Bolded for where we differ the most. We're past that point, we're not even at the point where we can make our own items never mind put ourselves into a position to block anyone else from making them. We're not interested in competing directly with any guilds like that. I absolutely understand that point of view, but that's not why I'm playing here anymore.
Fair Enough.
But I dont think there's really anything VH or the GMs can do to make us interested in directly competing with VH like that. Hatebreed was probably one of the best shots you guys had at finding a guild you could use as an opponent, however they were drawn into the GVG with WC and the absolute flood of RMT'd items ruined any opportunity there.
You are correct. And HB was a huge turn off on the game for us. Infact it made our leadership quit.
Your best bet is to look at established groups or playerbases and see if we can get them to join us, but as zerowon said a few posts ago, it's expensive to get started here and there isnt enough people active outside of woe to make it feel like an active community. Hence why we're looking at trying to get the GMs to just increase total population before building upon war of emperium.
We are on the same page then. The concerns VH has voiced have been more about not making the server completely unappealing for startup groups. Using feedback from my stream, the first question they ask is "how many god items are on the server? How many MVP cards are on the server?"
This is something that both our sides would need to compromise on for the good of the server. I'm sorry if it hasn't come across like that in the past, it's never been about maintaining a lead or anything, we just don't feel that we should have to stop playing or achieving our goals for the server's benefit. It's never been about stifling valk and I am sincerely sorry if it ever came across in that manner.
Do we need to pause our activity for the server to build up? Can we agree on something that doesn't impact one of us more than the other? Perhaps total god/mvp disablement would be a step toward making the WoE enviroment less foreboding.
I'm not saying that will solve everything, they need start up packages, transfers, etc. But we need to address all aspects of the problem, including the psychology.
2:11 p.m. - Tolrin: if valk was in this position, which we were for a long time on valk server, we would sit on our lead, and defend our forts until guilds were interested in fighting over what we had. It is easy to create a situation where other guilds are forced to fight you for a fort by simply denying access to an item. Running around and fighting people doesn't work, because you leave plenty of opporunities to accomplish goals by misdirection or luck. If instead a guild was forced to fight you for the last piece they need to make an item, eventually guilds would do so.
Tolrin, you're a smart guy. You pick up on my plans very quickly. Then you must realize that a certain group were blocking our access to pieces we needed. I used the server drop rates to my advantage and stacked other parts of sets en masse all at once, instead of focusing econ of one piece.
I knew they couldn't block me forever. One slip up finishes not one set, but three or four. I let other guilds econ for me then snatch it when I'm ready, building the pieces up from other places.
I do not wish to sit in a stale fort for months on end, precasting against well... nobody, just waiting for the merged guild of the same people to show up and number us, until the cycle repeats again. If economy was worth fighting for, then I'd do it, but economy is detrimental.
This is a problem with castle drops and the economy system.
Helpful super villain has spoken.
2:16 p.m. - Tolrin: by being the strongest guild on the server for a long time, 6+ months, but never, ever defending a fort and always prioritizing offense, you've already driven away most of the guilds that would have been up and comers, and would have tried to accomplish stuff. at this point it will take much longer for the server to recover naturally because there are much less small groups of players that have tried to get organized, most of the little guilds have dissapeared. this means that regardless of what you do, theres going to be woes where you have to sit around and do nothing while other people get interested in doing things. you have to look at things from the other perspective, you are so hung up on YOUR numbers, and YOUR items, and YOUR goals, but what leads to good competion is the OTHER sides goals/items/numbers. It isn't something you can change internally, and it isn't something you can force on players, it is something that people have to want to do on their own. If the gms can come up with ways to encourage guild growth and organization thats great, but so far I havn't seen any ideas that will make players interested in starting their own team/guild/whatever and getting into the pvp scene, and i certainly don't have any ideas on how to get people interested of my own.
Well whilst we are *BOTH* farming the crap out of WoE we are collectively making it even more unappealing.
I care greatly about your numbers (I feel your items issue is slightly self inflicted out of stubbornness, but lets not debate that here) and your goals. When I offer you something like a fight with equal numbers, notice I didn't use the words gvg once. Infact I think I said something about entertaining BOTH of our members. If you have problems with supply, consider it an investment into your members. There are things both of us can do as guildleaders to LEAD our people and make their time more fun. I don't want to talk down to you, I respect that you have led a guild through a larger server than I ever have and that you have kept valk together so long, but sometimes, I want to slap you!
We are "enemies" / rivals, wtfever. That doesn't mean that we can't be beneficial to each other too. You wanna find rewarding team activities to build your population, either invent them or think them up and suggest them. If we need to make up our own entertainment to keep the people we play alongside interested, so be it. I will continue to do so, I'm sure you do in your own way, but if we could work together it'd help everyone.
But again, I must re-iterate, what we as established players achieve now, in the server's downtime can be the thing that discourages start ups. That is 90% my concern here. 10% of it is valk, but then again, if we can't bring ourselves to understand eachother then there's little hope.
2:20 p.m. - Tolrin: just as an example from the past, on valk server, my guild had something like 250 blue asprika pieces from bottom left rachel, because we sat on that fort at 100 econ for almost a whole year while other guilds caught up. we didn't sell or trade pieces, we didn't sell runs, we completly denied access to the item from the rest of the server. eventually guilds grew large enough (dissolution and others) and got interested enough to take the fort from us, and thats when valk's woe scene actually became competetive. I can't garuntee the same thing would work on this server, it might be too late into it's growth, there might not be enough new players coming in, there might be too many items out in the wild already for people to care, but thats my $0.02 on the topic.
It is too late. Also the drop rates are much higher here anyway. I also never sold unique pieces (whats up @ 38 wheels of unknown btw) - but nobody here even wants to make gods. Perhaps its indicative of server pop issues, but what is related is the huge number of gods deterring start ups.
All of Juno being over 50 econ is sort of symptomatic of this. None of us should be THIS far ahead. Well thats what the econ wipes were advocated to prevent, so that kind of denial game play would be feasible. But you know it's too little too late now.
We both know that.
So work with what we have.
edit: We could of course just talk directly. I know that you care and want to keep playing and I know you want to fix it. You are a guildleader that is still here and logs in every day. That is the only thing I need to see to know that you care for RO and the experiences that come with it. So even if it's awkward, can we please try to find a solution? We won't agree 100% on everything, our origins are very different. Don't be held back by preconceptions of what you think Valhalla or myself may want or aim for.
Edited by Xellie, 09 March 2015 - 05:38 PM.