Arelith

Every problem I have ever had with reporting players could have been solved with a followup message of

"This player has been talked to"

"This player has been punished accordingly"

"This player has been corrected and apologized"



Vague statements like this would go way further than


"Hello i would like to report X for Y"

CRTL+C - CTRL+V "We will look into it"

------woooshing silence and tumbleweed--------

Dagonlives wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2019 11:21 pm Once, a player even made a sinfarian representation of my character for purposes I will not specify in detail.

What the actual. . .

Let Love In wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2019 10:45 pm
Or, what about changing the death system in PvP entirely? All deaths from PvP could result in some kind of enhanced subdual, where you can't move, but you still hear what is going on around you. Or all deaths in city areas, maybe. You could possibly rp your death throes. It would make a whole lot more sense that everyone dying every five minutes. If people wanted to bash you, they still could. This would prevent innocent bystander deaths, give people the chance to have more finely grained conflicts and make some pvps much more friendly oocly.

This is a good idea, but I'd advocate for removing bashing as a mechanic alltogether. As is, its STILL used to humiliate people for losing PvP by bashing them in heavily traveled places, particularly since nobody can remove the bashed corpse, which makes no sense whatsoever. Let people pick up and move corpses still, but tell the player in the fugue who has their corpse, so that they can message them and work out if they're being raised, or if they should respawn. This will also make trashbinning corpses or dumping them way out behind locked doors or in the wilds more easily reported because thats a real Pufferfish move on an OOC level. If heads are nescessary, give the corpse an inventory with a head in it without needing a bash.

The bash mechanics usually feel like they force debuffs on players, not PCs, because they cripple a PC's ability to do basically anything. For what purpose is this? The rules already say that said PC is not to fight the same people over again. It comes across as the player is not trusted to RP accordingly after their demise, and thus must be crippled for 2 RL hours, wherein they are encouraged to log out. Respawn debuffs are an imperfect system, but I'm not sure what the solution would be.

What I do know is that hostile PvP is still a big point of contention on the server. I think a massive part of this is due to a lack of OOC communication between the sides, and I would actually advocate that any time a mass conflict is to break out, the players leading both sides be brought together in a DM room to talk about the impending hostilities; Lay some ground rules, establish some expected behavior from each side(eg: No 3v1 ganks at late hours. players X, Y, &Z are willing to be captured, etc.).
Its a game. Lets see some more sporting behavior, and less concern with winning outright. The RP is the goal, not the fight itself.

Richørd wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2019 11:28 pm Hell, I would also love to be able to look into my own "criminal records". Yes, that would open up a new pot of issues by perhaps making people OOC go after the ones that reported them (which will often be blatantly obvious if everyone was able to see their own records of reports and "crimes" on Arelith).
In that case I guess they'd just make it worse for themselves since OOC harrassment is another break agains the "Be Nice" rule.

But whatever. Enough rambling.

Yeah lets not do that. They MIGHT make it worse for themselves in the long run if they aren't crafty and ride a thin line along the edge of the rules, but the player who reported them will still have to put up with it, and I've seen far too many people quit the server over griefing long before said griefer can be dealt with in time. A crafty griefer can straddle the rules for weeks or months before they're dealt with.

If the damage is already done, the punishment is too late.

Edit: scrubbed my suggestion because its bad.

I would however advocate for players to be told what was actually done with their report. If someone got banned, let the reporting player know. If they got a MoD, let the reporting player know, so they don't just see dickbag_X running around appearing scot free still. Give the players that report closure that something was done or, if nothing was actionable, say so!

"We'll look into it" is less than useless as feedback.

This will not happen.

Punishments are between the offending party and the DM team. This is so that player can correct their behaviour and return to the game without the reporting player lording it over them and without other people judging them.

The reporting player will receive a message from the DM that handled the case confirming it has been addressed accordingly. That is the most you will ever know.

Telling aggravated players that the object of their frustration will be deleted if they just gank them enough is an AWFUL, TERRIBLE IDEA. Under absolutely no circumstances should anyone be aware of someone else's MoD. It's just asking for abuse.

magistrasa wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:55 am Telling aggravated players that the object of their frustration will be deleted if they just gank them enough is an AWFUL, TERRIBLE IDEA. Under absolutely no circumstances should anyone be aware of someone else's MoD. It's just asking for abuse.

Yea now that you point that out. I see what you mean. I'll scrub it.

From the few times the dm's spoken to me about some of my derp i had to simply agree with them and slap my self in the head cous they where right and i knew it the moment they said it.
Only 1 time did i not fully get the point of it but at the same time it was just more of a friendly talk.

Think i can still count the cries for help / reports i made to the dm team about my fellow players on 1 hand and recieved responses where it was needed.

All in all the more i personaly seen from the dm team over my stay here on the server the more i like how they handle things.
They seem fair , willing to listen to your side of it and wil be very mild with punishment if you show you understand why they took the time to pull you aside for a chat.

I was going to type out a multi paragraph message about how I helped Admin a roleplaying server for years in another game, but Spyres refusal to entertain alternate solutions to what is clearly a problem unable to be handled within the current paradigm just leads me to believe there is no desire to actually solve the discontent of what is clearly a sizable portion of the playerbase.

It sounds like basic human behavior to me.

Spyre wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:54 am

I would however advocate for players to be told what was actually done with their report. If someone got banned, let the reporting player know. If they got a MoD, let the reporting player know, so they don't just see dickbag_X running around appearing scot free still. Give the players that report closure that something was done or, if nothing was actionable, say so!

"We'll look into it" is less than useless as feedback.

This will not happen.

Punishments are between the offending party and the DM team. This is so that player can correct their behaviour and return to the game without the reporting player lording it over them and without other people judging them.

The reporting player will receive a message from the DM that handled the case confirming it has been addressed accordingly. That is the most you will ever know.

So the situation is set up to protect the privacy of both the reported player and the DM team. The reported player knows that they have been reported, and in most cases, will be able to deduce which situation it was, who was involved and who the likely culprit was. So we cannot reasonably say that the player making the report is totally protected, but we can say that the DMs don't disclose that information to the reported player.

Alright. So before I go into this, I would like to point out again that the DMs are regular players. Who, regardless of professionalism, will likely talk to their OOC friends about incidents, thinking nothing of it. And in most cases, this is harmless. But we should all acknowledge it happens.

My question for all of this is: Surely there's a gradient? A scaling of severity?

If there's a case where I report a guy for using a particular word that isn't PG-13 in his RP, then I won't be sitting around with baited breath, waiting to hear about his punishment. He'll likely receive a friendly warning, perhaps even a stern warning if he resists. In this case, the player having his privacy and keeping his dignity over a small mistake is fine. Nobody is expecting the DMs to go to war with this guy over a minor issue.

However, some issues are larger than that. If the entire server is aware of a particular faction who has OOCly rigged votes to win a settlement election and is now rampaging across all the other settlements, flagrantly disregarding PvP rules, murdering scores of people with hellballs and doing some political RP all atop a mountain of player corpses, then why go to all the lengths of protecting their privacy when the entire server is aware (and irritated) by their actions? Stop me if this sounds familiar. I'm not even referring to a particular or recent incident, it happens OFTEN on Arelith. Let's not beat around the bush here, it resulted in a settlement getting nuked. And that wasn't even one incident either, but a constant repetition of them.

I understand the need for professionalism and no, I am not calling for public lynchings every friday to appease the masses of tea-and-crumpet players who just want everybody to get along and never fight, ever. We know there are two sides to every story. But let's not pretend that we don't know each other, as players (yes, even the players who happen to be DMs as well). You cannot simply disarm the entire situation with a single line of "It's being looked into".

All you are doing is disappointing the players who believe that making a report is doing anything, whatsoever. You're players on the server yourself, most of the larger incidents are things that you're aware of, without even putting on your DM hat. We know that more people are going to get outright banned instead of repeatedly forgiven - I am not opposed to this, and I'm sure many people would agree with that. But in order for people to have faith in the report system, you need to give some proper feedback on more serious incidents.

Alyxnia wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:19 am I was going to type out a multi paragraph message about how I helped Admin a roleplaying server for years in another game, but Spyres refusal to entertain alternate solutions to what is clearly a problem unable to be handled within the current paradigm just leads me to believe there is no desire to actually solve the discontent of what is clearly a sizable portion of the playerbase.

I think what I said is being missed.

I am not saying feedback on cases being handled is out of the window. I have reminded the team, and will continue to, that a confirmation that concerns were addressed should be sent to the reporting the player.

However, never will a player know the verdict of what that punishment is. That will always remain between the DMs and the offending players due to the reasons above.

So, yes. You’ll know your report has been processed, investigated and handled. You will know to them make further reports after if you see repeat behaviour. But you won’t know what happened to the player you reported.

This is something I’ve brought up to the team, this is how it has always been on a Arelith, and this is how it will continue to be processed unless advised otherwise by Irongron.

Allowing a thread for limited OOC posting for things like IG history and guild info/recruitment would definitely be a good idea.

You know, I read every post in this thread and I'm still not sure what anyone is arguing about. I want my half hour back.

Spyre wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 4:26 am

Alyxnia wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:19 am I was going to type out a multi paragraph message about how I helped Admin a roleplaying server for years in another game, but Spyres refusal to entertain alternate solutions to what is clearly a problem unable to be handled within the current paradigm just leads me to believe there is no desire to actually solve the discontent of what is clearly a sizable portion of the playerbase.

I think what I said is being missed.

I am not saying feedback on cases being handled is out of the window. I have reminded the team, and will continue to, that a confirmation that concerns were addressed should be sent to the reporting the player.

However, never will a player know the verdict of what that punishment is. That will always remain between the DMs and the offending players due to the reasons above.

So, yes. You’ll know your report has been processed, investigated and handled. You will know to them make further reports after if you see repeat behaviour. But you won’t know what happened to the player you reported.

This is something I’ve brought up to the team, this is how it has always been on a Arelith, and this is how it will continue to be processed unless advised otherwise by Irongron.

Why not allow a vague followup to the report? What is so wrong about following up a report with "We have infact just finished dealing with this problem"?

I find specifically telling people "Yea we put an MoD on the offending player" Too much info.

Why not just tell the reporter that "We did not feel that the player broke any rules"
"We did see a rulebreak, and they have been talked to/Punished according to rules/ etc" but not specific to what has been done?

This is a small gesture that would go a long way.

I've been silently reading this thread up until now. There's a lot of arguments and reasons given for what "the" problem could be, although we can agree it's a collection of many issues piling up.

A lot of wise words have been said so I'm not going to repeat those. I could talk for days about how bad OOC venues like Discord are for the betterment of the server, but since it's already been mentioned I'll spare you I will add my own take to what one of problems could be, or at least that I've seen recently.

The must-win mentality. It seems to be very prevalent on our server today, perhaps more than ever before. So much so that people take IC events personally on an OOC level. And I am not just referring to rulebreaks. Those need to be reported, naturally.

Speaking of win-mentality, my partner made a really interesting observation. He plays a lot more of a variety of games than I do and he told me that people are more "try-hard" in most genres of games than ever before. Naturally we see that spilling over from other games to Arelith. I wonder if the rise of achievements as well as the incentive to do better in most mainstream games has sort of created this must-win mentality in gamers today.

I think it's important to make the distinction that Arelith is not a PvP game where your wins and kills score you a higher rank. Similarly, there is no achievement waiting for you when you reach level 30, or when you own the biggest piece of property on the server.
At the end of the day, we're all here to have fun and tell a story together. I'm not sure how this can be achieved, but the must-win mentality must go. I can only work on my own self and strive to create a healthy environment where RP is fostered and stories become legends.
But we must do this together. We're in this together. Arelith isn't a solo singleplayer campaign. It isn't your playground. It's not even your story. It's OUR story.

We've always made it a principle here to think of the other player and their enjoyment. This is perhaps more true than ever now.

To be more specific, I'd like to remind everyone that character-agenda is not necessarily (and in my opinion, should not) be the same as player-agenda. If there's someone you don't like as a player don't just have your character be automatically hostile towards them. We've seen it before in forms of exiling and killbashing with silly justification that barely makes the pass.
I'm not saying this to call out anyone. I'd like for all who read this to be encouraged to do better and to focus on the game rather than petty OOC squabbles over something that happened in-game (again rule-breaks must be dealt with, and disrespect towards a player is in that category).

I've had these talks with people from here often and we agree that your character is not your. Your character should not be you. It's played by you, and by all means, there's always going to be an essence of you within the characters you make. But you are not your character. You don't have to things personally and be offended because someone called your character names.
This can get difficult as we get very invested in our characters, so when our character experience some kind of loss (eviction, exile, death, theft, or however it may look like), we tend to take it to heart because we invested time and energy on building up this character.

But at the end of the day, it's just a game. The person behind the screen is another human. And like yourself, that human is worthy of your respect and you of theirs. Anything less than that needs to be reported and yes, many of you are correct, the Staff should be reliable in the way they deal with this. Similarly, they can't do their jobs if there is no trust from the playerbase.

But if we can't even trust our fellow players, what incentive do we have to trust the DMs and admins? It has to start somewhere.

There's no magic bullet solution to this other than we as players sitting down and deciding to respect each other. It's only right and it's only humane that we do.

I'll start by saying I'm not a prime example of the perfect player. I've had my fair share of frustrations voiced in wrong ways in the past. I will freely admit that, and I'm sure I don't stand alone. But we grow as people, we grow and we learn from our mistakes. And there HAS to be room from our playerbase to allow such growth to happen. Resentment and bitterness only leads to a dead server, I've seen it time and again on this game and on NWN2 RP servers.
Players need to let go of past gripes. What's done is done, and slandering, gossping, beating the bush around an old mistake that has since been rectified is only going to lead to pushing players away from here.

Note, this entire post is aimed at the players, not Staff. If we can't have a decent playerbase that behaves well, we do not deserve fair admins.

EDIT: Typos and punctuation
EDIT again: A couple additions. I promise I'm done

Things I, as a new player, noticed that seemed off about the Arelith community:

- People can be really overly sensitive, both on forums and in-game. I guess this stems from months or even years of toxic environment but it seems like a lot of people are almost eager to be offended or take things personally, or in-game they seem very quick to jump to OOC comments (in tells or not) about what you are or aren't supposed to do or react or whatever.

- DMs are very quick to lock contentious topics, presumably because they are afraid it'll turn into a riot. I fear that this magnifies the overly sensitive attitude of the server population as nothing really gets adressed, and everything seems to get shut down as soon as somebody throws a hissy-fit. Lets maybe not lockdown all communications just because of a few rotten apples? There is such a thing as invidual moderation action.

- There are no official avenues for discussing your narrative OOC'ly. As I've already mentioned earlier, having a place on the official forums to represent factions and events might help in making narratives more communal. Maybe this needed to have been done 10 years ago before the toxic server-wars started, I don't know as I'm new here. When your only channel of relating to server events is OOC or in your own private echo-chambers, that's the opposite of building community

As I see it these things stems from a lack narrative community. You might say that Arelith is all about building a narrative together but for the players it is not, for them it is about their character. It's not even unusual, psychology/sociology indicates that we, as human beings, only really care about those closest to us in any meaningful way, I doubt people behind the screen generally counts as that.
When you have no ways of relating to fellow players other than through In-character, in-game, that becomes the default norm. You're no longer building narratives together, you're in a Monster Truck Battle Arena driving a statblock each and you want to win because well, the win is really the only thing that gratifies your character as there is no other outlet for it.

Regarding the whole transparency of punishment, what might be interesting could be if every week/month/whatever fits, the DMs put up a generalized listing of all reports/"punishments", not to give an idea of who gets punished how but simply what is actually going on in terms of rule violations. Might make people think twice when they see there's already 20 PvP violations each week.

Though, in regards to the whole " don't want your dirty laundry aired": unless you were actually intentionally breaking the rules, I don't really see how being made aware of an unintentional breach of etiquette should be cause for embarassment. But again, Arelith community seems very, very sensitive to well, anything, so I guess that's why.

To all those overly sensitive people out there: Remember, you are not your character and disagreements on rules or setting is not a personal attack on you

Honestly, I genuinely believe the only necessary information a dm needs to relay to a person who submits a report is "your report has been received and will be processed"

OR if the reporter is horribly wrong in their interpretation of the rules, a correction.

Wishing to know if the "perpetrator" has been punished verges on being a little vindictive, perhaps. Once I submit a report, it ceases to be any of my business how it is handled, unless the dm team ask me to clarify anything, or player-to-player mediation is necessary.

That is it.

But I really do feel all this ridiculous talk of punishment and the spectacle of justice being meted out and reports and whatever else, is sorta obsessing over symptoms.

I can honestly say with the heavy personal negative experience that there has been some OOC rot that has started to infect the roleplay in the Arelith. It even got me depressed last year and I nearly quit.

There is some who take any conflict on their characters/factions/settlements/favorites/friends as personal attacks, which unfortunately usually in my case had lot of powers and connections to going as far like driving others off into the corner out of sight. Its really a dreadful feeling like being forced to walk on thin ice with treating others with silk gloves or else they explode.

Some even seem to rather break their characters in order to feel better like forcing PvP out of random.
Or siding with something for OOC reasons no matter what has happended IC, even if their characters clearly would do otherwise.
Or spreading piles of nameless hate posts and speedies to slander or blackpaint the others, without any chance to defend.
Sure there is "handle it IC" but where is the limit? Usually I've seen the victim getting told to take a break and shelf characters when they're starting to feel bad. I think that is not fine.

There is some who feel new players and/or characters being a threat to their own roleplay.
When EE first came out I once had discussion during the "Dale Drama" where someone tried to explain to me how we should "never allow these new people have power as they just ruin things here." Pretty awful point of view as we should remember that all of us have been new here once.
If all stays unchanged, the air will go stuffy if its not freshed out and we cant expect all we build to last forever.

The Discord does seem to cause more harm than good, even if I'm guilty of using it too.
It felt really bad when some players suddenly cut connections to me because what happended IC, even banning tells and ignoring forum pms.
Remember that there is always two sides with the tales and words might be misunderstood.

"I must win!" mentality has also badly increased. We sure all love to win but lately some see the potential defeats as danger to their "power fantasies" like "if I lose then nobody will take my character seriously anymore and make fun." With this sometimes come out "You're either with us or against us" mentality, even if some would rather stay away as neutral party in the conflicts. Some people are more eager to engange and clash if they know someone has poor build, low lvl, etc. OOC but discouraged if there is risk of getting biten back.

Please, we're all here to have fun and create fantastic stories long to be remembered.
Hate the characters but not the players during the conflicts.
Take time to think how would you feel like if being on the boots of others.
I be running the Nomad Inn & Tavern if any of you need to chill out.

Aodh Lazuli wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 11:36 am R if the reporter is horribly wrong in their interpretation of the rules, a correction.

Wishing to know if the "perpetrator" has been punished verges on being a little vindictive, perhaps. Once I submit a report, it ceases to be any of my business how it is handled, unless the dm team ask me to clarify anything, or player-to-player mediation is necessary.

That is it.

Not getting catharsis results in unfulfilled sense of justice which, in the end, would likely breed more animosity towards other players and the Arelith team.

When involved in an experience/episode that evokes your negative emotions, there's an extinction period (which varies with the subjective perception of intensity of said negative emotions) in which you (as a human being), have a tendency towards acting out a phenomenon called excitation transfer. Simplified, this phenomenon can be interpreted as follows: Negative emotions that are not extinguished either by time or by catharsis, can spill over into other your interactions which then often leads to further negative episodes that as a result, prolongs the extinction period and negative feelings - thus bringing further "harm" than necessary. (This is why Areliths 24 hour rule is a great concept by the way).

But, when OOC chatrooms are such an embedded part of the Arelith community (and I think this is unavoidable), echo-chambers are bound to exist. These echo-chambers (be it of one or the other kind) CAN effectively keep the negative emotions unextinguished, as people often will be confirmed in their negative emotions (likely by people sharing their own experiences of the same variety, which in turn inadvertently serves to further strengthen the feeling of being wronged in the individual).

Therefore, psychologically, it would make sense as a preemptive countermeasure towards this phenomenon, to generally be more transparent and report back to the players letting them know, in some form or another, that justice has been served.

While I feel the DM Team should have some more transparency, I don't think that transparency should go all the way to saying that person X got punished for reason Y on the forums.

I think the DM team should be more transparent in who they actually are, with strict rules on if someone ever bothers them unless it's an immediate concern (aka: Some jerk is running around Cordor killing all the NPCs and every lowbie they can find) while not on DM accounts, the person gets a nice week long vacation from the server.

People are talking about no longer trusting the DM team, I feel that might be a big step towards regaining that trust. I understand the concerns but other servers have had the DMs known publicly for a very long time, and while Arelith is as always unique it doesn't mean we can't try new things.

Several of my friends have left the server for now, and while I can't fault them for it, I wish I knew how to make things better. How to make things more accepting. The only thing I can think of is people being told 'Stop judging other people, stop thinking they're out to get you and try to collaborate instead of cutting off roleplay'.

MissEvelyn wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:48 am But if we can't even trust our fellow players, what incentive do we have to trust the DMs and admins? It has to start somewhere.

Casually snipping your post down to this point. As I've expressed to a few players, my feelings on the whole trust thing is this. From some PM's I was having with an old friend. Not trying to toot my own horn, just expressing my feelings, so take it as you will.

Kreydis wrote:As of recently, the community is in a place where I don't think I can play a weak build anymore. . .

It's just that there's so many people who seem insistent on forcing their narrative through PvP, that I just don't feel like I can have a fun balanced story with them, unless I can also hold my own ground in PvP. . .

So I want to make it about the story, not about the mechanics. But I just don't feel that many of the current 'drivers' of conflict feel the same way.

Don't get me wrong, I've failed to make any meaningful RP out of PvP many times. It is not an easy task by any means. Even more so when you have a group of blood thirsty hounds at your back aching to try out their new toys on other players. But my main point is this.

Mechanical PvP I have felt is never a good or reliable tool to drive any proper narrative (I feel, if you're into it, go for it. Just be respectful.) It only makes players such as myself feel the need to powerbuild to level the playing field. But with how jaded our opinions already are of the 'opposition', the level playing field just turns into killbashing, ganking, and scry ganking, because of the danger of the enemy player to potentially drive the narrative. A vicious cycle of hatred and distrust that feeds into itself the more and more we continue down this path.

What narrative is there in going across the island just to shit on another player's day? What narrative is there in saying hello, casting time stop after they say a single word after, and whatever combo next? What narrative is driven by me doing X against Y.

These are questions we should all think about before even considering trying to get a hostile encounter with another person. If it happens, it's fine. PvP is part of the game. But it has simply been abused to a breaking point. Who is honestly even having fun at this point? I had to start a new character because I was just so tired of feeling like I had absolutely 0 control over anything.

Role play is an interactive story from all sides. It is a give and take. I've seen the take, where's the give?

Kreydis wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:30 pm Who is honestly even having fun at this point?

I know plenty of players who are having fun and do constructive RP, even in the face of "increasing" PvP encounters. And to clarify: I'm not saying that your experience isn't real, just that not everyone shares your viewpoint.

Sartain wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2019 12:03 pm One thing I don't understand is that, as far as I can tell, DMs/Admins aren't necessarily too impressed by the use of OOC communication channels and it has been implied so many times (IMO correctly) that these have a tendency to precipitate cliques and general insular behaviour yet there seems to be little initiative to do anything about it other than telling people not to.
It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine but as a new player let me tell you that this server seems designed for clique-ishness. If it wasn't that both DM team and Irongron himself had spoken out against it I would think it was intended.

My feeling is that when everything is FOIG it causes the hoarding of information, which leads to veterans finding some status is having said information, and divisiveness between said veterans as they develop different philosophies about said information.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of times when FOIG is pretty cool but when it extends to pretty much all information there is about what is happening on the server including the real of public history of kingdoms, factions, events and such, PvP between disagreeing groups also becomes an information war. With no Out-of-game base to build narratives together, as players instead of as our characters, all in-game information becomes weaponised and general attitude of the server becomes toxic or apathetic, or both.
Since new players have no way of accessing information OOC'LY all veterans with an axe to grind will want to paint their own particular group in the best light possible while demonizing their opponents as much as possible, and new players will basically have to adopt whatever particular vendettas are pushed on them if they want to join factions.

As I see it:
- When our only way of discovering or driving a narrative is In-character only, our Out-of-game reactions also tend to follow our In-character views. I'm sure even the best of us can recognise having had an IC conflict bleed into OOC, or the other way around.

-Without any sort of OOC documentation on factions and events (say, a forum where faction members can post about their particular group) all information becomes potential fake news and nothing is held to any sort of standard.

What I think might help:
- Give the players an OOC venue on the forums for promoting factions and groups, and documenting big in-game events. Encourage the use of this, and cooperative efforts from both sides of a given conflict. Have a DM or two give this project some extra attention as with the current toxicity of the server, some people might need a bit of handholding

- A full server wipe

Totally agree on the "toxic or apathetic" comment. With the recent bug Surface conflict. When I really involved my character closely in the events, it felt super toxic. When i took a little step back, i became apathetic because if you werent present at every single meeting and event, it became impossible to track so i just sort of ignored the whole thing. Im pretty sure most people did. In fact, im sure most characters difnt even realize there was a "war" on.

So. I played a character a lot of players hated.

Which was the point. For those who don't know I played a character named Ryldwyn. For those that knew of the character? He was a brutal and violent angry drow man with a scimitar who would use violence to get his way and to enforce his ideology on people.

It was the first time I have played a directly hateful character like that. I had to constantly reach out on an OOC level to try and remind people that it is, in fact, a character. I went so far as to try and never bash corpses if I had a choice, offer free raises to players he killed, etc.

I got death threats OOCly. I had people accusing me the player of being a mysoginist because I killed drow women. I had all manner of crazy shit said to me because people could not make the leap that I am not my character.

It was fun being a character that was hated. The issue was that people took it way too personally on an OOC level to the point where people went out of their way to try and rub things in my face OOCly or otherwise try and stick it to me as a player any time my character lost.

I rolled him and had him leave the isle because I couldn't deal with the sheer mass of OOC vitriol I got.

People need to remember IC does not mean OOC. Hate the character, sure. But remember that its an act (or it should be) and while part of me was happy I was hated ICly as it meant I did a good job? The amount of BS made it not worth the trouble any more.

I think if people remember its a game it would help.

RandomhouseAudio wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 12:59 pm People need to remember IC does not mean OOC. Hate the character, sure. But remember that its an act (or it should be) and while part of me was happy I was hated ICly as it meant I did a good job? The amount of BS made it not worth the trouble any more.

I think if people remember its a game it would help.

I, personally, have seen many instances where players either cannot or actively choose not to differentiate between the two. And I think that this is in part due to the fact, that this RP-server encourages (as it should) deep personal and social RP - where the players pour a lot of time and emotions into their characters narratives. And when someone comes along and disrupts this (as they should be able to, as long as it is not detrimental behaviour), for example an angry drow man with a chip on his shoulder, this has a much greater impact on the person behind the character than say someone engaging in PVP in a game like world of warcraft or something similar. The problem is, that not everyone reacts the same way. Some players get really upset and sad that their character had to go through such an experience, where as someone else might shrug it off and continue on their way.