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wirsindallein
Registered
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
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 Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 5:52 pm |  |
| Seer wrote: |
| .I wish for two things: meaningful reasons to cause conflict/dissidence, so it's not all signed off as player stupidity/attention whoring/suiciding, and that people OOCly note attempts to create conflict and find ways to go with it instead of ignoring or actively snuffing, aka zerg rushing with twenty of your comrades. |
I'd be happy with just the first one, honestly.
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Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 7:12 pm | |
[Disclaimer: This post may be a little long. Almost certainly, since it's mine. I bear no hard feelings toward anyone who prefers to skim or skip over it.]
A lot of good points about things to take into consideration have already been made in this thread, but I'm pretty skeptical of most of the proposed solutions. To be honest I think the issue is far too fundamental to have a simple, direct answer. So, let's get drunk and talk about it. [not really drunk, of course  ]
Personally I think that solutions that center solely around goals/attitudes all the clans have in common (acquiring resources, fighting an outside enemy, technological advantages [collectively I term these "Capture The Flag"]) are probably just going to lead to a sort of Red Team, Blue Team, Yellow Team dynamic in which there is conflict, but no distinctive differences. Whereas solutions that focus on creating distinctive differences will perhaps lead inevitably to conflict on their own (though CTF suddenly becomes interesting to engage in at that point).
I'm not clear on whether or not the staff would be interested in fleshing out the Families in more detail (lineage, history, traditions, notable points of conflict, etc), and if not, whether they would welcome attempts to do so by players.
Of course, the limitations of any single PC would make this a necessarily OOC endeavor. But since the clan leads (not just the captains, but everyone with an on-going investment) have been setting the tone for their Families up to this point, I'm not completely sure why they shouldn't be able to do some creative embellishing. If people feel they can't make conflict out of what they have at their disposal, why not provide them with more? I know it's awkward for things to suddenly be true, but it's a lot less awkward now than a year from now when we decide that really, the problem was that there wasn't enough raw material to start with. I personally think a clunky retcon is better than an on-going, persistent problem.
If the staff is against it for some (probably very good) reason, that's cool. But if not, I've always thought a lot more gets done when everybody helps out.
As for the Jalthans, it's unfortunate that that was the high point of Family conflict in the game so far, given its distracting flaws. Obviously murderous revenge PCs are pretty limited in the end, always winding up dead and taking any number of constructive PCs with them, unable to develop without invalidating their entire backstory. But I don't think that's any reason we shouldn't analyze what worked about what happened -- not with the intent to repeat it exactly, but with the intent to learn about what works generally, and to figure out how it might be repeated without the downside(s).
In brief: It gave everybody a lot to respond to, the necessity of choosing sides (or refusing to), and a real sense of the power of one Family, versus the apparent weakness of another. At a time when everybody was new and nobody knew how anything was going to work yet, it gave people a reason to be suspicious of each other, a very ambiguous situation from which to draw their own biased conclusions, and an obligation to decide what to do, where you stood, what you believed. It also demonstrates, I think, how it's possible to generate inter-Family conflict out of the deeply-held beliefs of one (or two [or three]) PCs.
On the other hand, fewer people could have died. More people not directly touched by the conflict might have regarded it as something to take sides about, rather than as an aberration that ought to be extinguished if possible, or else avoided. [I don't really blame them in this instance, because of the very real risk of things devolving into a rash of player killing.]
These would, I think, be the hoped-for results of most attempts to generate conflict, and they needn't even involve PK. Except that PK is something people actually respond to. Which leads to an interesting question -- do the Families fail to conflict with one another because nobody cares about any slight short of murder, but OOCly we're all shying away from triggering a PK-spree?
One might argue that one can't respond to non-fatal inter-Family friction because the Necessity of Cooperation overrides everything but murder. But I would argue that the Necessity of Cooperation is, at the present moment, almost as mythical as the Necessity of Stuff. Sure, when all the fungus zombies come pouring out of Hyperion people will forget their differences for a unified lock-and-load party, but we're far from there. In fact, we probably want to get our asses in gear and start figuring out how to make conflict work before the zombies arrive, because it won't make sense to do it then.
But in analyzing the Jalthan Affair, I find I'm not entirely convinced that some reticence to engage in conflict isn't at least partly a defense mechanism left over from traumatic rashes of player killing on ARPI. But, codebase or no, playerbase or no, this isn't ARPI, and we have the opportunity right now to decide how it will be different. And we already have, the staggering PK-fest didn't happen. But now we've got other issues to solve.
ETA: I was reading, elsewhere, a couple of different instances of people asking about the demographics of Rust, with respect to RPP races, and I realized something that pertains to the conflict issue.
For those who feel that nothing can be sustained that isn't triggered by the mechanical reality of the gameworld as-is -- from the outset we've been working within a system that causes PC reality to differ dramatically from what we know to be true more generally of Rust, namely the First (or Second or Tenth or whatever) Percentile Rule. We know not to make generalizations about Rust based solely on the population of PCs and their actions. I'm not totally sure why the canon of Family history and conflict doesn't operate more or less the same way.
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| I would prefer not to. | |
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 1:55 am | |
Maybe we need a mass of PK slaughter, let everyone get their murder-fix. The aftermath will be plenty of simmering conflict.
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 3:14 am | |
alright, everyone go to the south slums and turn off your radios. Let's just have a massive free-for-all for 2 hours. Whoever is alive after that will have plenty of simmering conflict to take about.
*finishes derailing the thread*
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 4:30 am | |
I wonder what Krelm would say in this thread.
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HAL
Administrator
Senior RPA
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 7:53 am | |
He wouldn't say anything. You'd already have been killed.
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HAL
Administrator
Senior RPA
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 7:54 am | |
| wirsindallein wrote: |
| Seer wrote: |
| .I wish for two things: meaningful reasons to cause conflict/dissidence, so it's not all signed off as player stupidity/attention whoring/suiciding, and that people OOCly note attempts to create conflict and find ways to go with it instead of ignoring or actively snuffing, aka zerg rushing with twenty of your comrades. |
I'd be happy with just the first one, honestly. |
And frankly, this.
We're going to provide the first.
Players, you lot really need to provide the second.
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| "Was a Niner once, then I took a gato bite t'th'knee," a bald, gaunt-faced lanky young fellow says a bit randomly as he looks his knee over. | |
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Roadhawk
Registered
We lurk inside your brain, we hide inside your mind.
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 9:52 am | |
What follows is not a rant or moan, an observation. I've played with a lot of the PC's and have had some of the best times of the game as them as leaders.
I will offer the suggestion of removing our current leadership class. It would appear we have had the same group (not any one person) of leaders since the middle of Angost/FJ/MT. If not in the highest position then no more than arms length away from those occupying it.
Now I know a sizable portion of those here never played there or even those games, but those that did occupy some of our top level spots and have done since the game opened. Perhaps what we are feeling right now is a top-down trickle of metaknowledge or fatigue of being the leader? There is no denying this is very similar, again, totally not the staffs fault, we've been upon only a few month.
Perhaps if those in charge, who have been in charge for some considerable time over several PC might willingly bow out and allow some of the newer players or those who have desperate to feel the soaring highs and the crashing lows of leadership might be given their chance? That and we'll graciously thank those players who have, for good or ill, been at the helm of so many memorable experiences?
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 10:34 am | |
I was wondering recently what it might be like if 'clanlead' positions were split into two: one person to play the formal IC leadership role and a second, separate person OOCly charged with fostering clan culture/cohesion/etc. ... but placed in an IC role that gave them more time and flexibility to work with in pursuit of those OOC responsibilities. The clan's chief cook or medic, weapons trainer, an older and semi-retired leader/advisor. Anything, really.
I wouldn't be surprised if the two jobs appealed to slightly different groups of players, once so separated. We have some very fine RPers who find themselves hampered by the demands of our current all-in-one cleanlead role and others who simply won't take it.
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Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 11:29 am | |
I think an argument can be made that putting your best RPers into the clan lead position is not in the best interests of the game, OR those RPers.
I think that leading a clan (plot generation, organizing, dealing with IC/OOC issues, code issues, admins, etc) and leading by RP example (conflict, immersion, lore focus, culture development, history development) are two entirely different categories of tasks and require two entirely different skillsets.
I'm not advocating it, since I really don't know A from B about this mud or its players/PCs/leaders, but I've found in my experience that exemplary PCs were always at their best when NOT burdened with clan leadership, or at the most, were leading very small, closely knit clans of RPers that didn't need much direction.
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