V5 Feedback Thread

[Hollow_Mage]

Actually, I'd like just one iteration of the server where CONFLICT isn't shoe-horned in. What's wrong with 99 being a hub? What's wrong with capitalism being benign? I think repeating the same conflict-for-conflict-sake attitude of previous modules would be boring. And I think the odds are good, based on external messaging from the DM team, that all the tools necessary to create conflict naturally are further in.

The King awaits.

[Hound]

Because conflict is the essence of narrative. The resolution of opposing forces, metaphysical or physical, is what makes stories interesting.

[KaedweniKnight]

Because conflict is the essence of narrative. The resolution of opposing forces, metaphysical or physical, is what makes stories interesting.

This 115%. And anyone with half a brain would know hes not refering just to PvP.  If the goal of the server is just to ringrun..?

[bobofwestoregonusa]

If all there was to do on the server was ring run it would get very boring within a month. This server really has something for everyone and that's why it's so enjoyable. You can make entire concepts that never touch the rings, or you can make concepts that do exclusively that.

[Moonlighter]

Actually, I'd like just one iteration of the server where CONFLICT isn't shoe-horned in. What's wrong with 99 being a hub? What's wrong with capitalism being benign? I think repeating the same conflict-for-conflict-sake attitude of previous modules would be boring.

"Conflict-for-conflict-sake" is not somehow more boring than a goodly hub of merchants with peaceful guards who all help each-other out. As it is, Ticker Square lacks the real tools or reasons for anyone to have any sort of attitude toward anything other than to say "Cash is King" and honestly people don't even do that. I've my issues with the Peerage Ward too, but I will say that as someone who has exclusively played in Ticker Square, the latest dramas are absolutely almost entirely ignorable. I'm not saying that "what Ticker Square needs is the Reformed Order of the Spellguard" but having everyone sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing Kumbaya is dreadful.

Sanctuary at least had different groups (be they Red and Black, Society/Spellguard or Exile/Spellguard) who had competing dogmas and visions for the City that gave people reasons to bicker, squabble, and yes even PVP. There was a reason to play the "Game of Thrones" and to try to eek out influence over one-another. Ticker Square currently lacks any reason to do this at all, which creates a fairly stale environment that quickly grows old.

[KaedweniKnight]

Actually, I'd like just one iteration of the server where CONFLICT isn't shoe-horned in. What's wrong with 99 being a hub? What's wrong with capitalism being benign? I think repeating the same conflict-for-conflict-sake attitude of previous modules would be boring.

"Conflict-for-conflict-sake" is not somehow more boring than a goodly hub of merchants with peaceful guards who all help each-other out. As it is, Ticker Square lacks the real tools or reasons for anyone to have any sort of attitude toward anything other than to say "Cash is King" and honestly people don't even do that. I've my issues with the Peerage Ward too, but I will say that as someone who has exclusively played in Ticker Square, the latest dramas are absolutely almost entirely ignorable. I'm not saying that "what Ticker Square needs is the Reformed Order of the Spellguard" but having everyone sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing Kumbaya is dreadful.

Sanctuary at least had different groups (be they Red and Black, Society/Spellguard or Exile/Spellguard) who had competing dogmas and visions for the City that gave people reasons to bicker, squabble, and yes even PVP. There was a reason to play the "Game of Thrones" and to try to eek out influence over one-another. Ticker Square currently lacks any reason to do this at all, which creates a fairly stale environment that quickly grows old.

Spot on.  ;D

[Hollow_Mage]

Actually, I'd like just one iteration of the server where CONFLICT isn't shoe-horned in. What's wrong with 99 being a hub? What's wrong with capitalism being benign? I think repeating the same conflict-for-conflict-sake attitude of previous modules would be boring.

"Conflict-for-conflict-sake" is not somehow more boring than a goodly hub of merchants with peaceful guards who all help each-other out. As it is, Ticker Square lacks the real tools or reasons for anyone to have any sort of attitude toward anything other than to say "Cash is King" and honestly people don't even do that. I've my issues with the Peerage Ward too, but I will say that as someone who has exclusively played in Ticker Square, the latest dramas are absolutely almost entirely ignorable. I'm not saying that "what Ticker Square needs is the Reformed Order of the Spellguard" but having everyone sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing Kumbaya is dreadful.

Sanctuary at least had different groups (be they Red and Black, Society/Spellguard or Exile/Spellguard) who had competing dogmas and visions for the City that gave people reasons to bicker, squabble, and yes even PVP. There was a reason to play the "Game of Thrones" and to try to eek out influence over one-another. Ticker Square currently lacks any reason to do this at all, which creates a fairly stale environment that quickly grows old.

Big shock, but people have different opinions on what is or is not boring. Here's mine: Bickering and squabbling is boring. It's a little childish, and I often feel embarrassed to be in a digital space with grown adults whose ideal of narrative conflict is bickering and squabbling.

What I'm saying, and please god don't quote me if you're not going to read it, is that if you WANT conflict, go get it. It's not on the forums, unless you're strawmanning me. It's in the rings. The messaging is clear; nobody outside the DM team has any idea the potential of the server to host your wildest concepts AS IS.

Just once, let's have a hub of likeable people. Huh? Just once?

Edit: And maybe keep the dogma IG?

This was rude and probably not constructive. Rather than delete it and hide, I'll just say it's fine to enjoy EfU any way you want. Sorry.

[Hound]

I am sorry that you find it embarrassing to engage in roleplaying discourse with other EFU members, but it does not change the fact that the server has a very strong and well-ingrained tradition of player-oriented dispute as the main drive of drama and interest, rather than a player-to-DM focused relationship as might be found on PotM or the like which is characterised by long periods of downtime and brief flurries of activity and interest. This is the way EFU works, and it is quite time-tested to be successful and enjoyable as an approach to storytelling in a dynamic way.

[Vergadain]

I think whether someone is inherently 'good' or 'evil', you always have methods of rising up. Whether you become beloved or you play the game and rise up through cutthroat politics, there are so many ways to do it. I think it's very unfair of you, hollow, to say that people are being immature by wanting narrative conflict and calling their idea of it stupid or inappropriate. Conflict /is/ the basis of a good story. It's in every story. There is always a conflict. But I think the setting of ticker square is fine as it is. It's a status quo which could be easily transformed by player initiative into whatever dogma they wish. Just have to take risks and not be afraid to lose your PC, and focus on creating a solid narrative and environment for everyone that is enjoyable and interesting. What I've noticed so far is that a lot of people really don't actually care about doing that in this chapter- it seems to me that there are a few who have taken unique initiative to create interesting plotlines (Hervis Cross and Royland Blacks are two I can name that have really stuck out to me) but for the most part, people seem more interested so far in just being adventurers and becoming more powerful, which is fair. I think it's an awkward time for the setting. Long-term PCs are building up their power bases and making small moves. Groups and factions and ideologies are being established. Enemies and friends are being made. The social structure of the server is still being molded by player action. My word of advice to those who want more conflict is to create it themselves and let it naturally form. I think it's very intentional that ticker square is kind of a neutral hub right now. I mean, from an IC perspective, we don't really know how long this entire little society has been operating. We know that there are the old masters. We know that the nobles of the Peerage once ruled over the entire ring of 99. There is shadowed history that holds tension just in itself. And as players, we are not native to the city. We are still falling into place and learning about its history. I have no doubt that over time, there will be more conflict and separating ideologies/factions that create interesting stories and tension. For those trying to initiate stuff like that, bravo to you and keep it up!

[Hollow_Mage]

It's pretty dishonest to read between the lines to find the worst possible interpretation and then argue to that. I've lost a bit of respect for some people in this thread.

I'm out.

This isn't what happened, I over-reacted. Sorry to the folks in this thread; that was immature.

[Knight Of Pentacles]

  The Peerage has their daunting lords who abide by restrictive traditions and are strictly anti-demihuman.  The Pond is a sink hole of thieves, monsters, wild mages, and the fae touched.  The square is led by a guild of highly cooperative, inclusive merchants who seem to treat their members fairly well all things considered and have no greater aspiration than to make a profit.  One of these things is not like the others and doesn't really fit well into the traditional EFU mold.   Now if the Square were meant to be a nexus of sort for the other hubs and contending factions to interact on neutral territory,  that might be a neat thing.  But I don't think that is its intention. 

[TwoOClock]

Couple observations:

V4, which is the only OTHER iteration of EFU I've seen, had a main hub (two main hubs, upper and lower?) and then an "outside". This outside being, of course, the untamed wilds of the deep dark. From what I understand this was also the case in A and M.

Efu5 however has no such thing. You have three wards, and the "outside" is technically just the rings, which are very small and gated spaces that require intensive collaboration to be breached. The closest thing to an "outside" so far is ring 94, and unless there's really vast, multiple-areas regions deeper in, this means that there's almost literally no "away" from ring 99. Everyone is roosting in there, for good or ill, and that alone promotes a certain amount of truces and cohesion.

V4 had an atmosphere of impending doom and scarcity of resources, as well as the absolute NEED for a big bad tyranny keeping things in check (spellguard). In v5, separation, divide and impera, creeping paranoia and exclusiveness seem rampant, with the "King" working hard to prevent large groups from forming. If you slap together all these details, conflict is bound to shift more and more along the lines of non-deadly competition.

It seems to me that the current IG priority is "escaping" from the King's Maze. If the team wanted, and I assume this will be the case at a certain point, player characters will be pitted against each other by the King himself, or will murder each other over something a bit more palatable than the Dispensary.

Big conflict tends to crop up when two parties are vying over something that cannot be split, over ownership of land and power (which is so far clearly and steadily in the hands of the King) or in general when there is something, anything to fight FOR. Monsters are likewise a little hard to handle, when there's around 20 areas for them to hide in. Less, if you consider they likely can't go questing and getting what they need to advance in the rings.

Currently, the server is structured under an all powerful, all knowing NPC Tyrant-God. It also has a very big, very clear PVE challenge. I kind of expect PVP and conflict will bloom once more and more people will have reached deeper rings/shops and resources that aren't exclusive to ring 99. Because the general (IG!) agreement seems to be that war in 99 is bad business for ringrunning, and in general pointless, since there's nothing to gain (king rules anyway) from conflict, except draining precious resources, potions, gold.

I honestly think this is intended. It'd take very, very little to make ring 99 hell, considering the King can literally issue a mandatory manhunt between, say, Tickers and Peerage. Or we could see a faction of "terrorists" defying the king's rule and opposed to its enforcers. Or districts could fight over a McGuffin that's really, really worth draining those 40 csw and making a bunch of enemies for...

EFU is well known for raining curveballs over its playerbase, and given previous eventfulness I VERY MUCH doubt V5 will just be about fighting over the dispensary, questing, and unlocking deeper rings. I also think all the options and tools for conflict haven't been laid down yet, and that we'll see more incentives in the long run.

I'd go as far as to say that conflict in v5 can make more sense than it did in v4. V4 had the somewhat unifying threat of the impending apocalypse constantly hovering over the head of every PC, and thus squabbling over petty things felt a little out of place sometimes. V5 is already designed to "split people up" in small-ish groups (up to 8?) even within larger organizations such as the noble houses. Give these small groups an incentive to murder each other (and V5 already hinted it could turn into a massive Battle Royale at a drop of the hat) rather than many reasons to collaborate, and you WILL see conflict.

Edit:

If you think people are holding hands, consider all of this and more happened in... the last three weeks, top?

- Several murder-tournaments.
- Naomi, brutal dispensary fights, reanimated and headless corpses being thrown from rooftops, characters turned into pincushions. If anything, that conflict could have been milked for longer! More house feuds!
- BANDITS. During the first week or so, walking through Commons was almost a death sentence.
- Crownless vs Peers plus multiple kidnappings, beatings, people being robbed, street-duels and more.
- Ten-Tonne's turf war.
- Bethany and Mazeed vs everyone.
- Hatcher, butchers, death of Skrol.

[Moonlighter]

If you think people are holding hands, consider all of this and more happened in... the last three weeks, top?

- Several murder-tournaments.
- Naomi, brutal dispensary fights, reanimated and headless corpses being thrown from rooftops, characters turned into pincushions. If anything, that conflict could have been milked for longer! More house feuds!
- BANDITS. During the first week or so, walking through Commons was almost a death sentence.
- Crownless vs Peers plus multiple kidnappings, beatings, people being robbed, street-duels and more.
- Ten-Tonne's turf war.
- Bethany and Mazeed vs everyone.
- Hatcher, butchers, death of Skrol.

All of these are external sources of conflict, and most of them scarcely apply to Ticker PCs at all, and it more or less proves my point. Ticker being a peaceful, largely good and nice hub that simply "reacts" to bad things happening around them isn't good for the health of the server nor really all that entertaining from a player's point of view.

Not one of them pits any Ticker Square PC vs another. The closest thing I've seen to someone using Ticker Square as a platform to create conflict with other players is refusing to serve half-orcs at their merchant stall and others who do predatory gold lending.

[Pandip]

From afar, Ticker Square feels like Sanctuary without the Spellguard or internal conflict, which is to say, boring, reactionary, and "friendlyman." I have yet to see any Ticker PCs really squabble with one another and they seem to largely stay in their own zone unless someone inspires them to other action through PvP, kidnapping, etc. Ticker appears to be a place for generic merchant PCs to thrive without conflict because the guilds largely get along despite supposedly being brutally capitalistic. I'd love to see more squabbling between guildmasters; territorial disputes, rampant poverty, disgust for the poor, etc. Peerage Ward has houses conflicting with each other, PCs striving for glory within their house, and fighting off the wants of the other areas while pursuing individual house goals. Pondsmen foster strongholds, deal with life labeled as bandits and societal rejects, and wrestle with the fact that everyone wants to take their freedom. I don't really understand what an individual Ticker PC can strive for to create drama without doing their own thing, a la the Crownless.

Ring 99 is the hub. It is Sanctuary/Dunwarren, it is Mistlocke/Forest, it is the Ziggurat/environs. Insisting that conflict should take place outside of Ring 99 and within the rings feels either ill informed or disingenuous.  I have been very happy with Ring 99 and have a lot of fun playing with #housesunsloths, but I can fully understand why people might feel like Ring 99 doesn't suit their thirst for drama and conflict from a different perspective.

For those of you who have been struggling, I will say that I think the DM team has been very helpful and open to dialogue since the transition. If you have a cool group or have an inclusive PC and you want to create drama or conflict, I would recommend reaching out to someone you have a rapport with and at least discussing your ideas.

---

About ringrunning- I have very much enjoyed ringrunning as a side endeavor to pursue with allies. Progressing through the rings feels like a challenging drain on resources that does just enough to knock you on your ass before letting you get back up and become victorious. I have had many great late nights getting further in the rings with my allies.

That said, from my (limited?) perspective of the system, ringrunning still feels very linear, jilted, poorly paced, and discouraging of interaction.

The rings and seams most closely resemble the Mistlocke / Forgotten Forest dynamic of traveling the mists. Only unlike the desert and the mists, the rings and the seams never actually meet, which makes the server feel very linear and makes it difficult to bump into other people while running. The rings don't feel like an extension of Ring 99, but a separate adventure from it, which makes the server feel claustrophobic and means that players who set out to ringrun are doing their own thing for hours on end without the possibility for interaction with others. This might be a contributing factor to the boredom that some players feel because they have to get in on the ground floor of a ringrunning group to experience the further rings; not doing so cuts the content they can interact with by a significant margin.

Some of the best moments of drama in EFU occur when two groups meet each other far from home. Stargazers clashing with a Ziggurat patrol. The Fury bumping into the Numinous Order at Marcail. Spellguard and Covenant standing off in the tramways.  These things don't happen when Ring 99 and the rest of the server are so mutually exclusive.

Ringrunning cannot be a full time endeavor or concept with a group of friends because the challenges demand you return to Ring 99 to recuperate without metagame knowledge of the tasks at hand. Further, some of the challenges are extremely time restrictive and do not allow for players/groups with limited play times to progress reasonably. I do not think these things are necessarily bad on their own -- I want to return to Ring 99 because that is where the roleplaying happens. But (a. changing spawn points) and (b. non-keystone barriers to entry) make this very difficult to do. I understand these things are meant to make people commit to ringrunning, but this is oftentimes impossible, impractical, and not fun to do in practice.

I don't want to post specific spoilers, but I'm more than happy to explain in more detail in PMs.

[Providence]

Actually, I'd like just one iteration of the server where CONFLICT isn't shoe-horned in. What's wrong with 99 being a hub? What's wrong with capitalism being benign? I think repeating the same conflict-for-conflict-sake attitude of previous modules would be boring. And I think the odds are good, based on external messaging from the DM team, that all the tools necessary to create conflict naturally are further in.

The King awaits.

I wanted to express my support for this statement.
There's nothing more boring to me than obviously shoe-horned conflict. Example:

Faction 1 is delicious potao-men and Faction 2 is hungry starving fry cooks.
Faction 1 is druids and Faction 2 is "I HATE DRUIDS" engineers.

I don't think this sort of forced conflict adds anything interesting to the setting or the game as a whole.
Furthermore I think it's quite appropriate to have a somewhat more mellow setting in which people don't instantly click on each other while hostile because they happen to be from the Peerage/Pond/Ticker square. You can still have that experience, and people have been having it, if that's what you want. But in the current, more long-term PC oriented setting I would prefer to avoid a "fast and furious" PC lifecycle where people brutally murder each other because they happen to sleep in the wrong inn.