squakhawk 6315 Popular Post Share Posted May 23 Hello Everypony. It’s almost time for our new map Squakeros to drop. We figured now is as good a time as ever to update you on what the story team has been working on and some of our plans. It hasn’t been all mori and spider invasions – there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes, too. Plugins and Development The next map has many things to look forward to. Perhaps most excitingly so is our collaboration with the tech team to try and flesh out PvE dungeons. Through the magic of Curio, story team members are able to create fully-fleshed out dungeons with mechanical puzzles and interaction. If you’ve ever had trouble setting up a time to interact with someone’s event site, then Curio, the new plugin, may be your saving grace. It will allow players to explore parts of the map without needing an event team member present for interaction. It’s worth noting that this style of things will not be the standard for events going forward. Rather, it’ll be another tool in our arsenal to try and make the next map as dynamic and engaging as it can be. Curio is still in development. There is currently no estimate for a release date. The goal of these dungeons is something passive to do with a more lax take on lore/events to have fun with your friends with. We’ve been experimenting with these for months and are finding a way to balance rewards alongside promoting unique experiences so each dungeon run has a little bit of variation from the last. While these will not be available upon release, we are looking forward to them as soon as possible. Lore and The World Furthermore, we’d like to make a shift towards more story-rich eventlines. A big improvement on this goal is by having front-facing public Maplore, along with maplore that affects things like feats, world lore, and is something to be used by players and ST alike rather than just waiting on ST interactions. These story-focused eventlines should be in abundance going forward, rather than every so often . There should be things to interact with and stories to unfold even without an event team member required to interact with, or even request an event from. We’re doing a major expansion to our compendium of botany herbs, ores, and creatures in an attempt to make exploration more meaningful and rewarding, while building upon the uniqueness of our world and setting. We want venturing around the map to be more engaging and unique from previous maps. You should be encouraged to explore more than a single run around the map to waypoint all the botany herbs, and that’s what we’re looking to achieve with these updates. Down the line as well with curios, we are hoping to have more engaging herb gathering with emoting, effects, and so on. Going into this map, we already have lore in place for various locations on the server. Ruins will be there for a reason and will add to the world around them, rather than just something to add variation to the terrain as a closed off event site. We did our best, but ultimately didn't get to execute what we'd wanted with Almaris. However, with a not-shitshow of a mapdev and transition, with proper communication and team coordination/involvement, we plan to have Frontfacing maplore that is developed and added onto organically as the map goes onward. Alongside this, Builds finished on release that are immediately visible. No closed off tiles, and encouraged player-to-player interaction, as well as player and lore interactions. This includes a massive overhaul and expansion of our Bestiary, with a few more additions/removals to Materials and Botany. We have maplore playing part in more of a map-long storyline that will involve an antag relating to the overall map and how that plays with each unique region rather than one that simply pops up out of nowhere like Inferi or Mori. As well, map lore should play more of a front with day-to-day interactions with effects and events roleplayable at any time, along with feat/magic interactions, and MArt opportunities. We also plan on introducing a system that treats characters more akin to MArts with a unique effects/items that are easier to track and give more to character flair and uniqueness that is easily trackable and visible on the frontface that ET can write up and give to players, with manager approval. Still working out the kinks in this idea, but it should be out soon! A Quick Note on Antag I plan on writing up a post in the next week regarding a full reflection and introspective on Antag. This may just be available to ST, but I may expand it for player rationale too. I haven't quite decided yet. It will be based off of personal experience playing a part in 2 Antags, and managing/running 2 more. But I want to write some stuff down based off of what players have said to me, what we have received in the poll, and what I noticed from my own perspective of Antag being able to see all the moving (or unmoving) parts working with one another. Just a written piece to get an idea while it's still fresh in our heads to see later on. If I like explode and a new admin is left to pick up the pieces, it's something to read and look back upon. I feel like that was an issue with this Antag, where Joel, Kai, Rift and I accomplished something by kind of completely winging it and it ended up great. I won't get too much into it- but maybe expect that soon. At least for the ET. Sect Updates Our builders are also looking to future proof the map. It’s too common to see disdain for terrain after having played on the map for a few months. This is something we’d like to try and combat. A map should be fun for the duration of its stay on LOTC, not just the first few months. There have been some bumps in the road, though these have not been for nothing. This map we genuinely spent so much time playing catch-up with a lack of lore and builds at the start of the map, and super disconnected fragments of what we did have before. The event sect of our team has been hard at work with the end of map eventlines. Since April 1st, there have been ~180 events nearing 4000 individual player interactions. This is done by our team of roughly twenty-five actors. We’re going to look to keep this momentum up into the new map, as well! A huge thank you goes out to all of our event actors. We will be performing an audit based on Antag sometime this week while we do some shuffling with the team internally alongside taking some team-feedback. As for the lore sect of our team, a huge shoutout goes to both christmanism, TheAmazingSewer and Delmodan. All of them have been carrying on the sreq and forum app side of things. With that being said, our lore team has been dwindling in size over the past few months. As such, we’d like to put out an open call that we are looking for more lore team members. We are mostly looking for people who are passionate about lore on the server and interested in voting on submitted pieces. Doing taskwork (like sreqs) is nevertheless also a bonus to player convenience and experience. I’ll include a link to the application forum at the end of this post! Lore Shelving - Siliti and Vargr As much as we’d like this update to be only good news, there’s an unfortunate notice we need to put out. Both Varg and Siliti lore have been shelved, moving into the new map. These are not without their reasons and have been a point of contention among the team for the last little while. As for the Varg, there was some deeply disturbing imagery included in the lore piece – namely alluding to some topics that we do not stand for on LOTC. We firmly believe that these elements do not need to be present for a good story to develop. Along with the unnecessary fluff was the incredible vagueness of the lores mechanics. There were consistently different rulings on what the lore was capable of, so much so that both the lore team and the Varg community itself was confused. Overall, it was lore from an old era that slipped through the cracks and no longer lives up to our standards. As with any other lore piece, we welcome a rewrite which tackles the issues mentioned. Siliti had its fair share of issues, too. The lore had issues making Siliti objectively incredibly powerful entities. The abilities and mechanics had been manipulated to favor some individuals over others. There were a few unlogged changes to the lore piece by ST members, as well as consistent handling of suspected issues related to Siliti by current and former LT themselves; There was obvious bias involved that recurrently appeared even after removing prior members for bias, which existed not nearly in this capacity for other lorepieces. Not only this, Siliti has had an unfathomable amount of community drama with over a half-dozen reports sent by members or groups of the community on other members and groups in the last couple weeks. After evaluating these issues and understanding past ones, that despite our direct interventions with the lore entirely by player request (Adding PKs, adding more flavor/theme, editing Coffins), the lore has unsuccessfully recovered. It is unacceptable the amount of bad-faith roleplay and community toxicity that exists within the CA that causes so many people to quit the server temporarily or even entirely. Personally, I believe it is our fault and we dropped the ball on this lore piece and are going to work on not letting this happen going forward. While we take a very liberal stance on changing lore and following player request as much as possible, we believe that only negatively impacted this lore and managerial involvement earlier on could have prevented this. The argument has brought up that certain community members alone caused this shelving and their removal could satisfy a fix, but after looking over the list of who in these reports warranted removal, as well as the general noncompliance with feeding mechanics, tells, or weaknesses, 2/3rds of the community would be PKd or ca-revoked based off of the aforementioned alone in the last 12 weeks. Overall, the lore enabled bad actors to flourish and have a strong grip on some of the community which did not have the best interest of roleplay in mind. It leads to people leaving the server and regretting time spent, and floundering player interactions which often lead to frustration and suspicion. Lore should never do this. With all that being said, we, as a team, think it best to shelf Siliti and have the lore start anew. Similarly as mentioned with Vargs, we welcome a rewrite if it tackles the issues we’ve outlined above. However, by the 31st, Siliti will be officially and completely shelved and all characters will have the option of PKing, permanent shelving, becoming ET characters, or reverting to a base descendant form- even turning to a Corcitura if priorly a Siliti. WANT TO HELP US SHELF MORE LORE? WANT TO GIVE MAGIC AND EVENTS ONLY TO YOUR FRIENDS? WANT TO CARRY EVERY OTHER STAFF TEAM SO HARD YOU'LL HAVE SPINAL PROBLEMS FOR LIFE? HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER? APPLY HERE!: https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forms/54-story-staff-application/ 54 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wowj 1641 Share Posted May 23 6 minutes ago, squakhawk said: We’re doing a major expansion to our compendium of botany herbs, ores, and creatures in an attempt to make exploration more meaningful and rewarding, while building upon the uniqueness of our world and setting. Please Fire-Salt PLEASE 5 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TreeSmoothie 3560 Share Posted May 23 Excited for where this map'll take LOTC, crossing my fingers these projects won't end up like vortex (rest in p***, vortex) 6 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdowdy 211 Share Posted May 23 RIP the dream of becoming a Siliti and commiting massive tax fraud with the IBS (Internal Blood Service.) (Yes, I also have irritable bowel syndrome from all the blood drinking) Super excited for the new map and very excited to see the new events! I've always wanted more puzzle events but I know they might be difficult to create or run with how LOTC works! Thanks for the Update! 6 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWhiteWolf 835 Share Posted May 23 Can't wait for you guys to see the Bestiary! Pretty keen for next map. 6 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarven 967 Share Posted May 23 Hyped for the darkest dungeon update... 7 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles The Bald 1598 Share Posted May 23 I cannot wait to beta test Curio. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DISCOLIQUID 1945 Share Posted May 23 Silit Shelf Memes Spoiler 7 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shorsand 1703 Share Posted May 23 SQUUUUUUUUUUUAWKKKKKKKKKKKKKK GIVE US THE MAP LOREEEEEEEEEEEEEE REEEEEEEEEEEE I NEED TO MAKE EVENTS THAT ARENT FLYING BRAINS AND GLIMERPOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS AND MORI KILLBOXES 10 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoanOfArc 3761 Share Posted May 23 can striga get unshelved now please o please 6 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lojo613 1255 Share Posted May 23 This is bait 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gemini 1469 Share Posted May 23 Ok cool— I’ll send you a virtual cookie 🍪 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wytchwood 641 Share Posted May 23 oh hey the powergaming ca of all time got shelved, neat 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The King Of The Moon 4869 Share Posted May 23 First they came for the Strigae And I did not speak out Because I was not a Striga Then they came for the Afflicted And I did not speak out Because I was not an Afflicted Then they came for the Vargs And I did not speak out Because I was not a Varg Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me 7 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xepphir 337 Share Posted May 23 very nice, cannot wait for the new map 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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