Metaplay - A Retrospective

[argonian 14254]

The most noticeable outcome of metaplay rules has been that no one makes RP posts anymore, because they're an easy way to get yourself banned if it turns out not every minute detail of the post was actually done in-game previously. Whereas if you don't make the post and communicate solely via Discord, then your OOC plans never cross the "threshold" into RP and you're safe.

 

Metaplay as a rule has made discord plotting worse and not better.

[CharmingCavalier 2189]

I tried to send a bird to three people yesterday with information about their characters. There is a FIVE minute cooldown between sending letters at an aviary. It took me 15 minutes of sitting next to a mineman bird head to get information disseminated to THREE people. How is this conducive to role-play and somehow going to encourage someone from sending a letter instead of just sending a discord message?

 

Here is a chart showing the times it would take to send letters to a select number of players, for your reference:

 

Players	Time at Aviary
3	15 Minutes
4	20 Minutes
5	25 Minutes
6	30 Minutes
7	35 Minutes
8	40 Minutes
9	45 Minutes
10	50 Minutes
11	55 Minutes
12	60 Minutes
13	65 Minutes
14	70 Minutes
15	75 Minutes
16	80 Minutes
17	85 Minutes
18	90 Minutes
19	95 Minutes
20	100 Minutes
21	105 Minutes
22	110 Minutes
23	115 Minutes
24	120 Minutes
25	125 Minutes
26	130 Minutes
27	135 Minutes
28	140 Minutes
29	145 Minutes
30	150 Minutes
31	155 Minutes
32	160 Minutes
33	165 Minutes
34	170 Minutes
35	175 Minutes
36	180 Minutes
37	185 Minutes
38	190 Minutes
39	195 Minutes
40	200 Minutes

 

#ReduceAviaryCooldown

 

Spoiler

PS: I suppose if this suggestion is taken under advisement Tech Team should have it implemented by 2036 at the earliest.

 

[Samson Option 9652]

13 hours ago, monkeypoacher said:

If this is the definition of "metaplay" then there's really no forgiving the bizarre franken-4X mechanics that govern all roleplay on the server. The most "meta" set of rules anyone could conceive, and they are explicitly directed toward the OOC goals of Nation Leaders to prevent spontaneous roleplay that threatens power structures cultivated through expert manipulation of Discord Roles. There's a magic force field that prevents anyone from doing something more spontaneous or destructive than breaking a window without PRO approval.

 

Want to pitch a tent on the outskirts of town and smoke cactus green and sell counterfeit potions? Sorry, buddy. That needs an entire convoluted set of rules specifically for Nomads, which needs to be internally debated and redlined and means-tested. Or you could ask the guy who owns the region if he's okay with it, I guess. Does that kind of take the spontaneity and fun out of playing a character on this server? Does that 'degenerate' your 'roleplay?'

 

We're all playing Minecraft, but in order to actually Mine or Craft anything you have to fill out a form and pay imaginary money and get people to sign a petition. The fact that you have to facilitate or gather RP is an obvious failure of the system. We all come here to RP. If given the choice, we all RP with each other spontaneously. But it's so unbelievably difficult to find someone to roleplay with, much less do anything particularly interesting once you do, that most people don't bother. They fall back on event calendars, which have to be explicitly allowed in the rules because we've tied ourselves in knots trying to define "metaplay." 

 

You have failed completely at preventing OOC motives or information from influencing important RP. All you have managed to do is move RP conflicts out of character. People now fight wars by maneuvering to get their enemies banned, or the rules changed in some key way that changes the parameters around what roleplay is allowed and not allowed. It's maddening. Please stop.

 

Meanwhile, the actual gameplay of Lord of the Craft is set up to be as hostile to spontaneity and creativity as minemanly possible. Everything is protected by worldguard. There are no roleplay hubs. Finding roleplay involves running a command that tells you OOCly where people are, and when you actually go to one of those places you find people mainly AFKing or running around to stim themselves while they talk to their friends on Discord.

I'm hopeful that the next map will improve on these conditions a bit, but how much can it, really? If we're too busy trying to correct 'player culture' to bother playing the game? 

 

I'd be delighted to see a response to this quoted portion.

 

[Sarven 2619]

7 hours ago, CharmingCavalier said:

I tried to send a bird to three people yesterday with information about their characters. There is a FIVE minute cooldown between sending letters at an aviary. It took me 15 minutes of sitting next to a mineman bird head to get information disseminated to THREE people. How is this conducive to role-play and somehow going to encourage someone from sending a letter instead of just sending a discord message?

 

Here is a chart showing the times it would take to send letters to a select number of players, for your reference:

 

Players	Time at Aviary
3	15 Minutes
4	20 Minutes
5	25 Minutes
6	30 Minutes
7	35 Minutes
8	40 Minutes
9	45 Minutes
10	50 Minutes
11	55 Minutes
12	60 Minutes
13	65 Minutes
14	70 Minutes
15	75 Minutes
16	80 Minutes
17	85 Minutes
18	90 Minutes
19	95 Minutes
20	100 Minutes
21	105 Minutes
22	110 Minutes
23	115 Minutes
24	120 Minutes
25	125 Minutes
26	130 Minutes
27	135 Minutes
28	140 Minutes
29	145 Minutes
30	150 Minutes
31	155 Minutes
32	160 Minutes
33	165 Minutes
34	170 Minutes
35	175 Minutes
36	180 Minutes
37	185 Minutes
38	190 Minutes
39	195 Minutes
40	200 Minutes

 

#ReduceAviaryCooldown

 

  Reveal hidden contents

PS: I suppose if this suggestion is taken under advisement Tech Team should have it implemented by 2036 at the earliest.

 

This some real shit, aviary having such a pain in the ass cooldown literally just incentivizes you to use OOC communication. The mechanics should be alongside the rules to help people follow them

[drfate786 1690]

20 hours ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

 

This should already be a thing, why it is not is mind boggling. 

 

9 hours ago, Dyl said:

My biggest concern with metaplay is that I do not believe it is being applied fairly. I’m all for trying to shut down ooc plots and actions that would kill rp and degrade the state of rp on the server. But I do not believe metaplay is succeeding in its goal as of right now. 
 

 

You guys need to properly ensure that there are no conflicts of* interest involved in the process. Moderators who are involved with the groups, communities, players, etc CANNOT have a say in what happens. They have to be forced to recuse themselves of the situation or be disciplined accordingly. This is a standard practice in almost every enforcement role.

Edited May 22, 2025 by drfate786

[FlemishSupremacy 6115]

14 hours ago, squakhawk said:

 

@FlemishSupremacybecause their response was similar

 

I can elaborate some on at least my perspective of that scenario

 

 

The issue that came of that was that the roleplay had occurred but the report had only come together days after - which left us in a weird position.

 

We could void the roleplay, and return to the NL (this is the act we'd done) - which allows the path to resume from where it was and back onto it's natural course without any further intervention

 

We could just ban the NL/other actor (this was the other we'd considered) - which still involved the metaplay ban(s), but this time it automatically enforces the path to go through as if the roleplay had occurred when the roleplay itself was metaplay to begin with.

 

My concern with the second path in particular was the worry that it would be seen at large that we are banning people and still getting the forced outcomes of actions that shouldn't have come to pass to begin with. This would look poorly on the administration to endorse that they wanted a specific outcome of the conflict rather than one that should've proceeded naturally to begin with.

 

 

 

In regards to Vinovia, the issue if we placed a "Wait until all their fleeps are unbanned" (or any cooldown of that kind), it'd artificially stifle roleplay and lead to mass public outcry that admins don't want anything to happen, nothing ever happens, chudjak, etc.

If we put any sort of cooldown or arbitrary OOC restriction on this from the outside, it would in my eyes,

1. Place a barrier on roleplay that still can, should, and did happen that exists only for purposes of pvpers getting their shot

2. Encourage that people in the future perform similar scenarios to buy their nation more time

3. Enable hostile banwaves for purposes of thinning a rally rather than for purposes of actual justice

4. Softly state that we want to afford some nations more protections than others rather than enabling equal opportunity

 

While a lot of the people in that banwave did have it coming already, I wanna add that of the 20 bans that went out for the Vinovia banwave, 8 out of those 20 were unbanned by the time the war started, and were involved in the first warclaim. I know some people attribute the victory of burgundy singlehandedly to the fact Vinovia had been banned en masse, but i'm not sure if twelve people defined the difference of these nations existing or not, particularly when the numbers were always thirty-some difference between the two sides with already nearly half the vinovian rally still present. 

 

 

In the future I think there's waters to navigate carefully with roleplay that has already occurred, and making the right decision in that moment that is both impartial and allows for natural roleplay to take course rather than actions that should not have happened to begin with. It'd be shitty to have something happen when it shouldn't have, ban the people involved, and still let that action take course anyways. At least in my opinion

 

I'm not disagreeing with the decision to void the celia'nor thing, even if a few people had already moved their vassal groups elsewhere and whatnot.

I don't think anyone is advocating for "wait until all their fleeps are unbanned" or a cooldown on acting against the vinovia thing. People are wondering, if voiding metaplay'd rp was in the cards, why didn't the existence of Vinovia get voided if 1. they recruited through metaplay methods and 2. their rp was spurred on by metaplay.

 

 

If you're going to wipe out a group because the way they established themselves was metaplay, you ought to void their existence and actions, too.
Now we ended up with a situation where a group was wiped out OOCly through staff intervention and then the existence of that group was used against Haense to start a war against them, while the group itself really had no way to impact the war that was caused on their behalf because they had been oocly wiped out.

It also doesn't help that part of the people who decided on all this had a stake in this situation.
It should be unacceptable that admins with an RP/OOC stake in a situation do not recuse themselves from the decisions and discussions regarding such matters. 

[squakhawk 14038]

15 minutes ago, FlemishSupremacy said:

 

I'm not disagreeing with the decision to void the celia'nor thing, even if a few people had already moved their vassal groups elsewhere and whatnot.

I don't think anyone is advocating for "wait until all their fleeps are unbanned" or a cooldown on acting against the vinovia thing. People are wondering, if voiding metaplay'd rp was in the cards, why didn't the existence of Vinovia get voided if 1. they recruited through metaplay methods and 2. their rp was spurred on by metaplay.

 

 

If you're going to wipe out a group because the way they established themselves was metaplay, you ought to void their existence and actions, too.
Now we ended up with a situation where a group was wiped out OOCly through staff intervention and then the existence of that group was used against Haense to start a war against them, while the group itself really had no way to impact the war that was caused on their behalf because they had been oocly wiped out.

It also doesn't help that part of the people who decided on all this had a stake in this situation.
It should be unacceptable that admins with an RP/OOC stake in a situation do not recuse themselves from the decisions and discussions regarding such matters. 

 

 

The existence of Vinovia itself wasn't metaplay is the issue - it existed for if i recall right, about two months before the report info was gathered. Though on top of that, in full honesty, if Vinovia hadn't existed to begin with Burgundy could still find another reason for CB or just cite conquest. While voiding hadn't been something we really considered with the vinovia thing (Given we didn't even think it an option), I think in retrospect I still wouldn't have given it was yes bad leadership and bad actors, but half (or less than half) of the actual people within Vinovia. Given again that half of the banned players were unbanned within 4 weeks of the banwave before the war even began, I just don't think a voiding of Vinovia's existence would've been neither crucial nor necessary personally

[TaraJess 2848]

10 hours ago, CharmingCavalier said:

I tried to send a bird to three people yesterday with information about their characters. There is a FIVE minute cooldown between sending letters at an aviary. It took me 15 minutes of sitting next to a mineman bird head to get information disseminated to THREE people. How is this conducive to role-play and somehow going to encourage someone from sending a letter instead of just sending a discord message?

 

Here is a chart showing the times it would take to send letters to a select number of players, for your reference:

 

Players	Time at Aviary
3	15 Minutes
4	20 Minutes
5	25 Minutes
6	30 Minutes
7	35 Minutes
8	40 Minutes
9	45 Minutes
10	50 Minutes
11	55 Minutes
12	60 Minutes
13	65 Minutes
14	70 Minutes
15	75 Minutes
16	80 Minutes
17	85 Minutes
18	90 Minutes
19	95 Minutes
20	100 Minutes
21	105 Minutes
22	110 Minutes
23	115 Minutes
24	120 Minutes
25	125 Minutes
26	130 Minutes
27	135 Minutes
28	140 Minutes
29	145 Minutes
30	150 Minutes
31	155 Minutes
32	160 Minutes
33	165 Minutes
34	170 Minutes
35	175 Minutes
36	180 Minutes
37	185 Minutes
38	190 Minutes
39	195 Minutes
40	200 Minutes

 

#ReduceAviaryCooldown

 

  Hide contents

PS: I suppose if this suggestion is taken under advisement Tech Team should have it implemented by 2036 at the earliest.

 

as someone who has a character playing a secretary who's entire job is to schedule shit, I can not upvote this comment enough. I've been at a point where I needed to send 15 birds out and I've had to grab another person or two to help me out because the cooldown is too long.

[Pintape 170]

12 hours ago, CharmingCavalier said:

I tried to send a bird to three people yesterday with information about their characters. There is a FIVE minute cooldown between sending letters at an aviary. It took me 15 minutes of sitting next to a mineman bird head to get information disseminated to THREE people. How is this conducive to role-play and somehow going to encourage someone from sending a letter instead of just sending a discord message?

 

Here is a chart showing the times it would take to send letters to a select number of players, for your reference:

 

Players	Time at Aviary
3	15 Minutes
4	20 Minutes
5	25 Minutes
6	30 Minutes
7	35 Minutes
8	40 Minutes
9	45 Minutes
10	50 Minutes
11	55 Minutes
12	60 Minutes
13	65 Minutes
14	70 Minutes
15	75 Minutes
16	80 Minutes
17	85 Minutes
18	90 Minutes
19	95 Minutes
20	100 Minutes
21	105 Minutes
22	110 Minutes
23	115 Minutes
24	120 Minutes
25	125 Minutes
26	130 Minutes
27	135 Minutes
28	140 Minutes
29	145 Minutes
30	150 Minutes
31	155 Minutes
32	160 Minutes
33	165 Minutes
34	170 Minutes
35	175 Minutes
36	180 Minutes
37	185 Minutes
38	190 Minutes
39	195 Minutes
40	200 Minutes

 

#ReduceAviaryCooldown

 

  Reveal hidden contents

PS: I suppose if this suggestion is taken under advisement Tech Team should have it implemented by 2036 at the earliest.

 

Absolutely agree with your sentiments,

A rule of thumb everyone should follow is, "do not punish behaviors you want to see." (can't remember the real quote).

In this situation, people leading and/or communicating to large groups of people have two options: Either to sit at the aviary for half an hour to bird 6 people or spend two minutes DM'ing them via discord. What do you think people will choose?

Wishing to see everything done IRPly and then making it such a hassle for, truthfully no good reason, is ridiculous. Especially when it restricts communication, one of the most important aspects of LotC as a whole.
+1 to this.