Hurray! Another long OP post!

[pyrrhon]

Atysians, I call on all Atysians to rise up and break the Hegemony that has dominated our world for to long. What, another Kami vs. Kara rant? No, I mean the Hegemony of the same guilds holding the high level OPs month after month. The factional (kami v. kara) nature of the existing alliances makes us slaves to the hegemons. To even get a taste of the "rewards" of a high level OP, one must join the hegemons, ally with them, or otherwise go begging for a scrap. Trade of course is possible, but the hegemons can obviously dictate the terms.

This is my suggestion then. Let us (all Atysians) take the OPs from the hegemons and hand them over to someone else. It doesn't really matter who or what faction. If the factions feel the OP must remain in faction hands, so be it. Let us ask the new owners to treat the OP like a community OP (or share in whatever way they want). Regardless of whether they treat it like a community OP or hoard the rewards, after one month, we (the homins of Atys) take it over again and hand it over to someone else.

Who gets to take over? It doesn't matter how the choice is made, lottery, vote, duels, contests, alphabetical, whatever. They'll only hold it a month and as long it doesn't go to the same guilds over and over, any breaking of the hegemony is good thing.

As for the hegemons, I call on them to participate willingly. Show your true heroism and leadership by being able to walk away from your OP with dignity and grace (assuming the community can defeat your best defensive effort). A truly noble and heroic guild would not need to cling to an OP month after month.

Let me add this, since it needs to be said upfront. As far as I know, ALL of the holders of the of the high level guilds ARE generous with the OP products and DO SHARE with people including Freely giving cats to Complete Strangers (I can atest personally to this). I have received free cats and mats from many of the guilds (Karavan AND Kami) holding the high level OPs. I am NOT accusing any guild of being selfish in any way. I Bow to each of them for their generosity and their political and military ability to retain their OPs for so long.

Nevertheless, I believe that 1) hegemony on Atys is a negative overall, 2) the factional nature of the existing power structure is detrimental to the community overall, 3) some shakeup of the status quo would be a fun and interesting development. The Kami and Karavan will in the end need to unite to defeat the kitin. We should not let factional differences make homins eternal enemies of homins.

Disclosure: As I post this, I am a member of the Kami alliance. I post this without consulting them and whether I am cast out of the Kami alliance for my heretical position is up to them. Let me add that the Kami alliance is a friendly and honorable group which I encourage any devout Kami to join.

(Hegemony (Wikipedia definition): the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. Hegemony controls the ways that ideas become "naturalized" in a process that informs notions of common sense.)

Lastly, I didn't post this in the sticky OP thread because that thread seems to be dealing with ways to change/improve the mechanics of the world/game. I say we need to deal with the world/game as it is.

[katriell]

I have to disagree, because my purest happiness (in game and in life) comes from giving things away freely. Crystals and flowers are the easiest way for me to do that.

[gillest]

Even tho my gaming hours do not allow me to participate to OP battles + Im solo guild, I would tend to agree with this.

I do not believe OP have been created to be Kami or Kara, they have been created to be GvG. So any Karavan guild could challenge a Karavan OP owned by another guild.

The fact of wanting to keep the OP made the players to create alliances and turned the OP battles into Faction battles.

Maybe we can "blame" (too strong a word) the Devs and the CSR for this too: it may be due to some kind of conditionning and bad timing: after the old lands episodes and the temple construction, players have been used to fight in FvF and not primarily in GvG; this trend seems to have just continued with the OP battles..

Now, to have a real GvG OP battle would really be a mark of real fairplay imo: fairplay from attackers as well as defenders who will have to stick only to the strength of their guild and not rely on other guilds to help

[philu]

Maybe we can "blame" (too strong a word) the Devs and the CSR for this too: it may be due to some kind of conditionning and bad timing: after the old lands episodes and the temple construction, players have been used to fight in FvF and not primarily in GvG; this trend seems to have just continued with the OP battles..

Have to agree with this. Mistakes were definitely made in the timing of things. They should not have started a faction war and then give us something that was originally described as a GvG feature. That was never going to happen once conflict between the factions had begun.

Who knows what OPs would have been like if they had come first. Maybe the early days of them would have been truly GvG. Maybe not.



* Before you all get started *

Blah blah you're bad.

Blah blah no you're badder.

Blah blah you did it first.

Blah blah no you did.

Blah blah propoganda.

Blah blah counter propoganda.

Blah blah blah.

There that should save this turning into yet another long pointless FvF "who did what" debate.

[ffxjosh]

The way i see it:

If people were not happy with "the smae" guilds holind all the goodies (cat flowers etc) thern they would have done sumthing by now.

The thing is that the guilds who hold the higher level OP's are aliied with lower level guilds (well all the ones i know of are) and so the lowever level guilds do get a a portion of the rewards.

Why should an 6 man guild comprised of level 100 members, get an op that is held my a 30 man guild comprised with lvl 200+ players?

Just a thought (or 2)

Tyilin

xxx

[pyrrhon]

Why should an 6 man guild comprised of level 100 members, get an op that is held my a 30 man guild comprised with lvl 200+ players?

Tyilin

Because the status quo discourages new players from staying and new guilds from developing. New guilds (recruiting new players) face the discouraging prospect of probably never being able to hold an OP. New players realize that they will probably never be able to experience the "purest happiness [that] comes from giving things away freely." (Katriell). New guilds will never be able to leverage cats for alliances or mats or whatever. New guilds will never be able to develop from a "6 man guild comprised of level 100 members" into a "30 man guild comprised with lvl 200+ players." I'm not saying that the status quo is not fair. I'm just saying that the status quo is not conducive to growing the player base and enhancing the enjoyment of the world for all.

[meloner]

the real mistake was allowing other guilds to support the attackers/defenders.
only by removing that will u get GvG

[ffxjosh]

Because the status quo discourages new players from staying and new guilds from developing. New guilds (recruiting new players) face the discouraging prospect of probably never being able to hold an OP. New players realize that they will probably never be able to experience the "purest happiness [that] comes from giving things away freely." (Katriell). New guilds will never be able to leverage cats for alliances or mats or whatever. New guilds will never be able to develop from a "6 man guild comprised of level 100 members" into a "30 man guild comprised with lvl 200+ players." I'm not saying that the status quo is not fair. I'm just saying that the status quo is not conducive to growing the player base and enhancing the enjoyment of the world for all.

I'm in a six man guild. we are part of an allience, and when our time comes, we will have an outpost. We wont need an outpost to grow. far from it, yes maybe cats will help. but we feel that us being the best we can be (not just in terms of levels) is a far better reason for sum1 to join our guild, than to give out cats.

I understanbd where you are comming from, but OP's have only been about for a very short time. Ryzom lasted just fine prior to outposts.

Outposts are far from the be-all-and-end-all of Ryzom. Most new players who play aspire to earn the right to hold an outpost (if they create a guild) rather than get an outpost via proxy.


EDIT: im sorry if i seem a bit harsh. the big guilds have earnt their outpost(and proven that they should keep it), who are we to take it from them?

Tyilin

xxx

[marct]

the real mistake was allowing other guilds to support the attackers/defenders.
only by removing that will u get GvG

Please see ALL of the past posts on why GvG alone would be bad also. The same ***** about numbers would be apparent fairly quickly.

The largest guild would own ALL of the outposts.

[ffxjosh]

Please see ALL of the past posts on why GvG alone would be bad also. The same ***** about numbers would be apparent fairly quickly.

The largest guild would own ALL of the outposts.

Or they would just invite everyone who was same faction alligned into their guild prior to attack/defend