not really possible to make everyone have fun. I think what Anaris implied in his messages is to make this game fun for as many as possible. To achieve that the game obviously needs to have more activity. But unfortunately game limits how far you can travel and forces you to fight your neighbours. You can only fight the same neighbour so many times before you can sick of fighting them. At least board games have an end goal.

[GoldPanda]

What the admins apparently should have done is to punish these shameful players for their despicable actions, but it should be noted that claims of 'winning' the game didnt begin until after their dominance was a fait accompli.

I don't think an admin on the forums should go around calling other players "shameful" and "despicable".

[Vita`]

I don't think an admin on the forums should go around calling other players "shameful" and "despicable".

Did you even notice it was in proportionate response to the disgusting suggestion that violating the social contract was a praiseworthy crowning moment of BattleMaster history?

Most of that previous reply was meant to demonstrate the disgust in like proportions to the praise being rendered for violators of the social contract after my more moderate, reasonable response resulted in continued insistence on blaming/not-blaming and effusive praise for poor player behavior.

[JeVondair]

As a player, I'm all about building/expanding. This might actually get me 'active' on Dwi again.

[Medron Pryde]

There's nothing wrong with trying to win.  It is admirable in fact.

The drive to win, to outmaneuver the other guys, is one of the things that makes BattleMaster such a great game.  It is always in flux, with alliances shifting as time goes and everybody is scrabbling for an advantage.

That and various mechanics in the game makes alliances truly winning the game all but impossible, and I think that is a good thing.  It helps to drive the competition to win that keeps all of the continents flowing back and forth and ever changing.

Atamara was one of the few instances where all those mechanics failed to account for one single thing.  The single thing that kept Tara and Cagil from ever betraying each other.  Loyalty.  Pure and simple loyalty.  I remember when Tara was Foda and two other regions.  That's it.  Hemmed in on three sides by nations that wanted us dead.  And who stood with us in those darkest of all days?  Cagil.  Only Cagil.  We fought together as brothers and broke back attack after attack and in the end we began to break one enemy after another.  Enemies we destroyed or turned into allies.  And then we marched on, brothers in arms until the very end.  Because no game mechanic, no shifting alliances or drive of personal power or averice, could override the deep and abiding loyalty that Tara had for the nation that had saved her in her darkest hour.

Tara and Cagil together were unbreakable.  Beatable?  Yes.  But their brotherhood was unbreakable and every nation that fought one of them knew, if one called, the other would come with no questions asked.  Neither wished to beat the other.  And in the weirdest way, neither wished to win over the other.  They were brothers, and they stood back to back through thick and thin and no one could come between them.  Soon other nations began to realize that the only path to survival was to ally with one or both of them.  And as the years passed, that resulted in the lock of alliances that held sway when I became Tyrant.

The fact was that no gentle or ungentle admin pushes, no player connivings, no game mechanic, no nothing could get Cagil and Tara to break up because it just wasn't their story.  It broke every bit of their shared history and culture to even consider betraying the other.  It was roleplaying and camaraderie at its finest.  I don't think I've seen another alliance as solid and neverending as that one was anywhere else in BattleMaster.

It took a YEAR of hard work and consistently higher tensions to drive enough of a wedge between the two to pull the trigger and actually have a realistic and fun story of how that alliance finally broke up.  And that was with the rulers of all the realms combined working together to pull it off.  It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I did as a player, and you know what?  You know the really tough thing?

I still feel like I betrayed Cagil.  We all decided as players that we had to do it for the good of the game.  We had to kill the Cagil-Tara alliance.  And I still feel guilty to this day that I had to do it.

That is how much power there was in the shared history of Cagil and Tara.  They were brothers.  Period.  End of Line.

[Chenier]

As a player, I'm all about building/expanding. This might actually get me 'active' on Dwi again.

Yea... let's back back to the topic on hand, shall we?

Recent BM history is getting full of examples where realms are splitting with friendly secessions because of ridiculously low tax tolerance. Vix/Highmarch and Luria Nova/Luria Ferrata are fairly good examples. The result is that those otherwise thriving realms have gradually turned into shadows of their former selves.

"Too many realms" is the worst form of low density, because of the fixed amount of titles each realms adds to the continent.

[GoldPanda]

Did you even notice it was in proportionate response to the disgusting suggestion that violating the social contract was a praiseworthy crowning moment of BattleMaster history?

Most of that previous reply was meant to demonstrate the disgust in like proportions to the praise being rendered for violators of the social contract after my more moderate, reasonable response resulted in continued insistence on blaming/not-blaming and effusive praise for poor player behavior.

Did anyone violate the social contract? If so, did you complain to the Titans? If so, what was their verdict?

And even if someone did something wrong, an admin on an internet forum shouldn't be publicly airing his personal bias like this. How can you claim to be unbiased and impartial after this?

Would you still sit down for a board game if the person in charge of explaining the rules calls your past behavior "shameful", "despicable", and "disgusting"?

If you really need to vent, may I suggest making a throwaway account to do so?

[Zakky]

Tom was still around those days. I don't remember him telling players not to do what they were doing. If Tom felt what CE was doing was so harmful to the game, he would have stopped it. It is his game after all.

[Anaris]

Tom made a lot of decisions over the years that were more driven by dogmatic vision than by what would actually be better for the game.

And attempting to claim that us not intervening in unprecedented ways to stop the trainwreck that was CE's takeover of Atamara from happening means that it must have been OK is patently absurd.

It's a very big step to go from hoping that the people actually doing things will stop and say,

Huh. Y'know, lots and lots of people, including prominent people in the community, are telling me the things I'm doing are wrong and are going to lead to serious problems down the road. Thinking about it logically, I can see how conquering the entire continent would both drive people away because they've lost everything they built in the game, and create an environment where it's harder for new people to get engaged because there's not much going on. Maybe I should stop doing what I'm doing, despite how much fun power-trip fantasies are, and try to make things more dynamic, instead.

...to saying, ourselves,

Well, we've told these people again and again to stop, because it'll cause problems, but they're really not listening. Despite the fact that the strongest intervention there's ever been on this island—nearly the strongest ever outside Beluaterra—is lightning storms killing individual characters, it's painfully clear that won't be enough, because the people that would succeed them are of exactly the same type. Let's upend years of reasonable restrictions on our own powers, and reshape a stable-branch continent according to admin fiat, rather than the players' collective will.

And yeah, hindsight is 20/20, and yeah, we should've intervened.

But no, we shouldn't have had to. Because first, you and your brethren in CE and Tara should have recognized the harm your fun was doing to everyone else's—like so many people were telling you—and done something to change that.

[PolarRaven]

Hmmm, at what point should a realm decide that it is doing to well for its own good?

Well, we just got our 30th noble and everyone else has less than 20.  Maybe it is time to chase off some of our nobles to keep the game fun for those realms that have only managed to attract a few nobles.

We finally have all the alliances that we need to survive, maybe we need to back stab a couple of our long-time allies to make the game more fun for those who are too lazy/unable/unwilling to make alliances.

It seems our realm is larger than any of our three neighbors who are all allied against us.  Time to piss one of them off and get decimated by all three to keep the game fun for others.

Really... where does one draw the line?

How many nobles were in CE and Tara?  How many nobles were not part of that alliance?
What percentage of the players were actually enjoying/not enjoying Atamara?

Did anyone actually win the game?  NO, it stagnated and we all lost a continent to play on. 
Not one winner there.
CE/Tara shared a long-time brotherhood that seen both realms grow and prosper together. 
To have one or the other break that bond would likely have seen one or both of those realms totally destroyed.
Asking the players to give up that bond at the cost of one or both realms, so that other players can have more fun, is just not reasonable.

I have heard reasons for not resetting the island, but maybe it should be a consideration when a situation like stagnation occurs.
Another possibility could have been huge tornadoes/earthquakes tearing through the island killing any nobles and destroying everything (buildings, populations, walls, much longer travel times, etc) in their paths (partial reset). 
A huge tornado 2-4 regions wide that ripped through the middle of CE/Tara lands (and beyond) could have reduced the power base and allowed many options. 
A separated CE and/or Tara may have promoted/encouraged the formation of separate realms on either side of the devastated lands. 
It would have made both of the realms harder to defend or to co-ordinate offensive actions. 
It would certainly have allowed for many RP possibilities. 
Players that had nobles killed in the tornadoes may have started new characters in different realms. 
We would likely have lost a few players to this solution, but I recall hearing we lost lots to the sinking of the island anyway.

It is human nature to grow. 
Would you tell your employer "No thanks, I am already earning too much money.  Give my next raise to the poor janitor so he can enjoy life as much as I am."

I don't believe that realm density was a problem back then, so limiting the size of a realm was not practical.
To be honest, I feel that the current rogue/density "solutions" are also stagnating both Beluaterra and Dwilight.
Other than the adventurer "incident" that was reversed and certain players were punished for their efforts, Beluaterra has not seen any significant conflict since the rogue/density solution was introduced. 

[Anaris]

Really... where does one draw the line?

I don't know. It's a hard question, and I won't even try to deny it.

But when you've got significant chunks of the playerbase, including major figures on the dev team, telling you, repeatedly, over the space of RL years, that your actions are detrimental, you need to change them, and you're going to ruin/are ruining the fun of many people, then maybe that should mean something.