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[JamesCorella]

Bring back an Armok Kingdom!

[Reelya]

Well that's two people, which is enough to start a realm. However, this time start it somewhere in the big mountain chain. You get metal from the start that way, so you avoid the problem that always plagued the first Armok kingdom in the northwest: there's almost no metal on that entire subcontinent.

The problem was that the bay12ers joined in when the new area was opened up, only to discover the genius devs had made the entire area with almost no metal at all. Yes, the Children of Armok with their vast armies of leather-clad spearmen and longbow. Do it right this time, and go start it on a mountain.

[Hanzoku]

Yeah, Tom has/had a hardon for ‘historical’ rather then ‘fun’. He never quite got why it wasn’t good that the kingdoms with iron could roll everyone else with heavy infantry and cavalry and there wasn’t any counter.

[Reelya]

Heh it's sorta like "ok, we're playing James Bond, and I'm James Bond, and you are all the villain's henchmen that get mowed down. Now, stand over there until I come over and shoot you. What do you mean, it's not fun? That's how the movies work, and the movies are fun!"

[Vivalas]

I would seriously be down for the Armok thing. We should probably just pick a large empty patch and grow inwards towards each other to form a single body and then just go from there. World conquest being the eventual objective of course.

[Arx]

I still really wish this game were fun and I'd love to have a CoA realm... but last time I ran a realm it was far too similar to a real job to be enjoyable. There ends up being a great deal of herding people, trying not to step on toes, and so on. I'd kinda rather spend that time building a kingdom IRL.

[coleslaw35]

I still really wish this game were fun and I'd love to have a CoA realm... but last time I ran a realm it was far too similar to a real job to be enjoyable. There ends up being a great deal of herding people, trying not to step on toes, and so on. I'd kinda rather spend that time building a kingdom IRL.

I did what I could to carry on the legacy of Asitet Anoth, but the game felt like a chore at that point what with all the trolls, wargamers, and the utter lack of people who could even formulate punctuated and in-character sentences. As such, I dissolved my realm and retired all my characters about a week ago, and I honestly don't regret it.

[Arx]

Asitet Anoth was a lot of fun (and it makes me happier than it maybe should that you kept it going) but yikes I did not enjoy the constant fear of being annexed by Ascalon with their indestructible heavy soldiers.

If I do ever start playing again, it'll probably be 100% IC. I might appear in the CoA realm without anyone knowing! Can't be got down by toxic metagaming if no-one knows who you are, and I'm fine with people hating my characters.

[coleslaw35]

Asitet Anoth was a lot of fun (and it makes me happier than it maybe should that you kept it going) but yikes I did not enjoy the constant fear of being annexed by Ascalon with their indestructible heavy soldiers.

If I do ever start playing again, it'll probably be 100% IC. I might appear in the CoA realm without anyone knowing! Can't be got down by toxic metagaming if no-one knows who you are, and I'm fine with people hating my characters.

I actually felt the best way to move forward was to join Ascalon, and so I did. They were the good guys given the situation I found myself in, being confronted by the Lowlands and by the Western Confederation alike. Ascalon welcomed me and gave me a place to earn a reputation, and that's what I did. In that time, I learned that Ascalon wasn't the nation with all the armor clad troops. We were relatively metal poor, and had masses of leather armored troops. The people who actually held heavy troops in vast quantities were the Hawks and the Exiles, who I learned to loathe due to their extreme wargaming and exploit abusing.

It seemed like every player in Ascalon (and most Hawk players, admittedly) would actually take the time to respond with an in-character, well-thought out response that was commendable. And then I had the "joy" of speaking with people like the Lowlanders and Exiles, who, like I said in my previous post, couldn't even form coherent in-character responses. Constant out of character remarks (like one particularly odd exchange where one of my female characters was accused of being a "tranny"), constant disregard for reason, it was just one big "me kill, me conquer" pointless charade that made me loathe interacting with them (and I, unfortunately, had to do so a lot.)

For example, near my decision to resign all my characters (about a week ago), 4 drones (no description, no liege, nothing but 4 names that were all very similar to each other) spawned, somehow immediately got 2000 soldiers, and were sent my way to attack my settlements. I inquired what the fuck they were doing, where they were sent from, and by who, and got nothing more than joke, fragmented sentence responses. That really did it for me. I looked back recently and saw that, after I retired my characters, they all swore fealty to the same Lowlander, and all began annexing what were my settlements. Most of the community doesn't give a shit about this game anymore as a platform for constructive roleplay, and instead are intent on doing everything they can to fuck over everyone else in order to come out "on top." That's why most of Ascalon left, because we were sick of having to put up with such destructive and shitty behavior from such a large portion of the player base.

Even though I may be biased now, trust me when I say Ascalon and its players weren't the bad guys.

[Arx]

I have nothing but respect for the Ascalon players! It's just that it turned out that the game working properly still sometimes feels like work. Especially since at the time I was quite attached to trying to keep Asitet independent.

The game really badly needs real moderation, and has since forever. I dunno if Tom has ever mentioned anything about that.

[Reelya]

What I think the game could really use is another layer of play. There is the ruler level, and there's nominally a heirarchy, but it's really only 1 player to 1 town. Or more like 1 player to 12 towns minimum. Along with the distances and times to travel, this doesn't engender frequent interaction, and the game even at 100% full feels kinda empty.

One of Tom's ways of thinking is similar to the way of thinking of that guy who made Crown of Conquest. Both games effectively allow one player to have unlimited holdings, on the basis of "not imposing arbitrary limits". Well, maybe for a game like this it *should* impose far stricter limits on the number of towns that a single lord can hold. Or: there should be more roles so you don't end up with situations like that Harald Dubhaine in Lowlands. When he quit playing, it turned out he had over 100 towns all siphoning into a single mega-town. His success thus crowded out possible space for about a dozen other players. If there were actually meaningful roles and delegation, then Harald could have delegated out managing of his many towns to various other players, so keeping the "no limits" thing, but not actually crowding out other play. A similar thing has happened with Ascalon, as Rothrik quit recently too, and vast chunks of the map became fallow, clearly indicating that almost all of those (not counting Steelhold) were in fact held by the Rothrik player.

Really, what I think would work better is if a single lord can really only directly rule one town, or a handful, but you have subject towns, ruled by other players, and you can impose taxation on those. Then, have a "merchant's game" too, so have an economic class of players that's separate from the military/overlord class of players. If you raise taxes too high, then the merchant players might go elsewhere, and you can build your centralized armies through trade and resource collection. The merchant players may care more or less who the actual "Lord" is, much like real life.

I think a game like this one, but with many more "roles" could in fact fit a *lot* more players in, with stuff to do, and that would actually make playing from one town as a lord turn into an interesting game, since you'd have traders coming and going, and so on.

[coleslaw35]

A similar thing has happened with Ascalon, as Rothrik quit recently too, and vast chunks of the map became fallow, clearly indicating that almost all of those (not counting Steelhold) were in fact held by the Rothrik player.

It wasn't just Rothrik who retired his characters. We had a group chat with the major Ascalonian nobles and came to the conclusion that we should all just retire since none of us were actually having any fun anymore. I was of the opinion that I should stay to at least sort of oppose the shitlords, but I soon grew weary of that and also retired all my characters.

It wasn't like Rothrik retired and then suddenly all of Ascalon was available, a bunch of different Ascalonian nobles retired all at once which lead to the massive hole where Ascalon was. Sure, Rothrik and others still held quite a bit of land (including me), but that's because we couldn't find players who would actually stay to hold the land. Every time we made knight offers they were either abused or the players would just leave shortly after no matter what we did to try and interest them.

[SaintofWar]

I forgot about that, it's probably correcy

BTW Tom hasn't directly worked on the game in a *long* time.

There are a group of players who are involved with trying to update it, but I generally disagree with the direction they've taken. Adding more and more half-baked features that don't integrate / synergize with existing features, not improving balance features, basically stonewalling ideas that would attract and keep new players while doubling down on things that benefit an "old guard" / established kingdoms.

This is why active players generally make terrible devs.

This is patently wrong and uninformed. It is obvious to me that you had a bad experience with the game, which is not uncommon in M&F. Since you haven't bothered to think about what the changes introduced into the game actually do for the game, not that I think you'd even understand them, I am not going to bother explaining them either. I will say this:

New players and old alike, if you are interested in M&F, now is a good time to join. Just make sure you join a realm that can actually protect you. It is unlikely that you will find a decent Knight Offer as most people are jaded at this point with issues previously mentioned; your best bet is to spawn in a character close to where you want to go, and find one of the major landowners and send them a message which you can do at any of their cities.

Starting a Kingdom at this time is probably unfeasible until you learn who is active and who won't care about someone taking their land. Knowing which land has metal is also a boon but is entirely unnecessary. Elysium, for example, has heavy cavalry and heavy infantry, even though they have no access to metal whatsoever. It's just slower without it, but not impossible.

I hope you enjoy Might and Fealty, if you do decide to join. There will always be shitlords and whiners, and some of them will ruin your experience at some point--it is unavoidable--but if you stick with some of the core groups of players you will have a good time. Generally, I think, you get from M&F what you put in.

[Hanzoku]

This is patently wrong and uninformed. It is obvious to me that you had a bad experience with the game, which is not uncommon in M&F. Since you haven't bothered to think about what the changes introduced into the game actually do for the game, not that I think you'd even understand them, I am not going to bother explaining them either. I will say this:

*golfclap* Great way to get new players to join the game, by showing up and being a dick towards people who disagree with you, and then talk down to them.

[Arx]

I don't always agree with Reelya but he's rarely flat-out wrong about things. Hanzoku's dead on. If a guy who's played the game and knows a lot about game development finds things odd, a new player is going to be utterly bewildered.

"You get out what you put in" is I think a very apt way of putting it. The problem is that the point of a game is that you get out more than you put in, and it shouldn't all be front-loaded.