BradSTL
15-06-05, 11:13
We had a Dome Alliance Council meeting on Sunday afternoon. Two anti-city Job Dealers chaired the meeting, and they had one item on the agenda: why don't more people care about the Alliance Councils? Why don't more people vote? What did we, as elected reps, think we could do about that?
We spent about two hours brainstorming. We came up with a ton of good ideas. I wish I could release the transcript of that meeting. I don't think that a single idea we came up with was anything that any player in this game would think was unfair to either side, or a bad idea, or something that would negatively affect the game. I think that several of those ideas would set the whole server drooling.
We got word back yesterday: every single suggestion we made was shot down. Every. Single. One.
Let me sum up what we told them, and what I just reminded them via in-game email. What we said was that the Alliance Councils, the elected faction representatives, don't matter to most runners because there isn't any way in which we matter, period. The events team says that it's our responsibility as elected faction reps to come up with our own creative ways to make our elected positions matter. But there is absolutely nothing that you can do as an elected council representative that you can't do as a 0/2 runner with an LE chip. Not one single thing.
The Alliance Council is a place for members of the factions to talk to each other. We have a plethora of those already. We talk to each other on the Alliance chat channel all day long. The Alliance Council is a place to create and recruit for role-playing events. Which is the absolute last thing we need, because anybody with an account on this forum can create and recruit for role-playing events. Other than that, what do we do? We talk for an hour or two a month, and then nothing happens.
What I said was that if you want people to care who's on the Alliance Council for their side, if you want to see actual competition for the posts, if you want to see Alliance Council reps actually matter to the runners, then the position has to come with something, anything, even one thing that players in the game actually want or care about. We do get a faction budget. I can't speak for the other factions, but mine comes to 2500 credits per month. Big whoop di do. You can't get your implants poked back in at Tech Haven for that much.
We asked for the Alliance Council to be a channel for communication down from the "management" NPCs. If we were the first ones to hear even hints about planned changes to the game world or upcoming events, even if it was only by a day or two so we could float rumors, then we'd be seen as having some trivial importance. The answer we got back was, "Good idea! We're going to have more communication from the top-level NPCs on the NeMa and VotR web pages where everybody can read it at once." Can you hear my teeth grinding all the way over where you're sitting? That's the mathematical opposite of what we asked for.
We asked for the Alliance Council to be a channel for communication from the runners to the "management" NPCs. That is to say, we wanted to be able to file in-character reports about what we'd seen in game, and to ask questions about what we'd seen in game, and get email answers back, or get the EGM staff person who chairs the next monthly council meeting to give us in-character answers from them. They didn't even bother to reply to that suggestion. It vanished into thin air, as if the whole time we spent talking about it went to the same limbo as the famous missing 18-1/2 minutes.
We asked if we on the Alliance Council could be given SOME authority to recommend even ONE spawn event per month. We asked that even once per month, we on the Alliance Council could vote to get even a tiny handful of NPCs spawned -- the number I floated was 6. And subject to individual veto from the events team, the spawn event we asked for would happen. Now, I don't think that was too much to ask. Both sides would get this authority. It would only happen once a month. How many times a month do random EGMs spawn hundreds of mobs at a time for no reason other than that they're bored? At least a couple of times a month those spawn events are in deep city sectors like DOY03 or PL2. So if once a month we chose to lead player characters in a raid, well, the example we voted for this time was a blockade of the Tech Haven south entrance in E_07, and asked our superiors to send (spawn) in this example six weeny little Fallen Angels security bots, would that be the end of the world? No, not least of which because they could just as easily respond by, say, asking six Stormbots to accompany them on a raid into DOY sector 01. It would be fun for everybody. It would introduce a note of unpredictability. And it would be a tiny, trivial amount of power in Dome Alliance Council and Neocron Alliance Council hands.
This idea also got shot down. Not just our specific target for a raid, but the whole idea -- I checked.
We were systematically denied any money, any equipment, any NPC manpower, any advanced information, any roleplaying interaction with NPCs, any of even the tiniest things that a player might care about.
And then they wonder why people don't vote? I certainly don't need it explained to me.
As the elected Tsunami representative for the Terra server, I have spent the last four months all over the GMs like ugly on an ape. I have lobbied hard for my faction's interests. I have carefully planned a roleplaying opportunity that requires only trivial assistance from the event team, and I have tried hard to make myself a useful resource for every Tsunami runner and a go-to guy for every other faction who has Tsunami issues. And in that time, I got two absolutely tiny concessions from the GMs. And those tiny concessions got me figuratively hoisted up on shoulders and figuratively paraded on a victory lap of the Dome, because even mattering that much was more than anybody else had ever achieved.
And I doubt that more than 20 people noticed. Oh, if this Sunday at noon Eastern Time's Council-only secret-until-then roleplaying event comes off, and if the EGMs do their part in giving the other side a chance to be heroes, then maybe more people will notice. And I used every tiny scrap of favor I was entitled to, and pushed the envelope of that to its very limits, to pull that much off. I have done everything I can to make my DAC membership matter to the runners. But no more than I have been able to achieve, I don't blame anybody who doesn't care, who isn't impressed, and who sees no reason to pay any attention to their Alliance Council representative, not even to vote for it, let alone run for it.
We spent about two hours brainstorming. We came up with a ton of good ideas. I wish I could release the transcript of that meeting. I don't think that a single idea we came up with was anything that any player in this game would think was unfair to either side, or a bad idea, or something that would negatively affect the game. I think that several of those ideas would set the whole server drooling.
We got word back yesterday: every single suggestion we made was shot down. Every. Single. One.
Let me sum up what we told them, and what I just reminded them via in-game email. What we said was that the Alliance Councils, the elected faction representatives, don't matter to most runners because there isn't any way in which we matter, period. The events team says that it's our responsibility as elected faction reps to come up with our own creative ways to make our elected positions matter. But there is absolutely nothing that you can do as an elected council representative that you can't do as a 0/2 runner with an LE chip. Not one single thing.
The Alliance Council is a place for members of the factions to talk to each other. We have a plethora of those already. We talk to each other on the Alliance chat channel all day long. The Alliance Council is a place to create and recruit for role-playing events. Which is the absolute last thing we need, because anybody with an account on this forum can create and recruit for role-playing events. Other than that, what do we do? We talk for an hour or two a month, and then nothing happens.
What I said was that if you want people to care who's on the Alliance Council for their side, if you want to see actual competition for the posts, if you want to see Alliance Council reps actually matter to the runners, then the position has to come with something, anything, even one thing that players in the game actually want or care about. We do get a faction budget. I can't speak for the other factions, but mine comes to 2500 credits per month. Big whoop di do. You can't get your implants poked back in at Tech Haven for that much.
We asked for the Alliance Council to be a channel for communication down from the "management" NPCs. If we were the first ones to hear even hints about planned changes to the game world or upcoming events, even if it was only by a day or two so we could float rumors, then we'd be seen as having some trivial importance. The answer we got back was, "Good idea! We're going to have more communication from the top-level NPCs on the NeMa and VotR web pages where everybody can read it at once." Can you hear my teeth grinding all the way over where you're sitting? That's the mathematical opposite of what we asked for.
We asked for the Alliance Council to be a channel for communication from the runners to the "management" NPCs. That is to say, we wanted to be able to file in-character reports about what we'd seen in game, and to ask questions about what we'd seen in game, and get email answers back, or get the EGM staff person who chairs the next monthly council meeting to give us in-character answers from them. They didn't even bother to reply to that suggestion. It vanished into thin air, as if the whole time we spent talking about it went to the same limbo as the famous missing 18-1/2 minutes.
We asked if we on the Alliance Council could be given SOME authority to recommend even ONE spawn event per month. We asked that even once per month, we on the Alliance Council could vote to get even a tiny handful of NPCs spawned -- the number I floated was 6. And subject to individual veto from the events team, the spawn event we asked for would happen. Now, I don't think that was too much to ask. Both sides would get this authority. It would only happen once a month. How many times a month do random EGMs spawn hundreds of mobs at a time for no reason other than that they're bored? At least a couple of times a month those spawn events are in deep city sectors like DOY03 or PL2. So if once a month we chose to lead player characters in a raid, well, the example we voted for this time was a blockade of the Tech Haven south entrance in E_07, and asked our superiors to send (spawn) in this example six weeny little Fallen Angels security bots, would that be the end of the world? No, not least of which because they could just as easily respond by, say, asking six Stormbots to accompany them on a raid into DOY sector 01. It would be fun for everybody. It would introduce a note of unpredictability. And it would be a tiny, trivial amount of power in Dome Alliance Council and Neocron Alliance Council hands.
This idea also got shot down. Not just our specific target for a raid, but the whole idea -- I checked.
We were systematically denied any money, any equipment, any NPC manpower, any advanced information, any roleplaying interaction with NPCs, any of even the tiniest things that a player might care about.
And then they wonder why people don't vote? I certainly don't need it explained to me.
As the elected Tsunami representative for the Terra server, I have spent the last four months all over the GMs like ugly on an ape. I have lobbied hard for my faction's interests. I have carefully planned a roleplaying opportunity that requires only trivial assistance from the event team, and I have tried hard to make myself a useful resource for every Tsunami runner and a go-to guy for every other faction who has Tsunami issues. And in that time, I got two absolutely tiny concessions from the GMs. And those tiny concessions got me figuratively hoisted up on shoulders and figuratively paraded on a victory lap of the Dome, because even mattering that much was more than anybody else had ever achieved.
And I doubt that more than 20 people noticed. Oh, if this Sunday at noon Eastern Time's Council-only secret-until-then roleplaying event comes off, and if the EGMs do their part in giving the other side a chance to be heroes, then maybe more people will notice. And I used every tiny scrap of favor I was entitled to, and pushed the envelope of that to its very limits, to pull that much off. I have done everything I can to make my DAC membership matter to the runners. But no more than I have been able to achieve, I don't blame anybody who doesn't care, who isn't impressed, and who sees no reason to pay any attention to their Alliance Council representative, not even to vote for it, let alone run for it.