The Lack of Unwalled Towns and Cities in LOTC.

[camocat9 1021]

In my experience playing LOTC, there are two things that every settlement has to their name: A single, massive city as a roleplay hub, and the fact that their settlements are walled. This server has a lack of roleplay locations for those who do not wish to live within the protective walls of massive cities. While nations occupy huge tracts of land every map, typically none of that space is set aside for unwalled towns or small villages.

The most common argument against these types of places is that “there’s no roleplay there”. But, this does not have to be the case-- there’s not roleplay in these types of places because people do not care enough to give them a good location where they are capable of getting roleplay. Any small villages or towns I’ve seen are always shoved off into the back corner of a nation tile that nobody even knew existed. Nations have the capability of giving these types of smaller settlements better locations, such as on the roadside-- some could even go as far as to have the road cut through the center of one of these small villages. If there are people aimlessly traveling the roads, and they actually see some people standing around and talking in a small village, perhaps they’ll stop by, speak to the locals, or even have some of the roadside tavern roleplay that many were promised upon applying for the server.

 

If there are those who insist that it can’t be done, take a look at a location such as Belvitz in the Duchy of Adria from the last map. This town was built on a roadside at a crossroads. You had to pass it to get nearly anywhere in the north of Atlas, and this helped bring it activity. It wasn’t shoved off into a forgotten corner, but rather set in a prominent position-- and this paid off. Belvitz was an extremely active town-- and one that never caved into being just another walled city. The local tavern roleplay alongside the more basic political environment made Belvitz a popular location among many. I believe that other places have the possibility of achieving such a feat.

 

Even unwalled suburbs would be an improvement, such as what is seen in Owynsburg, Kaedrin right now. While Kaedrin has their main walled city, they also have a large portion of their living space set aside as a suburb of sorts. There are small farmhouses and other homes outside the walls of the city-- and many of these homes are full while a large portion of the walled part of Owynsburg is empty. If other nations could just follow this example and have space to live outside the walls, this would be a massive improvement, and provide something for players who do not want to live within the walls.

 

I am not advocating for the complete abandonment of the walled city system that we’ve seen for so long-- cities still serve as useful roleplay hubs, and it only makes sense that they are well defended. I am only looking for more locations that are not within the walls of cities for players to roleplay in. This is more a piece asking for nations to consider more locations to roleplay in rather than their singular capital city next map-- places for people who enjoy the smaller town aspect of roleplay to fit themselves into the server.

 

[Ztrog 1017]

The mad man did it, but dude he is so right where the heck are small towns everything is locked up in big cities. +1

[forwhatpvrpose 1062]

The nature of roleplay is that it requires people. This requirement creates a need for some sort of centralization. Because of this, nations with access to a steady playerbase tend to significantly centralize their roleplay. That ensures that regardless of when you log on, you can probably find someone at the tavern or church or town hall to roleplay with. Small towns are antithetical to this level of activity and in fact do the opposite.

 

When populations are further distributed in small or rural settlements, ultimately players log on and do not find people around. When they do this, they become disengaged and inactive. This contributes to a great deal of total current players, but a small amount of activity generated from those players. We saw this in many previous maps. Modern staff policies and even decisions made by nation leaders reinforce the efficacy of centralization. Decentralization is a cancer on the back of an active roleplaying experience and it is important we stop using this rhetoric.

[camocat9 1021]

3 minutes ago, Lyonharted™ said:

The nature of roleplay is that it requires people. This requirement creates a need for some sort of centralization. Because of this, nations with access to a steady playerbase tend to significantly centralize their roleplay. That ensures that regardless of when you log on, you can probably find someone at the tavern or church or town hall to roleplay with. Small towns are antithetical to this level of activity and in fact do the opposite.

 

When populations are further distributed in small or rural settlements, ultimately players log on and do not find people around. When they do this, they become disengaged and inactive. This contributes to a great deal of total current players, but a small amount of activity generated from those players. We saw this in many previous maps. Modern staff policies and even decisions made by nation leaders reinforce the efficacy of centralization. Decentralization is a cancer on the back of an active roleplaying experience and it is important we stop using this rhetoric.

While I can see your concerns about the decentralization of roleplay, the small villages were not the only point that I’ve made. I’ve also advocated more unique settlements that are unwalled. As was stated in the post, I believe that unwalled towns are also an important thing. It might just be me, but every city I visit feels the exact same because it shares the same basic layout-- an outer layer of wall which all roleplay takes place within.

Even something such as what Kaedrin had going for the second part of this map (Owynsburg) would be preferred-- a small, suburbs portion outside their walled city which had farmhouses and other smaller homes within it. It was still close enough to the main city that it did not take activity away from it, but it had the feeling of an unwalled village to it-- something more places, in my opinion, should do.

[Statherian 3314]

Most of the “people camping their city” stuff can all be blamed to the god awful activity check system nations and charters had to deal with this map, the lack of road rp due to both lag and later on warps, and just the nature of lotc in general.

Hope to see RP a bit more spread out next map, and more dynamic rather than people camping the same spot for a few hours, sadly this map there were a few systems in place that pretty much required it.

[camocat9 1021]

15 minutes ago, Luminaire said:

Most of the “people camping their city” stuff can all be blamed to the god awful activity check system nations and charters had to deal with this map, the lack of road rp due to both lag and later on warps, and just the nature of lotc in general.

Hope to see RP a bit more spread out next map, and more dynamic rather than people camping the same spot for a few hours, sadly this map there were a few systems in place that pretty much required it.

 

I’ve got to agree with you here. Roleplay was really forced to be centralized in this map. While having population centers to roleplay in is not a bad thing, there should be other options. Somewhere like Helena that sees upwards of 60 people on the tile at once have the ability to have their roleplay more spread out and not have people log in, look around, and think ‘there’s no roleplay here’ and log out again.

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

35 minutes ago, Lyonharted™ said:

The nature of roleplay is that it requires people. This requirement creates a need for some sort of centralization. Because of this, nations with access to a steady playerbase tend to significantly centralize their roleplay. That ensures that regardless of when you log on, you can probably find someone at the tavern or church or town hall to roleplay with. Small towns are antithetical to this level of activity and in fact do the opposite.

 

When populations are further distributed in small or rural settlements, ultimately players log on and do not find people around. When they do this, they become disengaged and inactive. This contributes to a great deal of total current players, but a small amount of activity generated from those players. We saw this in many previous maps. Modern staff policies and even decisions made by nation leaders reinforce the efficacy of centralization. Decentralization is a cancer on the back of an active roleplaying experience and it is important we stop using this rhetoric.

The average LOTCer might not be all that engaged by less active rural areas, but there is certainly a roleplay niche for the types of roleplayers that are fine with it. It is not fair to deny those players their preferred roleplaying environment through harsh activity checks just because there are other players who don’t prefer it. The players who don’t want to live in a rural area can just choose to not do so. Nobody is forcing them to live in some random inactive village out in the middle of nowhere.

 

I know that there is a niche for less active, more rural areas because I’ve been a part of one of those niches for a long time. In those types of settlements, it’s more about creating your own roleplay than riding off the back of other’s roleplay. You drive your own narrative. You go to a city in order to find large quantities of other players so that you may coast along in their roleplay. You go to rural settlements so that you can personally know all of the inhabitants there, so that you can establish less relationships, but much stronger ones, so that you can be the one who starts your own roleplay. It's not as easy as living in the city, but it can be just as, if not more, rewarding. Some people just don’t prefer cities. The massive quantities of people burns them out, and they don’t want to roleplay as much. Sometimes not being hella active can be a bliss.

 

It’s absolutely not for everyone, which is why it's still important to have large centralized cities, but there is absolutely no detriment to the server for less active rural places to exist. Yes, it is a problem that people log online in rural settlements and then log off because there isn’t anyone else online. That’s not a problem that the staff need to fix by removing the settlements all together. It’s solved by planning when people can be online, by creating events and eventlines to keep people engaged. It’s fixed by leadership, by the will to tread forwards.

 

If a rural settlement with less activity than the walled mega-cities has active leadership, event planning, and a playerbase that is more than happy to keep living there, there is literally zero detriment to the server that I can think of caused by the existence of said settlement. You’re not going to make anything better by forcing them to live in a city.

[camocat9 1021]

14 minutes ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

The average LOTCer might not be all that engaged by less active rural areas, but there is certainly a roleplay niche for the types of roleplayers that are fine with it. It is not fair to deny those players their preferred roleplaying environment through harsh activity checks just because there are other players who don’t prefer it. The players who don’t want to live in a rural area can just choose to not do so. Nobody is forcing them to live in some random inactive village out in the middle of nowhere.

 

I know that there is a niche for less active, more rural areas because I’ve been a part of one of those niches for a long time. In those types of settlements, it’s more about creating your own roleplay than riding off the back of other’s roleplay. You drive your own narrative. You go to a city in order to find large quantities of other players so that you may coast along in their roleplay. You go to rural settlements so that you can personally know all of the inhabitants there, so that you can establish less relationships, but much stronger ones, so that you can be the one who starts your own roleplay. It's not as easy as living in the city, but it can be just as, if not more, rewarding. Some people just don’t prefer cities. The massive quantities of people burns them out, and they don’t want to roleplay as much. Sometimes not being hella active can be a bliss.

 

It’s absolutely not for everyone, which is why it's still important to have large centralized cities, but there is absolutely no detriment to the server for less active rural places to exist. Yes, it is a problem that people log online in rural settlements and then log off because there isn’t anyone else online. That’s not a problem that the staff need to fix by removing the settlements all together. It’s solved by planning when people can be online, by creating events and eventlines to keep people engaged. It’s fixed by leadership, by the will to tread forwards.

 

If a rural settlement with less activity than the walled mega-cities has active leadership, event planning, and a playerbase that is more than happy to keep living there, there is literally zero detriment to the server that I can think of caused by the existence of said settlement. You’re not going to make anything better by forcing them to live in a city.

Thank you making all of these points! These are exactly the points that I was trying to get across in my post, just worded a lot better. I know a large portion of players who enjoy this niche of roleplay, too-- they like being able to make closer roleplay bonds with others in these environments with more limited playerbases. It is important for players to be able to have the type of roleplay that they actually enjoy doing as opposed to forcing everyone into cities.

I’ve noticed a severe lack of player-ran events recently, and feel like these smaller settlements could provide people to push for these types of thing in their community. Organize a hunt, or a type of holiday or festival that is unique to the settlement it was born in. Players can even run events themselves that are typically seen as only doable in the eyes of the event team-- but, there are plenty of lore approved creatures that can be used in player-ran events. Even when there are no events going on, you get an opportunity to get to know the people in your small community even better.

[LotsOfMuffins 1357]

Concerning walls, my two cents:

 

Llyria. 

 

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk. 

 

Nah, but really, if Llyria had actually made walls, then there wouldn’t have been bandits there plaguing everyone’s RP every five seconds. If you had lived there, you would understand the need for walls, else people like to come by and screw up RP. There is a reason places have walls. Everyone in Llyria literally got bullied out after raid after raid after raid after bandit after raid. Every single day. I am for walls, because without them, people will skirt by the raid rules and raid with, like, 2 people all the time unendlessly if they feel like it. 

 

Llyria. They should have had walls. 

[Xarkly 12580]

Yeah, like walls on LOTC serve the same purpose they do in IRL history

 

Defense

 

If your unwalled settlement gets besieged, boy oh boy are you in trouble.

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

1 minute ago, LotsOfMuffins said:

Concerning walls, my two cents:

 

Llyria. 

 

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk. 

 

Nah, but really, if Llyria had actually made walls, then there wouldn’t have been bandits there plaguing everyone’s RP every five seconds. If you had lived there, you would understand the need for walls, else people like to come by and screw up RP. There is a reason places have walls. Everyone in Llyria literally got bullied out after raid after raid after raid after bandit after raid. Every single day. I am for walls, because without them, people will skirt by the raid rules and raid with, like, 2 people all the time unendlessly if they feel like it. 

 

Llyria. They should have had walls. 

Lived in a settlement without walls for most of my time on LOTC.

It’s fine, so long as you aren’t too large to tempt bandits to chain-raid you. Small settlements can easily get away with not having walls. When bandits do come for you, they get bored after a while and stop raiding you all the time. The only problem is if you get OOCly targeted, which won’t go away after a while unlike bandits just doing it for fun/loot.

Cities, on the other hand, yeah, those places need walls more often than not. Or a really active guard force.

[camocat9 1021]

4 minutes ago, LotsOfMuffins said:

Concerning walls, my two cents:

 

Llyria. 

 

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk. 

 

Nah, but really, if Llyria had actually made walls, then there wouldn’t have been bandits there plaguing everyone’s RP every five seconds. If you had lived there, you would understand the need for walls, else people like to come by and screw up RP. There is a reason places have walls. Everyone in Llyria literally got bullied out after raid after raid after raid after bandit after raid. Every single day. I am for walls, because without them, people will skirt by the raid rules and raid with, like, 2 people all the time unendlessly if they feel like it. 

 

Llyria. They should have had walls. 

 

As I said in the post, I’m not saying to get rid of walled cities-- nothing has to change with those. I’m just saying that nations should provide the option to players to live in smaller unwalled towns or villages. They should not be forced into city centers if that is not what their character dictates.

[squakhawk 7300]

let builders and nl’s do what they want with their nation

sure it doesn’t make sense in some cases thematically but just let people do what they want, if you dont like it go do your own thing and if its well likeminded will follow

personally i think its just the aesthetic of the race or culture. Think it’s absurd wood elven nations insist(ed) on having massive walls such as in irrinor or gladewynn, until they landscarred that whole area with a massive ******* mountain to remove the need for them (yet still had them), it just doesn’t make any sense thematically to me. But will I knock it outside of an insanely specific and nobody-cares niche-complaint? Not really. I understand the need, let em do what they want. Typically it’s to avoid bandits. Say what you want most bandits are extremely low effort and are just a nuisance that contribute nothing to rp, and the counter of “just get guards lol” doesnt work because players aren’t ******* npcs. Makes headaches a lot easier-  which is why gated communities, albeit annoying to get into (haelunor) are a lot more successful in that regard.

[camocat9 1021]

7 minutes ago, Xarkly said:

Yeah, like walls on LOTC serve the same purpose they do in IRL history

 

Defense

 

If your unwalled settlement gets besieged, boy oh boy are you in trouble.

While this might be true, it was not common for every single settlement to be walled. It’s the walled cities that are truly the defensive bastions in wars, while the villages were not viewed as important enough to be defended. What good is a tiny town to any war effort? The most likely scenario is that, if they’re sized correctly, enemy nations may not choose to bother too much with them.

[camocat9 1021]

20 minutes ago, SquakHawk said:

let builders and nl’s do what they want with their nation

sure it doesn’t make sense in some cases thematically but just let people do what they want, if you dont like it go do your own thing and if its well likeminded will follow

personally i think its just the aesthetic of the race or culture. Think it’s absurd wood elven nations insist(ed) on having massive walls such as in irrinor or gladewynn, until they landscarred that whole area with a massive ******* mountain to remove the need for them (yet still had them), it just doesn’t make any sense thematically to me. But will I knock it outside of an insanely specific and nobody-cares niche-complaint? Not really. I understand the need, let em do what they want. Typically it’s to avoid bandits. Say what you want most bandits are extremely low effort and are just a nuisance that contribute nothing to rp, and the counter of “just get guards lol” doesnt work because players aren’t ******* npcs. Makes headaches a lot easier-  which is why gated communities, albeit annoying to get into (haelunor) are a lot more successful in that regard.

 

I can see what you mean by this, but what I’m suggesting are smaller towns and villages that really have to desire for greatness. Places that are content with their small size, or ruled over by another larger nation. The success will come from the groups of communities that take enjoyment in small town/village roleplay, and don’t particularly want to grow into a massive, walled nation. Many places on LOTC have a desire to grow larger, and take in more and more players-- these smaller villages, of course, could always have a goal of growing larger, but I expect those who would want to roleplay there would have no desire in going for something such as nation status.