Do you want the game to end?

[Yourstruly]

I just need to be blunt at this point.

There are only a handful of us left. And of those of us who remain, we are mostly just trying to wrap up character stories before giving up and moving on.

The borough reports as of today are dismal.

5 days ago, Highgate:
Located at New Haven’s northernmost point and blurring into the Godrealm with architecture that defies conventional engineering.
This borough is governed by The Illusium Court.
An election is scheduled for Tue Feb 24.
Favored activities for this election: City Events, Plots (3x bonus)
Current polling results:
The Order: 8%
Celebrants of Wonder: 12%
The Illusium Court: 24%
The 63rd Legion: 32%
The Hollow Conclave: 8%

Today:
Located at New Haven’s northernmost point and blurring into the Godrealm with architecture that defies conventional engineering.
This borough is governed by The Illusium Court.
An election is scheduled for Tue Feb 24.
Favored activities for this election: City Events, Plots (3x bonus)
Current polling results:
The Illusium Court: 16%
Celebrants of Wonder: 8%
The Hollow Conclave: 4%
The Order: 8%
The 63rd Legion: 52%

3-4 of us in the Court have been contributing. 1-2 in the Celebrants. At least 1 in the Hand and Conclave each. How did the 63rd swing that wide?

The other boroughs all look the same. Some of us have been putting in dedicated work. I know from the week of the winter wild hunt that a small number of people *can* make a difference: because I made it happen. I went out and found people in differing factions and societies and even taught some (newer players) about borough politics… and saw things shift in the positive. This reads like there was a net negative, despite society reports showing (at least in the Court’s case) a large showing of effort.

Between these insanely inflated numbers from the 63rd and other changes (such as activity requirements appear to have altered, with people being removed from their factions after less than a week of inactivity), I can only assume the intent is to shut down this iteration of Haven as soon as possible.

If that is the case, I propose this:
shut off the grind and just let us have a freedom to write out and wrap up our stories without feeling pressure to grind like we’re 19 and WoW just came out.

[Holic]

That’s nothing compared to Bayview with the 63rd Legion having an unprecedented 90%, despite myself and I’m sure at least a handful of others all contributing there over the last couple weeks and with Hunting having a 3x bonus modifier for that borough.

Since this feels like a bug or that the LLM is not tallying things correctly, I petitioned it. Whether that amounts to anything, who can say, but yeah we just don’t have the numbers to combat this insanity if it isn’t automatically balancing itself around how many players are left.

[Yourstruly]

Yeah, I didn’t mention Bayview since it’s far enough out it just popped up with the full report. I’m guessing it is possible that when they do not yet have a current polling (All Saints, for example), there is nothing recorded. I don’t have any way to test that theory, but it is the only way I can figure that you would have that 90% swing for the 63rd.

The Court put in a lot of effort the last two weeks. I know that competition is needed, but there should still be some bigger sign of that effort. We have six people (which is a lot when you look at the population dip) who have contributed to varying amounts the last two weeks. And all six have contributed both weeks. Just in hunting. Add in the other categories (Social, Raids, etc.) and that number goes up to seven, maybe eight? (I don’t have last week’s report on hand right now.)

But it does feel like it’s been tuned to be worse. Maybe it is just there’s that much fewer people and it is that much harder, but I feel like that is the absolutely wrong approach. A couple of absolutely brand spanking new to MUDs and Haven people have shown up, but they’ve left because it… it’s not worth it. The uphill battle is so bad right now that even ‘onboarding’ people (I mean, the mentor system has been broken since the end of August) is a drag.

I try. I do try. I try to encourage people and be positive and help but… why give them hope? Why encourage them to invest themselves somewhere that loses people by the day? When they come across a bug and ask how to report it and you tell them… but want to follow it up with “… but the owner seems to have checked out completely and gives the appearance of not caring about the game in any way, shape, or form.”

I had more of a rant here, but I’ve removed it. This is one of those topics I get heated about. When I see an imbalance that is decidedly unfair and even antagonistic towards a player base, I get upset. And that’s how this feels. Those of us who are left are putting in the effort and losing. We are engaging with the systems, we are grinding, we are still going to raids, still using lookfor, still hunting, still…

The system, as-is, is punishing us for playing.
And as soon as I figure out a way to keep playing with some of the people I enjoy RPing with? I’m going to join the exodus.

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