Your View: On Course—Off Course?

[Rigorous 1548]

1 hour ago, Nectorist said:

I have the urge to write a larger post about it that can't be condensed into a simple forum reply, but I don't think the issues on the server really stem from the mod team, techs, etc. The staff team and its conduct is arguably the best the server has had except for maybe 2021-ish. The rules that exist right now are among the friendliest towards RP. Degeneracy is clamped down on and not covered up nearly as much as it was before. The toxicity right now is at record lows. I've noticed that many points of criticism people have of the server right now were problems that were much worse years ago, even though the general consensus is that the server's peak was around 2014-2018 (and possibly stretching out until 2020). People often look back on those years with rose-tinted glasses and ignore a lot of flaws, but there's a reason that those who were around then long for a return to the good old days.

 

The server's present problems lay almost entirely at the feet of the community, though I think it's a far more subtle, less malicious thing than people say. It's hard to pinpoint or express in simple terms, but there has been a cultural malaise that's overtaken LoTC for years now, and began to ramp up since around 2020. If I had to give a simplified cause, it's the server's older generation (those who knew how to make RP) moving away en masse and newer generations with radically different views of RP (probably influenced by a different pop culture/internet culture zeitgeist they've grown up in) taking their places and being unable to fill their shoes properly. Maybe it's just growing pains, and we'll need a few years for things to return to the vibrancy that was had years ago, or maybe it's a permanent problem that's just irreversible. I don't want to be pessimistic at all, but I also don't think there's a silver bullet solution. A lot of changes people have proposed here are good, don't get me wrong, but it feels like they're focused on tweaking the rudders while there's a gaping hole in the ship.

 

People have always taken LoTC way too seriously (me too), but at least in years past it felt like people could have fun while doing it, as a way to justify the long hours spent online and the Friday nights devoted to RPing or scheming or grinding for tomorrow's warclaim or whatever. I don't get that vibe at all.

 

Or maybe I'm just old

 

I have met some of my closest friends on here. Overall, I prefer the community we have now to the one we had in 2016. But I feel as though this inability to let dead dogs lie has created a stagnant role-play environment. Though the server's map is beautiful and there's a lot of mechanical game-play options now, I feel as though there is a distinct lack of environmental events and story driven narratives on this map so far. The inability of Event Actors to be given easy leeway to create their own material is a contributing factor to this. Policies are far more stringent as it pertains to who is allowed to make what events and for whom.

 

The consequence is that there's not frequently event lines that are bad. However, the flip side to that is that very few events seem to be happening. This is boring for me and I feel like most of the role-play I see could be considered slice-of-life, which I find personally to be fun in small amounts, but overall very boring. The world should feel more alive and I feel like it can be done with a few policy changes and some new training. The Player Events Handbook by Sorcerio was helpful in returning narrative power to the players, but it is often forgotten about and slept on. It'd be nice to see a myriad of new event lines happen that define a history for this map outside of nation politics and the egos of supposed high-brow elitist players seeking their next thrill and allowing their own players to suffer in the crossfire.

 

There is divisiveness over game-play options. PvP or CRP. Nation or Magic Clique. There is derisiveness over every possible thing where people radically attempt to tear one another down. Player affiliation. A notion of misguided absolute loyalty to region PROs and ROs to the detriment of other players. Cooperative role-play is the sum of its participants. It is about people forming meaningful bonds between characters, proper out-of-character friendships, and by participating radical honesty with others. You cannot do this when all it takes for you to be supplanted from the place you're role-playing is out-of-characterly disobeying trends you do not agree with or being gate-kept from role-play you wish to do by ominous shadow figures of some dominant player groups that act in a manner that is consistent with political parties. You toe the party line or GTFO.

 

This makes staff particularly troublesome and nebulous to sift through, as there is no unified vision for how to make LoTC a better place -- we claim we will remove problem players, we recurrently unban them. We claim we will create nicer magic systems and balance things out, it becomes an endless stamping game of passing the next piece of lore that eventually gets rewritten by a new person who lacks creative vision, and then supplanted by the next fleeper who wishes to usurp it's attractiveness as a novelty which they can possess to attract followers and teach people en masse rather than to ensure that there is continuous and free flowing role-play that comes naturally with moving about in-game and having in role-play ambitions. The art of creating characters seems to be pretty lost. Everybody has a dozen of them, a dime a dozen for every elf and human you see.

 

People attempt to find over complicated solutions to a problem that is not at all complex. If you want more role-play on the server, role-play with more people. If you do not like those people, find new people to role-play with. Forgo the idol worship of the attractive nations and their driven personality cults, as there is no permanent nation on the Lord of the Craft, and the attempt to create one has led countless people to ruin due to the relentless sum of their own personal ambitions.

 

Many people have adopted leaving these things behind to role-play with friends instead. Some of my friends are very new players who came to LoTC from other servers on D&D. I see this often from some people and it gives me hope that there can eventually be a shift from nation role-play back to the good old days that revolved around settlements and role-play rather than an abundance of out-of-character gatekeeping and power creep.

 

Alas, until we have newer people take up the mantle of making these changes happen, we're going to be stuck with jaded old timers (myself included). Encourage people to be honorable and kind as opposed to the everyday snakery and devolved double-crossing nature that so many players have possessed and will continue to possess. The clout chasing, bizarre out-of-character decrees and nation blacklists, and magic clique factionalism is a waste of time so long as people can go #RP "Hello world." 

[Shmeepicus 3942]

1 hour ago, Nectorist said:

I have the urge to write a larger post about it that can't be condensed into a simple forum reply, but I don't think the issues on the server really stem from the mod team, techs, etc. The staff team and its conduct is arguably the best the server has had except for maybe 2021-ish. The rules that exist right now are among the friendliest towards RP. Degeneracy is clamped down on and not covered up nearly as much as it was before. The toxicity right now is at record lows. I've noticed that many points of criticism people have of the server right now were problems that were much worse years ago, even though the general consensus is that the server's peak was around 2014-2018 (and possibly stretching out until 2020). People often look back on those years with rose-tinted glasses and ignore a lot of flaws, but there's a reason that those who were around then long for a return to the good old days.

 

The server's present problems lay almost entirely at the feet of the community, though I think it's a far more subtle, less malicious thing than people say. It's hard to pinpoint or express in simple terms, but there has been a cultural malaise that's overtaken LoTC for years now, and began to ramp up since around 2020. If I had to give a simplified cause, it's the server's older generation (those who knew how to make RP) moving away en masse and newer generations with radically different views of RP (probably influenced by a different pop culture/internet culture zeitgeist they've grown up in) taking their places and being unable to fill their shoes properly. Maybe it's just growing pains, and we'll need a few years for things to return to the vibrancy that was had years ago, or maybe it's a permanent problem that's just irreversible. I don't want to be pessimistic at all, but I also don't think there's a silver bullet solution. A lot of changes people have proposed here are good, don't get me wrong, but it feels like they're focused on tweaking the rudders while there's a gaping hole in the ship.

 

People have always taken LoTC way too seriously (me too), but at least in years past it felt like people could have fun while doing it, as a way to justify the long hours spent online and the Friday nights devoted to RPing or scheming or grinding for tomorrow's warclaim or whatever. I don't get that vibe at all.

 

Or maybe I'm just old

 

You pretty much hit the nail on the head- but just because things aren't as bad now as they were years ago, doesn't mean they couldn't do with some improvement. 

[Laeonathan 3980]

23 minutes ago, Shmeepicus said:

 

You pretty much hit the nail on the head- but just because things aren't as bad now as they were years ago, doesn't mean they couldn't do with some improvement. 

I do not think anyone thinks that. I am 100 % that improvement should continue, but this constant negativity ("LOTC is at its lowest point") is what personally bugs me so much. I would understand it from someone who joined in 2021 or maybe at the start of this map.

 

But people who joined in 2016 saying the server has never been more toxic? Even I who joined in 2018 saw all the doxxing, racism, homophobia etc. Things that were considered almost normal. The atmosphere around PvP was so much more toxic, often groups just raided places like Sutica out of pure spite to force them into PvP and take their shit. All these horrible things are unthinkable now gladly.

 

But still people say the server is on an all-time low? Wtf?

[Spoopy_Duck 1500]

55 minutes ago, Deer__ said:

(The name MRP definitely deserved getting clowned on)

Billions must MRP

Ill respond to this since this project was my child from back in March so I feel responsibility for it's outcome however it's received. 

If I ever take charge of a project like that again I can include a forum post as well (key word is "if" because MRP alone sucked the soul from me still recovering.) The idea behind using the discord is that it sits at just under 300 members and discord back and forths are much easier than the forums where a lot of people will leave comment then leave on discord it is more real time. I also thought since I was doing daily updates for a few days that making multiple forum posts would be redundant or one post that I kept adding onto would have less and less retention than being able to do an everyone ping. I still believe discord is a better medium than the forums for discussion but you are not the first nor last person to have a comment like this relating to communication of things. 

TLDR: Feedback noted forum posts are still nice.
Just for fun and transparency I will also include some of the notes I was writing down based on the player feedback I was getting during the final days. 
 

Spoiler

 

[DeusVult 564]

4 hours ago, Telanir said:

Hi,

 

I've been hearing some chatter regarding server direction recently—I thought it might be helpful to get ahead of this. Does anybody smell smoke, or are we happy with our experience? Since there is a smattering of topics I figured I would keep this mostly unfocused.

 

The question I would ask: are we doing enough to defend our position as the premier roleplay server?

 

• Mission Statement

I've heard this phrase of "The road to 500 players" many times before, but I keep wondering how the admins of this server can even expect this? I am leadership in the Brawms PMC, I'm a core member that has recruited many a 'fleeper' or noobs to the cause of fighting, and I have seen all these new players except one leave (termss a goat fr). Why have these new players left? A simple question answered just as simply; there's nothing to ******* do. I have sat in that little tavern in Urguan and offered insanely high-quality roleplay to these new players, I've asked about their back story, gave them questions and actual situations that would flesh out their character a bit more than they would have thought otherwise, and then I see that they haven't logged on in two weeks because they joined to be a warrior/fighter, not sit around and do tavern rp all day. How can we get these players (at least in my side of things) to actually DO the roleplay they desire? In the current state of the server, we can't really find small and quick fights because everyone is very interconnected with discord, where people are a message away from quitting balders gate to log on and join a 1v5, making it a 6v5, turning a bandit encounter into a fight with guards that should have happened after the encounter. Banditting is dead, which was a pass-time for these kinds of groups, leaving tavern rp which these kinds of players won't enjoy. All these small interactions which would normally hold a player over until the next War of the Whigs, is completely gone. I haven't logged nearly as much time in as I would have because the narrative of being a warrior just isn't there. Of course, unless you want to CRP. 

 

It is a ******* mind-numbing thought that people think a 12 person crp is good for the server, let alone anything higher than 8. Expecting a new player to show up, excited to roleplay a character then be faced with ******* 4 voidal scion with mystic-blade or some shit is horrible. Imagine "Oh man, I'm a warrior who is going out to the world!" Then you get told "well actually I have soul lag so I hit you twice". I would turn that off and never play again on god. 

But instead, imagine you're the same new player, and you see the same group of people with rp giga magics, but instead of "i actually hit you twice" its a fight, a battle between warriors, but you still end up losing. It's a much better idea than just having a chat room where some people who play ooc politics get giga powers and others don't. (in regards to new players). 

 

Also, 'prioritizing narrative over clicks' is the stupidest shit i've ever heard in my life my ******* god

 

I wouldn't play this server for clicks, I can get clicks on kit-pvp and have fun, but I play this server because my clicks MATTER TO THE STORY AT LARGE. I enjoy contributing to a narrative in roleplay, and actually participating in it throughout all of it's stages. I liked cutting of Balon's hands after he cut of my character's hands, it completed an arc for vengeance that my character got. However, I don't like having to sit in front of Norland for 2 hours because "well pvp is called by defenders" so they rally 30 people and fights just don't happen. At that point, you stupid ivory tower fucks are so bent out of shape because it's not chatroom roleplay. We could also talk about Ferrymen V Haense recently, or the numerous times I've caught Ferrymen off at the road and they rally 10 people out of nowhere and turn an unprepared 3 man into a 12 man v our 8. These situations are something that would happen irp, a bandit group being caught unprepared, but are just memed on or shit on causing people to leave the server.

We had a group together, before pvp started and new players just bleed out despite offering tavern roleplay, and slice of life rp to those who are apart of it. They come here to find narrative-driven fights that mean something in the world at large, but instead dont get anything because pvp is so ******* demonized.

 

Also this whole one size fits all rule scheme is bogus, since it obviously caters to slice-of-life roleplayers. I.E. the Vale. The Vale, under the current rule set, can get raided by twenty people, then have the power to say "we will crp" and force twenty people who are unprepared, and unwilling to sit in a conflict for 4 hours to determine an outcome decided from the get-go. Also I'd like to point out that banditting and road-rp is basically dead except for English duck's psyochpathic group since Frostbeards aren't doing anything anymore. (SHIT RULES). I don't understand why the 8+ pvp rule can't be implemented back again, druids and voidal mages can still have their little crp fights, but when things get too big they can just have a vote INCLUDING EVERYONE INVOLVED to keep it or change it to pvp. 

 

Also on this note, I'd like to say that every crp raid I've done has always transitioned into pvp later, causing wasted time on fighting that meant nothing due to the resolution of the conflict being pvp. Excluding raids, I also think its bogus that players can run around in little darkspawn cliques and absolutely ruin the experience of pvpers, who's main method of conflict resolution involves minecraft mechanics.

 

I am a fighter irl, I've done Jiu-Jitsu at which I'm a three stripe blue belt, and I do boxing as well. I haven't done hema really, but from what I've gathered from both holding and doing some fun sparring (and looking at interesting shadivesity videos) is that sword combat irl is nothing like 'sword combat' in game. We could talk about powergaming all day, but I'm just going to say 90% of mods aren't equipped to even understand powergaming. I hate this whole bs of "I dodge backwards" while im stabbing someone with a sword. My arm moves faster than your whole body..............

 

I got off topic, but I'm gonna circle back to the main point of PVP vs CRP to determine conflict resolution. I, fight IRL. Some people don't fight IRL. I should have a distinct advantage all things being equal, but I always give in to stupid CRP bickering because I can't be assed to argue with a 16 year old who needs a win for his little minecraft guy. It is the same way in PVP, but instead of a mod determining the winner, it is determined by who played it better. 

 

TL:DR the admins are ******* stupid, and hate pvp. They want this server to be a chatroom-roleplay server, when instead they should use all minecraft mechanics to enhance the story that is being driven by players who want a narrative. The server in it's current state is unequipped for roleplay to be the deciding factor in conflict, and players, especially newer players, will continue to leave the server until things get better. (If only there was a solution for this that was in affect in the past) (its PVP Default, no crp unless agreed upon)

 

[Shmeepicus 3942]

59 minutes ago, RIGOR said:

 

I have met some of my closest friends on here. Overall, I prefer the community we have now to the one we had in 2016. But I feel as though this inability to let dead dogs lie has created a stagnant role-play environment. Though the server's map is beautiful and there's a lot of mechanical game-play options now, I feel as though there is a distinct lack of environmental events and story driven narratives on this map so far. The inability of Event Actors to be given easy leeway to create their own material is a contributing factor to this. Policies are far more stringent as it pertains to who is allowed to make what events and for whom.

 

The consequence is that there's not frequently event lines that are bad. However, the flip side to that is that very few events seem to be happening. This is boring for me and I feel like most of the role-play I see could be considered slice-of-life, which I find personally to be fun in small amounts, but overall very boring. The world should feel more alive and I feel like it can be done with a few policy changes and some new training. The Player Events Handbook by Sorcerio was helpful in returning narrative power to the players, but it is often forgotten about and slept on. It'd be nice to see a myriad of new event lines happen that define a history for this map outside of nation politics and the egos of supposed high-brow elitist players seeking their next thrill and allowing their own players to suffer in the crossfire.

 

There is divisiveness over game-play options. PvP or CRP. Nation or Magic Clique. There is derisiveness over every possible thing where people radically attempt to tear one another down. Player affiliation. A notion of misguided absolute loyalty to region PROs and ROs to the detriment of other players. Cooperative role-play is the sum of its participants. It is about people forming meaningful bonds between characters, proper out-of-character friendships, and by participating radical honesty with others. You cannot do this when all it takes for you to be supplanted from the place you're role-playing is out-of-characterly disobeying trends you do not agree with or being gate-kept from role-play you wish to do by ominous shadow figures of some dominant player groups that act in a manner that is consistent with political parties. You toe the party line or GTFO.

 

This makes staff particularly troublesome and nebulous to sift through, as there is no unified vision for how to make LoTC a better place -- we claim we will remove problem players, we recurrently unban them. We claim we will create nicer magic systems and balance things out, it becomes an endless stamping game of passing the next piece of lore that eventually gets rewritten by a new person who lacks creative vision, and then supplanted by the next fleeper who wishes to usurp it's attractiveness as a novelty to possess to attract followers and teach people en masse, rather than to ensure that there is continuous and free flowing role-play that comes naturally with moving about in-game and having in role-play ambitions.

 

People attempt to find over complicated solutions to a problem that is not at all complex. If you want more role-play on the server, role-play with more people. If you do not like those people, find new people to role-play with. Forgo the idol worship of the attractive nations and their driven personality cults, as there is no permanent nation on the Lord of the Craft, and the attempt to create one has led countless people to ruin due to the relentless sum of their own personal ambitions.

 

Many people have adopted leaving these things behind to role-play with friends instead. Some of my friends are very new players who came to LoTC from other servers on D&D. I see this often from some people and it gives me hope that there can eventually be a shift from nation role-play back to the good old days that revolved around settlements and role-play rather than an abundance of out-of-character gatekeeping and power creep.

 

Alas, until we have newer people take up the mantle of making these changes happen, we're going to be stuck with jaded old timers (myself included). Encourage people to be honorable and kind as opposed to the everyday snakery and devolved double-crossing nature that so many players have possessed and will continue to possess. The clout chasing, bizarre out-of-character decrees and nation blacklists, and magic clique factionalism is a waste of time so long as people can go #RP "Hello world." 

 

Probably the most coherent and well put post on this entire thread. Nectorist hit the nail on the head but you drove it into the board.

29 minutes ago, Laeonathan said:

I do not think anyone thinks that. I am 100 % that improvement should continue, but this constant negativity ("LOTC is at its lowest point") is what personally bugs me so much. I would understand it from someone who joined in 2021 or maybe at the start of this map.

 

But people who joined in 2016 saying the server has never been more toxic? Even I who joined in 2018 saw all the doxxing, racism, homophobia etc. Things that were considered almost normal. The atmosphere around PvP was so much more toxic, often groups just raided places like Sutica out of pure spite to force them into PvP and take their shit. All these horrible things are unthinkable now gladly.

 

But still people say the server is on an all-time low? Wtf?

 

I don't think I said anywhere that the server was bad. I said the server and rules could still do with improvement. Good chance they will always need improvement. As another player who joined in that era- I can agree with you and say that the server is in a much better spot now than it was then- but my point stands, things will always need fixing. That's just how it works. You will appease one part of the community and in that action upset another.

[Tabby64 1295]

4 minutes ago, MockingbirdArt said:

I have but one complaint about LOTC- The age restriction.
It is no secret that this server has problems when it comes to minors, actually, this is something that should have been considered and changed a long time ago.
Not saying that the server should get changed to 18+ perhaps 16-
I think that this one change would solve many of the servers' problems.

changing the age does not solve any problem. Its a simpleton solution with no thought behind it

[Lirinya 2662]

If you take away all the fancy plugins (weapon crafting, item renaming- leaving only a chat control), removed the option for pvp, you'd still be left with LOTC. It'd be a different experience but at its core, it's a universe fleshed out with lore and stories created by staff and players. It is not an outlet for pvp, nor should it be.

 

While I do agree that pvp is neccessary for the server- particularly in larger group conflicts and situations where folk can't come to an agreement on, it should not be something of a focus. Raid tools that (if I'm wrong please correct me, but I've never used them), allow folk to get into nations over walls, could easily be replaced by the roleplay requirement to emote setting up a ladder outside the walls (with moderator oversight to ensure the ladders were mechanically placed).

 

There is always going to be a two sided argument for and against pvp. There's a clear devide in most instances. But minecraft mechanics aside, LOTC is a roleplay server. While it can be said that "I PVP to roleplay a warrior"- that's just an easy way out. How do you communicate over LOTC in a roleplay manner? Through text. LOTC's style of roleplaying is a text based roleplay, and that should be its primary focus, in my opinion. We don't have a magic plugin to shoot fireballs for the mages, why should warriors be given the option to click a few times to down a person?

 

I have no issue with raids as a rule, but a notice to allow folk to be online would be ideal. It certainly does open up its own set of issues, metagaming and such (though that would arguably be limited as- if they know it's going to happen, you can't really meta it anyway, right?). I can't imagine it's fun for the offending side to come across no defenders, nor is it fun to miss conflict because you might be playing another game or generally spending time away from LOTC.

 

Primarily, the end goal is for everyone to have fun- it's almost like LOTC is a game.

If one side isn't having fun, there has to be a reason.

 

 

[Xarkly 12618]

I'll take a different approach and draw attention to the fact that the server doesn't appear to have any apparent direction whatsoever.

 

Ongoing projects, goals, improvements are all either non-existent or obscure. It appears to be the case that each Admin is just pursuing their individual goals (with varying degrees of success) while calling their fellow Admins useless in private settings. 

 

Where are our recruitment and marketing efforts after a non-Admin actually put us on the map for the first time in years with the TikTok? Where are efforts to build up the server with things like historic or lore video series? Where are the the grand eventlines that aren't cobbled together at the last minute? A coordinated effort to our RP approach, as you query in this post, is yet another example.

 

These don't scratch the service of things a unified server direction should aim for instead of the undeniable fragmentation we see now. Even if you guys turn around and say "oh, well we have a clear direction in Admin chat", this impression does not survive outside of the ivory tower and continues to erode any faith left in the Administration (which, unless you're a kid or new, is likely 0).

 

 

[Tide1 1593]

Blame lack of defender default and the lack of a crp cap for the rise of ooc-fights and non interactive-ism. If you can't leave your own house without fear of getting stuck in a multi-hour long crp encounter, why bother. 

 

Big fan of pvp, I think it tells cool stories. Don't like how ooc it has become as a result of "recent" changes. If you want a fight it'll have to be scheduled and considered ooc 90% of the time.

 

Pvp without rp implications and or consequences is extremely boring, stagnating and bad for server health. 

[creamynoteblock 2426]

I think PvP is really cool. It is awesome and there should be more of it. I love killing people. However, when I start losing in PvP, that's when it becomes bad for the server. When I start losing, we should ban PvP, because if I lose, I cannot make montages where I kill 12yo roleplyers, thereby decreasing the amount of advertisement for the server. Currently, I am winning, so we should remove CRP as an option and force everyone into PvP whether they like it or not.

[kazoo 586]

11 hours ago, Qctho said:

 

Though I myself am a bit behind on such public matters, I can say we are 100% on the Road to 500

 

1: the server can reach the maximum of 250 players right now

2: Its already one of the laggiest servers I’ve ever played in

its safe to say even if somehow we get 500 players the server wouldn’t support that many or it would just be unplayable 

server admins should reduce the player cap to 400 and buy more quality servers instead of paying for 100 extra capacity that will never get filled

[Telanir 6433]

I've read a lot of posts in this thread and much of it is genuine, high-caliber feedback. Thank you for that.

I made the mistake not to to point this out but please focus on the state of the server and not individuals, for example "your idea made me ill" is not a valid reply lol

 

There is no need to defend your opinion, a well thought out reply will do that more than hitting reply on someone else's musings.

 

Thanks for reading through my obligatory janny insert, I hid a bunch of posts, if yours was hidden it will be discussed anyway, admins can still see them.

[ferdaboy 1593]

There’s always something to complain about, but I personally have had no issues with any of them

 

I often see people complain about how staff reply to criticism and stuff but i dont get why theres this expectation of staff having to be meek and compliant

 

i think we’re on an upwards trajectory in terms of overall quality, but nothings ever perfect

 

also lag makes the server unenjoyable for absolutely EVERYONE fix chunks please

[sincerelyE 81]

11 hours ago, Telanir said:

 

How do we balance this with red-tape? Giving notice…is that RP-friendly, or dynamic…or even interesting? And, suppose we do remove ladders, then the problem of perma-locked settlements returns—gates down, 24/7. (my problem here is not that players behind gates are safe, it is that it's that community interaction is (literally) gated, and new players be sad for sure).

 

I liked the beginning of this map a lot, gates were wide open come-on-in—but flat turning off conflict would be worse. What else can we try?

The whole gate thing has been jarring ever since I gave LotC a try. You have such a massive playerbase, inviting the ability for people to hop on whenever, even on Euro/Aus times, and have enough people to roleplay with. That is not something any other mcrp server has, yet...

... The gates and the ever looming concern of mcpvpers. Too many times now I've spent 30ish minutes checking several towns, found them closed up, and logged off. There's only so much time I can allocate out of my day to roleplay - if 30 mins of that is spent (sometimes unsuccessfully) finding that roleplay, then most days I just won't bother at all.

When I first joined a year ago, I thought about writing up a post about how the coexistence of mcpvp and roleplay harms the latter and keeps the upper echelon of quality roleplayers either away from the server entirely or, if they are on this server, they're huddled up in little pockets in order to guard themselves from being forced into a faction server experience. I ended up not writing the post, because I thought I'd be shouting into the void of a largerly mcpvp-oriented server. But now, reading the posts on this thread, it seems to me that people do want some sort of changes.

 

Maybe it's time to pull a m******craft and make a separate ecosystem entirely for the pvpers, giving opportunity to abolish the jarring pvp defence systems like ugly city walls and hell, even allow roleplayers to be the ones to shape the outcome of politics and major conflicts. 

I understand this might be a completely outrageous take by LotC standards still, but it's been at the back of my mind for an entire year, so I might as well lay it out.

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by sincerelyE