Ups and Downs of Living Together

[sabinati]

i only knew one of the people who are currently in my village before we started this game. the rest are other people that i met randomly and got to know because they lived in the area, and as we helped each other out from time to time and got to know each other we decided to band together and form a village.

[kobnach]

It's worse if I either have no personal space - or am personally responsible for the defences of that space, as with the Bottleneck model. But those seems to be the current choices for communal living.

I'm not sure how it is in the various goon-villes, never having lived there, but I can say that you're pretty much dead wrong for Bottleneck. I'd hardly call any of the well-known Bottleneckers strangers, and I've forged my bonds with them through H&H, not B12. A lot of us (hardly all of us) came from there, but we're more than the forums we come from. If you're referring to how you wouldn't belong, well, you would after you got settled in.

I'm also not entirely sure when the Bottleneck model became based totally on personal responsibility. A lot of people built their own walls (or did so in tandem with others nearby, I think), but we've got a few unhinged sociopaths and a few normal people willing to risk their necks for their neighbors if asked too. I've been part of several thief-dealing-with-parties, with other volunteers or people who jumped at the call when asked to look into it.

My impression of Bottleneck was formed from the thread about open immigration to Bottleneck. The security model was described as "distributed", which I took to mean "build your own walls". Then this was reinforced with a warning posted about not bringing any valuables until you had personal walls. So to settle in Bottleneck, I figured I'd need (1) build a palisade, probably with finery forges inside (2) make steel, with no one else as backup for the every-12-hours-tending (3) build a brick wall around the palisade, to get something that wouldn't fall apart, require hard to find trees to repair, and be rather easy to chop through. If I wanted to make cheese as well, I'd need a personal mine _within_ my walls. As an industry specialized character, I'd have some difficulty with the quite reasonable requirement to plant a tree for every one I chopped down. Fortunately, I (a) have a nature alt and (b) know Bottleneck people who'll plant trees for metal, and it need not be steel.

Why could no one else mind my steel? Because I'd wind up kinning my neighbours, in the hopes of making friends etc., and it had been explicitly stated that some could not be trusted. I thus could not afford to give kin access to my claim, lest someone use this to chop through the palisade without leaving clues.

At any rate, it felt like I'd be maintaining most of a village's resources, solo, even living in Bottleneck. I didn't think through the details enough to see that it wouldn't be quite as bad as that... I wouldn't need my own ovens, carts, fields etc., so there'd be less maintenance, and the walls could be much shorter. Also, creative use of alts could solve my kin access problem... have an alt who owns the claim, and kins only a handful of individuals I trust, not mere neighbours. I only thought that through while composing this message.

Of course all this is separate from the question of whether I'd become friends with other Bottleneck residents, or feel like I belonged - or what the day to day atmosphere is really like.

[theTrav]

[ARRGLEBLARGLE

TLDR; Summary:
You didn't think about it for very long and made some incorrect assumptions, now you think you don't have a clue how it'd turn out.

[kobnach]

i only knew one of the people who are currently in my village before we started this game. the rest are other people that i met randomly and got to know because they lived in the area, and as we helped each other out from time to time and got to know each other we decided to band together and form a village.

*sigh* That's how Barrenburg started, except that we left our original area to get away from various PvP'ers - some of us were being griefed, and others were being threatened by murderers, or had had neighbours PK'ed on some kind of whim. (We also hoped to get better hunting, but civilization followed us, perhaps due to our idol, and perhaps due to the large number of individuals who spontaneously decided to settle the same area at the same time.)

Maybe the escape motive gave us a bad start - we had a lot of burned out people, inclined to see everything badly, not to mention turning every security risk into a crisis. I still remember several of us staying up all night finishing a palisade, certain that if we didn't get one up immediately we'd be looted and trashed within a day. (This was when fences were first available. I wanted to wait and build a brick wall, got overruled because waiting 3 days for 5 steel for a gate was unacceptable. Net result - a massive PITA of palisade maintenance, with only one nature character [my alt] actually willing to plant trees.) Of course this kind of thing was not fun, and people dropped like flies. I was more resilient, and started the series of posts that seem to have become my trademark. (At least my trademark isn't whiny illiteracy or murderous necrophilia.)

[kobnach]

[ARRGLEBLARGLE

TLDR;

See Dick run. See Spot run. Run Dick run. Run Spot run.

Is that short and simple enough for you, or do you need something simpler?

[Erik_the_Blue]

Why could no one else mind my steel? Because I'd wind up kinning my neighbours, in the hopes of making friends etc., and it had been explicitly stated that some could not be trusted. I thus could not afford to give kin access to my claim, lest someone use this to chop through the palisade without leaving clues.

...Also, creative use of alts could solve my kin access problem... have an alt who owns the claim, and kins only a handful of individuals I trust, not mere neighbours. I only thought that through while composing this message.

This is why we need multiple lists, or multiple access levels within a single list.

Of course all this is separate from the question of whether I'd become friends with other Bottleneck residents, or feel like I belonged - or what the day to day atmosphere is really like.

I've never really tried to fit in, choosing to live a few screens away from town, but the authorities accept my presence, and I've only had to explain myself to the security types once. I've also seen plenty of newbies move in after me, and they usually find their niche and some personal land rather quickly. As such, I find it hard to believe that any non-criminal resident wouldn't be able to fit in if that's what he desires.

[theTrav]

Is that short and simple enough for you, or do you need something simpler?

You made a wall of text to describe how you thought moving into bottleneck wouldn't work but now you've changed your mind and you're unsure.

The level of detail was excessive.

As is the level in your subsequent post. There's no need to repeat words so much, a simple "spot and dick are running" would have sufficed.

[kobnach]

I've never really tried to fit in, choosing to live a few screens away from town, but the authorities accept my presence, and I've only had to explain myself to the security types once. I've also seen plenty of newbies move in after me, and they usually find their niche and some personal land rather quickly. As such, I find it hard to believe that any non-criminal resident wouldn't be able to fit in if that's what he desires.

Ah, are you a Bottleneck person then?

I'm presently spending more than half my time in BoatMurdered, and the rest in Barrenburg. So that makes me rather connected with many of the Bottleneck people. BoatMurdered is working fairly well for me, except that if I were living there full time (my original plan) I'd want to have my own cabin and mine corner, to play with cheeses. Also, the ups and downs of communal food production - and consumption - got old fast when we had an influx of new residents - I'm now keeping some personally produced food outside of the common stores, so I can plan my stat gains - though at the same time, it seems the new residents have now begun producing a lot more, and no longer collectively completely wiping out e.g. all the agility food.

[kobnach]

Is that short and simple enough for you, or do you need something simpler?

You made a wall of text to describe how you thought moving into bottleneck wouldn't work but now you've changed your mind and you're unsure.

The level of detail was excessive.

As is the level in your subsequent post. There's no need to repeat words so much, a simple "spot and dick are running" would have sufficed.

*rofl* I take it you failed to recognize the literary allusion

[theTrav]

*rofl* I take it you failed to recognize the literary allusion

Oh no, I get it, I figured it was funnier if I pretended not to. You take my point on the extra wordiness though?