What do players think of Almaris and it's events from the past year?

[Werew0lf 12001]

15 minutes ago, Jentos said:

Say what you will, but I'm glad that events such as Ando-Lur occurred naturally. I hope we can all work together to make engaging storylines. 

stop joking around, im not here for inclusive and engaging storylines that drive narrative and character development

 

if i lose. then the server loses.

 

[VoidandNull 356]

I hate it. Besides a select amount of ETs, nothing is done. I've only had fun when I'm ******* around as some homeless man stalking the sewers, yelling at Haelunorians to suck my taint and then running away laughing, playing the infamous bandit "Lemon McSqueeze", or just player ran events. Yes there are ET events and I've had extreme amounts of fun playing them. 

The problem is, nothing has been done. War rules are so fucked you can't do anything, bandit RP is now just looked upon as "gooning", and even getting people to do new fun RP or meme RP is impossible in its own accord. Walking into Oren is imagining like what 1700's france is like, but just add an excessive amount of politics for no reason. Elvenesse is literally a burning pile of rubbish, the Orcs are slowly dying out, the Dwarves are just chilling under a mountain and not much else, and every time I run into a spook I might as well send myself to spawn with all of my items dropped to them because there is literally nothing I can do against a teleporting man in armor who wields two massive spears, has four arms, and is made from stone or some ****. Norland is more dead than my great grandfather, and Haense is just 'there'. Don't even get me started on the Druids. 

This map is just like Elvenesse. A spiraling mess that is burning into a rapid inferno. Might as well call it California because of how shitty it is. In fact, the prices are as inflated too. 

Edited November 11, 2021 by VoidandNull

[Unwillingly 11106]

I really wish we could see a return of spontaneous ET events that don't require a ton of fkn OOC paperwork or foreshadowing. I miss when the ET would just see people in a city, and do something entertaining, and I'm not even talking about CRP events since those have been pretty much completely occupied by player-ran events

I miss ET characters who would tell players magic riddles in exchange for prizes, I miss ET characters that would interact with the general populace to determine an outcome, I miss those small, lighthearted events that just gave players an hour of fun. Not everything needs to be super dramatic or pre-planned or impactful to the "nArrAtiVe" of LOTC. Yes, players can run their own events, but are still limited in such. The ET undoubtedly have a much larger range of what they can do for events, even if they're not eventlines. Even if it's thirty, fort-five minutes of fun for 10 people lingering in the square. We need these things to return, especially while there is absolutely nothing else happening right now

 

[RoamingRonin 619]

50 minutes ago, Fionn__TWG said:

Yes, it is up to us as players to provide rp too, but only ST have the power to create and run meaningful eventlines that truly affect the world other than a nation being like 'oh no!' for a month or two

 

This is kinda cap, in all honesty. Not to dig at the ST (since it's already happening at a commensurate rate (seriously please keep doing it, I'm getting my popcorn)) but considering that there have been no real significant events, the players have had to adapt and make their own events. A majority of the most fun I've had is either being a part of a player led event, or DMing a player event. Hell, the last time an ST event "wow'd" me, was a small Hexer event ran by Malaise. I can think of two others that hold a place in my mind, and both of them were ran by Mystery (a dude who's been long gone off the server for like, a year LOL). 

 

In my opinion, a fat chunk of the ST team needs to get the axe. A good solid majority have done nothing to help the server along, either eventline wise, or lore wise. It's time for some fresh blood. As well, not every event has to be doom and gloom. We can have some nonsensical events here and there. Perhaps something that relates to world building, and making it feel alive and fantastical. It just seems to me that people apply because they wanted PEX, and not because they want to tell good stories, which really sucks. It's a shame when the folks who are the ones supposed to help spin tales of wonder and creativity, are themselves creatively bankrupt. 

[antiopa 131]

their has not been a single good ET or ST or whatever team even sense 2017, please do some world event that isnt the map ending or atleast something.. yall built event sites on this map and then haven't used a single one.

[Nug 1885]

ngl i think that the big ST thinking only convuluted storylines are worthy events is the biggest issue that’s caused the map to feel so lame and empty, like please let an ebic spooky magical event happen that’s not some tryhard novella for the ST’s own buddies

 

and yes there’s muh player events, but even then, why use it as an excuse for the team’s own inactivity and limit them, if you’re not gonna use the event powers given to do what players can’t??

 

also when old ET would just do random events it was what helped spice up rp, not waiting for one or two big events per year that you can’t even interact with until certain day/time

 

sorry joel babie x

[Fionn__TWG 2616]

36 minutes ago, ᴜɴᴡɪʟʟɪɴɢʟʏ said:

I miss when the ET would just see people in a city, and do something entertaining

Me and 4 friends, one of which was an ET, strolled up to Elysium, since it was the most populated at the time, as hedge knights and challenged people to random challenges, such as a drinking contest or my challenge which was to see who could harvest more land in 5 minutes. It was entertaining to us since we got to interact with a community we rarely go to, and I hope it was entertaining to those who participated. It would be fantastic to see ETs more focused on the small things like that rather than large eventlines, would make the server a lot more realistic if we were doing small stuff like finding a missing child or stopping a fire rather than facing npc army #563.

[King_Kunuk 888]

I just want my self teach altars back on so I can die to voidal monsters in strange alien temples 😭

[Dry Crackers 230]

I remember just about every map we’ve had and I really like Almaris.  The layout is good, the terrain is fantastic, I don’t love the look of the trees they have all over the map but that’s ok.  Travel times are maybe a hair long but they’re tolerable especially with new roads, road speed, and horses.  More fast travels should definitely be encouraged, especially on rivers.  Oh and the CT warp thing is garbage.  More nations need direct roads between each other.   This will also hopefully let wars make more sense. 
 

the overall scale of the map seems about right.  Just about every nation capital except Haense is too sprawling, but elvenesse is getting rebuilt and providence has enough population to sustain that bizarre layout even if it’s a shame places like the churches never get much use.  I’m very glad staff has kept on top of managing abandoned settlements — one of my least favorite things about any map is when frontier areas get so suburbanized that nations start to blend together.  That said, I do worry if the difficulty of attaining some settlement status leads to people making overly cautions decisions in order to protect their investments and thereby stifling some RP outcomes. 
 

Recently it’s definitely felt like it’s tough to find RP sometimes, but I don’t think that has much to do with the physical aspects of the map.  After all, there was plenty of RP in lots of different places at the start of the map.
 

In ten years we’ve tried just about every map permutation under the sun and people have always complained about them.  Maps are alternately too crowded or too sparse.  Map antagonists are either obnoxious and smother self-motivated RP between nations or are totally necessary to alleviate boredom.  Freebuild leads to senseless landscaring or settlements are oppressive red tape.  The CT in the middle of the map stops nations from interacting or All the roads from CT are too long.  We’ve done it all before!  These same arguments have been going back and forth since 2012!

 

This map is overall pretty good.  Fix your cities and it’ll be excellent.  Deal with your problems with staff, stories, and RP separately.  If we’re replacing maps only to give people a jolt of novelty, we’re doing something else wrong. 

[SoulReapingWolf 2258]

While I recognize the map has had its ups and downs and the World Team has written down the issues brought up in different feedback posts by the community and is looking forward to making some changes once the development of next map takes place. However maybe contrary to some of the comments above I feel like I've had some amazing & memorable moments in Almaris. 

I've been able to participate in a couple of large events like the ones that took place in the south hunting down a dragon with Paladins & Norland, I was also there for a part of the Ando Alur floating city event and the siege of Elvenesse by Azdromoth and his minions.

There were a few smaller events I’ve been a part of like hunts held in Hefrumm or a random encounter with a massive lunarite bird that resulted in loosing a leg & completing my final trial.

But even though I had a lot of fun in those events, the things I seem to remember the most are moments in which I had some very spontaneous roleplay sessions with my friends, where we didn’t need a greentag to provide us with an entire eventline. I’ll mention some of them bellow.

I often remember fondly the time my paladin character Magni Irongut went fishing with his father Falk. I also like to think about that time he learned a new skill from one of his adoptive fathers Dorimnur, starting his own jewelry business and starting his ambitious path as a ruthless merchant. How could I forget that time his other adoptive father Aer’dir taught him many magical skills & lessons, among them how to vandalize the paladin keep with a hammer made of pure light? Or any of the moments that he has spent with Rhaelanthur were despite not being his own son he has taken him in and taken care of him as if he were his own.

I also got to join a wonderful new community, meeting some new friends, and going out of my dwarven comfort zone to play a different character. In Nevaehlen I’ve been able to develop my character Thordir from the lone wolf aspectist that lived in the edge of the forest into a loyal guardian and member of the Vale. It all started with the simplest of encounters, including trying to get the sand out of a beachfront house, roleplay crab fights, fishing for lobsters with the character that would become the mother of his daughter & the most important person in his life. I got to watch Miven being Miven & the opportunity of Thordir learning from challenges Nenar gave him.

I’ve gotten to learn golemancy from a great friend
I’ve gone on mining parties with the High Prophet
I got to join my friend’s mages guild, slowly finding myself diving head in into the depths of voidal magic & everything it offers.

Most of my other characters I could sit here and write a paragraph on, but overall, I feel like despite not having this huge world eventline everyone keeps asking about my characters have gotten some nice development. Something I can’t say they got in Arcas with all the big eventlines & stuff.

 

[Caelria 2618]

Spoiler

 

I think that just about everything, with some notable exceptions, I've seen the staff attempt for Almaris has been a colossal failure. (This will be leaving out personal staff contributions and expected baseline maintenance that most players don't experience. 5-10 person events, WT making a new tree, etc)

 

World Team issue has to be the map size. Player hostile. The vast majority don't like it and have let you know repeatedly. Road speed being the solution has proven to be a pitiful response, and if anything just shows me the teams don't really have any idea how their design is failing at all. Congratulations. Your world is huge. It's very impressive. Bigger meaning better is a kindergarten mentality and thinking that because Almaris is very big that it's very good is amateur. Your design is literally full of holes, and you've had to section off areas so players can't even see some of the damage that's been done. To my knowledge, there has been no work even started on making a new map to fix these fundamental errors. If your management played your own game from the perspective of a normal player, you would understand why this is a problem.

 

Story Team has some very key issues. The ST node system is unfulfilling and resented as either a nuisance or a chore by nearly everyone involved including Story Team members, and the ST's solution has been to unilaterally throw their arms up and say that since there's no better way of doing things they're paralyzed. The ST has performed two memorable events for Almaris. Ando Alur and Elvenesse. Ando Alur was tremendously contentious at the time of its destruction, and I don't think anybody who wasn't a part of the majority green-tag/ST friend group in the city actually had a very good time. I still remember the absolutely rabid response of players receiving ST messages saying 'well you were roleplaying in this area at the time of its destruction so you're dead see you at CT'. Like the World Team with the creation of Almaris, it was very big but very unfulfilling. I hope that what has been going on with the passive RP in the ruins will prove to salvage lingering player disappointment. I would consider Elvenesse to be one of the few successes of the staff for the general server this year, but to have one memorable positive moment for the playerbase all year in a team of twenty people (larger than some story writing teams for AAA games) is not a very high mark. I suppose it's very grounded and realistic that not a lot is going on, but it's definitely not very fun. If you consider one of the responsibilities of your job to be to entertain players, the sentiment that it's the responsibility of players to entertain themselves and that they're greedy for expecting interaction from you as a volunteer should be offensive.

 

Community Team has unilaterally failed to create engaging events like they did in the time of Muffins. New media has not been released by the team, but rather by players like Zilldude, and to my knowledge player retention remains stagnantly low. Under Treshure I was informed there were several projects underway that had been for some time, but with Treshure stepping back I'm not sure as to the integrity of those projects at all. Given the time frame of Almaris, to see nothing significant come from the CT at all is tremendously disappointing. Outside of whitelist acceptance (which I'm told is actually done by mods, CT just review the applications), the general sentiment of players I've spoken to has been that this team in its current state might as well not exist, and the general sentiment of members I know is that it's an easy way to get PEX.

 

Moderation Team has been a mess. War rules have been a joke and rewritten several times. Every unformatted, unfinished, and grammatically jumbled draft I've managed to find looks like a fourth grader did them in google docs the night before a due date. Just absolutely careless work. The gross incompetence of the team wouldn't even necessarily be a problem since to most players on LotC their primary duty is ticket fulfillment, but the rules currently written for conflict simply don't work. The team's inability to make any form of decisive change, or to express the self-confidence to have looser rulings with the moderation team stepping in to treat the real problems like toxcicity (rather than try to create systems to prevent themselves from needing to do work in the first place), has paralyzed any form of conflict on LotC. You will not write a system that moderates itself without the need for a judge without putting everyone in stasis, and stasis is antithetical to an RPG. Add onto this that the failures of the moderation team have put even more pressure on the Story Team to step in and entertain in the wake of players not being able to create their own conflict narratives (without being discouraged by paperwork and secret bans being leveled their way that aren't shared outside of leaks until the player has had a verdict rendered), and the result is that the ST is incapable of handling their new workload (especially their own paperwork requirements) and resentful as a result. This is an inter-team issue.

 

Development Team has been trying to fix their own failed implementation of Minecraft Runescape since the beginning of this map, with Tythus on standby with a fire extinguisher next to servers running at one billion degrees Celsius, and it's embarrassing that we didn't learn this lesson from Nexus. It's pretty cool to have Minecraft Battlefront II coming to LotC though. Development team is awesome and has been doing really cool things, but has been ignoring most of the central issues of LotC in favor of fun passion projects that either go unused or are tolerated by players like five minute ferries to Haelun'or (LOL -- if I were a new High Elf player and I saw that I had to stand still and watch that 5 minute bar creep to get to roleplay I would log out of LotC and never log back in I guarantee you). Just total mismanagement.

 

To my knowledge, every team feels paralyzed because every result has to be cleared with a largely inactive administration who does not play or playtest their own game in any meaningful capacity nor have the time to do so. All in all I'd give Almaris a D-.

[Ryloth 4312]

31 minutes ago, Caelria said:

  Hide contents

 

I think that just about everything, with some notable exceptions, I've seen the staff attempt for Almaris has been a colossal failure. (This will be leaving out personal staff contributions and expected baseline maintenance that most players don't experience. 5-10 person events, WT making a new tree, etc)

 

World Team issue has to be the map size. Player hostile. The vast majority don't like it and have let you know repeatedly. Road speed being the solution has proven to be a pitiful response, and if anything just shows me the teams don't really have any idea how their design is failing at all. Congratulations. Your world is huge. It's very impressive. Bigger meaning better is a kindergarten mentality and thinking that because Almaris is very big that it's very good is amateur. Your design is literally full of holes, and you've had to section off areas so players can't even see some of the damage that's been done. To my knowledge, there has been no work even started on making a new map to fix these fundamental errors. If your management played your own game from the perspective of a normal player, you would understand why this is a problem.

 

Story Team has some very key issues. The ST node system is unfulfilling and resented as either a nuisance or a chore by nearly everyone involved including Story Team members, and the ST's solution has been to unilaterally throw their arms up and say that since there's no better way of doing things they're paralyzed. The ST has performed two memorable events for Almaris. Ando Alur and Elvenesse. Ando Alur was tremendously contentious at the time of its destruction, and I don't think anybody who wasn't a part of the majority green-tag/ST friend group in the city actually had a very good time. I still remember the absolutely rabid response of players receiving ST messages saying 'well you were roleplaying in this area at the time of its destruction so you're dead see you at CT'. Like the World Team with the creation of Almaris, it was very big but very unfulfilling. I hope that what has been going on with the passive RP in the ruins will prove to salvage lingering player disappointment. I would consider Elvenesse to be one of the few successes of the staff for the general server this year, but to have one memorable positive moment for the playerbase all year in a team of twenty people (larger than some story writing teams for AAA games) is not a very high mark. I suppose it's very grounded and realistic that not a lot is going on, but it's definitely not very fun. If you consider one of the responsibilities of your job to be to entertain players, the sentiment that it's the responsibility of players to entertain themselves and that they're greedy for expecting interaction from you as a volunteer should be offensive.

 

Community Team has unilaterally failed to create engaging events like they did in the time of Muffins. New media has not been released by the team, but rather by players like Zilldude, and to my knowledge player retention remains stagnantly low. Under Treshure I was informed there were several projects underway that had been for some time, but with Treshure stepping back I'm not sure as to the integrity of those projects at all. Given the time frame of Almaris, to see nothing significant come from the CT at all is tremendously disappointing. Outside of whitelist acceptance (which I'm told is actually done by mods, CT just review the applications), the general sentiment of players I've spoken to has been that this team in its current state might as well not exist, and the general sentiment of members I know is that it's an easy way to get PEX.

 

Moderation Team has been a mess. War rules have been a joke and rewritten several times. Every unformatted, unfinished, and grammatically jumbled draft I've managed to find looks like a fourth grader did them in google docs the night before a due date. Just absolutely careless work. The gross incompetence of the team wouldn't even necessarily be a problem since to most players on LotC their primary duty is ticket fulfillment, but the rules currently written for conflict simply don't work. The team's inability to make any form of decisive change, or to express the self-confidence to have looser rulings with the moderation team stepping in to treat the real problems like toxcicity rather than try to create systems to prevent themselves from needing to do work in the first place, has paralyzed any form of conflict on LotC. You will not write a system that moderates itself without the need for a judge without putting everyone in stasis, and stasis is death. Add onto this that the failures of the moderation team have put even more pressure on the Story Team to step in and entertain in the wake of players not being able to create their own conflict narratives (without being discouraged by paperwork and secret bans being leveled their way that aren't shared outside of leaks until the player has had a verdict rendered), and the ST is both incapable of handling the workload (especially their own paperwork requirements) and resentful as a result. This is an inter-team issue.

 

Development Team has been trying to fix their own failed implementation of Minecraft Runescape since the beginning of this map, with Tythus on standby with a fire extinguisher next to servers running at one billion degrees Celsius, and it's been embarrassing that we didn't learn this lesson from Nexus. It's pretty cool to have Minecraft Battlefront II coming to LotC though. Development team is awesome and has been doing really cool things, but has been ignoring most of the central issues of LotC in favor of fun passion projects that either go unused or are tolerated by players like five minute ferries to Haelun'or (LOL -- if I were a new High Elf player and I saw that I had to stand still and watch that 5 minute bar creep to get to roleplay I would log out of LotC and never log back in I guarantee you). Just total mismanagement.

 

To my knowledge, every team feels paralyzed because every result has to be cleared with a largely inactive administration who does not play or playtest their own game in any meaningful capacity or have the time to do so. All in all I'd give Almaris a D-.

 

quite a lot of information from the top! o.0 how'd that get there? but all true and explanatory for the failure that is almaris. revert to arcas plz

caelria ban in t-minus 10...

 

edit: Almaris is probably one of my least enjoyed maps of all time on LotC. It's too big, it doesn't feel real, most trees are titanic, not enough unique custom biomes but the ones we do have are way too large, hub system is complete trash, CT is horrific and isn't even an RP hub just a HyPixel lobby, cities are too unregulated and colossal with RP spread so thin you might as well be starring in I Am Legend, too many cities, no freebuild area, roads/horses only got better after an entire year in, the dynamap is 4-5+ months ancient and staff laugh about it right now but new players are led to the wrong locations, nodes suck, nations have like 902029130 billion unregulated vassals spreading rp out even more while 90% of these vassals die 3 weeks in leaving a huge ghost town (vasiyeva/stygian hollow and all of sutica's remaining remnant builds Savoy is forced to knock down by hand which creates huge temporary world scars)

 

I have invited several people to play on this server and they have quit in the first week/month due to the above issues. Can we just have an Athera again? That was the best map we've ever had for RP hands down.

[LatzMomo 2088]

This map is dogshit, not even gonna sugarcoat it, whoever decided that new players spawn without food and then have to walk to a nation that is so far down the road that they'll starve before reaching it, I have mean things to say about them, but I'll refrain. I was appalled when I had to make that first run to Norland.

 

I quit on Axios or Atlas or something, I don't really recall, but the lack of conflict feels bad, since I have joined for the past three months it has felt like we are on the cusp of making very good and healthy decisions for the server, but then bureaucracy bogs it down and we are stuck in this endless loop of disappointment and mediocrity.

 

Ando alur blight is cool, I missed the Elvenesse event, but I was told it was cool, other then that there's really not been much going on, a few raids here and there have been fun, really respect the Dwarves right now because how they react to conflict is very healthy in my opinion, they don't ***** and whine, they roll with the punches and deal with the raids in RP instead of trying to use OOC rules to lawyer out of them.

[argonian 12836]

Can't believe it's been a year lmao.

 

It's partially COVID's fault but also literally what has happened in this map? If someone were to write a book called "The History of Almaris", it'd make for a very short and boring read. Compare that to any previous map(even Arcas had an eventful history in its first half!).

[The Media Wizard 2950]

1 hour ago, Caelria said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

... Elvenesse to be one of the few successes of the staff for the general server this year.

 

 

1 hour ago, Caelria said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

New media has not been released by the team, but rather by players like Zilldude...

 

Spoiler