Octarchal Auction (Discussion)

[Natrina]

 Just touching this: "2) Wouldn't have addressed the millions of tria too many in the community.  Granted, this has probably made more players collect tria but, it's more evenly dispersed". It was badly done from the beginning. They gave us a source that pumped million of trias into the economy, then made it stop as they realized it was badly done and instead of recurring to a wipe to balance things before auctioning houses, simply did it. Saying that this is a way to simply put off the millions of trias that got into the economy is forgetting the means to reach an objective, which is all the more worst when you're just "patching things", instead of actually taking care of them.

 I've been to a GM-oriented event that was quite fun, back then I actually wished for more gm-intervention. This one suffered a bit from the "upper people" (devs, gms...), but suffered mostly (in my opinion) because of the outrageous prices - that was what put me off. I just hope that the time in which in-game economy and settings economy become united comes sooner then not.

 I'm glad the Felines Lair got their house, congratulations to them, another victory for our society that only has itself to thank.

[zanzibar]

Zanzi, I'm not sure what happened after I left but while I was there I saw no godmodding ... the worst I saw was "/me throws a rotten tomato towards the auctioneer". If that's godmodding then I'm at a loss here. Nobody said anything about hitting them in the face or whatever, all they did was throw, something any normal person can do. If they actually went further than that and started telling the consequences of their attempts as well then I agree completely, it's out of line and should be ignored.

I can agree with that.

zanzi, to be blunt you can kiss my 

To be blunt, you need to learn some humility.  One of the sacrifices you make as a leader is that you can't always let out your knee-jerk reactions.

[ThomPhoenix]

I saw no bad roleplaying from Xillix, even though I wished that he would've struck down some of the trouble makers
Talad Priest, however, was talking OOC in main chat without brackets and used a lot of smilies. I frowned at it, but I can imagine some of the more die-hard roleplayers got aggravated.

[Ayshe]

I thought I might throw in my two cents.

Felines Lair has always strived to be a guild of exceptional roleplayers - i.e we try to set examples.

The house in question we had roleplayed as being ours for some time. Ask any member, there's a bar downstairs in the commons, the roof sometimes leaks in the rain and there is a dusty library scattered with Mordon's books.

When we heard that it was our house that was to be auctioned, the guild as a whole was mortified. Shurrim said it best, that RP'ers cannot come up with the funds that PL'ers have. It's true. During the auction as we watched the prices climb I was frantically calling in favours and pledges. To our guild, it was our home, and even though seven million trias is an insane amount of money, to the guild it was worth every coin.

Don't think that FL has many more millions to spare. The house has all but bankrupted the guild. Ayshe herself gave her last coin, and Hassadria has a long list of people we owe vast sums to. We will all be mining the rest of our natural lives.

Personally, the roleplay aspect of the auction would always be difficult to do, but I think it was handled very well. I was especially touched that the auctioneer mentioned our guild by name when they spoke of how the house came to be auctioned.

Our little family came together and we were desperate, begging people not to bid during the auction. As a roleplay event, we all felt for real this sense of urgency and impending loss. I am glad that the house was not given to us, and instead we all had to go into debt for many millions to afford the house. Is that not more like what would actually happen, had our kin been threatened with eviction?

I thank those who also roleplayed the event with us, especially those who rallied to our aid, both with voice and with coin.

Had we more than ten keys, I am sure you'd all be invited to the party

I just hope to Gods the furniture is a little less expensive...

- Ayshe

[bilbous]

Well I missed this event, doesn't matter to me. I myself have thrown the odd fish (during the shields event) but then I am a little iconoclastic and might well have done so again. I feel that the GM's have bent over backwards to acknowledge previous roleplay, as far as I am concerned you could role play ownership of anything you want but until now you have been squatters. It is kind of odd that those who pretended to have ownership should actually get it isn't it? I wonder if a log of the event could be linked so that those who missed it can actually see what went on.

Perhaps they should have sold off buildings that nobody had claimed if there are any, certainly they will likely all get snapped up in role-play as it appears claims ultimately get acknowledged.

One thing that occurs to me is that it might be more manageable in the future to have only guild leaders in attendance (if only guilds are allowed to be owners that is) and that otherwise you brings what money you can gather to the auction and cannot bid more than you have. Some wheeling and dealing could occur on the auction house floor where guilds can pool their money for a share of the keys. If unguilded people can have ownership then perhaps make the entry fee to the auction 5 times the reserve bid.

I think in any kind of public auction the bidders would have to register and buy a letter of credit, no-one else should be allowed to bid and the rabble be relegated to the cheap seats. Unsuccessful bidders would of course be allowed to redeem their letters of credit at the end of the auction.  Keys would be handed out on the basis of the letters of credit that are turned in for the winning bid such that if there are 10 keys and guild A has 50% of the value, guild B 30% and guild C 20% the keys would be handed out at 5, 3 and 2 respectively.  If these guild leaders so chose they could trade their keys for other compensation such as reimbursement of their contribution or alliance in a war or whatever the parties agree to.

[zanzibar]

@Ayshe:  You were godmoding, so you don't have much grounds for complaint in my book.  Sorry.

[Mordraugion]

Thats enough personal attacks I've read and re-read Ayshe's post several times now but fail to see a direct complaint, if anything the opposite

[Talad]

I will be interested to hear what you think were my OOC phrases during the auction. All I said during the auction was:
- to overlook with divination powers on the bidders, and check their purses
- warn people there will be other auctions, so it's unreasonable to have such bid bids
- ask some bidders why they wanted a particular house.

All the above was IC, not much roleplayed due to the need to check the database, but still IC.

About my char name "Talad Priest" it's quite evident he is not a normal priest, if it's the incarnation of Talad himself or not no one knows, but surely he has some great powers. Choosing another char name could be possible, but will not spread the name of Talad enough, so he is just known as Talad Priest.

[Ayshe]

@Ayshe:  You were godmoding, so you don't have much grounds for complaint in my book.  Sorry.

What's godmoding?

And um, I wasn't complaining - I was pleased with the outcome. Do you read before you post?

[neko kyouran]

godmodding: can be loosely considered any form of action that you as the player do to have your character force your will onto another's character.  as example, stating " /me stabs [insert name here] and watches as they die at my feet" would be godmodding. 

what zanzi is trying to state is that by you RPing that you and your guild were owners of that particular house were essentially godmodding by forcing everyone else to RP that you owned that house, when in reality, before the auction at least, you did not have permission from the settings team to claim you owned the house.  not until an official body such as the settings team gives someone the ok, in this case through IC auction, does someone own any house IG.

as for me, meh, whats done is done, and everyone should just move on.  enjoy your new house. 

[Ayshe]

what zanzi is trying to state is that by you RPing that you and your guild were owners of that particular house were essentially godmodding by forcing everyone else to RP that you owned that house

Ah, gotcha.

I don't contest that claim, certainly. And in nearly every respect, one guild saying they arbitrarily own something is unfair. But consider this, how many houses are ingame? We didn't choose that one to be auctioned, a dev did. Somewhere along the line, someone became aware that that particular house was being "squatted" in by a guild, either before or after they decided it was to be made a guildhouse. Of all the hundreds. Had they chosen the one next to it, or any other house, FL would have not made a squeak.

What does that say? Were we to completely change our roleplay history and retrofit every story centered on the house? There are many houses in game. Are we to believe they are all empty? Please. Someone chose that house deliberately. What better way to get interest than choose something that someone values. Valued because we 'godmoded' it.

I would love to hear the dev rationale for choosing the three houses so far auctioned; I have a feeling they are done so so that people who want to own specific buildings can own buildings. They have value because the community values them.

[Zan]

I always thought it was clearly stated on the forums that while roleplayers were free to pretend any building was their home, this could only last until the settings decided otherwise. That's why I find the main reason for revolting to be based on OOC problems. No player, no matter how good of a roleplayer they are, could have had a house with official approval ... that is up until now. However this whole 'revolt', no matter how unfounded it is, does show us one thing. The way houses are auction off does not really enhance roleplay. Instead it pushes people to grind away in gold mines or at least favors those who spend their whole time doing that. Sure it might be an original idea to get some tria out of the economy without wiping everything but I'd say it's also backfiring. I do not quite see roleplay being encouraged by this, except for on the auctions themselves perhaps.

Xillix, first of all .. sorry for ruining your birthday. I honestly didn't know it was your birthday, heck I didn't even know it was you leading the auction. I don't claim that what I wrote is the truth, it's just how I honestly saw things. Like I said I didn't stick around after the first house was auctioned off and most likely technical problems with the server not being able to handle all those people chatting, let me and many others miss out on a lot of what should have been said ... I'm sure that some of my issues would have disappeared if I could have seen it all.

Talad, I don't want to argue with you about what you said. Whether it was IC or OOC is something that can be argued from both sides. I just had the feeling that the moment you got involved the roleplaying atmosphere was broken for me. That was my opinion at the time .. and again, had I stuck around longer perhaps that opinion could have turned around.

I guess my lesson is that I should stick around for the entire event before giving criticism on it.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

Ayshe- the choice of houses was done aesthetically and at RANDOM

The exact thing occurred when we randomly chose the RoHP's house.

Zan- I was a bit tired when I first posted (and i worked on ps most of the day anyway ).

Zanzibar- You trying to teach humility is like an illiterate beggar teaching classic Japanese literature at Harvard.

[Izzabella]

Well I was only at the second acution that got cancled (second meaning after the RHoP but it got cancled and never happend) but my only issue was none of my char's have even had 100k for very long if even that, so I knew I was out of luck as far as the auction was concerned. So I looked forward to the event as a great roleplay experience. My char, being an outlaw and wanting to cause trouble, and earn a bit of tria, tried to rob a few people. Serpot (sp? sorry) did very well in saying he had no tria, even though my char did not really belive him she gave up and moved on as the acution people moved to harns, then to landing. There She spotted Talad Preist, a very rich looking Kran...I was a little dissapointed in the fact that I atemtped a few times to pickpocket him for a few circles and was completely ignored. But I moved on..it was not that big of deal, I fully understand that he was very busy with other stuff and whatever and so I am not mad.

What bugs me the most is the amount of whining.....I *knew* weather or not FL got the house there would still be whining...rember people YOU CAN"T PLEASE EVERYONE! All the settings team is trying to do is create a fun game for us all to enjoy and play, You think people that have a natural disaster such as a tornado take thier house and all thier belongings from them can sit back and say "no God you can't do that, I've been living in this house for X amount of years" No people pick up the peices and they move on with what they have, greatfull they still have the most important thing, eachother.

I guess I have nothing more to say. Oh wait yes I do...Devs, GM's, Settings team, whoever else who has ever contrubited to this game that is still in the process of being made: you are all doing a great job, I hvae enjoyed seeing all the changes and the improvemnts, not always the steps back but I have delt with it and  moved on, I guess it makes things more realisitc in the long run. anyways keep up the good work, it really is alot of fun to play Planeshift, and I really enjoy the roleplay atmosphre. The only complaint I have agisnst you is, you need to be carefull what you say, not matter how upset you may be, you represent this game, you are there to troubleshoot and help the players with game issues as well, and it turns the players away when they are told to "go to hell" by a settings team meber when they have an issue. Each indiviadual player does not know how hard your day has been or how many complaints you have gotten in the last hour. And on the same aspect the players need to think about that when complaining and maybe try to ask for help and not complain and atcak the settings team. I don't think it would hurt any of us to learn some niceness... You catch more flys with honey than vinagar...or something like that...anyways. think before you speak everyone, then we all can enjoy a better experience.

[Cebot]

I only can say one thing to those who complain that they got ignored...well, in fact a couple of points on that:

Chances are, that the massive lag has eaten up messages

Chances are, that a crowd of 10, 20, 30 or more all want the attention of one or two persons during an event. and chances are that the latter mentioned persons are humans and not robots, therefor: they cannot reply to each person of the crowd at the same time, messages get lost in the crowd and whatnotever. You think you have to complain about it? even whine about it? I suggest you to set up a big event once to see how it is when a big crowd is all talking to you at the same time, I would like to see you to satisfact every of them with replies and still do the event as planned. I would like to see you fail on that, just because that you will then understand how hard it is.

I haven't been there at the auction, so I won't dare to make comments on any of the happenings there, but as a general hint: try to think how it is for the other person, try to even imagine how hard it is to set up an event....have i forgotten anything? Oh well, feel free to throw your comments at me

But remember this before doing so:

I don't think it would hurt any of us to learn some niceness... You catch more flys with honey than vinagar...or something like that...anyways. think before you speak everyone, then we all can enjoy a better experience.

greetings,
Cebot

PS: @ izzy: very well said