OOC, Roleplay, and You(r view)

[_Jandy_ 3519]

***** mcdonalds wagies gave me 2 kuriboh toys. This means war.

[Epicethan4 948]

I have an idea. Require that alliances and warclaims have 'proof of planning' inrp. In heists you have to post screenshots of the planning. The same should be done for alliances and warclaims. It would at the very least require people to actually rp them.

[Cheese 8882]

1 hour ago, squakhawk said:

Metaplay. The play-beyond-play. Coercing, pressuring or ostracizing players to influence in-character outcomes. Out-of-character, backdoor driven narratives, events, or outcomes; fabricated or canned roleplay that serves an OOC motivation. IC activity that opposes the creative and spontaneous spirit of roleplay.

I actually can't count how many times people have come to me (especially after my report regarding metaplay) to tell me they were harassed, targeted, and bullied OOCLY out of their communities. LOTC tries to be so proactive about small-scale issues of metagaming (i.e. pointing someone out as darkspawn based on OOC information, rallying to locations, etc.) but what does anyone do when people schemed for WEEKS to remove me from a character's heirship? In my instance with this, everyone agreed that while there was roleplay, it only happened BECAUSE of OOC and there was "nothing that could be done." It wasn't fair to me, of course, and it certainly isn't fair to anyone else who has gone through something similar. Metaplay of any kind needs to be taken as seriously as metarallying or something similar. There are additional instances where this kind of stuff needs to be taken as targeting and harassment, because that's what it turned into for a TON of people who were bullied into moving communities or quitting the server altogether. It needs to change and it absolutely needs to be done better.

[PrimnyaQuorum 3999]

While I think this is certainly a good set of actions and ideals, I think the problem follows downhill, from leadership figures down to the people around them and the communities around them. Why would someone engage in RP if they go out of their way to engage in RP, execute a plot made in RP - and the target just doesn't PK, turns around and maximizes their coverage with death rules to make a RP post about a murder they "witnessed" or were informed about, only leaving out the part where they died? Why should someone go through the effort of meeting up RPly with a nations governing body, if they will adamantly refuse to acknowledge RP - not because of their character's mindset, but the players- in favor of Activity% or because they favor someone on that governing body?

 

It's one thing that the concern is on leadership - but this state of being has existed for so long I feel its normalized among players, to do what they can to not "lose" and act borderline OOCly through RP to "win". Because of that, this problem exists well beyond Leadership figures. Players grow more toxic and OOCly plot & act to gain as much of a advantage, be it through OOC ties, Magics/Magical Items, or diplomancy across every group - a point nearly everyone within some form of leadership can acknowledge - because they know if they don't, and they slight someone OOCly, they're next with little room for dynamic RP. No one wants to be the next guy who gets their group wiped off because they annoyed another groups leader.

 

Effectively, the only way to avoid this problem currently is for players to become their own moderators, gauging every action for if its actually RP or just thinly veiled OOC - and hope to document enough of it quick enough to pass along to actual moderation, which may do nothing, do very little, or tell you that what happened wasn't presented quickly enough and altogether drop the issue. Moderation does the opposite, it feels, of enforcing a "No Loopholes" policy - it feels like any chance to knock a issue away from requiring moderation intervention is taken, instead of approaching an conflict to resolve it. I cannot count how many times I have watched people run into clear powergaming/metagaming/toxicity/harassment, and see them Adamantly refuse to go to moderation because they don't want to make their situation public, and get no meaningful resolution. As such, ego-cliques go about freely, and unless you have a member of staff friendly to you, you've out of options for any means of resolution - nevermind the OOC target that gets put on you for not following the ego-cult of whatever you conflict with. I've heard plenty of times of players who went, overnight, from friendly to not within the cliques and were effectively ousted from any chance of status within that community because they dared to RP as their character would react, not as the OOC wanted the outcome to be.

 

The only resolution I see is that Staff changes its approach from a reactive, passive mentality to something active - it seems unreal to imagine filling out a application renders a staff member blind and deaf to the things that occur, and they should be free to take action when they find something clearly unproductive to the RP-First mindset everyone wants to claim to have. Until then, while I think this will help, it will just shift away the problem. People who already engage in these behaviors and don't want to risk punishment won't be the actual leader - someone else will. So long as the concern is on a specific part and not the entirely of the issue, given how widespread it has become, it will always exists in some form, and become the most problematic aspect. 

 

It's a sad thing that I can almost count of two hands the number of players that I hold in regard because of how they go out of their way to avoid these OOC pitfalls and engage in RP as it should be, or how unoften it is where I get into a encounter with players or characters I've never run into before with something at stake, and the conflict is cooperatively handled OOCly, instead of maximized for advantage on each side. 

[Periphonics 557]

reading the replies and this post is making something you said increasingly obvious; people see lotc as a game to be won. "metaplay gives people the benefit" is an issue not just because of metaplay, which i think will require a very set definition in the future, but because of what it reveals. With the last 5-6 wars that have occurred on lotc, i'd say all of them have been very expressly stated to have been oocly driven, which is because players and certain nations want to win. Crp heavy nations especially, which frankly are a blight to the server and offer nothing but conflict that could be sourced elsewhere and provide no actual rp communities within themselves (you know who you are)
ive been told recently that it was changed just before my joining that wars don't require an IRP reason to occur, which frankly i think is one of the major contributing factors to this issue. Instead of actually rping and having wars occur because of things that happen IN roleplay, people spend their time metaplaying and collecting resources to then war a group with the hopes of stealing their playerbase or settling an OOC gripe. In some capacity, I think it should be necessary to cite actual reasons for wars in roleplay, why that feature was removed is genuinely beyond me. 
This is even more to say that the poison of non rpers on lotc is seeping in further. These issues aren't caused by people who log on to roleplay, and only roleplay, they're caused by people who thrive off of conflict and chaos oocly and irply. Frankly, the best conflicts are ones that are created by spook players because they pose a genuine threat that occurs naturally through their characters archetype rather than a nation just wanting more land, and this is because these players have to actually roleplay to even get their power rather than just be given a title on discord
This is messy, but it's mostly to say i agree with the post overall and hope to see good changes in the future that prioritizes roleplay quality above all else

[Minuvas 3193]

4 minutes ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

While I think this is certainly a good set of actions and ideals, I think the problem follows downhill, from leadership figures down to the people around them and the communities around them. Why would someone engage in RP if they go out of their way to engage in RP, execute a plot made in RP - and the target just doesn't PK, turns around and maximizes their coverage with death rules to make a RP post about a murder they "witnessed" or were informed about, only leaving out the part where they died? Why should someone go through the effort of meeting up RPly with a nations governing body, if they will adamantly refuse to acknowledge RP - not because of their character's mindset, but the players- in favor of Activity% or because they favor someone on that governing body?

 

It's one thing that the concern is on leadership - but this state of being has existed for so long I feel its normalized among players, to do what they can to not "lose" and act borderline OOCly through RP to "win". Because of that, this problem exists well beyond Leadership figures. Players grow more toxic and OOCly plot & act to gain as much of a advantage, be it through OOC ties, Magics/Magical Items, or diplomancy across every group - a point nearly everyone within some form of leadership can acknowledge - because they know if they don't, and they slight someone OOCly, they're next with little room for dynamic RP. No one wants to be the next guy who gets their group wiped off because they annoyed another groups leader.

 

Effectively, the only way to avoid this problem currently is for players to become their own moderators, gauging every action for if its actually RP or just thinly veiled OOC - and hope to document enough of it quick enough to pass along to actual moderation, which may do nothing, do very little, or tell you that what happened wasn't presented quickly enough and altogether drop the issue. Moderation does the opposite, it feels, of enforcing a "No Loopholes" policy - it feels like any chance to knock a issue away from requiring moderation intervention is taken, instead of approaching an conflict to resolve it. I cannot count how many times I have watched people run into clear powergaming/metagaming/toxicity/harassment, and see them Adamantly refuse to go to moderation because they don't want to make their situation public, and get no meaningful resolution. As such, ego-cliques go about freely, and unless you have a member of staff friendly to you, you've out of options for any means of resolution - nevermind the OOC target that gets put on you for not following the ego-cult of whatever you conflict with. I've heard plenty of times of players who went, overnight, from friendly to not within the cliques and were effectively ousted from any chance of status within that community because they dared to RP as their character would react, not as the OOC wanted the outcome to be.

 

The only resolution I see is that Staff changes its approach from a reactive, passive mentality to something active - it seems unreal to imagine filling out a application renders a staff member blind and deaf to the things that occur, and they should be free to take action when they find something clearly unproductive to the RP-First mindset everyone wants to claim to have. Until then, while I think this will help, it will just shift away the problem. People who already engage in these behaviors and don't want to risk punishment won't be the actual leader - someone else will. So long as the concern is on a specific part and not the entirely of the issue, given how widespread it has become, it will always exists in some form, and become the most problematic aspect. 

 

The self moderation comment here is 100% on the mark and it isn't easy. I can recall being scolded by my own players when they felt something was meta planned, had to make the hard acknowledgement when it is, and then try to make sure debates and discussion happen IRP. 

 

The most important point here is that it is completely on the nation leader to drive the mentality and they totally control how this is handled. There's no real authority above the NL keeping them in check from this. 

 

Narthok and his Orcs are a prime example. He demanded almost exclusive IRP interaction, barely even wanting to agree to a time to meet OOCly on discord. 

 

I cannot emphasize how disadvantaged you are as a nation of you debate critical laws/issues RP...because again you are coordinating people who have real timezones....versus someone using a Google doc and leaving feedback in a discord channel. The age of efficiency will see a leader out planned and maneuvered by schemers who use OOC tools. 

 

The only way you'd fix this is if you got rid of nation discords, and forced them into nation channels on the main LOTC discord. Players request the nation tag of their nation, and moderators are watching discussion to ensure no meta or OOC coordination. 

[Periphonics 557]

53 minutes ago, PestyWarlock said:

he general understanding I get from other players and myself is that if these wars were not all-or-nothing ("my OOC groups will make sure your OOC groups don't exist anymore") there would be less inclination to need to OOC scheme, and instead there would be more focus on the actual roleplay of the war. In my opinion, this cyclical culture shift can be seen as an act of self-preservation. If one group does it, others will need to as well to keep up or be destroyed, that is just how the war system works.
 

this this this.
part of the huge reason for everyones stock piling on things, and for others entire aversion to conflict rp, is because wars are ALWAYS about destroying the other group
which provides nothing. at all. finding a good community to roleplay in is not easy, often times players can spend months isolated until they manage to make proper connections in character, and when some other random group comes to destroy that all it does is create ooc hate and leaves the losing side with resentment and no where to roleplay. I genuinely think there needs to be a change on the WC system entirely, some sort of limitation to how often nations can intend to obliterate another's, or just how often they go to war period. Something like per map a nation having 1 obliteration war, and like. idk 3 wars who's intent is to get the resources of another nation, or something in that vain, is much better given the fact it means you still get your pvp goon fun while not having to ruin the experience for roleplayers and incite metaplay

[mika1278 3213]

the current problem is that game-like systems were pushed out by previous admins that encourage staying in your realm, grinding materials and avoiding going anywhere else.

If you want to fix the community, you have to stop presenting us a meta to play (like optimizing tile resources for self-sufficiency of a nation, forcing expansion and a hour long daily grind on a nation that does not want it if it wants to compete at all). If you want to give NLs a chill time, give them the ability to change tile resources or remove the system all together and revert back to standard vanilla iron gear so that people can actually roleplay instead of grinding out sets for a never coming conflict.

another thing is that discord is a tool, a very powerful one, if one uses it and you don't, then the one using it is simply not going to survive. Sure everything in roleplay is good if you have buckets of time, but when you log on a few times in the week for a few hours then you just cannot manage the nation or organize events/war properly. conflict breaks out between players, some wild OOC crap happens in the nation and if you can't step in on time to shut it down, it might very well be the end right there.

Furthermore, something that I myself am guilty of, is to take a random 3 weeks break in favor of irl and the nation suddenly declines because I simply put in 0 effort towards OOC or RP during this time, the necessity of an NL varies per nation ofcourse, but this mostly happened with mechanical limitations where I was not able to pass PRO down on time and granting permissions to do things on my behalf was not possible, which essentially froze the nation in place. Freedom becomes very limited and nobody wants to act on their own even if I wanted them to as they were afraid of my reaction instead of going with the roleplay.


please fix, I have been leading communities for ages

I don't want to play the OOC game, I want to roleplay in the world

[wolfdwg 2677]

As much as this is a nice thought. What stops people from just coordinating more further in secret? Are you just gonna mandate searching people's DMs to sniff out potential OOC collusion? 

[Benleft 2579]

2 hours ago, wolfdwg said:

What stops people from just coordinating more further in secret?

US THE PLAYERS, BY DOING AND BEING BETTER. Aspire to something more than the lowest common denominator. Step up and raise the fidelity of roleplay even when it feels like it doesn't matter. Rule changes and alterations won't make these issues go away, but if we all come together we can fix them culturally. 

 

Most of these problems just need to be talked about ad nauseum. The more we think about the quality of our roleplay the more conscious and compassionate we get. Love will save us, xoxo. 

[Proddy 2415]

I think you're hitting the right notes here squawk, and I do unbashedly agree with everything you're saying in this post and I hope these reforms can be enforced because I think it will make positive change for the servers climate overall. But I think what you're missing is the perspective of regular players who are deeply entrenched within these nation groups versus the feedback you have to go off of from dissuaded NLs themselves.

 

I think the issue of nations, and how the quality of roleplay and the standard of roleplay, has deteriorated within them over these past few years goes far beyond what you prescribe as metaplay. Metaplay is and has been an issue on the server for years, doubly so with the advent of Discord and the shift in LoTC culture to be overly reliant on discord for communication. But I fear that metaplay is in itself only one root of a systemtic issue that I've seen these past few years overtake the server.

 

I think your analysis of what a community roleplay leader, or an NL, should be is accurate. I believe the overarching problem with NLs and community leaders collectively is a complete lack of awareness and understanding in what being an NL actually means or should mean. As an NL one should not only have the responsibility of guiding the roleplay of their community, but you are also in an agreement of responsibility with your players that I will dub as a Contract of Narrative Accountability. This contract between player and NL, though unspoken of the majority of the time, encompasses a few things - mainly, the responsibility of guiding the narrative of your group, the roleplay standard and what I think is the most important and the element that is most direly undervalued in modern LoTC - the thematic tone.

 

The conundrum I have seen recently, very heavily so these past few months although this has been ongoing for years, is that a lot of these community leaders and NLs have stopped taking their own roleplay seriously, and make no effort to try and enforce or dissuade people from doing the same. This just has a trickled down effect when in the end, nobody takes the themes of their roleplay seriously. There is a real cognitive dissonance in immersion when I see, for example, silly beach party events or people emoting their characters hosting a cook-out with burgers on a grill in a fantasy setting where said nation is inspired by some 12th century European nation. There is the same level of cognitive dissonance in immersion felt when I see a High Pontiff Fleeperus running about, or I see people in roleplay referring to themselves as Lectorboos verbatim, or I see an entirely serious RP post being bombared with responses of characters speaking in 21st century discord zoomer slang.

 

For the record, I don't hate fun and whimsy. Halflings are steeped in that niche of roleplay and it serves them very well thematically, as an example off the top of my head. What I do dislike is when the value of roleplay quality of so many people within the wider community isn't taken seriously or isn't treated with any sort of moral reverance at all. It's ludicrous to expect people to be some mastermind writer behind their emotes, but I will be honest in saying there are a numerous number of players I and many others will actively avoid because we know their whole shtick is some form or another of ironic le funny haha shitpost meme roleplay, typically an in-group joke that's just been cultivated from OOC to IC and now has to be subjected on the rest of the playerbase. It's tiring. It's exhausting. It's why so many older players have lost the sense of lustre for this server and have moved on en-masse. We're tired of seeing a server we placed so much value into once not being taken seriously in many forms by its general playerbase.

 

I don't think this will ever change until we begin holding NLs, or group leaders, or community leaders more to account. NLing shouldn't be a privilege or a luxury. It should be a responsibility. A responsibility of setting the expected tone and standard of roleplay within their own communities.

[JudgeTrudy 610]

I just want to preface what Is say below by stating I have tried to write and re-write this message a few times over the past hour and a half unsuccessfully. I desperately want my feelings to come across as genuine and hopeful, and grateful for this community, but I can't quite find the best words for that. So, the collective You get whatcha get.

 

Over the past 15 or so years, I have been a part of many different kinds of roleplay communities across even more diverse settings and mediums. In all that time, issues of Metaplay have been always seemed to creep into those communities and bring about some level of agitation and disarray. In my short time here, it has been evident that this has been an issue for quite a while, as the original post has already said. Metaplay is something I joined with the hope of avoiding like the plague it is, but that is starting to feel less and less possible each day I play on either of my Personas.

 

When I first began as a new Dwarf, I happily sat in one community Discord, and it provided as much engagement and information as I needed. Now, with two Personas having grown over several months and explored multiple mini-communities, I have had to create a folder for muted LotC Discords that I have felt compelled to join at risk of seeming rude, unenthused, or unwilling to commit by not joining. Having played a character who has, I'd hope justifiably IRP, risen to helm a nation's legislative body, I am now faced with more OOC discussions and scheduling than I do roleplay. Some of it is just because my own work schedule means I get very little time to login - and I try to split my time between the two Personas. Still, for every hour I get of roleplay, there seems to be a few hours worth of OOC discussion - and not just me/others happily chatting about the good roleplay that was just had. I've seen too many players across multiple nations, factions, and families show very real stress, anger, and guilt over their day-to-day roles in managing their groups. Even I am starting to feel that way, and I came here in some part to escape those feelings.

 

I think that some of the others who have replied here about folks feeling like they have to join into the less than ideal methods of communication or leading in order to avoid getting curb stomped by others doing the same thing is very real. I witnessed it very briefly during the end of the Veletz war, I have heard those same feelings come from players during other conflicts I've now gotten to 'participate' in, and I hear about it in other communities via forum posts and Discord messages.

 

Overall, though, the fact that there is some consensus between current (and some former?) NLs and the vast majority of replies here fills me with some hope for the future. I'm sure Squak and the staff teams will continue to put in hard work, and I look forward to future community discussions like this as ideas and changes are introduced, tested, and tweaked.

[nepir 472]

last time staff started playing surgents. It looked like a toddler with a powertool. cutting and gutting a piece of the server that at this moment has healed like a wound that had salt rubbed in to it. 

 

As it stands ooc is hotwired in to every part of the server. because the old mentiality is gone, One I was raised on in this server. power is every thing now. What is roleplay to you to people on the server. It use to be a character living there lifes making a story afcourse we had the new roleplayers going with the I AM A RANGER! I AM A WARRIOR! and the were shown through roleplay there is more to it then that. Conflict pvp it was a small part of the server because people found joy in beeing a farmer a baker or smiths. Events were there to entertain the more combat inclined players.

 

You cant fix this easly and its a delicate thing to change a servers mantality for starts, give people room to again go in and kill some thing create a big bad enemy. many nations who sit idle for a long while will grow stagnent and start to bleed. Mina and players. Because on every turn its getting picked at the NLs are told enterain your nation. and scheming oocly to set up a war because you oocly know the NL of Nation 1 and 3 and 2 in the middle of it is new or based on rp more then pvp. lets go kill it for reason X Y and Z because then we got some thing to do that will spike our activty seems like a really nice way to do so.

 

there is so many things that presure NL's and players alike to grind and oocly communicate. I have made it explisitly clear DONT ask me for magic oocly I will put you on my shit list and not teach you magic. There has been 1 player in all my time on this server that did not metagame and still found me in rp and ask to learn magic With proper rp. and I did teach them because the proved to have 1 a character with a proper motivation and 2 not to metagame. 

 

I took a solid hour and a half to write this because there is so much to the proverbial iceberg here, And I have a habit of sending my foot through the door harder then most people can take. I all ready tuned down the first part of this poste 8 times.

[kuebiko 684]

Using OOC methods for nation leadership stuff is absolutely an issue. An understandable issue, but still an issue. Speaking from experience as a nation's court member. If you don't do the OOC shenanigans you will unironically be forgotten about both ICly and OOCly. To preface and not solely blame Discord n whatnot, communication should be expected and me being forgotten about isn't completely their fault, I'm quiet and reserved OOCly and I don't like to do Discord stuff so I maaaybe spoke to TWO other court members frequently OOC that I'd say are my friends. However, when it came to an in-character decision that really should've been brought up to my character, let alone me OOCly via Metaplay. People would rather use instant-OOC methods like Discord to discuss and make a decision than go through the pain of IC methods. It is easier for a court to use a channel, or speak directly to their friends. If you don't play the metaplay game, you're automatically losing. If you are not everyone's friend OOC, you are losing.

 

This lean into OOC communication takes away from character interactions, people make decisions based off of OOC communication rather than IC ones. It also opens up to this issue: if my character is mad over a decision made OOCly, then I really have to start worrying about RP->OOC bleed if my character wants to be upset. I only want the characters to dislike each other, I don't want to cause OOC issues. It's difficult for a character to disagree with or address a decision that was made from a majority OOC standpoint.

[Kholibrii 1211]

I think the OOC Bleed that has become very prevalent in the last year or 2 can be also be linked to a few things that aren't highlighted in this post as well.

 

What players expect from the NLs and community leaders of their nations has vastly changed. Thinking back to my time in the server 3 or 4 years ago, community leaders main job was to promote role-play and foster a nation's culture. At times, they may have acted to mediate or manage OOC issues, but it wasn't the focal point of their job. Players weren't frequently coming to their role-play leaders about issues that should be handled by moderation, and when they were, the leaders would point them toward the mod team. People weren't getting kicked from discords, shunned IRP, etc because of ooc actions like "being annoying" or "offending someone", "messing up my RP", etc (in a non-bannable way). In the modern era of LOTC, players expect their nation leaders to inflict internal punishments or to mediate issues that should be handled by moderation. "Someone is roleplaying in a way I don't like? They said something offensive to my character? They keep DMing me in game? Of Course my role-play leaders need to address that OOCly!! That's their job isn't it?" I think the source of this problem comes from the time when staff had a more ''hands off' approach to moderating behavior/actions on discord. This left more responsibility to the individual leaders to handle the issues and over the last couple years, players now expect their NLs to handle these issues when they happen in game as well. The staff took a step in the right direction by becoming more involved in moderating behavior on discord and the new role-play leadership guidelines will help as well. I expect change here will take time, players expectations of people don't change overnight but we are moving in the right direction.

 

I don't think discord alone is the source of a lot of the problem, but the way we use discord plays a major role. It is basically impossible to role-play within a major nation without participating on discord. Want a house in the city? Please join the discord and fill out a housing request and ping a clerk in #housing-request! Want to be able to get keys to the city doors? Please fill out a citizen doors request in the #door-perms chat! Want to join the military? Please DM xyz so he can give you the oath! I remember when I first joined the server all of those things were done organically in role-play, someone introduced me to the city, helped me find a steward/clerk IRP to get a home, gave me keys to the doors, and even pointed me toward different locations of interest to find RP. All of this without having to fill out any form or ping someone in a discord chat. Sure, as I began to RP more there were communications over discord, things like pings for an event, dming someone to see if they are free on an certain day, or just having completely ooc conversations, but it was completely possible to enjoy your time on LOTC without being in a discord chat. You would be hard pressed to find a nation that you could become immersed in without discord these days.

 

I didn't really offer any answers here, because in truth, I don't know the best ways to solve these problems, but I am glad to see staff become more involved in addressing these problems. There will likely be bumps along the road, but I have hope that staff will be able to find the best path forward and wish you all luck.