What would you do?

[Kaiser 2347]

Freebuild is never coming back just to put that out there for everyone

[argonian 14254]

99% of the ppl against freebuild have never actually played on a map with it

 

tiles are retarded and you guys need to find a game other than eu4 to play 

 

discord is terrible precisely because it's great for organising events. event spam totally replacing and eliminating spontaneous and emergent rp was a disaster for the server. events should be rare and substantial enough that forum posts can advertise them. also u dont need 50 guests at a wedding between 2 nobody 3rd cousin scions of a baronial house, and if u want them just use the main church of a city at peak time and ppl will crash it. in fact u can do that for most types of event

 

activity checks suck because they create too much fake rp like the above

 

wars last way too long. way too much stalling (should be forced to have a warclaim every weekend unless it's a major international holiday) and fighting tile by tile is too much. you should be allowed to just march in a straight line to the capital. then give vassals the option to revolt and keep fighting or be subjugated too.

[sapphic_spidy 1089]

Hi, I'm John Quiñones...

[Dalek348 1962]

2 hours ago, سكون said:

Would be a pleasant development if at least one moderator commits to tracking this thread and actually make changes to server policy based on the play out of well-formed arguments. If this happens, then I'd be happy to chime in. Otherwise, this will be Server Feedback Thread #5961 which is no fault of yours Navigator.

I have been following a few feedback threads and it's impossible to tell if anything is ever being listened to - I neither see mods viewing the threads or responding, which is a little disappointing.

 

I will repeat that freebuild is essential to a server like this, and choosing to have an entirely regioned world actively harms this server. This is something which has been recognised years ago and by hundreds if not thousands of players, and the aversion to it is only a recent development. I should add that freebuild does not mean everyone can break or place blocks wherever they like - it means that there are certain areas of the map where your character can collect resources, build, or pick a flower if they choose.

 

It is essential because this is a dynamic world in which your characters interaction with it is a cornerstone of the whole experience. Without it, everyone is little more than a wandering soul. Currently there are 100-200 or so people who regularly log in to the server for that sort of experience. That is great for them, but I think the server should be aiming to cater for the additional 100-200 people for whom that experience is not good enough.

 

Notice how none of the people who are against freebuild are able or willing to articulate their reasons properly or engage in a debate. I think that the debate we have would therefore benefit from explaining how the arguments against freebuild have been discredited over the years:

 

"It decentralises RP" - freebuild in fact centralises roleplay. If people are given the opportunity, they will coalesce together. This is what people come here for. This fact is proven in every iteration. Look at the Aegis King's Road or the Belvitz crossroad in Atlas for examples. Further - the same people who argue that this decentralises roleplay will defend the current system, in which there are 11 capital cities and 114 officially-listed vassal settlements. These 125 settlements are in regions, which generally remain untouched, inactive, and spread across the map so that as much of the world can be painted in that nations colour like a Paradox game. Regions have evidently done absolutely nothing to centralise roleplay and in my view do the exact opposite. In freebuild, these would be removed and the land renewed, given that it creates a dynamic and interactive world which reacts to players actions and needs.

 

"There will be landscars" - land-scarring is already against the rules, and the tools exist to fix those land scars and ban the player responsible.

 

"There will be griefing" - see above. It is against the rules and can be solved within minutes. The fact that some players may break rules is not an appropriate reason to restrain rule-abiding players from playing their character how they want.

 

"The builds will look bad" - generally, this does not happen. When given the opportunity I have almost entirely lived within freebuild and been very impressed with the quality of building. This is often because they are built in survival mode and so do not lose all sense of scale and proportion and modesty like almost all creative builds do. See the above responses to land scars and griefing as well - truly ugly buildings are probably against a rule or a rule can be made against them, and poor builds removed. I can point to a dozen builds every map built in regioned areas that are incredibly ugly. Regardless, this is not a build server, it is a roleplay server and the quality of building is only a tiny consideration in the grand scheme of things.

 

"Mods don't want to work on fixing griefing or land scars in freebuild areas" - this is more an issue of moderator laziness than the concept of freebuild itself. It would be very simple for existing staff to police the rules that already exist against griefing and land-scarring, but you could equally recruit a small number of players who are happy to police such things. 

 

"I worked hard brown-nosing the right people and getting my regioned plot of land, why should someone else be allowed to build something without enduring the same struggle?" - this is a you problem, many of us just want to play the server and do not have access to LOTC discords to get in with the right crowd and spend long enough climbing the greasy pole for the privilege of being able to make a mark on the world we inhabit. Bear in mind that there are hundreds of new players every year that log on, with no friendships or connections made, who can't even pluck a watermelon from the ground before they die of starvation because of the world being covered in a region, who then log off and never play again. It is not a problem for players with years of friendships and connections who can get build permissions for near enough every capital or tile they fancy, it's the hundreds of new players that this server willingly loses as a result of this stale world.

Edited May 28, 2025 by Dalek348

[sapphic_spidy 1089]

2 hours ago, Narthok said:

Both of these beliefs, or rather the belief that these two orientations are disordered are mandatory per my extremely old religious community which happens to be the largest in the world.

I would argue that even if you believe this, it has no place on LOTC or the forums. Discrediting someone's identity has no place. "Transexual" is also a largely outdated term that carries implications that are just... untrue. 

 

You are actively invalidating people by saying this, and you are actively going against years of psychological research to imply that gay people are "disordered." You can believe this if you wish, just don't say it. Because it is hateful, even if you don't personally hate those groups, to validate people who do. 

 

On the flip side, people shouldn't invalidate your religion either. However, religion should never be an excuse for ignorance, bigotry, hatespeech, or generally being rude. Even if it's not hateful for you to say that, it is rude. And I think the server would benefit a lot from people just being nicer to each other.

 

I think that's generally my take on the server, as "hippie peace and love" as it may seem. If we were just nicer to each other, things would be better. If we let people have the benefit of the doubt more often, if we communicated our feelings respectfully, etc. That, of course, is wishful thinking, and I can't expect it of anyone. But personally, for me, going into the server expecting myself to have a good time and have fun and make friends has went pretty well for me. I don't want to be rude to people, I don't want to "win," and it has made my experience... pretty positive overall. Idk. Maybe I am just too soft. But that's my opinion on how to improve the server. Don't be assholes.

Edited May 28, 2025 by sapphic_spidy

[greisn 365]

experiencing freebuild was mostly exploring abandoned squares with huge holes in the dirt

what happened to temporary implementation to workshop interesting game rules and systems

[Kabukicraft 143]

#ReturnoftheWonks

 

I want to Wonk out.

 

[argonian 14254]

1 hour ago, greisn said:

experiencing freebuild was mostly exploring abandoned squares with huge holes in the dirt

or you know, vibrant hubs which shaped the server for years after, like belvitz or curon

[greisn 365]

1 minute ago, argonian said:

or you know, vibrant hubs which shaped the server for years after, like belvitz or curon

yeah there were awesome builds and some garbage. freebuild would probably perform better now than it did then

[monkeypoacher 8053]

2 hours ago, Kaiser said:

Freebuild is never coming back just to put that out there for everyone

You are free to turn your server into an inactive dollhouse with occasional laggy PvP battles. You're also free to write overly verbose rules about who gets what part of the dollhouse or when and how those laggy PvP battles are allowed to take place. You are even freer to stare at spreadsheets and paperwork in your spare time and have arguments over the spreadsheets and paperwork. It just seems like a lot of effort to have to continually expend to keep the server boring.

[Dalek348 1962]

1 hour ago, greisn said:

experiencing freebuild was mostly exploring abandoned squares with huge holes in the dirt

 

Then it should be trivially easy for you to go and find some examples.

 

In the interest of fairness, I also spent 5 minutes flying around the Atlas museum server in freebuild areas I frequented, and found the following:

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2025 by Dalek348

[monkeypoacher 8053]

2 hours ago, greisn said:

experiencing freebuild was mostly exploring abandoned squares with huge holes in the dirt

what happened to temporary implementation to workshop interesting game rules and systems

It's all pros and cons. This current map where nobody is allowed to build ever also has a lot of abandoned towns in it. 
 

People like novelty and have other priorities than Lord of the Craft. This means no matter what rules you put in place, builds are going to get abandoned and you have to have someone around to clean them up. A lot of effort from the staff seems to go into creating a magical ruleset that will prevent players from ever going inactive.

[argonian 14254]

9 minutes ago, Dalek348 said:

 

All the builds are lovely, but these stand out the most.

 

This is the kind of soul you only get in an organically developing map - never to be seen in the dollhouse LC pasted worlds we've had since, where you're welcome to look around at what others built off-server (and in many cases, were paid to build), but not ever to interact with it, despite that literally being the purpose of this entire game, which we all bought under that premise.

 

Anti-freebuild types should just forum RP and use ChatGPT to generate pretty pictures they can "ooh" and "aah" at if they don't give a shit about interactivity, dynamicity, or just life in a world, and instead just want to sniff farts while competing to see who can write the most adjectivally-overloaded emote.

 

Atlas was objectively a success as a map. Why do we have to pretend it wasn't? Because some people are paranoid that letting people play Minecraft will convince them to build something ugly that will somehow never be removed? People can already do that - all they have to do is get one NL to sign off on it! How much of the game must we sacrifice in the name of protecting people from ever seeing builds which don't appease their warped sensibilities? 

[monkeypoacher 8053]

16 minutes ago, argonian said:

All the builds are lovely, but these stand out the most.

 

This is the kind of soul you only get in an organically developing map - never to be seen in the dollhouse LC pasted worlds we've had since, where you're welcome to look around at what others built off-server (and in many cases, were paid to build), but not ever to interact with it, despite that literally being the purpose of this entire game, which we all bought under that premise.

 

Anti-freebuild types should just forum RP and use ChatGPT to generate pretty pictures they can "ooh" and "aah" at if they don't give a shit about interactivity, dynamicity, or just life in a world, and instead just want to sniff farts while competing to see who can write the most adjectivally-overloaded emote.

Hey man, I'm a competitive fart sniffing slice of life roleplayer. I don't even get to write my paragraph length emotes because I'm not logging on at 2PM on a Friday when the big discord community events are scheduled. I liked playing in a world that constantly changed a little bit with the people roleplaying it, even if I didn't build or PvP much. The current maps don't change except for 1 or 2 big events, and then there's a permanently burning city or a portal to hell for some completed event that is completely uninteractive. 

 

I think the nobuild stuff is mainly for the benefit of people who don't want to log on and do anything but still feel like they should have outsized influence over what happens in roleplay.
We should give people the benefit of the doubt if they have concerns about the map turning into one giant 2b2t lava cast or their RP being degenerated - these are all valid. 
 

If we make fun of anyone it should be the people who pretend to be the Game Master and force people to read their verbose rules and opinions and fill out their overcomplicated paperwork. Some of the first replies to this thread were people writing literal typeset paragraphs of inane commentary on minecraft rules. Those people should pick up a pen and paper and find some IRL grognards to discuss troop movements with.

[Dalek348 1962]

31 minutes ago, argonian said:

All the builds are lovely, but these stand out the most.

 

This is the kind of soul you only get in an organically developing map - never to be seen in the dollhouse LC pasted worlds we've had since, where you're welcome to look around at what others built off-server (and in many cases, were paid to build), but not ever to interact with it, despite that literally being the purpose of this entire game, which we all bought under that premise.

 

Anti-freebuild types should just forum RP and use ChatGPT to generate pretty pictures they can "ooh" and "aah" at if they don't give a shit about interactivity, dynamicity, or just life in a world, and instead just want to sniff farts while competing to see who can write the most adjectivally-overloaded emote.

 

Atlas was objectively a success as a map. Why do we have to pretend it wasn't? Because some people are paranoid that letting people play Minecraft will convince them to build something ugly that will somehow never be removed? People can already do that - all they have to do is get one NL to sign off on it! How much of the game must we sacrifice in the name of protecting people from ever seeing builds which don't appease their warped sensibilities? 

 

I would add that the wooden noticeboard is located at the picture above it. It was called something like the Jayamen estate, and being also a resident of the freebuild area I befriended him by trading resources and information. The Jayamen estate featured a tavern and several mini games you could play using (gasp) Minecraft mechanics. It was a really lovely place.

 

Although perhaps I should have queried at the time whether he was up to date with his lair licence following approval of his lair application pursuant to section 3.3(b) subsection 8 with, of course, the requisite number of petition signatories.

Edited May 28, 2025 by Dalek348