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

[Netphreak 448]

    It seems there's a lot of negative feedback regarding this plugin and how the information it collects is used for.. 

 

    I do not know the protocols nor procedures for activity checks and what you decide to do with said checks should they consistently fall below certain parameters; but skimming and scanning what the Community members have been saying, it doesn't look good at all. 

 

    I can understand if perhaps you allocated certain staff members to tiles that didn't get very much activity, such as the Story Team to do more local events in said areas to bring about a higher percentage of activity during these checks. 

 

    But to have a system that is used to evict a group or collective of members of the community just based upon a /percentage/ statistic; is actually revolting. Now, I get it.. I can play devils advocate, there's limited space on the map for high foot traffic areas, sure.. And they should be allocated to groups that have a higher percentage of players who actively frequent them.

 

    But about the groups that perhaps don't have that many, why are they subject to the dark side of the activity check? Why even consider eviction as a discipline for lower activity than the main Regions and Cities? Especially when their own activity isn't counted towards their home during the checks, which may or may not be in their respective tile..

 

    This is more of a stressor than it is an aiding tool, especially for the leadership of the smaller groups; people are taking hiatus because of this.. Roleplay is becoming a /chore/ and not a fun activity or a decent escape from reality for a short while. Why punish a group for inactivity; things happen.. Variables exist, conflicts arise, OOC situations happen that require our undivided attention for days at a time perhaps.

 

    Would LOTC really suffer WITHOUT this plugin? Maybe we should be saying the same thing that was told to us during Anthos when PVP Default became a thing and when Nexus became a thing. "Just try it." 

 

    So.. Remove the activity checks, just try it. See what happens; make your Community Members feel as if they're being heard instead of retorting against the community and defending a system that people clearly do not care for and may be the cause of additional stress; or at the very least.. Do not punish people for inactivity or be part of the nagware system.

 

 

[monkeypoacher 6993]

activity is a ridiculous metric and the staff have always had a problem keeping track of the checks and enforcing them impartially anyway. wouldn't it make everyone's life easier if we just canned them entirely (or kept them only for special privileges - i.e. nation status?)

 

speaking from the other side of this - why the **** would I play your server if the most interesting thing I can do is punch a clock? why is the only form of progression a number that the staff gives you at the end of the week telling you how many collective hours you and your buddies have spent standing inside a specific group of blocks? 

 

If you want people to keep coming back here, donating, etc. you could spend the energy you are currently using to collect activity data making something fun like a PvE dungeon or an alchemy plugin (just spitballing here). but doing this might risk pissing a few guys off who really really like being Lord of the Spreadsheet so it's better to just keep making more elaborate excel formulas to tell you how much fun you are supposed to have

 

and it's not like I'm a hard person to entertain either - just yesterday, instead of playing LoTC, I logged on to a 24 hour 2fort server and spent like 20 minutes repeatedly taunting at the enemy resupply room until I got killed. you could make this server worth playing just by comfy halfling tavern ambiance alone - but @Llircan't do that, he has to fumble the bag, and he has to lead a team of coders to write elaborate bukkit plugins to help him fumble the bag more efficiently. i do not understand it

[Box of Rain 131]

We deserve RP.

[Amayonnaise 1535]

On 2/22/2023 at 1:04 PM, Llir said:

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.

 

I think a new mechanic could be added that utilises our /cardex perms, and the activity monitoring on the server. Keep the Nation Activity monitoring of course, but maybe when someone sets their "Nation" using /cardex, that will contribute to another activity statistic for that tile?

What I mean is, you could have
- Activity Stats for the tile itself
- Activity Stats for characters with that tile as their "Nation", or home

 

This way, people are encouraged to explore as they wish, but aren't punished for doing so. They can live on a specific Tile and conduct their slice of life / family RP / community RP as they wish, but also aren't causing problems by visiting other locations. You're also able to then compare the Tile Activity to the Character Activity, and get a better understanding of whether they just don't have enough players, or if they have more than enough players, but those specific characters conduct RP in other locations.

[Slorbin 1771]

just log off

until they implement a REAL nations plugin

[Mannamannaa 1626]

2 hours ago, Amayonnaise said:

-snip-

I really don't think any form of cooperation with the OOC activity check will solve the core of this issue:

Staff shouldn't be the ones deciding whether IRP communities live or die. RP characters should. Any OOC plugins like nations should exist only for the absolute necessities of being able to more easily operate/define the location of a large group and manage the mechanical perms for regions so that griefing and landscarring do not become commonplace.

 

[Box of Rain 131]

2 hours ago, Slorbin said:

just log off

until they implement a REAL nations plugin

 

This is the best solution I've seen here so far.

[Andustar 2115]

The activity system is an RP strangler that kills communities. Recently my own group was faced with the dilemma of either vassalise under a nation or be essentially made a non-entity going into the next map. We climbed out of a civil war with a decently sized playerbase and unique culture, bearing every intention of rebuilding. Yet, we were informed that due to the nature of activity checks and so forth we would be unable to acquire land come the transition. With that knowledge on hand, many people ultimately went on hiatus, disheartened that they could not rebuild independently without the administration breathing down their necks.

 

To me it looks like instead of wanting to promote a unique and enjoyable experience the administration are more concerned with a numbers game, propping up only the largest nations to encourage player retention via RP quantity. But there is a problem with this model in that inevitably people seek to branch out and develop their own projects of quality, often times starting off small in their efforts. As we have already established they are punished for this ingenuity. How can you expect a flower to bloom if it is immediately trampled the moment it sprouts from the soil? 

[Box of Rain 131]

7 hours ago, simpleglitchbro said:

I just wanted to host a wedding, like why do I have to hurt other nations by inviting them? Like if they didn't come to my event they wouldn't have failed the check.

 

It's not your fault homie

[SethWolf 1378]

 

5 hours ago, Andustar said:

How can you expect a flower to bloom if it is immediately trampled the moment it sprouts from the soil? 

 

This. It's a short-sighted numbers game. If the only thing that mattered, and I mean the only thing that mattered in LOTC was a percentage, then even by that metric alone, it is failing as that number is getting smaller, and smaller. Slowly, but surely. You either flock to the mega-powers, or you die on the limb, there is no middle-ground. 

 

Maybe I'm just a stupid idiot new player, but it seems to me like the staff are falling for the oldest trick in the book that every staff team seems to do: Overly ridged, top-down, arbituary, bureaucratic systems that look really nice on paper but ultimately just end up stifling creativity.

 

 This server, I do declare and will say again: This server does not need a rule, and clause, and rigid definition and super-high tech system in place for literally everything on the planet. Stop it. 

[Slorbin 1771]

6 hours ago, Box of Rain said:

 

This is the best solution I've seen here so far.

seriously. 13 tech team members (4 of which are exclusively java team!) and we use ******* WORLDGUARD /rg for our nation plugin.

[Liam5232 338]

Percentage based activity checks is an amazing addition to the server... until you get 2 or 3 Nations that are passively able to get several orders of magnitude greater activity and they start sucking in players. Activity checks were originally made to keep dozens of abandoned nations from forming and consolidate roleplay in a few generalized nations. Through the consolidations and exceptional leadership, Hanse and Celinore have become Nation Superpowers. There is nothing wrong with that, but when this means places like Bywater, which is a known racial hub, has to worry about being evicted or join another nation as a vassal, there is a major issue. Not only would you removing another unique area (RIP Yong Ping), but actively forcing them to disband or throw a major portion of their lore out the window and join "Bigg'uns". 

 

Activity checks should only be glanced at after a Nation noticeably has issues and should be a "final countdown" when all other options have been exhausted.

[Xarkly 12580]

On 2/22/2023 at 5:04 AM, Llir said:

 

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.

 

I don't buy it.

 

Appreciate the sentiment but it's seemingly universally agreed that this system sucks doggy doo doo why are we waiting 3+ months to resolve it instead of implementing a fix now? A huge volume of alternative suggestions have been raised on a plethora of threads dating back years.

[Lomiei 1487]

NotEvilAtAll def makes some good points, and the way activity checks negatively affect the organization of government events irp and ooc is a big bad, ive seen that so many times myself. Im not an expert analyst on statistics but at the end of the map it could be cool to just be able to do whatever without having to stress about getting privilages given or taken.

[Dont_Advertise 1602]

9 hours ago, Xarkly said:

-snip-

 

Because that'd imply having to code something new. A terrifying prospect of work for a team that much prefers to wait along till the next free volunteer developer whose life can get sucked out of their brains.

 

I find it hilarious this topic is still somehow being talked about as this was still a f*cked issue back 4+ years ago when I was the Halfling leader. Every single iteration of Halfling leader has had to deal with this. It's f*cking exhausting, and makes no sense in the first place. Receiving false hope and having it dangled over the eyes of whatever prospective Halfling NL exists at the time before then once again the wee community is forced into a state of oversaturation in order to appease the funny server numbers of a platform that really is not struggling to maintain its concurrency due to the attachment of nostalgia people have. There's a plethora of easy fixes, and also a level of common sense that can just be applied.