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[Ehndras]

People are afraid to trust. We've been steamrolled by trolls taking fealty offers then fucking people over, stealing estates, burning them to the ground - destroying RL MONTHS of work, then killing themselves. It really fucking sucks!

Are you Thrain, by the way? I was about to give you your own estate and a nice chuck of troops too :|

Actually, I've kinda had it with this game already. I'm getting the impression you have to be some RP-wankers bottom-bitch to get any foothold in this game at all, and that totally sucks. I tried signing up with two different lieges and they were both a-holes about it, even though I tried to communicate with both of them and ask for advice. I have honestly never come across a game that's more hostile to starting out players as the "experience" of trying to get the very most basic start in this game.I kinda get the impression that this game has it's heirarchy and they're not helpful to new players at all.

Well, I'm out. I killed all my characters. I don't have time to deal with snarky fucktards just to play some game.

[Reelya]

I'm not in the game right now.

[Ehndras]

Alekhsandr/Ehndras/Maximilian Aurea, Arh'ala Azharod, Lysandra Gault-Moore, Magnus Decimus Aurelius Gault, Pestilence, Septima Luciana Thorbrandr, and Brynjar Thorbrandr II here. If you're from B12, please let me know via in-game message so I know I can trust you more easily. I have estates and troops to give but I've gotten multiple dickwads taking my fealty offers then attacking my settlements, burning buildings down it took me fucking WEEKS to build, stealing the little bit of gold I produce, enslaving my hard-earned peasants, and otherwise pissing me the hell off.

Join Rathgar or Tetsuyama and RP a bit. I was literally handed 3-4 estates right off the bat just for posting 2-3 short messages IC. the Archonian Dominate is looking for a diplomat even if you're brand new, and I suggested numerous other influential positions that will also be added. Hell, some of our brand-new newbie characters are Archons, which literally tell the entire country what to do. Ascalon rewards activity and good RP, and so does Arrakesh. Arrakesh just took a bunch of northern territory so we'll be properly able to give estates out now / very soon. I have 5 estates under Alekhsandr and I'd like to give 2-3 away but people aren't responding and I can't risk having to blow 200-300 hard-earned troops to reclaim from someone who goes dark after a few days.

The opportunities are there - you just have to be strategic. Its an RP game. I started off as an absolute nobody and carved my little empire.

Eventually, I hope to start a Dwarf-themed realm that's B12 friendly. If anyone else wishes to help, I could see where it'd be most possible to do so.

A LOT is going on. the Erstes Imperium just fractured and half the kingdoms are seceding because their leader is a raving lunatic IC and wants them to do so OOC because he has so much work and so many characters and the Imperium has grown so much that he wants things to happen and produce some more fun via !!WAR!!

For those of you who have had some bad opportunities, Tetsuyama is a good bet.

Also, you're misunderstanding what starting independently means. You're meant to find someone to swear fealty to, not wander around independently. We're way too late-game for that. If there were fewer players it'd be doable, but with so many new people we don't have much free land til they open the northwest. As SOON as I get a hint of that dark land opening, I'm starting a B12 expedition to forge our own kingdom there.

Piece of advice? Its all about finding the right leader. I almost ragequit Erstes/Eldamar because some dickbag rebelled ans tried to kill me as soon as I joined during my 1st week, but since I reported him to the Duke and King of Eldamar, they rewarded me with a few estates, a position on a holy order, and I'm now one of King Boras Kommagene's most trusted friends.

It IS all about who you know, but again... "Might & Fealty." The medieval era wasn't a friendly place, after all.

[Zangi]

So... efforts to protect players from griefing amounts to: "Doing so would restrict the freedoms of the 'good' players?"

[Reelya]

I think a lot of bad game design choices can be marked up to "keeping it realistic". Some things may be realistic, but they're incredibly poor design decisions for a game. Basically when you have a small established crowd who actively scare away new players, that's a design flaw no matter how realistic it is.

Realism is also a poor rationale because we always apply it selectively. I'm not talking about Might and Fealty here, but in general game design & game player circles. If we want full realism let's make realtime the same as gametime, and give every character a bladder/bowels values and you have to remember to log in to get them to take a dump, otherwise they shit their pants where they are standing. So, I'm not specifically refering to this instance in particular, but often people have some shitty pet game mechanic they want in a game that's being designed, and they'll go ""we need <feature X> because it's realistic", but they won't extend that same logic to a million other "realistic" things that we apparently don't need even though they are realistic.

[wereboar]

Don't make judgments based on you playing a game for one day.
Yeah, you happened to meet a few players who didn't give a shit about noobs. Design flaw? Really? Ever played any other online game?

You don't have to play this game if you don't feel like it, just don't come back here to spew ignorant crap about it.

[Reelya]

No need to snark. I'm just stating it like it is, and not blaming anyone.

If you have a game where the rules basically mean that the active players tend to scare away most new players, then there's a design issue, and it's not the player-bases fault. An MMO is meant to bring new players in, to experience the game, not create a closed shop that's nearly impenetrable. It would be like if e.g. in a MMORPG you have campers at every spawn location who immediately ambush and kill all new players. "Well, the medieval world was rough so deal with it" would be what established players might say.

That's basically a very unhealthy situation for an online game to be in, since over time you can find that the player base gradually shrinks rather than expands. And then you end up with a situation where the dev slows down the introduction of new features since there's not really a lot of call for it, and the dev might eventually just say "you know what, this isn't really working out" and they spend more and more time on other projects.

It would be useful if the game displayed statistics such as number of active players, number of characters per player etc.

[Arx]

Reelya, I suggest you go to the official forums and create a thread (there's a rage zone if you don't feel like being polite about it ) with all your issues. Tom watches the forum, and from what I've seen he's willing to engage with issues like yours if you're willing to explin what your issue is and how he can fix it. Don't know that he'll actually do anything about it, but he certainly won't if you don't let him know.

[Reelya]

I just want to mention to wereboar, that I came in here asking how one goes about getting a foothold in this game as a new player and basically got "being a noob sucks, get used to it" as the advice. All my assessments are based on what other people in this thread have told me. I'm going off what you guys are telling me 100%. And you haven't provided any evidence that anything I said was incorrect ... you're welcome to correct my facts rather than just going "meh you don't know shit". Feel free to pick apart what I've written.

I won't be making a thread, because the kind of problem we are talking here is what I'd call a structural issue, with how the game works on a core level. The existing lords control all the means of production. If you want to do anything in the game, you become a servant of one of them. That's not something a quick fix could change.

[Arx]

Ehndras did, in fact, explain why you're wrong a few posts up.

If you're from B12, please let me know via in-game message so I know I can trust you more easily. I have estates and troops to give but I've gotten multiple dickwads taking my fealty offers then attacking my settlements, burning buildings down it took me fucking WEEKS to build, stealing the little bit of gold I produce, enslaving my hard-earned peasants, and otherwise pissing me the hell off.

Join Rathgar or Tetsuyama and RP a bit. I was literally handed 3-4 estates right off the bat just for posting 2-3 short messages IC.

And even if you think it's a base structural issue, mention it. You don't know that it's not fixable.
Of course, it's also entirely possible that this is just not a ame type you enjoy, which is fair enough too.

[Reelya]

Well, I wouldn't say any of that proves anything I said was wrong.

- lieges are paranoid. for the reasons Ehndras mentioned. That paranoia plays into what I experienced. "Almost everyone's paranoid and won't cut me a break" is all that a random new player would pick up on since they don't get the other side of the story. It really doesn't matter why they are paranoid, if you come across a bunch of unhelpful paranoid people you only remember that they weren't helpful.

- It's all about "who you know" and the fact that I know someone from outside the game is the only reasonable chance I've heard about of getting anywhere. Certainly, if a random person wandered into Might and Fealty they wouldn't have that Bay12-related offer from Ehndras to fall back on. And you'd basically have to work your way up by the next option, which is :-

- Or, you can RP (schmooze) a bit and hope that someone already in the game takes a liking to you. But of course, you'd need to build up your roleplayling persona a bit before you could make inroads with that tactic, which would probably mean you'd already have been playing for a while. Sure, it's nice that Ehndras gave me some tips on countries which might be friendlier, but again that's information gleaned from outside the game, and not something I had a reasonable chance of learning inside the game.

[Arx]

- Or, you can RP (schmooze) a bit and hope that someone already in the game takes a liking to you.

Certainly Rathgar isn't ike that at all. I just sent a message that wasn't clearly OOC (effectively "Hey, you said 'no masters', is that for real?" and the guy offered me lands and entourage.

[Ehndras]

Rathgar is awesome. I literally posted one sentence in a hurry about how Id like to go raid as a viking or some bs and some king promised me 4 estates and has been super cool with me.

[Arx]

Oh, yeah:

I'd like to give 2-3 away but people aren't responding and I can't risk having to blow 200-300 hard-earned troops to reclaim from someone who goes dark after a few days.

* Sarden waves

But seriously, I've been looking for an estate, but I don't want to be a bother.

[Neonivek]

I think a lot of bad game design choices can be marked up to "keeping it realistic". Some things may be realistic, but they're incredibly poor design decisions for a game. Basically when you have a small established crowd who actively scare away new players, that's a design flaw no matter how realistic it is.

The biggest issue with realism is that the biggest surrealism will always penetrate into the game. Your character risks their lives, you do not. Your character gets to eat well and sleep on a lavish bed, you do not.

That will always keep the game from ever REALLY being realistic.

Since a Lord is probably hard pressed to find competent vassals to take care of their lands. While a vassal who is being screwed over typically won't want to do suicide runs because he kind of wants to live.

This is why in fiction often the more realistic you try to be, the less realistic you end up becoming.