Concerning game trend: Not harsh enough?

[MarshallDFX]

Hegemony:
1 : preponderant influence or authority over others : domination <battled for hegemony in Asia>
2 : the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group <extend their own hegemony over American culture as a whole — Mary K. Cayton>

We can all go home now.

[Gimfalisette]

I want to know who's in this group and how I get in. Is it special-app?

[Olgaris]

I think staff could probably do more to promote the prolonged-conflict behavior they want to see. Leaving it up to the playerbase seems to eventually lead to all of us wallowing in ennui over the issue.

I haven't read past this, so this may well be answered already, but... How?

In all honesty, the players that hold a hegemony on the GDB can probably do a LOT more to influence change in attitudes than the staff can. We're not going to ban PK, and short of that it's a shift in attitude that you're looking for it seems, and we can't do that.

Stuff I think staff could do:

-- When players write in to clan staff about plot stuff, make concrete suggestions as to how to achieve particular goals without killing. I have seen this done on occasion, but not often. I don't know if it's a policy to do that or not, but if there is a general staff desire for conflict to be long-term, then it would seem to make sense.

Generally we don't like to suggest plots or plans to players. This is due to a variety of reasons. First is that we have shifted our role to supporting player actions rather than dictating them. Second is that if we go about suggesting ways of doing things, then we are in essence telling the players what to do to 'win.'

-- If staff notice that someone is PKing a lot, and possibly going to put a note on their account about it, then an email conversation with the player should be had as a matter of course. I don't know if this is done or not, but I suspect it's not done in a coordinated or policy-driven way.

We do this.

-- If there is a particular clan that is supposed to be known for raiding or brutality or whatever, then the staff of that clan might work specifically with those players in a how-to manner...how to raid without always killing, how to torture and make that a scene where the victim feels they can trust the RP of the other players, etc.

We do this.

-- Work on general measures to increase trust between players. Sometimes the GDB is too flamey and awful, and to be honest, I think it decreases trust between players. Moderation could be done in a way that feels more coordinated and fair.

This stems back to the hegemony that I will elaborate on further down.

-- Code in solutions that the players have suggested for more non-lethal options when it comes to detainment, torture, and punishment. Yes, we will always have players who refuse to "lose" in a conflict, but I don't really think they are the majority in the playerbase; however, we have a lot of players who would love to be brutal and mean and leave conflict open-ended, but there are just too few coded ways to do this.

There are lots and lots of options other than death. They don't need to be coded. Some of the coded ideas that we have come up with as staff have been shot down by the staff as a whole because from experience we've found that players really hate for their PCs to be mutilated. Yes, players actually send in complaints about having things severed, or being disfigured. This is part of the culture of hating to lose at anything. Perhaps it is easier to accept death, because you just get to make another perfect PC, I don't get it personally.

But to get to the core of what I tried to insinuate earlier in less words, is that the regular posters on the GDB have more power to change attitudes than the staff do. We can change rules. We can change some of the structure of the game. But attitudes are your department. What I mean by hegemony is that if there is a general consensus on the GDB that, for example, looking at a bunch of people in a room without using look emotes is bad role-play, then people who read the GDB (regardless of whether or not they participate) will start feeling bad if they don't use look emotes.

If there is a general consensus on the GDB that hacking obsidian is twinkish, and characters that hack obsidian are constantly trashed on the GDB as players who don't know how to role-play properly, then less people will play obsidian miners.

Hegemony is not something possessed by the few. It is a power that permeates to such a degree that you begin to believe and think certain things as your own thoughts, but really come from the group as a whole. Like peer pressure, only you don't realize necessarily you're been pressured by your peers.

The point of raising that is, that raising threads like this on the GDB is probably a lot more effective than anything the staff could do, aside from starting threads like this on the GDB.

The game isn't harsh enough? Post about it. Agree about it. Be the change you want to see. Other people will read it, and they'll see it in game, and they'll think "Hey, this is awesome. I am going to make my PC hate that guy and secretly plot against him." The staff don't have that kind of power.