I need to get this off my chest...

[Gamzee Makara]

-honks in the distance for fun-

---EDIT---

So I had literally no Idea what was going on, like, even the actual base assault/factionfight/whatever the hell. Like seriously, all this stuff went over my head. Just, PEWF, missed it. Just learned that it was happening when I found this thread. At any rate, after pouring (poring?) over a few different related threads and discussions, I have to split my agreement to basically all of you because all of you bring up valid points, some more terse and blunt than others.

Some of Guu's fears are fairly well-founded, and I think that it is pretty unfair that the members of NB had to abandon some near future plans. However, I don't actually think that anyone was forced into doing this. You said it yourself; people dropped out. Battle is not necessary. Fleeing is always an option. In fact, this didn't have to end in a PVP at all. There were other solutions to this, but this is how things ended up. I do not however think that people OOC would go as far as to befriend you and then use this to IC betray you? If that is what you were getting at? I do not harbor immediate distrust for the friends I have made(not implying that you do). In fact, I consider myself friends with pretty much everyone that has made a post in this thread. That said, I don't think it is fair to just assume that they did all of this just for the hell of it and because they purposefully wanted to ruin everyone's plans. Might I reiterate, however, that it was not exactly fair of them to go about this the way they did. I suppose my main thoughts are that yeah, there are some problems with some of this that has been happening, but I think there is a tad bit of overreaction here. But then again, I'm not in charge of a faction, just a part of one. I don't have to deal with the stress you do, and I'm trying to imagine if it was Ambrosia being assaulted how I would feel about it and what I would do. It's hard to accurately type down my feelings on this whole subject as words....

I agree with Thaal's Notion that this is simply how this works, like, it is a PVP PbP site. It's true. Fights happen. You can lose, or you can win; there are consequences for both. He also brings up a lot of valid points about artifacts. But yeah, I'm not gonna sit here and retype the above. There were better ways to go about this.

Nealapph, I strongly agree with. This is a first for this site. Mistakes will be made. They are not the first mistakes, nor will they be the last. The topic of miscommunication is also a noteworthy one, as that misfortune will bring a serious shitstorm. The thing is, it's hard to find a solution for that. It's not exactly black and white. Sure, okay, yeah, they could have like, formally announced that hey, this is a thing thats happening, but thats counter-productive and franklyboring Personally, I think that the lesser of two evils would have been to message the leader of the opposing team and requesting a secret collaboration of sorts, that way the rest of the site would have been genuinely surprised. They could have even gone as far as to keep it hush-hush from the rest of the members of the defending team(i.e. only the leader knows about the attack)

That, is creating a story.

But this isn't JUST a book. It's an RPG.

Going as far as to orchestrating a genuine surprise attack counts as a logical tactic to be used in this game. Can it be unfair? Yes. Do Villains EVER play fair? No. No they do not. It's just a matter of keeping character and player/writer separate. However, even if a player is genuinely simply trying to stay in character, his or her morals will always be called in to question because of the nature of the stakes.

I'm not touching Metagaming, or the topic of banishment, as my input on both of those subjects is not helpful in the slightest. Briefly, I will note that this is a bout between NB and LAW, and other characters have no business partaking unless they just happen to within sight of the ensuing battle.

IMPORTANT GENUINE ADVICE/IDEA:

Perhaps there should be a sort of buyable base upgrade that allows for a sort of Passive Mode or status, in which case the Faction with this upgrade would be unable to take aggressive action towards other factions or even individuals in exchange for amnesty in situations like this. This should be an almost permanent buy, one for factions that would desire no assaulting of any kind, defensive or offensive or whatever.

Please forgive my rambling. It's 2 am.

Honestly, this whole discussion topic is starting to feel like the squabblings of five year olds.[spoiler][/spoiler]

---MORE DEDIT----

I would also like to say that I am trying to be as impartial as possible. Like I said, I consider basically all of you my friends, and I don't want to really take sides on this, just pointing out some things about some things that were said.