The State of LOTC

[LoxyTheReindeer 356]

Before I even begin, I want to make it clear that I'm not attacking anyone with this post. This is just a collection of my observations in my year of playing on the server, and an invitation to everyone else on the forums to add their opinions and discuss freely. And because I know it'll come up- I'm not talking about metaplay in this post. While that is a whole other issue that is incredibly nuanced and important, it's not what I'm focusing on right now. What I want to talk about is the state of LOTC as a whole.

LOTC has not been enjoyable for a lot of people, myself included, for many months. And ignoring the monster that is OOC and metaplay, I think the main reason why can be boiled down to one simple sentence.

Realism vs Enjoyment.

There is a reason that when a studio sits down to make a video game or animate a show that viewer/player enjoyment comes first. Real life is depressing, boring. We watch these shows and play these games to escape from real life. So, when realism comes before the enjoyment of the player base in a Minecraft server such as this- you're left with a lot of people who don't particularly want to play anymore. And I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. Yes, it's realistic for empires to rise and fall as they have done so over the course of history. It's realistic for wars to be waged over religion and even more realistic for these wars to raise up said empires. But you know what it isn't? Fun. It isn't fun to only have six nations to choose from when you finally get whitelisted to play on the server: with most of them being canonist human nations. It isn't fun to have your community destroyed over an extremely unfair feeling reason and not be able to do anything about it. Nor is it fun to try and create something new, and immediately have it squashed by the largest nations on the map simply not wanting something else to flourish. 

 

Despite how realistic that all may be based on historical empires- none of it is enjoyable for the playerbase that has to suffer as a result of it. I am not alone in saying that these problems are affecting the enjoyment I get out of the server- I know many people who either already have, plan to leave because of it, or simply don't find their time on LOTC enjoyed anymore. People who spend hours venting or arguing because they feel like they're not allowed to do what brings them happiness on this server anymore. Because they're not one of fifteen people with the power to change something. because if they try, they'll be persecuted into oblivion. Yes, this is realistic to real life. No, it's not fun. For anyone. Fun conflict is dramatic and directed with intent of creating conflict that's fun for both sides. Not conflict that only serves to deepen one sides pockets or further their regime. Again, yes, it's realistic. But when it happens again, and again, and again, it's frustrating and boring.

We've had two megawars between the exact same people on either side, and more than 10 nations erased off the face of the map. All within the span of a year. More nations are dying than can be raised up, and more unique ideas and builds and communities are being erased by the day. All for the sake of an empire that more than half of the server doesn't want nor believe in. We're a high fantasy server with lots of unique races to play and magics to obtain, yet 90% of the nation's available are canonist and human, which persecute these other races. This isn't okay; it isn't sustainable.

I'm asking everyone on the Mod and Admin teams to ask themselves this, and to have a long conversation about it; Is this what you want for the server? Is this the future you want for LOTC? Because if it is, you will likely see server activity decrease substantially by new map. You will see so many people quit, and they will not return unless major changes are made.
Please take my words into consideration. And again; I'm not attacking anyone with this post. I just want to open this up for discussion, because this can of worms is long overdue for being opened and picked apart. Please keep your comments and discussion respectful towards all parties. And thank you for reading.

[Werew0lf 24181]

An exaggeration to say half the server does not want it. 

 

Players deciding they want to be humans over elves is a player demographic, not something controlled by staff. If you stop botching wars and conflict for the sake of appeasing to a small minority, then LoTC would not be the fun story narrative server that it is. I am not saying OOC toxicity does not exist, but it undermines the hardwork of people who do roleplay and are taking it seriously. Unfortunately, players will sometimes take the conflict OOCly, and in comparison to what used to exist, this is nowhere as harsh or as bad. This has created a lot of roleplay.

 

 

Above is the roleplay some human nations have been able to get due to the war -- this includes war-time roleplay, refuge roleplay, and just the general conflict roleplay. A lot of Haense has come under this new kingdom, some of them have fled to Norland and have made a very cool town. Sure, OOCly they did not want this, but RPly it happened and they spun their own cool twist on it.  Screenshots were taken across numerous days, and they were persistent across numerous hours, not just one show-and-glow sort of thing.

 

I think you have an L mind-set and should probably focus on playing your character instead of looking at the greater political hoo-hah that is running around on the map. Anybody on the losing side would feel like this, not saying it is not warranted, but trying to appeal to admins and moderation over something that is a non-issue is very bad-faith in my opinion. 

 

👍

[Yeetboy0206 1574]

Loxy put a lot of my feelings into words. I get that some people want this server to be GoT levels of politics and backstabbing, but LOTC is named Lord of the Craft for a reason. It’s inspired by Tolkien’s style of fantasy, a mix of wonder and awe with gritty harsh reality countered by the intricate facets of human nature that ultimately allows good to prevail, despite the magic slowly fading. Does the server feel anywhere near how it was intended to feel when it was created? That’s a question the people who’ve been here longer than me have the answers to, I’m just the relatively new guys perspective.

[LordCrowe 173]

8 minutes ago, LoxyTheReindeer said:

yet 90% of the nation's available are canonist and human, which persecute these other races. This isn't okay; it isn't sustainable.

An idea I've long toyed with is that Canonism really needs a catholicism vs protestantism style split, with the protestants being much less beholden to secular power (as in real life) and also notably removing all the fantasy racism.

Lets be blunt, some of the draw of Canonism for some people is the "funni racism memes", see https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticRacism. And the staff coming down after YEARS of this being normal and saying Canonists can't be racist anymore would probably cause an uproar.

But a Protestant/Catholic schism would allow the people who actually have fun with that sort of thing to do their own thing, while retaining the medieval "the church is a key part of the state" thing for the rest of us humans. It works WITH the playerbase to affect change in a way that make sense.
Also, y'know, it would provide an ACTUALLY GOOD REASON for the High Pontiff to be mad and have wars of religion start.

Unfortunately, the impetus doesn't seem to be there, so unless the ST are willing to organize some sort of political world event out of it, any attempt at starting such a movement would be a small group that gets instantly crushed for heresy...

[gremlockgremlin 755]

I think lotc should walk away from Google translate rp all together

[argonian 14254]

There's only gonna be one Canonist human nation in the near future so no worries about the most nations being Canonist thing.

 

28 minutes ago, LoxyTheReindeer said:

Yes, it's realistic for empires to rise and fall as they have done so over the course of history. It's realistic for wars to be waged over religion and even more realistic for these wars to raise up said empires. But you know what it isn't? Fun. It isn't fun to only have six nations to choose from when you finally get whitelisted to play on the server: with most of them being canonist human nations. It isn't fun to have your community destroyed over an extremely unfair feeling reason and not be able to do anything about it. Nor is it fun to try and create something new, and immediately have it squashed by the largest nations on the map simply not wanting something else to flourish. 

The small number of nations is a staff decision to have activity checks and to not accept charters except under a strenuous set of conditions. It's not the result of war. We have these rules because players complained at having dozens of empty copy-paste nations. Now the complaint is that there are too few and it's hard for one to build their own community. 

 

I'm more towards your side of this particular issue (allowing ppl to get land easily vs activity checks and charters) but also it's not hard to get land as a vassal, so why not just do that instead of leaving the server because your nation got annexed? If you don't have the manpower for it, then band with other groups. Ultimately, this is not WoW village RP - you don't get to pick and choose who you RP with, but rather live in a (barely) living-breathing dynamic RP world where things outside of your control will happen and characters with hostile intentions will interact with yours. At that point you have to roll with the punches. Loss is an opportunity to do something new and it's an important part of any story (and that's what this is at the end of the day - cooperative storytelling).

 

28 minutes ago, LoxyTheReindeer said:

Fun conflict is dramatic and directed with intent of creating conflict that's fun for both sides. Not conflict that only serves to deepen one sides pockets or further their regime. Again, yes, it's realistic.

There's no drama where there's no stakes. As for the motivations behind starting a conflict - there is no art to the mind's construction in the face and all that, but we can safely assume the goal is not to deepen pockets, given that money is totally worthless on this server. Nor does it help furthering a regime - starting a war is much more risky than just sitting back and basking in one's own decadence as 90% of the server are wont to do.

 

28 minutes ago, LoxyTheReindeer said:

But when it happens again, and again, and again, it's frustrating and boring.

It's happened like twice total.

[Yeetboy0206 1574]

1 minute ago, Werew0lf said:

An exaggeration to say half the server does not want it. 

 

Players deciding they want to be humans over elves is a player demographic, not something controlled by staff. If you stop botching wars and conflict for the sake of appeasing to a small minority, then LoTC would not be the fun story narrative server that it is. I am not saying OOC toxicity does not exist, but it undermines the hardwork of people who do roleplay and are taking it seriously. Unfortunately, players will sometimes take the conflict OOCly, and in comparison to what used to exist, this is nowhere as harsh or as bad. This has created a lot of roleplay.

 

 

Above is the roleplay some human nations have been able to get due to the war -- this includes war-time roleplay, refuge roleplay, and just the general conflict roleplay. A lot of Haense has come under this new kingdom, some of them have fled to Norland and have made a very cool town. Sure, OOCly they did not want this, but RPly it happened and they spun their own cool twist on it. 

 

I think you have an L mind-set and should probably focus on playing your character instead of looking at the greater political hoo-hah that is running around on the map. Anybody on the losing side would feel like this, not saying it is not warranted, but trying to appeal to admins and moderation over something that is a non-issue is very bad-faith in my opinion. 

 

👍

As for this whole thing, it’s her opinion based on her own experiences. You don’t have to agree, but be respectful man. Don’t just call it an L-mindset and tell her to focus on her character instead of the greater world when the greater world is directly affecting her character and other people’s characters. She has a right to speak her mind about her concerns and have them be taken seriously and debated respectfully and rationally rather than simply concluding that “oh, that’s not the whole situation thus you should stay out of the kitchen.” You may have a point in how the RP for human nations has been higher, but it’s also killing every other unique idea and identity on the server in favor of a relatively homogeneous empire that’s just a repeat of the same attempts done over and over and over again on LoTC from the history that others tell me from both sides of the argument. It’s only fair for some people to worry about if they won’t have the freedom to truly experiment and be unique with their characters without having to worry about getting instantly crushed because their character won’t fit into this new empire. But again, I’m a new player, so I suppose my views have no validity in the eyes of the veterans of LoTC.

[Nectorist 12869]

If a community and its leadership involves itself with RP politics, especially to benefit from it, then it invites the risk of consequence for its RP actions. Veletz wasn’t, and shouldn’t have been, able to get out of the consequences of the aggressive foreign policy it conducted. The way nations are treated now shouldn’t be any different. There’s always an opportunity to play somewhere else, develop a new group, and come to power again when the political winds change (if that’s your aim). Nothing on here is permanent and a bit of patience usually goes a long way.

[Wonderland_Boy 1081]

Honestly, Loxy makes a lot of valid points. While I’m not entirely sure how the admins or the ST could realistically fix the amount of chaos the server has gone through over the past few weeks, it’s still really disheartening to see all the hard work people put into their nations go to waste. Just look at Hyspia, for example, months of effort, lore, and time, all thrown away in a matter of weeks.

[Benleft 2581]

I promise if ET were in charge of arbitrating how conflict is resolved the server would be much worse. Keep ST cucked, it is better for you. 

[argonian 14254]

2 hours ago, LordCrowe said:

An idea I've long toyed with is that Canonism really needs a catholicism vs protestantism style split, with the protestants being much less beholden to secular power (as in real life) and also notably removing all the fantasy racism.

Lets be blunt, some of the draw of Canonism for some people is the "funni racism memes", see https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticRacism. And the staff coming down after YEARS of this being normal and saying Canonists can't be racist anymore would probably cause an uproar.

But a Protestant/Catholic schism would allow the people who actually have fun with that sort of thing to do their own thing, while retaining the medieval "the church is a key part of the state" thing for the rest of us humans. It works WITH the playerbase to affect change in a way that make sense.
Also, y'know, it would provide an ACTUALLY GOOD REASON for the High Pontiff to be mad and have wars of religion start.

Unfortunately, the impetus doesn't seem to be there, so unless the ST are willing to organize some sort of political world event out of it, any attempt at starting such a movement would be a small group that gets instantly crushed for heresy...

lol dude virtually every Protestant country had/has a State Church with the King as the ultimate head of the Church - funnily enough most schism attempts IRP have also been nations trying to create state churches. And as for the fantasy racism - it's actually Canonist dogma that all races can go to the Seven Skies and it's the sects that believe only Humans can. Not to mention that the Canonist Church has had non-Human Saints and Pontiffs.

 

Very weak attempt at smearing Canonism with all the things you dislike about Human RP. I recommend you google "the Church of Denmark" and search "Favoritism" on the forums before your next one.

[Werew0lf 24181]

11 minutes ago, Ryfin Chany said:

As for this whole thing, it’s her opinion based on her own experiences. You don’t have to agree, but be respectful man. Don’t just call it an L-mindset and tell her to focus on her character instead of the greater world when the greater world is directly affecting her character and other people’s characters. She has a right to speak her mind about her concerns and have them be taken seriously and debated respectfully and rationally rather than simply concluding that “oh, that’s not the whole situation thus you should stay out of the kitchen.” You may have a point in how the RP for human nations has been higher, but it’s also killing every other unique idea and identity on the server in favor of a relatively homogeneous empire that’s just a repeat of the same attempts done over and over and over again on LoTC from the history that others tell me from both sides of the argument. It’s only fair for some people to worry about if they won’t have the freedom to truly experiment and be unique with their characters without having to worry about getting instantly crushed because their character won’t fit into this new empire. But again, I’m a new player, so I suppose my views have no validity in the eyes of the veterans of LoTC.

 

Nitpicking L-mindset when I was quite respectful in my original comment is funny but I will ignore it for you Yeetboy, since this is your mindset also. 

As for the empire repeat.

 

We have not had one in over five years. It has just not existed, and I think formulating an opinion on the whispers of one side is ... an L mindset. I am not saying you should be joyful and spraying confetti in hype about losing pixels on minecraft. I am not telling you to be an emotionless robot and say this doesn't take a toll on your mental. I am not an LoTC veteran either. If this is not people's cup of tea, that's fine, I just wanted to express my opinion. 

 

None of these posts came up when my friends nation got destroyed by a large coalition. Why are you choosing when it is bad, and when it is not?

[CasualNuker 1113]

Just now, Werew0lf said:

 

Nitpicking L-mindset when I was quite respectful in my original comment is funny but I will ignore it for you Yeetboy, since this is your mindset also. 

As for the empire repeat.

 

We have not had one in over five years. It has just not existed, and I think formulating an opinion on the whispers of one side is ... an L mindset. I am not saying you should be joyful and spraying confetti in hype about losing pixels on minecraft. I am not telling you to be an emotionless robot and say this doesn't take a toll on your mental. I am not an LoTC veteran either. If this is not people's cup of tea, that's fine, I just wanted to express my opinion. 

 

It has been three years. Do not inflate numbers on that. Further how is it possible for ST member to play a character so influential that you reshape the map? That seems like bad-faith in my personal opinion. Maybe just maybe staff should revoke the ability for themselves to reshape entire maps, cultures and nations by playing such a powerful character...

[Yeetboy0206 1574]

1 minute ago, Werew0lf said:

 

Nitpicking L-mindset when I was quite respectful in my original comment is funny but I will ignore it for you Yeetboy, since this is your mindset also. 

As for the empire repeat.

 

We have not had one in over five years. It has just not existed, and I think formulating an opinion on the whispers of one side is ... an L mindset. I am not saying you should be joyful and spraying confetti in hype about losing pixels on minecraft. I am not telling you to be an emotionless robot and say this doesn't take a toll on your mental. I am not an LoTC veteran either. If this is not people's cup of tea, that's fine, I just wanted to express my opinion. 

 

#1. Calling someone L-mindset is not respectful bro. Adding nitpicking L-mindset just makes it more disrespectful.
#2. I am aware of the length of time between Empires, but it doesn't change the fact that there've been 9 empires on LOTC (which IMO is a lot of empires to spread out over nearly 10 years). 
#3. As Nuker said, and I don't say this to be disrespectful, you have a lot more privilege and leeway about how your story goes on the server than a lot of other people. You're an ST, and you're most prominent character that you play is basically the guardian angel of the side that currently seeks to make an empire. That's not to say that anyone arguing against you is clear of conflict of interest either, but our opinions can be just as valid as yours even if we don't have as much say over the state of the server as you do. I didn't call your opinion anything negative outside of respectful criticism of how you went about arguing it. 
#4. I stated pretty clearly in my comment that I formulated my opinion off of both sides. But I'm not going to accuse you of anything, and chalk it up to the fact that there were other things you thought were more pressing to address in my comment, like the length of time between empires on LOTC. 

Thank you for acknowledging that these events can still weigh on players, and that our feelings on the matter are not invalid.

[Navigator 4260]

7 minutes ago, CasualNuker said:

It has been three years. Do not inflate numbers on that. Further how is it possible for ST member to play a character so influential that you reshape the map? That seems like bad-faith in my personal opinion. Maybe just maybe staff should revoke the ability for themselves to reshape entire maps, cultures and nations by playing such a powerful character...

If people got out of the forums and out of their fear of 'metaplay' to actually play the game, you could reshape the map too. World-changing, culture-defining characters aren't limited to staff. Look at Smatown as Kharak'Raguk, Pyrodude as Emperor of Oren, Phaedrus'Yar the Elf Rex, etc etc. People are just too stuck into their cozy little slice of life RP - which is not shameful in any way, and I myself enjoy it - that whenever something actually happens and they are forced to roleplay the consequences, they freeze in place and say the server is unfun.

 

I'm not saying Loxy makes invalid points. I do believe that a conversation should be had about how OOC mindsets and OOC discussions affect and have always affected roleplay, but at the end of the day, if people just play the damn game, play their damn characters and stop being afraid of consequences because of 'ohhh all the time I spent :((', things will happen.

I went from a Hyspian peasant to Ravenmirian Prince, Knight & future Lord Justice.

 

Make things happen. Don't sit and complain on the forums.