RNC 7: Will Nexus Come Back?

[Sporadic 2799]

The Remove Nexus Chronicles

Will Nexus Come Back?

 

 

Short Answer: No

 

Long Answer: There's been an argument going on in status updates for several days/weeks now by a few dedicated individuals who want to see some features of Nexus reintroduced. In a nutshell these are all advocates for a mechanically feature-rich Roleplay Server as opposed to the feature-light philosophy that the Dev Team has committed to in Atlas. Certainly, with the stagnation that always comes when maps pass the halfway mark of their lifetime it is natural that people just want " more things to do". There's also been a distinct lull in staff proactive-ness which many people blame many different causes for, further reinforcing the stagnation. Indeed, then, any system, even one as grindy and antithetical to roleplay as Nexus might seem like a welcome diversion from the monotony.

 

So why aren't we just "reactivating" the plugin? Maybe bring it back temporarily while we wait for 7.0? Why don't we just take SOME features which SOME people might have liked and release Nexus-lite? The reasons for this are many, but there's 4 I'd like to discuss off-the-cuff with you all today.

 

Reason 0: Roleplay IS the content

I really can't put it any easier than this. At the end of the day, this IS a roleplay server. Content plugins such as the Magic Plugin and the Skills Plugin have been pitched in Aegis and Asulon as a way in which Roleplay can be guided and enhanced. However, this is no longer Aegis. LotC has grown far beyond anything that could be encompassed by a mechanical plugin. We have a massive history, endless lore, and an amount of playstyles equal to the amount of players we have on this server. Every single one of you has their own unique way in which they enjoy LotC. And your only limitation to this enjoyment is your imagination (and the server rules!!).

 

Nexus, on the other hand, is a mechanical plugin governed by global rules and hard limitations. It's a plugin that tells you what you can't and cannot do. And in order to  make a plugin function it needs rules which are universally valid. This runs amok with the way a lot of people choose to enjoy this game. Not everybody falls neatly within the context of Blacksmith or Stonemason or Mage. In fact almost nobody does. To force people to pick such "professions" kills a lot of the magic of LotC (the metaphorical kind, not evocation). Nexus is a  lot like a vending machine were people need to chuck in coins (in the form of grind) in neatly-defined slots in order for the candy to pop out. This experience takes away from what is most important on this server: To tell a story, and to share an experience with other people.

 

In more recent plugins, I've opted for a much lighter experience where centralization is key. Hunting and Caravans are both plugins that are relatively light and force people to come together in the same space in order to enjoy it. For better or worse, this have let to people meeting each other in a way they wouldn't have before. The grind, furthermore, is not mandatory as Minas are not strictly necessary to gain a PvP advantage. While you might have your qualms with the plugins, they are at the very least unobstructive to the main attraction on this server, which is Roleplay.

 

 

Reason 1: The Inescapable Cycle

Anybody that's been lurking feedback threads as long as I have knows there's a cycle the forums go through. A feature is introduced, and the people who hate it take to the forums and ask for its removal. The feature is then amended, but for the really discontent people this isn't enough, so eventually whatever was the issue gets removed. Then the people who actually liked the feature want it to go back the way it was, and so the cycle continues. Limited Creative is the best recent example, but similar things can be seen in the never-ending "Remove Freebuild" vs. "Bring Back Freebuild" discussion that starts with every new map. More vs Less Nations is also popular, when any removed Nation will take to the forums and demand the criteria for nationhood be revised, which will inevitably only lead to a surplus of nations requiring the tightening of the rules once more.

 

Should Nexus be brought back in any form, it will be greeted by the same people who hated it before and still do now. Although many people consider the Energy System an improvement, there were just as many who vehemently oppose any kind of resource gating on a Roleplay server. There's also dedicated Lore Keepers who were against the conflicts of the mechanical nature of the plugin against the free creativity of lore. There were a lot of discontents. Nexus was a massive project and it wasn't discarded "just because". It in fact took months of (ultimately futile) tweaks and rebalancing, and subsequent criticism on these measures, before the plug was finally pulled on the project. People who liked Nexus probably never saw the forum as much as I did in those days, but you will just have to trust me that the Remove Nexus camp was large, and they weren't the friendliest or most reasonable of chaps.

 

 

Reason 2: Time Investment

Big projects require a time investment much longer than pretty much any other team's project. Nexus, for example, would require no less than a year of coding up to a release, followed by at least 6 months of heavy rebalancing of the various features, and a lifetime of light tweaking and rebelancing as the community shifts and evolves. This is a huge time investment. Even just "reactivating" Nexus won't just work out of the box. The codebase of LotC has since changed to be completely incompatible, and Nexus had become a very unstable beast to begin with. Just getting to the point we left off would take a large amount of work. And this is the Nexus that so many people hated to begin with. To actually begin improving the system beyond its foundations to a point where it will be welcomed by the majority will take a lot of planning. Planning which will likely require multiple teams to work together and give their opinions, but only a single or duo of coders to actually do all of the heavy lifting.

 

I like to think in similar terms whenever someone comes to me with a "Magic Plugin". I know that coding such a thing, given the amount of highly divergent lore we have, would be an absolute mammoth of a task. There's been a lot of people in the past that have wanted to code such a thing, but I just know they won't have the willpower to push through a hesitant community for the better part of a year. It's in fact an arduous journey a coder will have to go through to make a fully completed Magic Plugin. It's going to take a really special person to pull it off.

 

Reason 3: Opportunity Cost

Devs don't just code and produce content plugins for the community to enjoy. Our task list is expansive and any commitment to one task means less time to spend on the other. If nothing else, the day-to-day maintenance, bug-fixing and support queries make up a sizable chunk of work. And we're a small team. Our caurrent team has individuals such as Seventh and Wrynn who can focus on smaller content plugins, but the main crew is either inactive (such as myself and 501) or focusing on more important things such as updating to Minecraft 1.13 (Tofuus) or facilitating functional tools for an increasingly complicated staff roster (Kowaman).

 

Without a doubt there will be people who (rightly) point out I should just quit if I am inactive. And that's fair. However a large amount of this server runs on code I've written so it's likely better for all of you if I stick around just in case things get out of hand.  Beyond that my time is my own to spend how I'd like, and right now I am just not too inspired to launch any large content updates for LotC. However, I did release smaller content updates that I believe worthwhile without obstructing RP (Hunter, Caravans) and pushed work on things I believe in such as the application and voting overhaul.

 

 

In Conclusion

I wrote a lot, so thank you if you actually chose to read through it all. I didn't go back and edit because I want this to be a honest, from-the-heart discussion where we don't diss each other or point fingers or act like we know better than everyone else. So to conclude I invite you to pitch in your own thoughts about this server and how you interact with the content plugins in it. Which ones you enjoy, which ones you'd like to see, and which ones you can live without. Also let me know how Nexus has affected your roleplay and how the way you roleplay has changed after it, if at all.

 

Hugs and kisses,

Sporadic.

 

 

[NotEvilAtAll 9927]

This deserves attention 

 

+1