Myra
Killing time softly
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Okay. A month has passed, another Friday 13th came around, and we had another war … which we lost. Last time I had a lot of opinions about why that happened, this time I am honestly kind of stumped. This war was extremely well planned and the staff went above and beyond to make it awesome – taking into account many of the points that were made earlier in this thread. We knew the deadline from the start, it was a deadline in the evening, we had a lot of variety, and we had a lot of milestones that helped to keep up the motivation. There are also major storyline implications that we don’t know in full at this point, but it’s probably going to involve the loss of an NPC we have known for a very long time – so it was a really consequential war. The war was actually going really well too. There was a lot of forum activity, and we achieved the milestones easily. Except for the last one – actually winning the war. I think many players were a lot more motivated and fought a lot harder than the last time. I know I did. I changed my schedule and put off some things I actually wanted to do this week, and I tried to do everything I couldn’t put off as quickly and efficiently as possible, in order to free more time for this war. I also sacrificed sleep, to the point that I now feel awful. (My own fault, I know. I won’t repeat this mistake). There are some things that I consider risky moves by the staff. The war had 4 million waves, and although we came really close to defeating them, that is a lot to ask from a community that, as I pointed out last time, is smaller and busier than it was some years ago. Also, the catapult mission and the bombing run were changed/taken away at certain points in the war, leaving us with fewer and slightly slower options to defeat waves. But I don’t want to say that these are the reasons for the defeat – I don’t think they are. If we had won – and we were really close - I know that I would be praising these decisions now: Yay, they gave us a big, challenging war. What I want to say though: I feel that right now the consequences of wars are going in a direction that instead of rewarding the community for fighting, they are punishing us for not fighting enough. And it seems that players who fight the most are actually punished more than those who aren’t as active. Who is going to be affected by the curse the most? The people who play the most, right? Who is going to notice that Serenity is missing now? Those who play frequently and pay attention to the storyline, right? I feel that this is a mistake, I believe it is going to hurt the community and by extension, the game in the long run. I never thought I would say this, but in my opinion the consequence is: Wars need to become less demanding. It is not my fault that there are fewer people playing the game, and I cannot replace them by just fighting harder and harder. I feel burnt out. I have a full-time job and a social life, and those are not things I can or would like to change. If I keep feeling punished by wars for that, I will participate less and eventually I might stop participating. If this sounds huffy, I’m sorry, it’s not supposed to. It is honestly what I think will happen. This time I have no clear idea what actually needs to change, that is why would like to discuss it. Maybe it’s my attitude. If I end up feeling this when I care a lot about the outcome of a war, maybe I should just care less. Fight as much as I like, but not to a point where I feel tired of it. But if everyone adopts this attitude, and the demands of wars stay the same, we are not going to win anymore.
< Message edited by Myra -- 3/20/2015 19:44:16 >
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