Settlement Election Integrity

[D4wN]

How about actually roleplaying to change a leadership? And actually roleplaying to weaken a faction? And using the already existing assassin's guild mechanics to force elections? I don't see a reason for a blanket maximum duration to exist as a standard for leadership.

If someone is hogging leadership and not doing anything from it, not creating roleplay and not developping people's stories from their position, I am certain the staff would intervene on a case by case basis to mend the wrong. Otherwise, it is a roleplay server and leadership challenges and such are part of the roleplaying world. If a leader is able to hold a position for a long time it is due to their own effort and their own roleplay which lead them to such a position in the first place, and so it feels disingenuous to penalize people's efforts in that way.

More so, settlements have an ebb and flow, sometimes activity peaks and sometimes it tanks, and there isn't always someone interested in taking the mantle of leadership. For a settlement to lose their leader on such a moment with no one to take the mantle it would eventually kill a lot of the roleplay.

This basically.

[Ruzuke]

How about actually roleplaying to change a leadership? And actually roleplaying to weaken a faction? And using the already existing assassin's guild mechanics to force elections? I don't see a reason for a blanket maximum duration to exist as a standard for leadership.

If someone is hogging leadership and not doing anything from it, not creating roleplay and not developping people's stories from their position, I am certain the staff would intervene on a case by case basis to mend the wrong. Otherwise, it is a roleplay server and leadership challenges and such are part of the roleplaying world. If a leader is able to hold a position for a long time it is due to their own effort and their own roleplay which lead them to such a position in the first place, and so it feels disingenuous to penalize people's efforts in that way.

More so, settlements have an ebb and flow, sometimes activity peaks and sometimes it tanks, and there isn't always someone interested in taking the mantle of leadership. For a settlement to lose their leader on such a moment with no one to take the mantle it would eventually kill a lot of the roleplay.

This basically.

This would be an issue if such things as characters being banned from settlements based on their last name did not happen on the island of Arelith. Not for actions they took, but their family name and told disown your family or you cannot RP in most of the settlement cities.

Same people are supposed to raise a lot of support and create RP taking control of the city? The reality is if a settlement des not like your IC family you may be banned. Much less you speaking out to power.

[Aeryeris]

How about actually roleplaying to change a leadership? And actually roleplaying to weaken a faction? And using the already existing assassin's guild mechanics to force elections? I don't see a reason for a blanket maximum duration to exist as a standard for leadership.

If someone is hogging leadership and not doing anything from it, not creating roleplay and not developping people's stories from their position, I am certain the staff would intervene on a case by case basis to mend the wrong. Otherwise, it is a roleplay server and leadership challenges and such are part of the roleplaying world. If a leader is able to hold a position for a long time it is due to their own effort and their own roleplay which lead them to such a position in the first place, and so it feels disingenuous to penalize people's efforts in that way.

More so, settlements have an ebb and flow, sometimes activity peaks and sometimes it tanks, and there isn't always someone interested in taking the mantle of leadership. For a settlement to lose their leader on such a moment with no one to take the mantle it would eventually kill a lot of the roleplay.

This basically.

This would be an issue if such things as characters being banned from settlements based on their last name did not happen on the island of Arelith. Not for actions they took, but their family name and told disown your family or you cannot RP in most of the settlement cities.

Same people are supposed to raise a lot of support and create RP taking control of the city? The reality is if a settlement des not like your IC family you may be banned. Much less you speaking out to power.

No amount of changing the rules on elections is going to make such factions suddenly not be universally disliked. People don't become shunned by every settlement at once for no reason.

IC actions have IC consequences. And yes, those consequences can extend to allies, family members, or faction members. And even then they could still hire an assassin.

[Ruzuke]

Yes, they do for no reason on Arelith.

Because my brother and sister is evil does not make me evil. It means I have siblings who are evil. Their actions are not my actions. Because we have the same father and mother, and last name does not make me a part of their evil plans. So, banning me from the settlements because of this is not due to me.

Official laws which occurred were any future people of this family who come will be exiled unless they renounce their family name. This is part of this server's history and actions which happened ICly in the game. It makes me not inclined to speak out to the powers and attempt to change. As the last name can have you made an exile, I have little doubt actually saying I disagree will not do the same.

[D4wN]

This basically.

This would be an issue if such things as characters being banned from settlements based on their last name did not happen on the island of Arelith. Not for actions they took, but their family name and told disown your family or you cannot RP in most of the settlement cities.

Same people are supposed to raise a lot of support and create RP taking control of the city? The reality is if a settlement des not like your IC family you may be banned. Much less you speaking out to power.

No amount of changing the rules on elections is going to make such factions suddenly not be universally disliked. People don't become shunned by every settlement at once for no reason.

IC actions have IC consequences. And yes, those consequences can extend to allies, family members, or faction members. And even then they could still hire an assassin.

Pretty much. If you decide to stand by your brother/sister/cousin/uncle/aunt even though they have committed crime after crime or have actively worked against a Settlement's leadership, then that is a choice you make as a character. You have every right to stand with your family member even if they actively antagonized the local leadership, but then you have to expect there are consequences for the choices you yourself make to stand with and in favor of such actions. People in my experience don't get shunned because they share a family name, just generally that they will either stand up for them or not help to work against them. You pick a side basically and if you pick wrong, you pick wrong. That's okay, but then accept there are resulting actions from such choices. It still doesn't stop anyone from working against the leadership or hiring the Guild or what have you.

Facts are, there are mechanical tools and plenty of RP opportunities to remove leaders you don't want/like. Just because it's difficult or maybe even dangerous doesn't mean it shouldn't be pursued. That's again a choice you make as a character.

[Kythana]

If someone is hogging leadership and not doing anything from it, not creating roleplay and not developping people's stories from their position, I am certain the staff would intervene on a case by case basis to mend the wrong.

Requiring manual intervention on a server of this size is simply not realistic. As has been pointed out earlier, most property used to operate on a FCFS basis, and as a result, pretty much never went available to the public. The automated system is ultimately fairer in the end regardless.

If a leader is able to hold a position for a long time it is due to their own effort and their own roleplay which lead them to such a position in the first place, and so it feels disingenuous to penalize people's efforts in that way.

When "own effort and roleplay" often translates to ooc collaboration and mechanical gamification, I can't really agree.

Generally speaking, I'd very much like to see term limits in place. Or another automated portion of settlement leadership(beyond assassins) that can remove or threaten the status quo.

[Kuma]

When "own effort and roleplay" often translates to ooc collaboration and mechanical gamification, I can't really agree.

Generally speaking, I'd very much like to see term limits in place. Or another automated portion of settlement leadership(beyond assassins) that can remove or threaten the status quo.

term limits wouldn't fix that issue at all, it'd just go to an appointed successor/colluder, if that situation were to occur

[BlankStare16]

The discussion on assassins and exiling brings up another relevant factor, as these are the only actual mechanical methods in the game for influencing elections.

Namely, hiring an assassin has been brought up several times but is effectively useless, as discussed in a thread several weeks ago. Settlement leaders who fear assassination check the guild several times a day (some of those who've played settlement leaders posted in that thread to confirm as much), and with the ability to pay off the contracts, assassination is effectively neutered. Sure, you have to pay more than the person placing the contract- but gold is effectively infinite on Arelith for any faction that cares to grind it out.

Contrast the tool that Settlement leadership is given to suppress rivals- making someone a Pariah is free and easy and effective for getting rid of political rivals and threatening their family/support. Exiling is a bit more involved but not prohibitively so.

The tools for staying in power are presently much more effective than the tools for removing someone from power.

[Algol]

Why are you assuming most settlements are held by OOC means? The incident caused the announcement could be an unusual one. It is easy to assume foul play while there is none.

[D4wN]

The discussion on assassins and exiling brings up another relevant factor, as these are the only actual mechanical methods in the game for influencing elections.

Namely, hiring an assassin has been brought up several times but is effectively useless, as discussed in a thread several weeks ago. Settlement leaders who fear assassination check the guild several times a day (some of those who've played settlement leaders posted in that thread to confirm as much), and with the ability to pay off the contracts, assassination is effectively neutered. Sure, you have to pay more than the person placing the contract- but gold is effectively infinite on Arelith for any faction that cares to grind it out.

Contrast the tool that Settlement leadership is given to suppress rivals- making someone a Pariah is free and easy and effective for getting rid of political rivals and threatening their family/support. Exiling is a bit more involved but not prohibitively so.

The tools for staying in power are presently much more effective than the tools for removing someone from power.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. It's not that hard to find supporters and place a sizable sum on a settlement leader knowing it will cost them about 3x more to pay it off than what you put on them. Put 100K on them? Sure, they'll pay it off. But a few mill? I don't think so. If you put in the effort you can absolutely get rid of someone. But, if you find it's hard? Maybe it is because the majority of players in that Settlement are simply content and satisfied with the way things are. If many people were unhappy with a ruler you should have 0 issues finding a support base to remove said ruler.

And assassins useless? As someone who's literally been taken out by one after another Chancellor before me was taken out by one as well and a candidate for High Sheriff was taken out by one? You've clearly not been paying attention.

[Eters]

The sentiment I get is that people believe that everyone is OOC collaborating and gamifying the system. If that's the case, then the issue is with the community and not the system since any system put in place will be gamified and the "OOC Collaboration" will continue.

No amount of systems will make up for the lack of trust between parties, for that to happen, people need to accept that while there are few bad apples out there, most do things with goodwill.

As for assassination being useless, the previous chancellor of Cordor was assassinated for example, so it still works, you just have to put effort behind it.

[Kuma]

i'll happily say that the recent elections in guldorand feel like the polar opposite of many of these complaints

i, at the very least, don't believe there was any ooc collusion

it can still happen!

[Aeryeris]

i'll happily say that the recent elections in guldorand feel like the polar opposite of many of these complaints

i, at the very least, don't believe there was any ooc collusion

it can still happen!

People like to point to OOC collusion whenever they lose, instead of accepting everyone played by the rules and they lost. It's the "I died therefore my opponent must be cheating" mentality so common in other video games. In reality it rarely ever happens, and when it does the DM team can spot it a mile away and act accordingly. That is why the recent election in Brogendenstein was overturned so quickly. This thread is saddening and disheartening. I am tuning out.

[Paint]

I'm not convinced the majority of elections on arelith are plagued by ooc collusion in meaningful amounts. All of the faction discords I've ever been in have been overseen by a DM anyways, and if you want to keep your faction discord clean, I would suggest offering to let one of the DM staff sit in on it, even if they're not particularly active.

[Spriggan Bride]

]

This would be an issue if such things as characters being banned from settlements based on their last name did not happen on the island of Arelith. Not for actions they took, but their family name and told disown your family or you cannot RP in most of the settlement cities.

Same people are supposed to raise a lot of support and create RP taking control of the city? The reality is if a settlement des not like your IC family you may be banned. Much less you speaking out to power.

Look I don’t think outright banning solely based on family name is right or should be allowed but you get SO many benefits from making a family member to someone else’s prominent character— including instant cachet and being able to latch on to everything they’ve accomplished in RP, instant approval for positions at their settlement, likely an influx of cash and easy access to gear, being able to get votes solely based on that name at election time— that it’s only fair to take heat when family members cause trouble or are out of favor too.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

It saddens me to see the disregard of the data provided.

Let me reiterate.

Up. To. A. Full. Third. Of. Votes. In. Certain. Recent. Elections. Were. Eliminated. Because. There. Was. Little. To. No. Roleplay. From. Those. Voting. Characters.

Someone who is not roleplaying in a settlement and then logs in during an election to cast a vote and disappear cannot be roleplayed away. They are not roleplaying. They are not there for interaction. They cannot be penalized in character. The response to dealing with people who are violating these rules and damaging the environment is not for the rule abiding characters to roleplay harder. That suggestion is preposterous.

Arelith's rules are out of character concepts. They exist to protect the in character environment from exactly this kind of misbehavior.

Misbehavior that up to thirty four percent of certain elections engaged in.

You cannot roleplay away a player who is maliciously or selfishly refusing to engage in roleplay while supporting power for themselves or their friends. It isn't even within player hands. When people are playing against the rules like this, they are playing unfairly. They gain an advantage over people who are playing fairly and staff need to intervene and take out the trash, whether by correcting the behavior with progressively applied penalties up to and including literally removing the offenders completely.

1/3 votes.

But safe guards need to be put in place while the staff deal with this process to insulate the play environment against toxic or stagnant administrations that can become entrenched because of the phenomenon of poor voting behavior like what has been described.

Term limits have problems, yes. It is also possible to subvert that safeguard and I am certain that as soon as any safeguard is put in, certain members of the playerbase will be taking steps to subvert it - such as colluding to put in a puppet character when one official is removed (this is also how the assassination system as a control to elections can be subverted). But even incremental improvement against the effects of this frankly embarrassing number (up to 34%) of people using settlement mechanics in bad faith is worthwhile.

[The GrumpyCat]

It saddens me to see the disregard of the data provided.

Let me reiterate.

Up. To. A. Full. Third. Of. Votes. In. Certain. Recent. Elections. Were. Eliminated. Because. There. Was. Little. To. No. Roleplay. From. Those. Voting. Characters.

Worth noting is that this is a particularly bad extreme. I don't think (and I welcome the team to correct me) that we've ever had such an extreme example of no rp voting before. We tend to get a few in a lot of elections, but it's rare that it's enough to tip the stakes, and I don't think we've had numbers on this level before.

This isn't to say that the rest of your point doesn't hold validity, and that it isn't highly concerning, but it also isn't quite as apocolyptically bad as one might think.

[Vyrandil Rivorndir]

I feel like somehow significant low effort/no RP voting which was an extreme anomaly to the point of being called out by the DM Team, is somehow attributed to collusion by 'entrenched parties' in the settlement where an election took place.

I highly recommend people take a moment to consider the dynamic between things as (potential) correlation is not necessarily causation. Confirmation bias because it suit's someone's own perception is never good for anyone.

Some kind of automated safeguard against people voting or warning system potentially even simply exempting their votes -if- people do vote with that low effort seems like the way to comb through notorious cryo-podding, and a direct way to address this rather than weird, roundabout statements of trying to apply things that take away from a potentially genuine majority of populace's wishes because it maybe, might be, potentially can be related or correlated going from the standpoint of assuming people are acting with malice on the other side of the fence.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I would suggest offering to let one of the DM staff sit in on it, even if they're not particularly active.

This is really good advice. It both protects the outside world from a potential hive of toxicity, while also protecting you from being accused of being a hive of toxicity. Arelith takes feedback, even hostile feedback, better than one could reasonably expect them too, so you should still feel comfortable saying whatever as long as it's not something that involves actually going against the rules of the server. Which in my mind at least is where you want to be in a private discord tied to the server.

Off topic, I know, it's just good advice so I wanted to highlight it.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

Worth noting is that this is a particularly bad extreme. I don't think (and I welcome the team to correct me) that we've ever had such an extreme example of no rp voting before. We tend to get a few in a lot of elections, but it's rare that it's enough to tip the stakes, and I don't think we've had numbers on this level before.

This isn't to say that the rest of your point doesn't hold validity, and that it isn't highly concerning, but it also isn't quite as apocolyptically bad as one might think.

Thank you for the clarification. I kind of expected this would be the case.

I've seen a lot of elections in my decade or so here and certainly, some are better or worse than others. I'm also relatively familiar with the tendency of posts from the team to not come out publicly as an announcement unless there's a particularly egregious event or general upwards trend of bad behavior (for example, the occasional "Can y'all stop erping please" posts.)

That being said, the general theme I see with settlement mechanics in recent years is abuse of the systems and disengagement from roleplay and retreat into insular groups. There are shining examples of engagement and back and forth here and there, yes. But overall? Woof.

Is it apocalyptic? No. The only real 'apocalyptic' event I've seen in my time here was a forum leak that was represented as a larger hack or to a lesser degree the sudden drop in playercounts overnight when the Grind Script was put in. The rest of the big scandals were more akin to fluctuations in air quality.

But man, I'd really rather walk around breathing clean(ish) air, and I'm highly interested in the environment here being constantly adjusted away from being a coal mine.

[-XXX-]

DMs saw odd stuff, DMs fixed it. End of story. Thank you DMs.

Now, before we spiral farther into tinfoil hat territory here, I choose to believe that what happened might have been caused by an issue that's actually much less malicious, but still something that I've noticed to increasingly becoming a problem:

Players tend to forget who their main character is.
They often still consider their old, high lvl toon as their main character, completely oblivious to the fact that they now actually spend 90% of their playtime lvling up alts rather than paying attention to IG events and political intrigue that might affect their "main" character (who they rarely play anymore, if at all).
Then once they catch up (I don't wanna say discord... but it's discord) we suddenly have a "lvl30 butting in out of the blue syndrome" on our hands.

[DM Potato]

Hello!
I'd like to back up GrumpyCats post a little here. I've overseen a lot of elections and the rest of the team also covers them frequently and broadly speaking this was very much an anomaly.
For all elections I've personally overseen the results did not change no matter how tightly I put the bar on activity. Meaning that if you are active and want to become the ruling faction, your active supporters did in fact sway the election with approriate weight.

If the concern lies within 'Inactive characters change the outcome of the elections' this has not happend since I was present, and as far as I am aware has never gone uncorrected when it has occured in other instances.

While we are not perfectly omnipresent I am genuinely confident that the elections are not rigged - they're in fact never this abnormal and we do take note of those that do not participate proper generally.

I'd like to really ask of you all not to draw from this one instance to other elections, because I am very much aware of the accusations sometimes leveraged - I hope to just assure you that it has not had a impact on any outcome I am aware of.

[IUseMagicalHatsToHideOblivion]

as someone that isn't involved in the discord side of things, just wanted to drop a note that through the time i've spent in Cordor I cant' say i've had any bad experiences, especially when it comes to election stuff. Really cool players all around. Would feel very comfortable battling them for Cordorian supremacy if I play a villain.

[ScalesofEquilibrium]

I will frontload this post with the tl;dr. Once election integrity is questioned, once it is revealed that even one election has 1 in every 3 votes fraudulent (to server rules and standards), the proverbial cat (not grumpy variant – pun intended) is out of the bag and is not so easily stuffed back in. I’m sorry but this is election integrity we are talking about. This is not a simple matter – it never has been and never will be.

--

Every single election before and after this one comes to question. The validity thereof. No amount of assurance from anyone in a position of authority is enough. No anecdotal evidence is enough. No reassurance of ‘well guys it is just this one place and time come on’ is enough. It takes action and change – specifically action and change that is transparent, strong, and frankly unpopular to the status quo.

Don’t believe me? Look to any election in any system – fictional or real world – in which the integrity has been questioned – evidence provided or not. How much division and dismissal it creates. How much toxicity emerges, polarization taking hold. I’m not kidding when I say the cat is out of the bag here.

The more a player engages with this community IC and OOC, the more they stand to be impacted by this moment forevermore. When it comes to settlement elections, the most engaged players are the ones who will be impacted. The more they stand to question and doubt the decisions of server leadership, settlement leadership, OOC motivations of players/staff in those positions, and so on. Please tread carefully with any benign assurances.

[perseid]

I will frontload this post with the tl;dr. Once election integrity is questioned, once it is revealed that even one election has 1 in every 3 votes fraudulent (to server rules and standards), the proverbial cat (not grumpy variant – pun intended) is out of the bag and is not so easily stuffed back in. I’m sorry but this is election integrity we are talking about. This is not a simple matter – it never has been and never will be.

--

Every single election before and after this one comes to question. The validity thereof. No amount of assurance from anyone in a position of authority is enough. No anecdotal evidence is enough. No reassurance of ‘well guys it is just this one place and time come on’ is enough. It takes action and change – specifically action and change that is transparent, strong, and frankly unpopular to the status quo.

Don’t believe me? Look to any election in any system – fictional or real world – in which the integrity has been questioned – evidence provided or not. How much division and dismissal it creates. How much toxicity emerges, polarization taking hold. I’m not kidding when I say the cat is out of the bag here.

The more a player engages with this community IC and OOC, the more they stand to be impacted by this moment forevermore. When it comes to settlement elections, the most engaged players are the ones who will be impacted. The more they stand to question and doubt the decisions of server leadership, settlement leadership, OOC motivations of players/staff in those positions, and so on. Please tread carefully with any benign assurances.

Or we could be rationale, acknowledge that the audit caught the behavior (I would be shocked if anyone genuinely thought no efforts to attempt this kind of thing ever happened), realize that this is what a working safety net looks like instead of using a rare moment of transparency as a platform to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Then for bonus points we could expect the same of our fellow players.