My heart bleeds

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louis
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My heart bleeds

#1 Post by louis » Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:28 am

People, I'm very sad.
Losing a player is always a sad thing, losing a long year player unnecessarily (and against the players intentions) really makes my heart bleed. Since we had several incidents of this kind the last months, the latest one just today, I would suggest to stop "business as usual" for a moment and reflect what happened (without mentioning names) and brainstorm what maybe could be done better.

All the cases I refer to have one thing in common - the player in question does not desire to leave the game, but he feels that there is no other option left for his char (or for himself). For his chars coplayers (regardless wether friends or foes ingame), nothing but just an empty chair remains. Nothing is gained, except empty space.

No doubt, the game offers a lot of room to enjoy yourself, but it is doublessly also very cruel if driven that way, leading from small skirmishes of every kind to irreparable damage of your char, and maybe aso beyond that. Sometimes, on days like these, I am asking myself wether we players are still aware, that every character we meet in game is played by a friend of us. And that loosing a character to interact with also means losing a coplayer investing his time to play with us.

From a wizards perspective, I am asking myself, what could be done to make sure, that the limits a player has are respected, what could be done that a char is not totally destroyed, so that the game remains enjoyable and playable for everyone that desires to play it.

What do you think? Is there something to do? And if yes, what could we do?

Olrane
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Re: My heart bleeds

#2 Post by Olrane » Thu Oct 23, 2014 1:51 pm

I don't know anything of the circumstances around losing this player, nor of the game or metagame of Geas in current years at all. All I have to say is informed by my experiences playing on and off from 2004-2011 on two fully realized characters; losing my final character drove me from the game.

There are definitely paths that can be taken in this game that are dead ends. It's very painful to reach a dead end with a developed character.

One of the things that contributes most to the hopeless feeling that your character is at a dead end is the inability to escape the cycle of death and statloss. There are plenty of characters who feel (truthfully or not) that they cannot function at a certain level of death malus. In my experience, the inability to succeed at stealth checks etc. due to death malus meant that I could not play the game - I had no access to any of my resources - for an unknown and overwhelming amount of time.

Roleplay is what gets you cornered, but death malus is what keeps you there. There is no option to roleplay out of a hole when you can't perform at all.

I'm not sure if the malus should be reduced, but I do think that there needs to be better feedback on recovery so that players can keep hope alive and feel like they're making progress. I believe that players are owed a % vitality indicator on one of the outputs (stats I would guess).

Almost any situation can be played out ICly - keeping the OOC player from feeling defeated is the only way to retain players.

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luminier
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Re: My heart bleeds

#3 Post by luminier » Thu Oct 23, 2014 5:45 pm

There was a time when I played Geas upwards of 6 hours a day, sometimes staying up all night long and getting no sleep just to play and PVP.

In that time I took the game VERY seriously. I knew exactly the strengths of my character and my weaknesses. When you take the game that seriously it is extremely disheartening when it seems like someone is pretty much just out to make your life as a -player- miserable.

Louis is right, we should try to remember that the person on the other end of that character you may be exploiting is a an actual person who has feelings.

In my case, I had a friend that I talked to quite a lot OOC. We played quite a lot together and I even helped him plan his character in order to make him successful. One day we had a falling out, I am not exactly sure why. But after that it was an insane couple of months where I had it out for him and he had it out for me. I actually hated him as a person because I was so obsessed with the game, from what I heard it was the same for him too toward me.

If I learned anything from that, it is to try to not take this game too seriously. It is a game where you are suppose to have fun and roleplay. It is fine to want to hunt someone down for either betraying you or being an enemy or just that you don't like something they did. But to go as far as pushing that person away completely from the game is just bad for the game and bad for everyone.

Without players, there is no game.

As for advice to not have this happen again, just look to the older players like Delia...

Be kind, Chill, don't rush into something irrationally (think about it for a day), have some fun. Remember you don't always have to kill someone. Sometimes just slandering them publicly is way better. =D
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

Aturshus
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Re: My heart bleeds

#4 Post by Aturshus » Thu Oct 23, 2014 9:04 pm

Characters don't always get along, and that's inevitable. My character has this problem frequently. The real trouble starts when the disagreements are no longer just between characters, as is the case in the story Luminier shared. No idea what happened today, since I was pretty busy and didn't really get on, but I'm sorry to hear something like this has happened.

Whatever happened, it's really unfortunate, and I guess people just need to remember to separate reality from the game, especially during stressful or unpleasant situations. I'm sure we all get upset some when things go badly for our characters we've grown to like, though. Not much I can say that hasn't been said, I guess, but it's very sad to hear about something like this.

Skragna
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Re: My heart bleeds

#5 Post by Skragna » Thu Oct 23, 2014 10:03 pm

Things like this is why I feel we need to have some sort of system for retiring our old characters. Perhaps divvy up a portion of our XP and such and let us use a new face that grows more quickly. In addition, this would keep guildhopping down, since a character could /retire/ instead of guildhop. They lose their guild skills, but not the XP. In essence, old characters can fade into the background and let new faces appear. Rather than PLAYERS vanishing into the ether.

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Delia
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Re: My heart bleeds

#6 Post by Delia » Fri Oct 24, 2014 4:50 am

Thank you Luminier for kind words :)

I do not have much to say about this but remember that taking a pause from the game is important. Even more important is learning to recognize your need for a pause. The pause could be a day, a week, couple of months or even two years!

You eventually _WILL_ become emotionally heavily invested in the game and while that drives stuff forwards, it will slowly but surely become a burden for everyone, yourself included. So that a pause. Live that life outside your computer as Luminier said in another thread. Reallife issues can bring stress to the game as well. Then, possibly with fresh perspective, come back and see how things work out.

Well, this is how things are/were with me. I am slowly feeling the urge to play a bit once more. Logged on once this week for two hours and it was kinda fun. Hopefully I will manage to shorten Delia's to do list a bit(too many promises and deals...)....
"To be is to do" - Sokrates
"To do is to be" - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do be do be do" - Frank Sinatra

mazarmormuk
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Re: My heart bleeds

#7 Post by mazarmormuk » Wed Nov 19, 2014 3:36 pm

i completely agree with skragna.
wanna add that especially those players that play on a high risk character like thieves, spies, pot stirrers generally, need a way to go on playing without starting at cero again if catched.
after months and years of training a character onto a level where abilities make real waves and force/involve many peoples reactions, a dead end is just a motivation killer to go on playing

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luminier
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Re: My heart bleeds

#8 Post by luminier » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:49 am

mazarmormuk wrote:i completely agree with skragna.
wanna add that especially those players that play on a high risk character like thieves, spies, pot stirrers generally, need a way to go on playing without starting at cero again if catched.
after months and years of training a character onto a level where abilities make real waves and force/involve many peoples reactions, a dead end is just a motivation killer to go on playing

Thing is, even if you got some basic skills, it's still going to take months-years to get that character back to where it was.

if you retired a character with 30 level 100 thief skills, how many of those should he/she retain upon retiring? maybe 50 levels in those thief skills? even those last 50 skill points can take a year of daily play to get to 100 again.

so, sure, maybe we could have it. would it really help all that much?
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

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Allalltar
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Re: My heart bleeds

#9 Post by Allalltar » Fri Nov 21, 2014 7:27 am

keep in mind, this is really a secondary issue, regarding skills.

What really hurts is loosing all the history, connections, possible traits / blackmailling, supporters and enemies your char had. And we can't carry those over now, can we?

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