PROBLEM PLAYER

[Reece Nolan 996]

I get the feeling that only Mick and maybe 1 or 2 others actually care about roleplay or the consequences that come with their actions, while the rest are there just for the clicks.

 

If there's anything I'd like to see, I'd love to see the ferrymen change from being mercenaries and politically active to actually being a proper road bandit/thieves antag that gives no remorse to anyone, like proper scum of the earth type RP being absolute rats to anyone and everyone. If it's gonna be just for the loot or combat, go all in.

[Zakajaervi 259]

5 minutes ago, Reece Nolan said:

I get the feeling that only Mick and maybe 1 or 2 others actually care about roleplay or the consequences that come with their actions, while the rest are there just for the clicks.

 

If there's anything I'd like to see, I'd love to see the ferrymen change from being mercenaries and politically active to actually being a proper road bandit/thieves antag that gives no remorse to anyone, like proper scum of the earth type RP being absolute rats to anyone and everyone. If it's gonna be just for the loot or combat, go all in.

Kind of hard to be road bandits as ferrymen when there are soulstones that literally delete the meaning of roads. Nobody that can use an SS anywhere uses the roads instead just because. 

[Frisket 4538]

Heya Ferrymen, Frisket here.

When I began in LOTC, I was a member of Elysium (ew, I know). From such community, I was possibly one of many people who disliked or even hated the teal bandana players, who seemingly-in my mind at the time only understood "click makes right" and ultimately looked at you all as just terrible role players, or just players with just an intent to ruin role-play in a roleplay server, because you had nothing better to do than to do bandit RP and conflict RP.

This was in the past, I admit, there are times today where I think this still, but remember that it's a block man game and you guys are here for one thing which I will express in, below.

After talking with many others who were within your friend groups, and who were either connected to you guys by friendships or relationships; Or sometimes straight up talking to ferry members, I started to see a different POV of the teal scallywags, and how they contribute to roleplay as a whole. Maybe the only issue is that I assume that you guys pick people based on PVP skills, which I could be wrong because I am working on the old 'Ferryman Application'. However, many of these people who actively spoke out against the harsh comments me and many others made about your group, simply stated one sentence, that amongst every group, we agreed. Sadly this term was mentioned by a BANNED player, but many others who I have spoken to have also said something similar, however I think, this simple rebuttal, is one that allows me to overlook the encounters with my OOC eyes that I judge you all with, and find some fun and pleasure in fighting against or with you guys and gals or others.

"They joined the server, because they want to roleplay. Not roleplay the way you roleplay, but roleplay in their own way."

So to answer your question:

3 hours ago, Mickaelhz said:

Tell us how to do better. If you don’t wish to post your two cents publicly, you may also DM me (ferrymick on Discord).

I don't think I would offer any alternative to the roleplay you guys do, I think your post about the Order of The Ferrymen were possibly one of (if not) the most anticipated post I have awaited to learn about since my POV change. To understand, the same group I have fought for a good little while with and against. Bandit RP is a very important aspect of the dangers in the roads. Casually we should have bandits attempt to steal and rob places, sell info and create possibly a black market to govern and control the flow of products, loot and heist treasuries before uniting under one big raiding group and emerge from the shadows to raze and pillage places. An Idea I had while writing this response is maybe make a black market? (Teal market confirmed?). Have the ferrymen sell info, dark magics, maybe illegal contraband to sneak into cities and create corruption?

Just an Idea, but generally I have no current issues with your RP. I've seen better RP from ferrymen than most voidal mages.

If you guys have anything you wish to say, or ask me questions, I will be paying some attention to this for the next few days (no Guarantee of reply because I stay busy and look at the forums in a dry day-to-day basis.) but if I don't reply, my discord is also open for conversation! (teawithFrisket)

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

I hate the way you play LotC because the way I play LotC is the best way to play LotC and your way is not the best way to play LotC ?

[Zakajaervi 259]

1 minute ago, Charles The Bald said:

I hate the way you play LotC because the way I play LotC is the best way to play LotC and your way is not the best way to play LotC ?

Pretty much explains 99% of problems on lotc

[FlemishSupremacy 6115]

Debated if I ought to reply, as I know there's some bad blood to be found here, but here goes
I personally have 3 lingering problems that leave a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to the ferrymen;

Firstly, the practice of recruiting off of pvp servers with the sole intent of having extra bodies in RP conflicts, raids, etc, compounded by the fact that a lot of ferrymen personas are just side characters exclusively used for raids, with a few notable exceptions, gives off a feeling that a lot of the ferrymen characters aren't characters at all, but rather, just a thin veneer for the player behind it. I certainly know that my ferryman back in the day was just kind of a random bandit who didn't do anything of note outside of attending the raids. It's definitly not all ferrymen, but I am confident in saying that atleast half, if not more of the ferrymen personas throughout it's history were meaningless throwaway bandits just made to attend the pvp for fun, with no real other depth behind them.
You're essentially trading the feeling of ferrymen being an RP entity for pvp power. The ferrymen are not definitly not the first group to do this (dunamis, flays, reivers, just to name a few out of a long list).

 

Secondly, I think there undeniably is an undertone of toxicity in the group. Again, not saying that everyone is toxic or even that the majority are toxic players, but there was a severe grade of tolerance towards toxic, hateful behavior. This manifested mostly on discord. (I was removed from the ferrymen discord over suspicions of having leaked a players toxic messages. I did not do that, but I should have. Good riddance on that player.) I don't know if this has improved or deteriorated since I left some time in 2023, I haven't been in the discord since.  
It did, however, also manifest in game. Players being snarky and unkind in LOOC to players they were fighting when these players did something they did not like, OOC taunts (either in OOC channels or barely disguised as RP emotes. I know a lot of players soured on interactions with us because some members definitly did not display proper behavior ingame. I think there's been a few examples of that mentioned in this thread, and during my time among the ferrymen I found myself often wondering why some players had to be so unpleasant to others we encountered, something I also voiced on more than one occasion. I also know that there are people who have had experiences like this who don't want to reply to this post either out of fear of looking like a whiner or out of fear of drawing people's ire.
EDIT: Wanna quickly add to this in response to @MaltaMossthat I definitly wasn't immune to this either, and that I'm not denying that during that time, I also contributed to this in some ways. Only illustrates my point further.


Lastly, from a storytelling perspective, I feel like it is hard for the opposing side to the ferrymen to get closure, for it is near impossible to inflict any meaningful consequences on the ferrymen. 
While the opposing side might get captured, lose items that are dear to them, get maimed or killed, risk their nation getting destroyed by an enemy being propped up by the ferrymen, etc. Such things rarely apply to the ferrymen. The most consequences the enemies of the ferrymen can inflict on them is the loss of whatever gear set they carried to the raid. This is made worse by the fact that, with a few exceptions, a lot of ferrymen personas simply do not exist outside of ferrymen raids. 
If you lost an item to the ferrymen, you're not seeing it again, as it's disappeared into a chest somewhere. They'll only carry their equipment when you next see them, and anything of value will be soulbound.
If you were maimed by a ferryman, good luck getting retribution, for most of them only appear in raids, and even then, are barely characters as is.

Ferrymen are raiding your nation time and time again? You could war the place they're hiding out in, but even if you wipe that nation out, they'll find another nation that would like pvper muscle to take them in, and they'll continue as normal.
I think this also massively contributes to why a lot of nations have the reflex of after losing a fight against the ferrymen, to justgo on with bussiness as usual and pretend nothing happened, because what's the alternative? You can't really do too much to retaliate that has any lasting effects, so you might aswell ignore it.
I think it would, from a storytelling perspective, been a lot better to have considered the ferrymen disbanded/destroyed after the war with between Veletz and everyone else, and to then do something new entirely.

An additional thing I do want to talk about, but that I don't think is really a fault of the ferrymen but rather just an observation is that the existence of a pvper union type group, like the ferrymen, reivers or dunamis just works a lot better when there is one nation that is head and shoulders above every other nation in terms of power, like Oren used to be. At that point, these groups can act as a counterbalance to the overwhelming force of that empire, and thus serve a narrative and geopolitical purpose that makes sense and isn't too jarring, and they kind of slow the process of steamrolling a bit, which was good.
However, now with there not being any nation that could potentially take on a coalition of 75% of the other nations, like it was with Oren, they kinda stiffle conflict and incentivize these huge alliances everyone's embroiled in, to offset the risk of the ferrymen suddenly bolstering a hostile nation with their rally, and pulling players who normally don't really play into the conflict for the pvp on ferrymen personas.
I'll illustrate with a hypothetical;

If Haense wanted to war Luraq, they could normally be pretty confident of being able to pull that off, if it was current Luraq's active playerbase vs Haense's active playerbase. However, due to the risk of ferrymen joining that conflict, they'd be safer off finding common cause with other nations before engaging in this war. 

[Pancho 4197]

Honestly I have respect for a lot of the players just not the actions taken. When Ferrykingdom comes along I’ll be happy that there’s a cool state. Though big props to your achievements on the server, can’t wait to see what comes next

[JJosey 1481]

release my wife!

[Malta 2811]

21 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

Debated if I ought to reply, as I know there's some bad blood to be found here, but here goes
I personally have 3 lingering problems that leave a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to the ferrymen;

Firstly, the practice of recruiting off of pvp servers with the sole intent of having extra bodies in RP conflicts, raids, etc, compounded by the fact that a lot of ferrymen personas are just side characters exclusively used for raids, with a few notable exceptions, gives off a feeling that a lot of the ferrymen characters aren't characters at all, but rather, just a thin veneer for the player behind it. I certainly know that my ferryman back in the day was just kind of a random bandit who didn't do anything of note outside of attending the raids. It's definitly not all ferrymen, but I am confident in saying that atleast half, if not more of the ferrymen personas throughout it's history were meaningless throwaway bandits just made to attend the pvp for fun, with no real other depth behind them.
You're essentially trading the feeling of ferrymen being an RP entity for pvp power. The ferrymen are not definitly not the first group to do this (dunamis, flays, reivers, just to name a few out of a long list).

 

Secondly, I think there undeniably is an undertone of toxicity in the group. Again, not saying that everyone is toxic or even that the majority are toxic players, but there was a severe grade of tolerance towards toxic, hateful behavior. This manifested mostly on discord. (I was removed from the ferrymen discord over suspicions of having leaked a players toxic messages. I did not do that, but I should have. Good riddance on that player.) I don't know if this has improved or deteriorated since I left some time in 2023, I haven't been in the discord since.  
It did, however, also manifest in game. Players being snarky and unkind in LOOC to players they were fighting when these players did something they did not like, OOC taunts (either in OOC channels or barely disguised as RP emotes. I know a lot of players soured on interactions with us because some members definitly did not display proper behavior ingame. I think there's been a few examples of that mentioned in this thread, and during my time among the ferrymen I found myself often wondering why some players had to be so unpleasant to others we encountered, something I also voiced on more than one occasion. I also know that there are people who have had experiences like this who don't want to reply to this post either out of fear of looking like a whiner or out of fear of drawing people's ire.


Lastly, from a storytelling perspective, I feel like it is hard for the opposing side to the ferrymen to get closure, for it is near impossible to inflict any meaningful consequences on the ferrymen. 
While the opposing side might get captured, lose items that are dear to them, get maimed or killed, risk their nation getting destroyed by an enemy being propped up by the ferrymen, etc. Such things rarely apply to the ferrymen. The most consequences the enemies of the ferrymen can inflict on them is the loss of whatever gear set they carried to the raid. This is made worse by the fact that, with a few exceptions, a lot of ferrymen personas simply do not exist outside of ferrymen raids. 
If you lost an item to the ferrymen, you're not seeing it again, as it's disappeared into a chest somewhere. They'll only carry their equipment when you next see them, and anything of value will be soulbound.
If you were maimed by a ferryman, good luck getting retribution, for most of them only appear in raids, and even then, are barely characters as is.

Ferrymen are raiding your nation time and time again? You could war the place they're hiding out in, but even if you wipe that nation out, they'll find another nation that would like pvper muscle to take them in, and they'll continue as normal.
I think this also massively contributes to why a lot of nations have the reflex of after losing a fight against the ferrymen, to justgo on with bussiness as usual and pretend nothing happened, because what's the alternative? You can't really do too much to retaliate that has any lasting effects, so you might aswell ignore it.
I think it would, from a storytelling perspective, been a lot better to have considered the ferrymen disbanded/destroyed after the war with between Veletz and everyone else, and to then do something new entirely.

An additional thing I do want to talk about, but that I don't think is really a fault of the ferrymen but rather just an observation is that the existence of a pvper union type group, like the ferrymen, reivers or dunamis just works a lot better when there is one nation that is head and shoulders above every other nation in terms of power, like Oren used to be. At that point, these groups can act as a counterbalance to the overwhelming force of that empire, and thus serve a narrative and geopolitical purpose that makes sense and isn't too jarring, and they kind of slow the process of steamrolling a bit, which was good.
However, now with there not being any nation that could potentially take on a coalition of 75% of the other nations, like it was with Oren, they kinda stiffle conflict and incentivize these huge alliances everyone's embroiled in, to offset the risk of the ferrymen suddenly bolstering a hostile nation with their rally, and pulling players who normally don't really play into the conflict for the pvp on ferrymen personas.
I'll illustrate with a hypothetical;

If Haense wanted to war Luraq, they could normally be pretty confident of being able to pull that off, if it was current Luraq's active playerbase vs Haense's active playerbase. However, due to the risk of ferrymen joining that conflict, they'd be safer off finding common cause with other nations before engaging in this war. 

I remember when I joined the group and you made fun of me talking about how I was guarding a pedophile and I was an idiot bc I came from oren.

lol jackass

[sapphic_spidy 1089]

Somehow I haven't actually been robbed by ferrymen, which is wild. In fact, one of my characters was given a protection slip from a ferryman against other ferrymen banditing him. It just comes down to most bandit rp only being fun for the bandits.

 

Yes, it can be fun to have that danger, but most of the time it is just annoying to deal with. I have had a fun bandit encounter! It was the first one! 

 

On the other side of the coin, when I mentioned maybe making a gimmicky bandit, someone OOCly unfriended me and blocked me on discord for it. So I do think the hatred for bandit players isn't the most warranted- I'm not even a bandit player and I've experienced it. It was really awkward too, because it was a person who had previously played an important role in one of my character's lives! 

 

I don't hate bandit players TLDR, I hate bandit interactions when I'm busy with other things. Sometimes I will honestly hope for trouble, but it's never those times when I find it. Only when I'm trying to actually accomplish something in roleplay do they show up! And it's the opposite of accomplishing things in roleplay, you only ever lose things. Most bandit encounters I've had have tried to kill me, leaving Sydney (somehow the only of my eight personas to ever be robbed) near bloodless and unable to recall most of the fight due to that twice! (I know technically I don't have to have him not remember the encounters at that point, but it just makes sense, especially since in both cases the injuries were super near fatal and I just felt it was most fair that way)
 

This was just a long "spidy says a lot of nothing again" rant but whateva

Hate the roleplay not the roleplayer and all that

[Mescaffier 6197]

- Most/all points have been made by prior comments: it's impossible to make everyone enjoy your roleplay, and player groups themselves, even if they have good intentions/are not even remotely villainy or banditing based, will ultimately only become tired in the face of being shat on

- All the same? The dreaded Ferry Diaspora (?) arc has lead to me only seeing people talk about getting 2-emote killed by the roaming Ferry and no more of those nicely formatted posts

 

TLDR pls lead banditry 4ever mick

 

[monkeypoacher 8053]

the need to make this thread for attention says more than anything in this thread

 

amazon basics brand house flay obsessed w clipping footage of hapless roleplayers getting clicked to death

[Crevel 7557]

I think the thing that I dislike more than anything about the Ferrymen is the profound yet marring legacy that it's left on the server's conscience in regards to militaries on LOTC. Joel touched on this in his own way on the thread he made, but I feel that this is a general sentiment that has been seen over the course of the server's recent history. In my eyes, it used to be very common to see militaries playing a central role and institution in a nation. I remember that the first thing I did on the server was joining Renatus and being funneled into the Legion where I did training, patrol, and gate roleplay. Other nations have done similar things and weren't specific to Renatus. However, I feel that despite a few nations’ attempts to uphold militaries as they were, it's a dying niche that is partially due to the attitudes held by community builders and/or older players who have seen the role the Ferrymen have played in server politics.

 

Nations could put together a military of experienced roleplayers and new players, even with overwhelming numbers, but they’d lose to the Ferrymen whose members primarily contained those who had dedicated a lot of their playtime on Minecraft to PVP already, including those recruited on PVP servers, and/or members who were actively spending time practicing PVP on PVP server. This meant that the players who actively spent their time on the server roleplaying were at a disadvantage because they weren’t spending what spare time they had grinding skills off-server. A few attempts have been made in war discords over the years to encourage people to hone their PVP skills, but it ultimately does not work because people are interested in the server for the roleplay. They didn’t come to a roleplay server just to be forced to log onto an unaffiliated PVP server to improve their PVP skill just to have a chance at being able to effectively defend their roleplay nation. The Ferrymen’s long-lived presence and victories in numerous conflicts that they intervened in for one reason or another rendered nation militaries almost obsolete. This also ties in with the technical and rule inconsistencies of the war system which made war incredibly undesirable to pursue. Nation militaries have had no real motivation to exist outside being an event or general activity outlet because the skill gap between a group that has spent more time PVPing than roleplaying will almost always overcome a group that has spent more time roleplaying than PVPing. It’s proven to be more efficient to just get a handful of PVPers on your side and use whoever else in your nation can rally as filler. I do not believe that the Ferrymen intended to weaken the military dynamic because it eliminates any challenge and fun that they may have had going toe-to-toe with an established military. However, it is something that they have unequivocally played a heavy role in.

 

Then there is the point that the Ferrymen has contained or currently contains players who have a history of rule-breaking, acting in bad faith, and/or general and targeted toxicity. This has included: powergaming, metagaming, insulting people on the basis of their claimed disabilities, doxxing, vigilantism, and harassment. From my understanding, the confirmed cases of these have for the most part been punished. However, it is nevertheless a culture that some members of the Ferrymen are involved in. I do not understand how many people are considered part of the Ferrymen or how the innerworkings work so I cannot comment on how integrated these behaviours are into the group’s general culture. All I can really say is that these are behaviours that have been displayed by some members, and that there must have been some manner of attempts to obscure behaviour because I had been banned from the Ferrymen discord after joining it years ago simply and I had been told it was because I was a moderator. This was near the group's founding so I am sure that they are not like this anymore. Ordinarily, I would subject my criticism to “It’s a group, everyone is going to be different. You can’t expect a lot of them to be wrongdoers because of the few”, but my scrutiny is being placed because of the repeated claims about the Ferrymen being tight-knit. I am sure that most are fine, but there are still bad eggs that ruin the reputation.

 

I think that there seems to be some manner of divide between the Ferrymen who are actively interested in roleplay and those who only stick around for the PVP part. In 2022, Mickaelhz launched an aggressive culture group called the Skavik that was open to everyone with the stated intention to welcome people to conflict roleplay. I was a part of it because I enjoyed the culture idea and it seemed like a genuine attempt to create something interesting. Presumably to limit it being an outlet for players solely interested in PVP, it was expected that any who died in an offensive raid which was fought by PVP would be expected to PK. The group did not last more than two months and Mickaelhz stated something along the lines of “My friends did not like the time that I was putting towards this group so I will be disbanding it” before deleting the discord. After this, Mickael went back to focusing on the Ferrymen. I think that there was so much potential for conflict roleplay that could be seen as a redemption for some players’ reputations but was lost because of pressure by others who were likely more interested in PVP. It would definitely be interesting to see if something similar came back because it brought players you would not ordinarily see together for an interesting culture.
 

[MailC3p 2403]

7 hours ago, Mickaelhz said:

. We are not as bad and mighty as people make us out to be

 

Sure, but it is rather annoying to be reminded that I RP'd in Oren while KP was Emperor everytime I talk to you

[Apotolofo 2204]

idk me personally, most of my interactions with the ferrymen have been p good. as long as you're chill oocly, and don't try to powergame or meta rally most of the rp and ooc is fine. 

 

that being said

 

I've seen some ferrymen do the sort of rp where you like start two blocks away from your face and attack, which is kind of cringe. It's also annoying to see right after that in ooc, "pvp?" 

 

Other than that you guys are chill