I don't want to be a slave to my region anymore

[NotEvilAtAll 9927]

Bywater made its last two activity checks but the most recent one was failed at 0.84%. I mentioned to the other main halfling leadership figure, @Hearth, to say that this is likely because we rallied for some events in Norland last weekend instead of exclusively doing things in our own village.

~Halflings in Norland, obtaining activity for something other than Bywater~

He admitted that I was right, because I (probably) was.

At this moment I took a step back to think about my current server experience.

 

1: I am tied down to roleplaying in one location on all of Almaris. If I go outside of tile_97 where Bywater is located, I am throwing my activity metrics into the void where my playerbase cannot use it. If another nation or settlement plans a cool event, even one that I like and whose players I am friends with, it is not wise for me to attend it.

 

2: If my fellow halfling players and I do not get enough activity for our settlement, we will be evicted and forced to rebuild a new village near the end of this map. Whether or not we get anything settlement-related at the start of 9.0 is also up to our activity. At the moment, the answer to that question seems to be a no.

 

3: These activity checks and the drive to meet them do not make me happy. During the holidays when there were no activity checks bearing down upon us I was planning events and narratives with my fellow halflings and having a good time. Our raw numbers may be slightly higher than they were back then (mainly out of more people logging online and staying online out of fear of eviction), but it has not made me happy and I doubt it's making anyone else happy.

 

I am going on hiatus because I am not happy. I am not happy with being tied down to a single area on the server and seeing myself required to spam events or see my community face eviction. This has not helped my character's narrative development nor has it helped my roleplay.

 

We do not understand why evicting Bywater is even a consideration. Halflings will never disband their race due to losing a village. We will not spread our members far and wide into the ranks of other nations like when a human or elven location is destroyed and its members spread out as refugees. I hope other people can see that making halflings move from Village A to Village B (now a vassal!) does not improve server centralization.

I've given up on halfling independence in 9.0. We'll be a vassal as was the case at the start of Almaris. All I ask of staff is to not evict Bywater in Almaris so that we don't have to make a new village that will only last for a few months before the map transition. I just don't want to give up my mineman freedom for the sake of the halflings either.

I'll be gone for a few days as a break from being an activity slave. Might be a week, maybe more, maybe less, I don't know. Good luck out there everyone.

[Jihnyny 2571]

I dont understand the point of putting activity on halflings. Theyre a main race and always stay in one settlement. Theyre the source of slice of life and also are the most harmless of all races. Its just stupid to do this

[TopazTheMagi 68]

Honestly, I've started a hiatus as well over this and seriously considered quitting. This is the one thing on this server I've enjoyed and staff keeps threatening it, so I tried to fight back and burnt myself out. This is a video game, not an investment profile or stock or something. You do not have to keep doing things everyone hates to make the server "improve". You'll drive away players because they came here to have fun- not work- and you turn it into the latter. Anyway- fully agreeing with Jumper. This is just... ugh.

[wowj 2754]

be a vassal again until you gather enough players so you can actually venture outside of your tile

[argonian 12836]

in based Atlas there were no activity checks and your place just got converted into ruins (or taken over by squatters) if it was like literally empty for weeks

 

if other ppl want your land they can deal with it IRP. conquer it, buy it, squat in it if it's totally deserted. if they aren't willing or trying to acquire it IRP, then they don't deserve it, so who cares if a quiet place occupies it?

 

activity checks serve utterly no purpose whatsoever. the ghost town scourge has always primarily been an issue within nations, and therefore one that activity checks don't address whatsoever. instead they just stress ppl out and provide weird ends to narratives where a weak country just suddenly has to delete itself because, uh, yeah who knows

[JoshBright 2104]

1 hour ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

1: I am tied down to roleplaying in one location on all of Almaris. If I go outside of tile_97 where Bywater is located, I am throwing my activity metrics into the void where my playerbase cannot use it. If another nation or settlement plans a cool event, even one that I like and whose players I am friends with, it is not wise for me to attend it.

been doing this for the past 6 MONTHS join the club

[JoshBright 2104]

delete this comment plz

[Hanrahan 2884]

I can't state how hostile, stupid, and idiotic the administration is being around all of these decisions.

 

Let's the the LOTC MISSION STATEMENT, shall we?

 

Does this decision...

 

"Prioritize the integrity of the story & experience over clicks & policies."

"Find a middle ground between mechanics-oriented anything-goes and bureaucracy hell—give players the power to do what the RP calls for and find ways to eliminate paperwork"

"Reduce the tendency for systems to require players to be vetted before they can engage in RP, or otherwise mandating staff involvement"

"Stop punishing the average chad LotC enjoyer or scrambling to appease old power — & in this way counter low retention rate"

"Accessible — open LotC to the newbies, give players who desire it time and space to incubate with light-rp, mine/build, & gradually integrate into the community. This ideally means no heavy-handed & confusing ruleset"

 

On every single one of these points, copied from the LOTC mission statement, you have egregiously failed. Your policies are hostile towards RP, hostile towards building community, hostile towards people who don't no-life LOTC.

 

Activity checks have been the bane of the server ever since they were introduced. They're a deeply unpleasant metric that add grotesque incentives to players and communities, and commodify free time having fun. It's a wretched thing, and THIS should be the warning sign to you administrators that it needs to be scrapped. Not reworked, but plain, simply, scrapped.

 

Good DAY

 

P.S

 

There is no reasonable justification you can possibly make for this. No metrics, no numbers, no high-minded ideas. This is bone-idle stupidity, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for attacking and virtually harrasing a community that has existed for over a decade, RPing in their own, charmed and quaint little way. Don't justify it. Just apologize, and fix it. When the players on this communal server say they're being hurt by your policies, listen to them.

 

(i could have been extremely vulgar but I wasn't so ur welcome :3 xoxo)

Edited February 22, 2023 by Hanrahan

[SethWolf 1382]

Activity checks are a simpleton's solution to inactivity. 

"Haha they'll actually rp if we put a gun to their head" 
 

My current tile in Haense has nearly 0.60% pop sometimes. Is that *amazingly good*? No, it isn't, but it's good for a Barony tile of a new house, and it's fine for any little place where friends are making memories and a community together.

 

 However, I'm not beholden to a psychotic drive to make sure people play on my tile. People play on my tile because they want to hang out with eachother there. 

I can't even imagine what being whipped into the servitude of a percentage every single week on top of my regular responsibilities would do to me. The halflings deserve better. Remove the rule, leave Bywater alone and let them roleplay.

[Asutto 1948]

wtf are you on jumperhand? every take you've made today has been unbelievably based

I'm sorry this is happening to your community. If any nation deserves continuous independence it's the halflings.

[Caravaggio 142]

I understand the need to not have absolutely inactive guilds and factions squatting on builds and tiles while no RP occurs there, but there surely HAS to be a better way to do so - not to mention the fact that the Orcs' tile had the activity check flag TURNED OFF during the activity checks to determine the order of who gets to pick region tiles in the new map first - so we get to pick last since our activity was 0.

 

As an old-head, I'd like to point out that in the past we had a different allegiance system where individuals just had to register as citizens of a nation in order to be counted as an active member. Maybe instead of splitting hairs over fractions of a percentage of activity to determine if a community is having sufficient amounts of fun, having personas register themselves to a single nation and a single guild charter would be a more reasonable way to gauge if a playerbase was active and present. If people have a problem with a guild or nation holding land that they want, they can resolve it in RP via warclaims. Why are we being scrutinized like employees working a factory line? 

[Mannamannaa 1626]

I too despise the activity check. Making RP a zero sum game where Larger nations are encouraged to OOCly oppress smaller groups so they can defend their own slice of the pie chart promotes much of the Toxicity that staff claims they don't want to see and point at as the reason things aren't like the good old golden age.

"It's the players forcing bad RP and avoiding conflict/interaction/good stories"

Well maybe we wouldn't avoid it if Staff didn't punish entire nations for leaving their capital walls. God, I am actually worried about the Orcs for the same reasons because staff has mentioned not wanting Racial Hubs to have the same levels of OOC protection as in the past. Knowing as Caravaggio said that a Major administrative blunder was made concerning the Iron Horde and their activity flag and then said mistake was not only unaddressed officially but literally laughed away by certain staff members joking that orcs were a "dead race" already ticked me off, and to hear some of the best SoL RPers on the server are also getting harassed over not being "mainstream enough" to attract the massive swarms of teenaged Haensians and Celianorians adds insult to injury.

Justice for Hayhollow, get rid of Activity Checks.

[Llir 5716]

50 minutes ago, Caravaggio said:

not to mention the fact that the Orcs' tile had the activity check flag TURNED OFF during the activity checks to determine the order of who gets to pick region tiles in the new map first - so we get to pick last since our activity was 0.

 

This is just factually untrue. I can share the numbers with the NL if needed, but going back 12 weeks I can see the Orcs activity has never been zero on any of their tiles.

 

Anyway, I appreciate the thoughts on activity here, we're making some major revisions for next map to make it less central to a realm's survival. More details will be provided once the system is more fleshed out.

 

For the Bywater decision, I am personally handling it and am free to discuss it in DMs with the NL, though I want everyone to know we are not by any means closed to the idea of giving special consideration to the halflings. Gotta keep that shirecore aesthetic going.

[Crevel 4727]

I was writing a response to this post, but I opted to make a new post entirely due to how much I wrote. Feel free to take a look: 

 

[ShyDisaster 102]

Gotta love this activity system ;_;

 

Building a new settlement takes a good amount of time. The staff should know this already. It takes time in the creative worlds to redo stuff that was already there but can not be used because "reasons". Time that could be used to roleplay or gasp! even spent doing things IRL.

 

I do have to wonder if exploring the map of Almaris is even worth it, when every little bit not spent in your own tiles is time wasted, according to these activity checks. And that kinda like makes me wonder if spending time on the server is worth it, when you are tied to do just few things.

Kinda ironic how these activity checks are supposed to make people more active, but just makes them wonder why be on the server at all.