Concerns with the RA

I would like to say that we shouldn't get too heated with this. I will say this much, Avis, you don't put the blame for your factions problems on us because "we don't get it" or "we aren't ready to handle it". It comes off as extremely pretentious and does little to actually make your point.

On the other hand, I would like to say that people need to just RP well. It isn't an easy thing to do but it isn't unachievable. What I think needs to happen is a constant effort from both parties to get to know one another and see each other as people. Become agreeable, plan events and discuss what is and isn't good RP without getting angry.

In my thread analyzing RP, I mention Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. It has some good points to make on perspective and compassion but that is all I will say for now, spoilers, you know.

 

hi

some of you may remember me

Avis summed up everything pretty nicely tbh but I suppose I'll just elaborate on some things.

firstly: we tried

God damn we tried. DirtyGoblin, Avis and I really didn't like how the old Armada had gone. It was hypermilitary, just your standard space marines in space doing space things on spaceships with space guns. So after the Ironclad Enclave failed (which had ties to the RA, obviously, but that wasn't supposed to be known, we kept it waaaaay under wraps for the longest time) we more or less decided to simply bring back the RA under the new faction guidelines, but this time do things differently.

Like Avis said, we were trying to go beyond just a military force. We wanted economy, we wanted politics, we wanted civilians. We tried so hard, you can still see the remnants of the effort lying around the subforum. I was in charge of the military, because let's face it Crosswell's "political" and "economic" policies really would just be shooting someone in the face anyway.

i was a really shitty leader

like holy god

But I had vision. I wanted it organized, I wanted stuff like fireteams and chains of command and everything nice and dandy and whatnot. Everything was supposed to be accounted for: weapons, ammunition, manufacturing capabilities, training regiments.

We wanted to create an actual faction, you know? We wanted something special, something people could look up to and see and go "wow, those guys really are unique, they know what they're doing". Industrial centers, civilian populations, laws, trade routes. It was going to start off small and become more complex over time. We knew we couldn't build our own colony because we didn't have the resources, so in true RA utilitarian fashion we just smashed our remaining ships into some planet and went from there.

We had members by that time. HOLY SHIT MEMBERS HOSDIGOSKGLDJLKDJGLSKJGSLDJKGLDGJL Pre-Hiatus RA only had like fucking three people when DG was doing life stuff like god damn we had members!

that was where the problems started

If I'm completely honest with myself we dreamed too big. There was a disconnect - the leaders were on the same page, we all knew what we wanted because we had been with each other for so long by that point, you know? In the beginning it was DirtyGoblin and his right hand man Pixel. Avis and I both joined the RA at the same time, dunno how long it had been around by then truthfully but it was okay, we both got put into the ASO at around the same time.

then Avis goes and gets himself rekt by Redcrest and it was just Crosswell

lol

But he stuck around OOCly and both DG and Pixel took note of us - myself for my rookie starcheat skills and Avis because he's a lovable douchebag who believed in the cause.

We were all on the same page. We were going to create the Armada. It had achieved some sort of pseudo-religious meaning for us. The perfect faction. What we had always wanted. It was our baby, our brainchild and something we could devote ourselves to. The most fun we ever had in the faction, I think, was when we were considering the what-ifs. We had thought we had learned our lesson from pre-Hiatus and we thought we were gonna do it right this time. There wasn't any drama within the faction, we were all buds.

but there was still the disconnect

Nobody else knew what we wanted. Neither inside the faction, nor outside. Again, if I'm honest with myself I'd say in the back of my mind I immediately had my worries. Nobody seemed to really care about building up the infrastructure, they mostly just wanted to go on missions and shoot things. Less logistics, more boom. I tried to appease them because I was worried that they would jump ship due to boredom, and honestly my biggest paranoia was returning to the time of obscurity, when it was just Crosswell, Donovan and a few others doing god knows what because we couldn't do anything without members. So I tried to put some stuff on hold for that, to keep them happy.

and in the end it just didn't work out

I had nobody below me to rely on - none of the soldiers understood. Things were repeating themselves, issues were starting to form. OOC problems with select members of the playerbase started up, and it really bothered DirtyGoblin for some reason. I think we all imploded around the same time for different but similar reasons. DG couldn't stand the drama. Avis was the economic leader, so he probably suffered the most in terms of people not understanding the vision. And myself? Cheesy as it is, we had all been together for so long and I couldn't stand the thought of trying to lead the Armada without Tarl Hollow or Donovan.

we tried so hard

so so hard

for ages

It was to the point where I couldn't even kill Crosswell off. He should've died a long time ago, you know? I hated the fact that he was still living. But I couldn't, because for a time Donovan wasn't an equal level, DG was away doing life-stuff (this was still pre-Hiatus) and I couldn't stand the thought of killing off a character who at that time was the sole leader, one with so much development - he had gone from fucking enlisted Private to leader of the entire military, for Pete's sake! - only to replace him by some random Boss McLeaderman that would in the end just be Crosswell under a different name and without the backstory.

I tried balancing all of our gear. The power armor (omg power armor!!!!!!!111!!11231232!) was destroyed on its maiden sortie. I kept explicit lists of how many we had of each variant - their loadouts, their weaknesses and strengths, who was qualified to use them (because yes you cannot just get into a fucking exosuit without training it doesn't work like that). But all that balancing didn't matter in the end, you know? Because power armor is power armor, and power armor is op.

So the power armor stayed locked on Crosswell's ship. No touchie the power armor. People no like the power armor.

Power armor op.

It was the same thing for the weapons. How much ammo they could carry, how fast they fired, how many shots until they overheated, where all the switches and levers were. For the advanced stuff, like the MAW, extra information was included like how much time it took to transform between modes.

I tried to tell this to the soldiers ICly as well. Weapon training and all that. But that didn't matter either because people were going AFK, some emoted being asleep or spacing out, etc. etc. And those that did pay attention probably just forgot about it five minutes after the training was over, so it's k.

the disconnect still remained

I suppose in the end the only one who truly got it was Trace/Ta'Lone. And for that, and I legitimately mean this:

Thank you.

Thank you for understanding. Thank you for trying your hardest to write things down and get things through legitimate means. Thank you for trying.

I suppose in the end all of this was a lesson in futility. Since my rather sudden departure, I've actually thought about this whole experience. I've made good friends. I've met some good people, some assholes, and some who were just plain funny. Most are a little combination of all of the above.

Probably the biggest lesson I've learned is the following:

People won't change unless they want to.

It's a lesson quite a few people here don't yet seem to understand. You can yell at someone all you want, you can try and explain things as thoroughly as possible, but at the end of the day it is solely that person's decision to actually change.

Three months ago, if I saw this, I would've been "lol no" and brought Marcus-motherfucking-Crosswell back from the dead (for like the fifteenth time or something idk), had him march down to Opportunity/Port Last/whatever it's name is nowadays in all his bandana-wearing glory and ordered every soldier there to drop and give him no less than a thousand pushups.

But guess what? It wouldn't fucking matter.

The person in command does not matter. Who leads the operation does not matter. The leader gets it? That's swell, it doesn't matter. A faction, a group is composed of individuals, all with different thoughts and personalities. If that disconnect remains, then the leader has changed his beliefs. The faction has not.

If the RA wants to change, it will. Banning every last member will not change anything, because next month it'll be the same damn thing again, just with a different group on a different hub world. Mod intervention will not change anything, it'll just create an unpleasant experience for everyone involved and destroy already fragile relationships.

Do I want the RA to improve? Of course I do, because it is and always will be my baby. Can I force it to change? Nope.

Do I have faith? Maybe, but my opinion doesn't matter anymore, because the torch has already been passed. And like it or not, the era of Tarl Hollow, Eugene Donovan and Marcus Crosswell is over.

so all i'll say is "good luck"

drops mic

backflips out window

 

Vote for me.

 

I'm trying to do this.

 

someone remembered my name *sniff*
Anyways, on to serious stuff.

I'm gonna lead off with saying this: my post was not to blame the RA's problems on everyone else. I was listing obstacles that I had personally with running the faction, and in case you didn't read the whole thing, I made it very clear that my largest issue was probably the pressure from those inside the faction. Like M-Bot said, I tried. We all tried. A lot of the issues boiled down to paople simply not being willing to change perspective for a moment, or even try to talk to us with the intent of actually solving problems instead of being 100% sure we were wrong and they wanted t somehow rub it in our faces.

I guess my biggest point here is this:

This is a flawed community dealing with a group that is perhaps more flawed, but no one is willing to admit that anyone else is right.

I'll list off a things on this server that I have rarely (If ever) seen happen:
Compromise.
Try to put yourself in their perspective.
Be humble. Understand that you don't know everything about everything.
Do what is right or socially acceptable. Not what is convenient.

And lastly, and probably the most outstanding and important:

Never give up.
Never surrender.

 

Alright. Skipi, you and I have known each other for a while now, and while I can honestly say that most of the stuff up there is fine, if a bit rude, you need to stow it with the last one. Just straight up telling people to stop RPing because they makes mistakes is a bad precedent to set. Also, skipi. I for one KNOW you have been guilty of some of these things in the past. And dont you dare try to argue with me on that. Artyom. As for edgy tropes..... Stop tattling on the kettle, pot.

As for everything else being said here, the one thing I would say needs to be done is that the RA needs to be rethought or brought down. This is for multiple reasons;

1. The faction has enough OOC hate against it, and from it, that it is unfeasible to keep it alive.
2. There are enough significant problems with the idea that trying to keep it running while you figure out ways to fix those problems is an iffy idea at best
3. The faction has no clear leadership. Before, we had Tarl, we had Avis, and we had Crosswell. I am not saying you guys were the best leaders or anything, but everyone knew who the leaders were. I work in the RA, and I don't know who the hell is in charge anymore, even by looking through the forums. I have an inkling that Joshua is, but I can't be sure because I can't ask IC as it'll sound stupid, and OOC I cant even find the info.

I really want the faction to work, truly, but I feel as if these problems are a bit too much for it to handle at the moment, and especially while the server itself is having its own issues.

 

I have replied to your earlier post, and while I didnt agree with the way you worded the last one, I can fully agree with this. I myself have been part of the RA for a while now, and even though my character has been around for a kind of ridiculously long time, I have always consented to death. The closest I ever came was that I was hit on the head with a rock that fell after something exploded, and I slid down a very large hill. I wound up in a coma. But at the same time, I was never put in a situation that made me feel as if my character was going to die. If i had been put in such a situation, I personally would have let Fenris bite the bullet.

At the same time, rping combat is still really unstable for the most part. And the more people there are, them ore unstable it is. Its definitely gotten a lot better than it used to be, but its still very difficult to figure out a lot of this stuff. I'm a pretty fast reader and typer, and if I can't keep up with the flow of the combat because there are too many messages going out, then I can guarantee there are plenty of other people who are even more lost. I dont really know what the solution is to be honest, but something that will definitely help is that people dont take 15 people from each side to the conflict. That, or we set up a specified order in which people type out their response.
Of course, that could take a really long time. In any case, I agree with skipi on this one; not enough people in the RA suffer even injuries. I can list the number of operations Fenris has come out of unscathed on one finger. And that was because she wound up pinned for the most part and only got out of being pinned by the time the battle was almost over. I also agree that injuries should be taken more seriously. If youre hit in the shoulder with a high caliber bullet, your entire arm isnt going to work, you will be bleeding a LOT, and if you arent treated within about 5 minutes, its entirely likely you WILL die from blood loss. And regardless of whether you get treated or not, you WONT be fighting any further beyond laying there and shooting a pistol, or arming and throwing a grenade.

 

Regarding injuries, I have some agreements/disagreements. I know that several members receive injuries enough to make up for the untouched little glass snowflakes that other peoples' characters are. For example, Joshua Scheffler is bordlerline maimed in every conflict. However, there is a limit. If you sustain major injuries repeatedly, it doesn't matter how many times you are treated medically. You will die decades early, if nothing else. Saying 'I get beaten up every operation" is not a good thing, to be honest. The pain needs to be spread around in a military faction. Most people should be sustaining some kind of injury, no matter how minor, and people should frequently die. I don't know the exact length of time it has been since an RA member died, but I heard MkVenner had, and he was a raw recruit, so it could not have been as long ago as some of these people claim. I myself killed three soldiers while I was a part of the faction, so it does happen. "Pre-Hiatus," I held the only dead character within the faction, and as pretentious as it may sound, I more or less put away the "We're invincible" mentality in the RA with this character's death.

There is a flip side, though. A faction may have minimal casualties, but I know that for myself, I had adopted the mentality of "No one else's characters' die, so why should ours?" after a point. I can comfortably say that the RA was the most organized faction by far. I personally kept track of the resources, which Trace now does. Several people were involved in the actual military training aspects of the faction; individuals were trained on certain weaponry, and received basic training in other weapons or tactics, and we had a very thorough system to check ranks, abilities, and so on. Realistically speaking, the faction would have the best trained soldiers in Antares. A squad of 5-6 soldiers would realistically be able to devastate a rag-tag group of bandits in nearly any situation. There are some, such as when a group of RA soldiers was ambushed on a ship by the Outcasts (Which went down quite well OOCly), but the losses the RA has sustained in the past simply to avoid people complaining is a very, very, long list. Since we have returned as a faction, we have lost a lot of people, be it through inactivity, character death, and resignations. The "RA characters never die and are invincible" mentality that many people have here simply is not valid. I'm not sure what the situation is now right at this time, but I have noticed a lot of the concerns being posted in this thread are concerns the RA has always dealt with, and to be honest, I'm sick of stupid little rumors running around about how powergamey we were, and I want to set the record straight.

I'm going to try to talk to the USCM guys, and figure out what I can do to help set them on track. They're good people, and they'll listen, but to be honest, the feedback that this community gives is less than polite in its first steps.

Keep in mind, however, that this is a faction that was trying to adhere to the community's ideals, despite others abstaining from them, and is trying to involve the rest of the server in its events as well. At least give them the courtesy of respect for doing what I can definitely say most others haven't done in combination.

 

I Have something to add, Losing Dust Today in a rescue battle really hit me, Most people Make Mains that they spend so much time on, and develop a large story, just to have it loss because "Pssh, we kill off our characters all the time, Just make another one" Mentality Has just been made so "Natural" and "Every day". The point of RP is not to just make millions of alts to throw into millions of other alts, when you lose someone you have been playing for 6+ Months, it REALLY feels like you are losing a family member, Or a part of you has died, Really i want to add that one of the only reason's i decided dust should be killed off is the sole-Fact That if i didn't i would have just been told "Oh you have main-itus, and there's no way she could of survived, since you did that i'm going to insult you to the point no one else wants to RP with you either". Im going to be honest, i cried when Dustclaw was killed, it was one of my most favorite, Love-able, stubborn characters i have ever had and or made, and i feel like a lot of my own personality Died inside me, and that character. So to conclude we "RA folks" Don't have the "We're Invincible!" Attitude, We really just don't want something we love to die.

 

Please change the title of this thread to "Reasons DG Burnt Out: The Drama Barge"
There was a lot of text here.
A lot of unfamiliar names.
And vague stuff.
Thumbs up to all who participated in this thread and said things that were stuff.
I paid close attention, and all I got was the typical blah-blah-drama that is pretty much so catch-all, it's damn near identical to the usual blah-blah-drama stuff that has been applied to factions/groups/players in the past.

I've learned that Ravenloft (nwn) has heavy rp, gritty themes and mature (notERP) roleplay, but with nowehere near as much drama. So I've moved onward. I poke around here every once in awhile, the mood striking me to make a pc, get involved again. Then I find threads like these, to remind me that "Oh god. Whine. Whine as far as the eye can see."

ProTip: These threads never have any effect. It's a lost cause, and a waste of time. Granted, the RA's never had a thread like this before to my knowledge. But, if it did. *Shrug* I'd just wait and see if a Mod said anything. Or see if I had any pms. Or other messages other than a random bile-thread. Typically, legit conversations make a bigger difference, than a handful of angsty folk throwing a fit as publicly as they can.

 

Tlr : Ramble, rant? Ramble. Lack of motivation. Try PMing people. Works better.

 

Making a character isn't the hard part.
It's letting go.

 

When it comes to characters in roleplaying games, I have two rules: Don't get attached to your character. It could be your character of six months who has become supreme overlord of the world, but he can die at any time. Steve Jobs died of Pancreatic Cancer while living in a safe place in a first world country. Your character living on the frontier of unexplored space can die from literally anything you could think of.

Second rule: If it is likely that your character will die, and it makes sense for them to die in that situation, it's a good time for them to die. Your death means more when it is unexpected and not planned out. It makes for significantly better roleplay, and opens up the gate to try new options.

Ask people I roleplayed with; My characters can make you pissed off like nothing else (Eitan Levy), or make you legitimately angry with me when they die (RIP AVIS). Death is a very important part of roleplay, and letting a character be as eternal as the server itself is generally, to be blunt, bad RP.

 

It's also a good idea to let something die when it's time has come. I know I keep pointing at it, but I've been told it's an excellent example. The dynamic of New Chicago. It died, horribly infact. However, at some point, I learned that it was fun and interesting RP. It's inspired some of my best writing and videos based on this.

My problem with the RA is mainly that they don't seem to be willing to have fun in the chaos. I'm now seeing an effort to change that but you must realize that it's time to probably move on from it. Come up with something new, fresh. You have the people for it. You have the imagination. Make something people will love, not resent.

For instance, I have a faction/colony idea in the works now. I've pitched the idea to even the most seasoned of the NC and ICIA haters and even they had to admit it was an excellent one. I won't give details here because it's a surprise but it is an idea that took everything I learned /not/ to do with the ICIA and applied it to a new faction.

At the end of the day, it's probably best to start from scratch. Make something new and refreshing. Something people haven't had the chance to RP before. You have the numbers, and I have faith that you will take what you have learned and apply it to a new amazing product.

 

So what you're saying is that the USCM should've died when they did their "We're dying." event?

 

Doc put it very nicely. Making a new character isn't hard. It's letting go. When Shadow died of bloodloss and due to his injuries after the takeover by the Blackfang I had quite a hard time letting him go. But I very much knew that his character development had stopped.

This marked a new milestone in my time as an RPer and was his last bit of progress completing him as a real character. His death and the death of other characters on that mission marked the beginning of a new chapter for the life of the surviving members of the colony and the now-disbanded RA; providing more opportunities for roleplaying for the involved parties.

That aside, I think that the death of my first character will help me be a better roleplayer as I begin to understand more and more about how things should be handled and how I shouldn't take them so lightly RP-wise.

 

Letting go is hard, but it's a necessary step in every person's character. Death, or retirement is inevitable. Nothing lasts forever.

 

I'm not sure you read any of my posts in their entirety, or the little summaries and TL;DR's that I put in there for people who didn't feel like reading a massive wall of text like I posted. I'll summarize that massive post here in bullet points.

• I'm not on the server, the faction is no longer mine.
• This part is more of a disclaimer for the Old Guard: We tried. We did everything we could, followed all the rules, and went above and beyond what the rules asked of us, and we still fell prey to ridicule based off of misheard messages and uninformed rumors.
• Regarding the USCM folks; they changed the RA. That's okay. What is not okay is the way they have carried out their roleplay since our leaving, and some of them are aware of that.
• This server's community has several prominent members of it who abuse every loophole they can and take advantage of those who attempt to follow the rules as they are intended, and demonize those who are doing it right when they get upset, which is why so many of the older members of Antares has left. If you look at the active members now, most of them have only been around 2-3 months, and their perspective is based off of only those few short months. The faction is receiving unfounded ridicule, when there is so much more about it that we have been open with and people still just don't know about for some reason.
• I am not saying "The RA must live on it is the greatest". While DirtyGoblin, M-Bot, and I were around, we had a tough time starting up again because of harassment and interrogation received about our means. Even after we got through the inital difficulties, we were all thinking of ways the RA would end. Tarl Hollow's death was something that we knew would happen; we just didn't know when. This is not a matter of "Let it go". This is a matter of "How can we make the best experience," and creating a blatant hate thread is not going to make any progress in that direction. As I have said before, if you're only after your own enjoyment, go play singleplayer.

It's here that I say after its return, and prior to these last few days, the Armada was the faction best carried out on the server, and it had the most in-character lore behind it, built by players and players alone. It was founded in the server, with no support from the lore existing in-game; it was its own thing. It was among the most fair of all the factions, as well. Despite all the claims of power gaming, the Armada very rarely actually won a conflict, despite having the only actual trained soldiers. After its return, every single official thing was recorded as expected, and every official action was carried out in a realistic fashion. Until my leaving, I have filled out forms of what was found at opportunity, I have mission files, I have reports of the drain on our resources as we crash-landed on our initial planet, and future plans for projects which were probably far too great of undertakings for a group of 20 guys. It was the only faction that carried out a training program. In the end, the faction's biggest weakness was that it was too in-depth for what this server was interested.

I invested a lot in the faction, and even though I didn't make it, it is still a very important to me. The Blackfang invasion was a good way for it to go, and now that it's gone, my only source of positive bias in this server is done. If I talk about it any more, it'll likely be with a very fond tone.

 

nice way to flip off the USCM / Fleet

 

Sorry, I realized I pretty much neglected this part of your comment.
I'm not sure how its final few weeks were, but when I was still directly involved with the Armada, I can make a guess as to why Armada members couldn't have fun among the chaos. While the three of us (DirtyGoblin, M-Bot, Avis) were around, we had training sessions. Weeks of work were put into technology (Powersuits showed up for a time, but after the first time we used them, we decided that they were OP and should not be used. Also we blew up Crosswell's arms with it on its first go). We had fireteams to set out who did what, we had hazing processes for the grunts that would last for weeks until they finally reached the slightly-less-grunt rank of PFC. The military side of our faction was so in depth that realistically speaking, we should have won more than we did. We even had tactics for missions, but they were shut down with people belly-aching that they weren't winning because their character was a trained US Navy Seal with over 300 confirmed kills who will track your IP and rek u. I'm not saying that the RA should win every conflict at all; I'm saying that the amount of losses we had just because some Billy Badass or group of robbers didn't realize they can't fight an organized military by themselves was far too high.

RMODDA 4 LYFE

What I meant by "Actually trained" Was that for 8 months, we had weekly training sessions, battle stations, war games, etc. The faction itself had more IG investment from the players than anyone else.