I love the roleplay I find in this game. I love the characters, I love the stories. I love the setting. I love the rich history.
I haven't had the heart to play for months now, even though I really want to.
I'm sitting here trying to think of why that is, and it ends up boiling down to miscommunication issues with staff, request tool overwhelm for both staff and player, and both sides assuming the worst of each other during interactions. Refusals by staff to meet in the middle or accommodate because of red tape or "unfairness" even if I'm willing to sacrifice a ton just to adjust something for a character's story.
It boils down to how slow things move in staff land versus how fast things move in player-land, and the amount of damage that can be done before staff is willing to step in-- after they've crossed their t's and dotted their i's and filled out their forms in triplicate, the problem has been running rampage for 8, 9 months, and it was just one of the problems.
I flat-out admitted that I am not blameless-- I got frustrated and word vomited because I felt misunderstood and/or like the real issue wasn't being addressed-- and promised to work on that, then was not met with reciprocal behavior. That led to one-sided, abusive-feeling interactions. I'd try to fix the communication gap and it would only seem to get worse.
Actively submitting things to try and improve areas of the game after getting approval to submit those things-- then having someone unrelated to the project step in and criticize it without any nod to all the hard work I'd put in, and having someone else try to take the entire project from me mid-project-- I GET THAT IT WAS WELL INTENTIONED. I REALLY DO. ALL CAPS SO THAT THIS PART IS ACTUALLY READ AND NOT SKIMMED OVER. I do understand they were trying to help. But the delivery was atrocious and when I diplomatically pointed that out, I got treated like a pariah. Rather than recognition that they'd put a bullet through my motivation.
It boils down to not being believed when I see problems arising and bring them up, and then feeling like I'm being shot as the messenger, even though I see it affecting others as well, and it feels unjust to try and be as fair as possible by saying hey, I get it, we all feel overwhelmed, and I have x and y issues, so I get that this is stressful-- and then have that used as an excuse to literally blame me for the breakdowns in communication and be told I should "stop playing for my mental health."
Guess what -- I was already planning on that, but because of the way I was being treated, and because of the constant confusion over how best to communicate and because I was literally called a bad roleplayer for doing exactly what my character should and would have done based on everything they had experienced and were presented with.
It boils down to staff not realizing that players get just as overwhelmed and it's not fair to ask them to shrug off things that they have no control over but that have huge impacts (possibly permanent) on their character, while staff gets to sit up in the clouds and deliberate with no risk to themselves. We're expected to shoulder the risks and the burden of pushing plots, and it's a lot of fun when staff has our back (OOC, even if there's challenges IC), but it's horribly unfun when it feels like they're just shitting on your plot for the sake of adding difficulty or danger rather than helping you run a cohesive story.
It boils down to required reports and then being yelled at for how I do those required reports. Constructive criticism was given at times and that helps, but in short: I spend hours writing those fucking things, and most of that time is me trying to condense and edit everything that has happened in the shitstorm, because I have no idea what staff saw and didn't. If I don't put in details, then important things get overlooked and awkward breaches in continuity arise. If I do, I get complained at.
The best way forward I see to play this game is to not play any sort of role where I'm required to interact with staff, but I am still feeling so hurt, demoralized, and like I'm viewed as and treated as a problem player simply for standing up for myself...
... that I still can't seem to summon the will to play. Because I don't want to subject myself to what feels like literal abuse. The most fun I had in recent memory was with a character with whom I had complete freedom over their narrative and choices, and I suspect that is the only way I'm going to be able to enjoy the game, if I can ever summon the desire to return.
As someone who's loved this game for over 20 years, I really hope you'll understand that this comes from a place of pleading with you all to have more empathy toward your players and recognize that the game is an ecosystem, and right now it is not a healthy one. Staff has all the power in their interactions and they NEED to be cognizant of that when deciding how to approach a situation or a response, especially if it is with a demoralized or frustrated or overwhelmed player who wants literally nothing but to add to and improve on the gameworld and enrich it for other players, not just themselves. It's so easy to destroy but it's so hard to build.
There have also been many inexplicable-feeling decisions that take power away from players to tell their own stories (see Spyguy's post, and I still don't understand the Garrison changes -- just curtail the Council's power and keep the Garrison, it was an amazing clan that is now for all purposes destroyed).
Players LOVED Morin's and tried for so many years to build things and expand there, but instead we got Tuluk (which is beautiful, but silo's the game) and a great central base area (Luir's) removed as an option to base out of, which makes it far harder to counteract that silo effect that Tuluk had. You can't FORCE players into areas. Leave options open.
LISTEN to your players, and look for ways to reduce the red tape ya'll wrap yourselves in.
I don't know when I'll be back. I keep wanting to try but I also keep feeling like I'm calling up that abusive ex for a fling.
edited for typos and clarification.