Claeyt wrote:At what point do you guys accept that the Ark was a stupid mechanic. How many times do I have to say it. ONCE DARWOTH HAD VISITED ALL THE STATUES BUT THE ONE HE HAD TOWNBELLED ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS CHECK THE ARK EVERY DAY AND STUDY AT THE LAST STATUE ONCE IT GOT CLOSE TO BEING COMPLETED.
The Ark itself was a pretty good mechanic, actually. Server works together to build a building that everyone but the witches benefit from (and even they benefit as people could have characters on both sides). It can't be destroyed while under construction or after completion so there is little risk in contributing. The fact that the ark didn't get finished had absolutely nothing to do with Darwoth. In my opinion, the two main reasons the ark wasn't finished were an ill-considered post on the part of John, and an overestimation of your ability to work together, even in your own best interests.
As I recall, the timeline of Popham went thusly:
For the first few months, there were quite a large number of players on Popham. The Ark was set up with a calculation for each player present to contribute a small amount to it. Assuming that some players wouldn't bother to contribute or would stop playing before the server ended (at the time, it was assumed to be ending in only in a few months), it was calculated that the average player would contribute only a few hundred items to the ark construction and it should have been ridiculously simple to complete, even with only a few months to work.
Months went by and the ark showed no signs of being built. Some players left the server, leaving the rest to take on more in the ark building. However, even with more to do, a good town can produce thousands of boards in a month's time. One dedicated group of a half dozen or so could have completed the ark at any time and filled it with their own animals.
This is where the first problem comes in. See, in the original concept, the ark was supposed to be siegeable, so that one group could complete it, add their animals, and then hold the ark hostage from all others so that no one else could get animals home and that one group could have initial control of all animals on Providence, except for whatever animals the witch brought home. But we assumed that the group in question would probably also do their best to have the witch as well so it would have been a great competition and hopefully fairly exciting to see who got the animals. And raids to try to break into the ark and add your own animals could have been a thing. I don't know why John changed it in the end to just let the ark be on town land, I guess he wanted it to be easier for you, but I think that was the first mistake as it then required everyone to work together, which I was sure you wouldn't be able to do.
And then the second problem. Around four or so months into the server, John made an ill-considered post that he thought would motivate all of you, but in fact had the opposite effect. He posted something vague about making some very difficult quest in Providence to acquire animals if the ark didn't work out or possibly make them a very expensive pack in the store. He thought people wouldn't want that and would get to work on the Ark, the easy way to get animals, so as to not have to go the more difficult route. However, people like Claeyt latched onto the post, as I told him they would, and decided that a nebulous future mechanic was going to be easier than the current one. They convinced themselves that animals would eventually be just given away on Providence if they whined enough. I think there's a thread from around that time where you can see people convincing themselves of that and becoming entirely confident that the ark didn't need to be built at all but that everyone would get animals anyway.
So, Popham lasted over a year, and it wasn't until something like eight months in that Darwoth even started playing there. He then spent a few months just ***** around, destroying bases, demoralizing people, trying to make as many strong players as possible leave so that he would have less competition. He did it too, he's good at that.
At that point, some people started using Darwoth's presence as an excuse to claim how it's all too difficult and started a new complaint thread about Popham and how everyone deserves to just be given the animals. And this point, Darwoth had begun claiming he had the required witch and that he had only one statue left to get. In fact, he did not have the required witch and only knew where two of the statues were.
Also at this point, I slightly intervened. As a dev, I don't want to get involved too much in player politics. It's a sandbox and I don't want to mess up your dynamic by taking sides. However, I started posting with encouraging posts telling all of you that it was still very possible to complete the ark, that there was still time, that you still had a very good possibility of getting animals. I even posted several strategies outlining how to complete the ark even assuming that Darwoth DID have just one statue left to get.
Eventually, in an effort to move things along, because Darwoth didn't even have the only eligible witch on the server, there were actually several, Marp put a map to the locations of all the statues in the middle of his album of photos from the ***** museum he visited. Several people saw it and I think the picture was posted on the forums shortly thereafter. I know the information of where to find the map was. That was still a few months before the server ended.
So, in the end, there was more than a year worth of time to complete the ark before Darwoth was even close to being able to end the server. After the map was posted, there were several people who could have gotten the jump on him and had their own witch win as he not only had to finish his witch and visit all the statues after the map was posted, but he also delayed for silly reasons of wanting to get ALL the prizes, so that was a big opportunity missed to outpace his witch.
Darwoth's propaganda is awe-inspiring in its effectiveness and people like Claeyt help him a lot by over-inflating his powers and then freaking out about them, causing other people to put more credence in what Darwoth says. And I am sure that that had some effect on the general playerbase's ability to complete either of the server tasks once he had been on Popham for those few months, but to not even have outdone him on any of the minor leaderboard tasks? No no, you don't deserve animals, certainly not free ones. You don't deserve any of the prizes you didn't get. You DO deserve the teabagging you all got from Darwoth, and that goes double for all you who play Chicken Little with your assumptions about him. Jesus Christ, guys, he's just one guy.
