Discussing the Marauder Faction/Cult - IDEAS FOR RYZOM

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#33 Added by Placio 9 years ago [en]

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Tamarea,

Have you examined the retention rate of players that have taken the marauder rite? From my in-game observations it is much lower than that of other factions during the same time period, however maybe there is data that shows otherwise.

With all respect to the volunteers and staff- I am seeing my friends try the marauder faction and then disappear from the game when they see that it is not enjoyable and difficult to reverse that alignment. This is very demotivating and unacceptable to me.

The Marauder players think that their faction needs more content to be viable- Probably to the point that you will need to build them a fully functional capital or nation.

I however am arguing that even with new content the Marauder faction will not thrive because it isolates a group of players from the larger community. The point of Atys, in my humble opinion, is that the different factions do interact, but with marauders there is no room for compromise. Their leaders have declared war on all the other factions, so whether they like it or not, they are the bad guys- and this does not make the game enjoyable for Marauders or the rest of the players. So not being able to compromise and interact nicely with the Marauder faction is an inherent flaw that will not be solved, regardless of how much new marauder content is added.

These are the reasons why I think the playable marauder faction is not a good investment and that action (like phasing it out completely, or indicating that additional marauder content is not a priority, or adding a mission to allow players to more easily un-do the marauder conversion process) needs to be taken:
1) The playable marauder faction does not make the game more enjoyable
2) it would take too much work to satisfy their growing needs/requests
3) players are leaving the game because of it.

#34 Added by Bones 9 years ago [en]

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Placio, there have been many players forced out of this game due to every Faction. The general population is nice. I was a proud Karavaneer from the beginning of this game until the last day when the server first closed. Some players chose to be very rude and take things too far. Some left. I stayed but joined the Kami until the same thing happened to me in that faction as well. I tried Rangers but again, I am not as good at RP as many here are so I didn't feel like I belong there either. I don't know where I would go if there was no longer a marauder faction and I'm sure others feel the same way too so it does bring enjoyment to some in this game, it is unfortunate that it did not for your friends. I couldn't be truly neutral if I was still at war with the other factions if marauder was taken out so where would I go? This may sound selfish but maybe others feel the same as I do, I don't know. With in game alliances there has to be a place for outcasts/exiles.

#35 Added by Placio 9 years ago [en]

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Ok, I aknowledge the human factor- some people might feel at home as a marauder. But that's not something that could be taken away from you. After all, the original marauder players could only RP that they were maras. This whole conversation stemmed from the idea that maras are being forced to use kara/kami to get to Almanti- this is a very passive, victim point of view. You need to have active RP, if there is an obstacle, view it as an opportunity.

#36 Added by Bones 9 years ago [en]

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True, but why remove it if it is already in place? It would surely take a lot of work to move all of our materials and things to another location. Why not make a Ranger be the NPC that ports you into Almati? That would be the least difficult and give the Rangers/Ranger Aspirants something to be proud of owning while not involving religious figures at all. Creating a teleporter to a location is not difficult, this has been done many times on the test server.
I would support an exit strategy for people who wished to rejoin society if that would truly bring people back into game. I would even support an easy way if it really helped. They could put a six month cool down on rejoining marauder and you could have some sort of probation period, a daily mission you must complete in each nation before you gain any fame points that day from other fame gaining missions.
Don't get me wrong, I am for Marauders having there own OCC and things but I don't want my complaints to be mistaken as delicious tears.

#37 Added by Lacuna 9 years ago Multilingual

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Placio

Ok, I aknowledge the human factor- some people might feel at home as a marauder. But that's not something that could be taken away from you. After all, the original marauder players could only RP that they were maras. This whole conversation stemmed from the idea that maras are being forced to use kara/kami to get to Almanti- this is a very passive, victim point of view. You need to have active RP, if there is an obstacle, view it as an opportunity.

Placio you must know that in the past when Marauders have suggested this approach, i.e, the whole discusssion about the bug that lets us enter cities and not be attacked if our fame is not too low. It was suggested that we could leave it as it is and rp as not being infamous enough to be recognised, or we are wearing helmets etc. AND we were shot down in flames for this. But bleh. had enough.

We are attacked if you want to rp away inconsistancies and attcked if we ask for inconsistancies to be fixed. That is where much of the frustration in this thread is coming from and directed towards.

Edited 2 times | Last edited by Lacuna (9 years ago)

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#38 Added by Nerwane 9 years ago [fr]

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Etre maraudeur ne fait pas se désabonner.

Il est vrai que l'on n'a pas accès à tout mais avant de le devenir, je savais à quoi m'attendre. Pourquoi alors? Moi qui ai été neutre pendant des années, puis avais rejoint la faction kara quelques temps. Parce que une fois avoir fait le tour du jeu, j'aspirais à un jeu moins routinier. Et je ne suis pas déçue :p
Il faut un peu plus se torturer la cervelle pour tirer son épingle du jeu ..

D'un autre côté,je ne me suis pas sentie flouée du reste du jeu , ayant à cette époque, 3 comptes payant. Je pensais naïvement pouvoir jouer mes autres personnages quand j'aurais envie de revenir à un jeu plus 'normal'. Malheureusement, il semblerait que même avec 15 personnages potentiels, il est mal vu de jouer différentes factions :(

Tout ça, pour dire que si j'ai désabonné des comptes, ce n'est pas à cause de la faction maraudeur mal finalisée.

Cela vaut pour moi, je ne parle pas des gens qui sont partis du jeu après avoir été maraud, mais dire qu'ils sont partis à cause de leur passage chez les marauds,je pense que c'est faux..certainement d'autres raisons de vie, car redevenir kara ou kami ou même neutre, ce n'est pas une si grosse difficulté,juste un peu de temps à y passer. Mais au fond, jouer à ryzom, n'est ce pas une façon de passer du temps?

#39 Added by Rook 9 years ago [en]

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Players from Kara/Kami/Ranger/Neutral stop playing every now and then.

Would you say it's because Kara/Kami/Ranger/Neutral is bad and should be fixed ?
I don't think so.
Your argument is not even relevant.

Yes, fixes need to be made, and anim Gaueko and his team are working on all of that.
This thread is quite pointless.

Last edited by Kyohei (9 years ago)

#40 Added by Lacuna 9 years ago Multilingual

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@ Salazar and Daomei, I still argue that Mara are a nation. We will not be able to agree on this as we have different undertsandings of what this means. So let's move on.

@Daomei: no culture in human history have ever resembled the Mara. It is only when filtered though the prism of savagery/civlity that any do so, such is in the examples you give or the Yanomamö, who are an anthropological cliche in this regard. The violence of the Other, as in these examples is always a negation of the self. It is filtered and evaluated through the prism of savagery. The Jesuit Fathers and their religious peers wrote volumes on the 'savagery' of the aboriginal peoples of Americas. They decribed the torture rituals of Algonquians and Iroquoian peoples in great detail. But never once did they compare this violence to that of Europe, and the brutal morality plays that were public executions at that time, or of the conquistadors who fed new born babies to their dogs. Savagery/civility are not obective facts or analtyical concepts they are moral weapons of attack.

I just mention this, it is ironic that that you do not mention nation states as resembling the Mara, as it is the the 'complex' societes in our history that have actaully set out to destroy peoples, from small pox infected blankets, missions schools to camps and gas chambers, and weapons of mass murder, genocide is an invention for the 'civilised'.

We may not agree that Mara are a nation but they are a people. Like the Fyros, Matis, Tryker, and Zorai they are an imagined community, homins have a sense of belonging to them. All of them have a shared language, culture, history etc. They all have a political and social structure. The Mara differ from the four civs dramtically but this does not negate the fact that the Mara are a vibrant, living culture. It may be one we as players find abhorant, but judged by its own standards it is a coherent whole! Further, our toons may not see this but it would be hypocrisy as players to lambast the 'savagery' of the Maras and ignore the religious wars of Kara and Kami. The zealots in either camp are no different from the Mara. The mara do not want to kill all. That is hyperbole. The want revenge and to destroy the civs and take over.

The mara are a people. The are not a mob. I think both of you do not really know much about tribal peoples or the history of ethnography of them. Your toons can see them as a ravening mob out to kill all hominkind. A view that mirrors the european curtural myths of the Other that we can trace back to Tacitus and Herodotus, indeed this is good rp. But this discussion is not about what toons think but what the mara actually are. We may not agree that they are a nation, but they are a people. And as cultrual entity that endure over time it is not unreasonable that as members of this culture that mara toons can show solidarity and earn faction points.

Edited 2 times | Last edited by Lacuna (9 years ago)

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#41 Added by Binarabi 9 years ago [en]

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Extremely well informed and very well said Lacuna - totally agree with you :))

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Binarabi
This idea of "I'm offended". Well I've got news for you. I'm offended by a lot of things too. Where do I send my list? Life is offensive. You know what I mean? Just get in touch with your outer adult. (Bill Hicks)

#42 Added by Daomei 9 years ago Multilingual

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Lacuna: Much interesting as is what you are telling, my perspective is rather that of the peoples of the middle kingdom and their formation of a multiethnic statehood than western primitive and totalitarian cults like "christian civilization". And I also hold some reserves against much lauded european enlightenment, the source of exterminatory "scientific" racism, and the malthusian concept of superfluous, dispensable humans, the cradle of nazi ideology. So you are ascribing a stance to me I do not hold and never will.

While your description of the marauder civilization is interesting, I ask myself how far it really fits the existing marauders, both in the ancient lands, and their outposts in the new territories. As far as I know and learnt, the marauders split from the rest of hominkind only short time ago (more or less one century now, to be exact). The founding fathers of the marauders, some of them probably still alive, stemmed from four different forms of statehood, which they all despised due to their defeat and collapse in the Kitin Wars 2481-84. To my knowledge, they collected the remains of hominity, united them with a lot of force, and formed their community. It became nomadic for the simple reason that they had to run and hide, later to hit and run, in face of the kitin danger. Therefore it is fairly understandable that their structure is based on clans, and has strength and readiness to fight as main principles.

I fail to see that those principles of the marauder community fit very well in the picture of tribal cultures you are describing. Granted I am not so deep in south american history and ethnology, but your analogies seem shaky to me.

The four peoples of the new territories just restored the cultures destroyed in the disaster of the twentyfoureighties, those are traditional rather than imagined communities, with their institutions, principles, and customs.

I fail to see that the marauders fit into that. They have a strange concept of "revenge" for that the nations, and they themselves alike, were not strong enough to win against the kitins, so that many homins either perished or were dispersed and left behind.

This desire for revenge is somewhat pathetic and ridiculous, why not punishing everybody for bad weather? But so what. Then yes, the want to "take over", to force all of hominity under their violent tyranny, and suppress and destroy their institutions, traditions, and cults (also their cities and house? I am not sure). I fail to see analogies in tribal cultures I saw and read about. China, for example, was two times forcefully "overtaken" by nomadic tribal people, the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty, and the Manzhou in the last centuries of the empire til the revolution of 1911. Those tribal rulers were not overly gentle during their takeover to say the least, but in fact, they neither destroyed the institutions nor suppressed the religions.

The program of the marauders seem to resemble much more ideologically driven movements than anything on an ethnic or national base. The matis and fyros may have their quarrels unfriendly neighbours have, but they always have a base to communicate, and no desire to overthrow the political system of their counterpart. As said, the nationhood would require less "universal", if not totalitarian claims which much resemble to those of e.g. christian crusaders aiming to either convert or kill every heathen.

And for the marauders being a people, I also have some doubts. This may be, to some extent, true for the marauders in the ancient lands, who, under the pressure of the kitins, found a viable way for survival, and even development, in their nomadic, mobile organization. The marauder proselytes from the new territories stem from more or less peaceful societies who found a comfortable way to restore more or less the pre swarm civilizations which well fit into the geopolitical and ethnic conditions of the regions where they are dwelling. Therefore, the status of marauders in the new territories is fundamentally different from their counterparts in the ancient lands, they are outcasts or dropouts in an environment which is in no way yearning to kill them all. Yet, I do not want or like to deny them to be a people. I consider them rather a faction, such as Karavan or Kami, with the differences described above.

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Daomei die Streunerin - religionsneutral, zivilisationsneutral, gildenneutral

#43 Added by Lacuna 9 years ago Multilingual

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Daomei, I did not ascribe this stance to you. I criticised your use of examples.

I was not saying that they fit into the tribal societies I described. I am trying to make the point that Marauder do not fit with any culture in human history whatsoever. But ironically have most in common with the ones that have actually tried to exterminate peoples, the so called civilised nations. My ethnographic examples are from North and South Americas and these are peoples who in the colonial ethnography and the popular imagination seem to fit the idea of the 'savage'. A mode of thinking that legitimises all that was done to these peoples.

Marauder have existed long enough to transform into a people, and ethnic group. An imagined community is one where people imagine they belong to a community though a shared sense of history, culture, language etc rather than simply face to face interaction. Indeed, such face to face interaction is not needed for a sense belonging to a community to exist. Benedict Anderson coined the concept to discuss modern nationalism but is has spread beyond this narrow usage. In this sense German, Scottish, Matis, Fyros and Marauders are all imagined communities. Imagined should not be read as antonym of real in this case.

Marauders in the new lands are outcasts etc from the Civs BUT they are NOT from Marauder in the Old Lands.

Last edited by Lacuna (9 years ago)

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#44 Added by Binarabi 9 years ago [en]

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When Subbo was chatting with the guy who brought in Marauders - how long ago was this ... Subbo had the intention that marauders real enemy would be kitin - not all "other" homins, so marauders were disgruntled homins who rejected both karavan and kami and had their own community - in theory this would have been best built in Prime Roots. They were never supposed to be a set of nasty villains, rejects from society, or criminals, just an alternative in game for those who did not want to be the other 2 factions but who wanted to be a good alternative. Homins who lived by their wits and who had their own code of honour - but the role play was taken in a completely different direction on other servers.
Basically they did not want to take over by force (rape and pillage) but expected others to give up their false beliefs and join them

As they stand now I, personally, see them as against karavan and kami - but will support who they fancy in any war (possibly for dappers) and not as a bunch of evil homins - well, not too evil anyway. The concept of "the other" that Lacuna spoke about is a good one - concocted ideology by karavan and kami to make the marauders seem like nasty evil people, not to be trusted or liked and who should be killed on sight by all. Think this happens in real life - thus "they eat babies"

And just a point about ideology - all social systems concoct their own - to try to create cohesion - some of it based on lies (masses of it in some cases), so ethnic and cultural ideals are also ideological - but then I always did love Althusser and Lacan.

PS in theory, under our guild's Trytonist beliefs, no homin can die - being as we are alive because of nanotechnology - thus we are created and put on Silan so we can become the slaves of the Karavan - thus we do not have children and thus we are rezzed everytime we die - but Lore has many deaths - presume nanotechnology can be withdrawn ...

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#45 Added by Daomei 9 years ago [en]

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Hm, I still do not buy that concept of a nation, and for my taste, the definition of a nation as imagined community is bit too postmodern and arbitrary. I prefer more down-to-earth views like those of Wallerstein and others in traditions of Marx or Weber. A nation is not only a cultural and traditional, but even more a socio-economic and legal entity. Of course, atysian societies and communities are not really comparable, but even marauders have to eat, to clothe, to build weapons and tools etc., imagined community does not help so much with it. And in real nations, a common legal system, rules of residence, property rights and their limits etc. are fundamentals which are definitely not imagined.

And no, I categorically deny the concept of a 'savage' for the marauders, it does not fit at all. They are violent, and in some of their views fanatic, but resembling ways more the conquistadores rather than any south american tribe in their attitude to the people in the new territories.

I agree that the marauders created, to some extent, a common culture, at least a language of their own. Beneath that, I fail to see that they are really one people. Every clan is a community in its own right, every marauder inside these boundaries a lawmaker of her/his own, entitled to act how she likes as long as she has the strength to defend that against anybody contesting it. So, there is no common law for marauders, only some rules of customary behaviour. And I saw marauder clans acting very differently, some were in drug trafficking, some in employing enslavement, some were in rather close communication with non marauder homins.

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Daomei die Streunerin - religionsneutral, zivilisationsneutral, gildenneutral

#46 Added by Lacuna 9 years ago Multilingual

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Imagined community is a concept to help explain why people think they belong to group, Daomei. Why does someone living in Stuttgart and someone in New York still identify as German. Why do they think they share ancestry, etc. Religions are also imagined comunities. People will never meet, indeed they may be dead for hundreds if not thousands of years, but they are seen as belonging. You are being very materialistic in your ideas. The idea of imagined communities does not preclude or negate Marx or Weber. It can be used to compliment them. Imagined communities ARE REAL. Imagined is not apposed to 'real' but face-to-face. It is how people who may never meet can think they belong to a group.

Daomei I give up. I could explain this too you over a bottle of wine, but not over the forums.

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#47 Added by Binarabi 9 years ago [en]

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But if they are seen as "the other" then in outsider's eyes they are homogeneous, but within their own "group" they may differ

On reflection I think that we should keep the marauder "faction", being as I think there should be a place for homins who do not agree with either Karavan or Kami and who want to flex their muscles in fighting and make choices about what they do, rather than toe-the-party-line in other "factions"

Also I love the rp of Lacuna when she sells wonderful crafted gear in the bazaar and, as a Tryker who has been told tales of slavery under the Matis, utterly agree with the idea of killing all Matis (hmm, maybe not quite all - but the particularly pompous ones) and keeping males in their place - preferably barefoot and in the kitchen

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