Human Settlements Rant

[MythicalAxolotl 25]

Hello. I don't make these types of posts often, but after seeing the difference between human nations and elven nations, I figured I should bring this up. The elves have 3 settlements, and two of them are primarily for an elven sub-race with a high population. It is incredibly easy to find RP in these nations given you log on at a good time. The people are active, and the population is dense. On the other hand, humans have an absurd number of settlements that I won't even try to count(a lot of them aren't even on the CT pillar list), and their population is spread thin across these. Despite this, we still have humans trying to build new settlements *cough* Reinmar *cough*. No hate to them(I play one of them), they just make a good example.

Wouldn't it be smarter to instead merge for the sake of RP? Or maybe staff can add a limit to the number of settlements per race? Another potential solution would be to create a public map that displays the locations of players in order to make finding RP easier, with an option to opt out of it if you don't want your location to be made public for the sake of avoiding metagamers.

We had this issue on a few other continents as well, and it only seems to be getting worse. The end of the pandemic is definitely a huge part of this, but 150 players is still a lot. There is no reason for you to have trouble finding people to RP with when 150 players are on the server. If we don't do anything to fix this, it will persist into the next continent as well. There's no point in waiting until then to fix these issues if doing so hasn't helped us in the past.

I just feel like making all of these human nations, most of which aren't even that different from one another, creates an unhealthy environment that makes it much harder to find RP.  And even with different cultures, its always possible to have different communities within a nation/city. With the option to form new realms taken away, internal conflicts and coups would be encouraged. This might also help newer players who haven't yet joined a community. If you can't find RP after traveling to 6-7 cities, why would you stay on the server? Obviously this isn't exclusive to humans, but the issue is most evident with them.

Sorry for the rant. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this as well, whether they agree or disagree.

Edited January 21 by MythicalAxolotl

[Laeonathan 3969]

Comparing humans and elves is a really bad thing, that does not work in itself.

 

Elven Subraces are essentially already cultures. While this is an immense oversimplifcation - but most wood elven cultures, high elven cultures etc. are not that different. Elven cultures, from wood elf to high elf for example differ significantly more. Core believes are utterly different.

 

However, another issue why you should never compare Elves and Humans is that their niche of RP is completely different. Or moreso, their attitude towards roleplay. People who play elves usually tend to focus more on individual stories, compared to humans who typically are involved in noble roleplay, that in addition is significantly more focussed on a national story, or the story of a culture, family etc. If you care more about your individual characters story, you will care that you roleplay in an active city - which causes elves to clutter.

 

And, the most important thing - ambition and organization. That is something I've noticed while being active in both groups VASTLY differs. Most people who play elves have little intention of starting their own group - why would you, if your characters story comes first? Human players, from my experience - are incredibly amibitious. Far more people will try to go further with their characters to strike out on their own and so, as you said create their own settlement.

 

But that is exactly the issue - that ambition is why they never sit in a city for long. You've had such phases in Oren or Haense - but even then there's a certain ambition. Because typically, all these families in - lets say Haense, have a background: For example the Waldenian Barclays. They are not a Haenser family, but have their own lore and history. Human characters are typically created as such, a part of a family with a history you can in 70 % of cases trace back 10 irl years. Elven characters are just often nobodies. Elven bloodlines that go 10+ years are much more rare.

 

Look for example at Celia'nor: Their relevant families are: Ibarellan (~3 years old), Cerusil (2 years old), Py'lrie (3 years), Wynasul (3 years - kinda. But they can be traced back further), Nullivari (7-8? They're kinda the expection.), Athri'onn (3 years). Why are most of them roughly that age? Because thats when Celia'nor came to be. They even barely care about cadet branches, or they are vastly unknown. Haense' families in comparison: Barbanov (from Carrions, so 12+?), Ruthern (from Carrions, so 12+?), Stafyr (12+?), Barlclay (idk but I saw them 4 years ago already...) When elves know their lineage perfectly it is usually for simpler reasons: My current Celianorian is 108. His father is ~450. His Grandfather is ~880. Aaaaand... we're in Aegis already.

 

What I am trying to say here - the focus of Elves and Humans is so different, and its only natural for humans to split up. Even if they're not in different realms, they'll just create 100 vassals. It does not really matter.

[christman 2307]

3-4 human nations (canonist, noncanonist, farfolk, extra) 1 orc nation 1 dwarf nation 2-3 elf nations (for each subtype but dark elves aren't always active) 1 halfling nation & sutica (an everyone nation) 

[Cheese 2307]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again

 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ESH3Y2sQRB6Mm35LUJZebA4p2eL4Z_jfRadVoq02yqo/edit

[Narthok 9213]

I think things are fine as they are. Let stuff get resolved by players instead of demanding staff intervention. I have centralized orcs and orcish vassals mostly through rp and diplomacy. No orcs get to have settlements outside capitol. Vassals need to be in view of the capitol. It has worked very well for us. Humans could solve this problem on their own and sould.

[Zqppy 227]

I agree with what both @Narthokand @Laeonathansaid in the replies here
Humans have both immense ambition for their groups and humanity has done nothing to centralize all the groups trying to go out on their own
We are post Oren and if you want to Roleplay Post Oren in Humanity, then Centralization is only going to become less and less.
More nations will get made; and with the system the staff have made they should be warred, merged etc.. to Centralize again

I recommend not calling for staff to destroy Roleplay and instead Roleplaying yourself and let the tales of Kings, Dukes and what have you in a Post Oren World play out naturally. 

[MythicalAxolotl 25]

Regardless of your stances on whether or not people should be able to keep making human settlements though, I still don't see why a dynmap people can use to find RP would be a bad idea if the /hide feature is enabled. It would solve the issue of RP being difficult to find while at the same time avoid removing the ability to form new settlements. The closest thing you can do is make an srequest and ask for realm activity, but that's not even that accurate(I was told Haelu'nor and Celia'nor had the most activity, went to both via ss pillars to find out Celia'nor had 2 people and Haelu'nor was completely empty at a time when there were 80 people on the server).

And yes, it might be possible to centralize through RP, but hardly anyone is willing to try. This post isn't entirely focused on staff intervention(even though most of my solutions revolve around that). The goal was just to convince people to start making human RP much denser on Aevos instead of waiting until the next continent like they always do. My "solutions" were genuine suggestions on how to solve the issue based on my own thoughts, but they were mostly there so this didn't turn into another complaint without substance and would instead spark an actual discussion on how to deal with the issue.

I do hope people leading human nations start keeping their vassals within sight though, as it would definitely somewhat help the issue if you didn't need to spend an hour traveling to only half of the human settlements.

And if you guys have better solutions, it'd probably be a good idea to mention and discuss them.

Edited January 21 by MythicalAxolotl

[Zanael Moonstrider 272]

I may not fully understand how all the realm things work but I kinda feel like each race should at least have one realm. Even the CAs since that way people who play those CAs can have a major place to call their own and not feel like some afterthought of a race.

[MythicalAxolotl 25]

On 1/22/2024 at 5:27 AM, Zanael Moonstrider said:

I may not fully understand how all the realm things work but I kinda feel like each race should at least have one realm. Even the CAs since that way people who play those CAs can have a major place to call their own and not feel like some afterthought of a race.

I agree with the fact that vastly different races/cultures should be able have their own city(realm if they don't have cities as vassals), but there should be activity requirements, and we don't need a separate realm for races, subraces, and cultures that aren't too different from each other. I can count 11 human cities if you include Lurin. I don't really see why Waldenians and Reinmarens need to separate from Aaun, as felt as if Aaun was either miscellaneous or primarily Waldenian to begin with. I also wouldn't understand why subraces of orcs would need to separate, though I'm not familiar enough with those to say with 100% certainty that they shouldn't be separated. Oyashiman are a lot different from Waldenians and most other human cultures though, so I believe they should be able to have their own city. These are just some examples though.

If we gave every race and culture, even the ones that are similar, their own claim, we'd only make the problem worse. A live dynmap that gives us the locations of players who aren't using the /hide command would make this much more viable though. It would get rid of the need for centralized RP and make it much easier to find people to RP with. Those are just my thoughts though.

[monkeypoacher 6993]

On 1/21/2024 at 4:31 AM, MythicalAxolotl said:

Wouldn't it be smarter to instead merge for the sake of RP? Or maybe staff can add a limit to the number of settlements per race? Another potential solution would be to create a public map that displays the locations of players in order to make finding RP easier, with an option to opt out of it if you don't want your location to be made public for the sake of avoiding metagamers.

I just feel like making all of these human nations, most of which aren't even that different from one another, creates an unhealthy environment that makes it much harder to find RP.  And even with different cultures, its always possible to have different communities within a nation/city. With the option to form new realms taken away, internal conflicts and coups would be encouraged. This might also help newer players who haven't yet joined a community. If you can't find RP after traveling to 6-7 cities, why would you stay on the server? Obviously this isn't exclusive to humans, but the issue is most evident with them.

Sorry for the rant. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this as well, whether they agree or disagree.

 

Centralization would rob human roleplay of what makes it interesting; the squabbles between the different decentralized settlements/nations is most of the substance. A player dynmap is a good idea though! It seems simple enough to add in with a command that lets you hide yourself from the map, or maybe a slightly more difficult implementation has anonymized player icons or a heatmap.