naztherak lore feedback thread

[_AzureLexi 766]

My experience with Naz has tended to be surface level unfortunately. All I  have to say, and this is a very personal thing, but I just wanna see Naz given more tools for the dealmaker archetype. Let them harvest soul frags for their inferi, and make boons not require rakir upkeep or something. Or something along those lines. I just want more "deal with the devil" RP beyond actually pacting as a Naz itself.

[PrimnyaQuorum 4003]

The primary problem with naz is [imo] the primary problem with necromancy and half of mysticism

you are a slop combative npc summoner. If your grimoire gets got, your useless with void strength. Meanwhile [IF CLERICS PASS GOD PLEASE] the weakest opp you'll ever face is either a mage or more likely some goodguy with 0 physical weaknesses and 0 metal weaknesses. The templar weakness [?] is if you get hurt a lot you can start to legally powergame more

 

I have my own strong opinions on the amendment war that went down but naz thematically and naz as reads in lore is an absolute mess. The lords explicitly target the weak to yoink the souls - why do they suddenly care if your strong. the lords want you to lose and struggle so you keep coming back to bargain more of your soul for more of their power, with the entire MA endgame being selling your entire soul to your lord in order to basically shed all the downsides of the magic in becoming a zarakal. Why would they care if you lost a fight and got dc'd? bring your ass back and sell more of your soul for another try. There is no real reason in any frontfacing lore for the lords to know, or care, or really even interact with the notion of DCing. It's a change made to target players who would get DC'd, go back to their TAs, and get reconnected because DCing those TAs was, for some reason, too far? 

 

Naz is open ended and I've seen both ends of people making use of that open-endedness and people complaining about those people. If you want your magic open ended, your gunna have SoL tea drinkers. I rarely see templars crashout at the idea of some templar community not throwing themselves into the nearest darkspawn lair to die heroically but maybe im just not in tuned with that playerbase. I definitely see it quite a bit with naz though. 

 

The Infernal Compendium is kinda CRP slop and while most of us would enjoy seeing it re-done with more flavor we're kinda at an impass. Rokodra is a slop metal by agreement of most everyone but according to management rokodra is "fine where it is". Malflame is a gimmicky mechanic fire that itself stands as the sole exception to how techlock treats armor [i.e we only care about the outermost layer for mechanical effects] nevermind the round shield is enough to stop most malflame. Even still, malflame is the balancing point of naz. If its too strong, the slop bookholder with their [2]0 firebreathing summons with the same ouchy fire with their 3 orc strength CA players with the same ouchy fire curbstomp everyone. Without it, you're somehow a worse necromancer. 

 

The biggest thing I don't like about naz though is how we've seen an uptick in amendments, internal and external, that are basically "hey one guy did something? kill his entire family". It's a god-awful mentality to be approaching a magic that essentially demands a community exist around it, and then basically isolate and later it when one guy does something. That aside;

 

The naz lore page[s] by far stands as a contributor to the larger issue of navigating naz lore. It would be nice to see the frontfacing pages updated to reflect whats real and not, and at the minimum be easier to navigate. It also would be so awesome and cool if ST wrote down what they thought about lore instead of "yea no we headcanon this and because you didnt know that, death." 

 

Malflame as a mechanic is too strong and too complex, in my opinion. The amendment that made it burn like fire was nice, but still I see naz and non-naz struggle to make sense of how it works. I think if naztherak were not forced into being caster/summoner forced archtypes, and instead allowed to choose what to be, it might go smoother. With clerics existing there is a decently strong argument to be a made a half-caster, half melee ma with something between no weakness and void weakness can work and contribute to a larger narrative. 

 

Cursing, fundamentally, is a waste of a slot. The sole time I saw cursed idols enjoyed and used was when Pallo [A akal and drazi player] exploited the loophole of entering RP with someone holding a cursed idol instantly locked drazi out of augmented flame and corrupted units. Cursed fire is functionally non useable given it works on less than half the malflame spells of both naztherak and inferi, costs an extra emote, and has one use per encounter. For an entire slot, its a waste that desperately needs modernizing, the "spirit" of naztherak be damned. 

 

I enjoy the Zar'Akal kit the most, given the freedom it gives; I enjoy cursing the least since, per above, you get basically an impossible to use kit + the ability to curse people into cursed children. 

 

I think conceptually, the magic just needs to do more with less. There's so many spells, rituals, additions, CAs, lore pages, etc that its like necromancy and an absolute pain to find whats referenced where for what reason. Nevermind the infernal alchemy/rokodra pages are effectively devoid of any soul behind spam producing slop, like fire immune metal/never-expiring genus/forced love potion. With how unused cursing it, and boons/banes following close behind, naz lore right now is basically just malflame + NPC Summons [summon lore not included] until you CA. Could absolutely be re-done to drop some of the weight and add something of a half-caster.

 

 

I have a Zar'Akal, i've had a naz, and I've had a zar'ei CA. It's kinda enjoyable to interact with? You've got a fire that everyone sweats their ass off to avoid being hit by, you've got a demon summoner directly chosen by the highest order of the pentacle who has absolutely nothing to do with said pentacle member, you've got 2 resources to keep track of that regenerate so slowly that you're basically limited to doing 1-2 rites per week, with CAs that essentially depend of those rites for any form of constant activity, and then everyone expects you to live up to the legacy of a lich-naz who got pocketed by ST for months to achieve what they were. 

 

Sure, you can be evil - if the PRO says you can, unless you forgot to ask ST! Nectorist kinda said it best;

 

1 hour ago, Nectorist said:

While on paper, the lore is centered around the pursuit of power in order to climb this devilish hierarchy, in reality, your power is constrained by the OOC realities of the nation system and the requirement for players to consent to anything consequential being done to them. On paper, rivalry, manipulation, and deceit among Naz covens is a central premise to how the magic community is supposed to work, but in reality, people either don't want to be in conflict or don't want to interact at all, depriving this crucial (I'd even say necessary) fleche of social Naz RP.

 

Here's a simple example;

 

as a Zar'Akal, to drop my penultimate land-altering ability for a wooping;

-2 to Infernal BM rolls

-1 to BM Rolls

-Permanently non-combat altering aura effect

 

To make a good one, I need multiple T5 Naztherak [min. 4 months per] multiple Ascended Zar'ei [1-3 months per] Multiple Zar'Akal, and then a decent chunk of our daily Maleus and weekly rakir. If I then want to expand this area [as I will, because I'm an international threatening demon king who wants to conquer the world per my lore] , I then have to cultivate this area at the whim of some random ST who more likely then not will not permit an eventline to expand this region, because its not worth that effort from them, which effectively means my evil demon king, who is killing and conquering and rallying this evil demon army....cant do anything. This area is also required to have a big stake, ST signed, that has more rules on where it can and cant be than necro coffins. 

 

It takes 5 druids /cleansing shamans 5 emotes to get rid of all of it. I can't make another for 2 weeks, because some st said we shouldn't be making these too often. Magically, several more amendments come through further nerfing this specific ritual that a grand total of.....1 has been made since the rewrite :3.

 

I'm super thankful I know druid players and am friends with druids, and that I have super cool demon players who, even with all this, treat each other fairly and get cool RP from it. As this big bad Zar'Akal, however, I feel like I am wasting my coven and my friends time by dragging them to do all this effort, for it to go to waste the moment they lose one fight. Remember, we're not supposed to be sweating CRP - its all narrative! but if we ever lose, then anything we do gets wiped out and we've got to start over. 

 

I dunno I feel like I whinge and cope a lot but in some way, I feel like the lore is basically just designed for us to sit in a cave, ignore the world, and ensure we survive. I'm not going to tell my people to go farm the mines at 2am so we have 3 gearsets total and then lose it to the next 30 man raid. We're losing anyway that gets sliced. Might as well just use our lore that people are kinda hardwired to avoid by any means because its such a devastating kit to get hit with, even once. 

 

I know there are [allegedly] rewrites in the works for the various lore pages, as has been said for the last 2 years. I've kinda stopped playing my Zar'Akal because with the time I have with my semester, literally anything else is more enjoyable then playing my Zar'Akal. For all the shit we give necromancers for powergaming I almost wonder if we're hit the bottom of the barrel with [most] evildoers being left just being those doing it for the love of the game or because they see a easy ticket to "winning", because everyone else who was doing has gotten fed up and just moved on from dealing with it. 

 

 

[Nectorist 12869]

2 hours ago, squakhawk said:

community could do better being an organized antagonistic force

I agree (most people should), but to what end? Feels like a consistent problem with 'evil' magics is that it's essentially impossible for them to get even close to winning on a scale that allows them to measurably impact RP. I get this isn't always in the hands of the ST, but the result is that even a well-organized antagonistic force is either going to basically be a player-led event, or its victories will be so inconsequential that they won't matter at all.

[Venomous_Pup 2978]

2 hours ago, Nectorist said:

I agree (most people should), but to what end? Feels like a consistent problem with 'evil' magics is that it's essentially impossible for them to get even close to winning on a scale that allows them to measurably impact RP. I get this isn't always in the hands of the ST, but the result is that even a well-organized antagonistic force is either going to basically be a player-led event, or its victories will be so inconsequential that they won't matter at all.

Everyone wants to be top dog with it handed to them on a plate, the last big antag group was Femur's Gash, and that was a lot of set-up going back maybe 2 years from 2024?. Truthfully, I think people care too much about the 'objective' outcomes, so it becomes a weird OOC game rather than anything based in RP, but the moment the barrier breaks down, there isn't a 'clean way' to respond to it. This usually becomes an issue imo because sometimes it is a big time sink to progress on LotC, and sometimes people get it relatively easy, so some people will ultimately become 'attached' to personas and groups. It would be nice if there were more mechanics expanded for Lairs, a rough idea would be some form of the enclave system tied with them so groups could make temp lairs that are designed to give protagonists characters narrative wins, such as a small fort, evil cave, etc and you can have it tie in to start off events, rather than have Events just being isolated from player actions, it'd be cool to hear IRP how a mad alchemist that is played by an actual player created some form of new homunculus creatures that escaped and kicks off a mini event for players to engage with, or some old necro/warlock/mystic base starts bleeding corruption and becomes a lil hotspot for an event of some description. On the side of Antags winning, it definitely is something that needs to be more possible, as I mentioned before, you can have cool things spawn from it, iirc Ando Alur's destruction was the result of Necro's two maps ago, and that still has formulated a lot of opinions on the Void for my persona in her early days and present, but given how difficult that is to pull stuff off to that scale, I always wonder if that is part of what causes a lot of infighting within the Dark Spawn community that I've seen and dealt with, because its easier to 'win' by leveraging inner access, than it is to do to outsiders.

 

[MonteGiant 891]

i think some of the biggest issues with this lore is that it has redlines are not truly expounded upon, or rather hold no equivalent in other pieces of lore to reference, leaving it easily powergamed by shitters in short. concepts like its natural armor for instance using ceramic as a reference, what the **** does that even mean? It's written good but needs just a bit more work imo, ive trolled with pallo about this but then again my disdain for the redline remains. however, the biggest issue with naz I would say is not its lore, its a sum of the playerbase just in general being like necro shitter roleplayers. The "There is no story, im trying to win and kill you and my sona cannot suffer any types of consequences and when i lose i crash out on the forums." players very much do exist, and in prevalent groups as well, but go against consequences they do not purely because they have powergamed to a higher board and that they are so annoying that no one wishes to truly deal with them in rp or ooc. 

Spoiler

 

 

[wowj 9747]

all these groups of bad guys (undead, naz, mystic) are always fighting internal battles with one-another, which is alright, but imagine what they could do, and what they have done, when they've united under the same banner

[Ardory 2978]

Where is the next Gashadokuro

[Navigator 4260]

11 hours ago, RezRatKeia said:

Lore Games 2 when??

yeah, nvm, you lost me.

[spaazmatism 1019]

void weakness is dumb. its stupid. makes no sense
otherwise the magic is fun.
i think malflame is maybe a little too non-fatal and if ur fighting somebody in plate u just lose immediately

still my favourite magic though 💔

[Frostdrop1 1843]

- Inferi are a glaring issue. They are rubbish to roleplay. People get them, get bored and stop because it's pretty much impossible to develop them in any sense beyond like one mechanical upgrade. They need more freedom to be maintained and interesting to those who pick them up.

- Boons & banes are too easy to remove (you can literally cut them off lol). This makes them not often worth investing in with non-naz players since the majority of the time you:
    x have cool interaction

    x hide something in it cuz ur a bad guy
    x they get rid of it oopsie
This results in boons & banes being more used between naz rather than against outsiders, because they're actually going to keep the damn thing.

- Cursing is not worth the irredeemable magic slot. The one amendment that was offered to make it worth existing got denied so idk. Make cursing more impactful and actually worth losing ur magic slot forever over it.

- Lean more into deal-making. Naz is so cool as a deal-maker premise. Imo, it would benefit immensely from in-built ways to disguise or distort memory so you can't be so easily called out. You can't exactly be a cool deal-maker if you try to interact beyond your circle, do 1 deal and they rat you out immediately but you also don't have $100+ to toss at skins so you can do alchemical switch-ups.

I mean shoot me or something but I don't think external payments to people with the skills to skin should be a necessary or fundamental part of playing anything on LOTC, but the nature of dark magics certainly makes such things almost necessary without just getting pinned endlessly.


Naz is fundamentally a cool magic, with a cool premise and has the community to back itself up. They're more nit-picks than glaring issues, aside from the inferi.

Also just like generally supporting dark magics so they aren't perpetual underdogs - all dark magics. It feels like dark magic is never a real threat on the server because frankly they're easy to beat into the ground. A lot of people just end up interacting within their own communities or with friends because that side of the server is more dependant on trust. And, frankly, it's better for it but it also means outsiders don't get to interact as much beyond the communities certain groups know they can trust.

[Karina 1883]

56 minutes ago, Frostdrop1 said:

- Inferi are a glaring issue. They are rubbish to roleplay. People get them, get bored and stop because it's pretty much impossible to develop them in any sense beyond like one mechanical upgrade. They need more freedom to be maintained and interesting to those who pick them up.

- Boons & banes are too easy to remove (you can literally cut them off lol). This makes them not often worth investing in with non-naz players since the majority of the time you:
    x have cool interaction

    x hide something in it cuz ur a bad guy
    x they get rid of it oopsie
This results in boons & banes being more used between naz rather than against outsiders, because they're actually going to keep the damn thing.

- Cursing is not worth the irredeemable magic slot. The one amendment that was offered to make it worth existing got denied so idk. Make cursing more impactful and actually worth losing ur magic slot forever over it.

- Lean more into deal-making. Naz is so cool as a deal-maker premise. Imo, it would benefit immensely from in-built ways to disguise or distort memory so you can't be so easily called out. You can't exactly be a cool deal-maker if you try to interact beyond your circle, do 1 deal and they rat you out immediately but you also don't have $100+ to toss at skins so you can do alchemical switch-ups.

I mean shoot me or something but I don't think external payments to people with the skills to skin should be a necessary or fundamental part of playing anything on LOTC, but the nature of dark magics certainly makes such things almost necessary without just getting pinned endlessly.


Naz is fundamentally a cool magic, with a cool premise and has the community to back itself up. They're more nit-picks than glaring issues, aside from the inferi.

Also just like generally supporting dark magics so they aren't perpetual underdogs - all dark magics. It feels like dark magic is never a real threat on the server because frankly they're easy to beat into the ground. A lot of people just end up interacting within their own communities or with friends because that side of the server is more dependant on trust. And, frankly, it's better for it but it also means outsiders don't get to interact as much beyond the communities certain groups know they can trust.

it's not quite that they're all easy to beat down, it's that most people aren't willing to engage in stories where they lose. As a result, the most common type of RP darkspawn deal with is a) being hunted or b) being hunted. Ppl raiding every place on cooldown is certainly a reason for burnout. ofc it goes both ways. The community just needs to be open to good-minded conflict. 

i would also say naz in general is just weaker then a normal human with plate-armor. YMMV but most of the fights against warlocks I've won, just involve walking up to them and punching them in the face. What are they going to do? Punch you back? You're stronger. Throw ST weapons, thanium, etc etc and I have a number of ways to unbalance the fight. Sure if you catch someone without armor or covering, malflame is useful. But it just doesn't feel worth the 2 slots. Let alone 4, if you take cursing and such along; which all do even /less/ impactful things then summon + throw fire. 

[Samson Option 9652]

17 hours ago, Rig said:

Naztherak is a magic so thematically compelling that it took my character (a pious and religious monotheistic elf) and warped him into a Demon King. Originally rolled with Templarism in mind, my character was gradually ushered from being a hunter of Inferi to being one himself. Below I will illustrate things the magic does well:

Positives:

• The lore is well-balanced and taken care of. 
• Many of the groups in the player base are intentional about their villainy RP and kind to people they interact with.
• The magic is useful and can drive role-play very well through things like Cursed Idols and trickery on the part of the Naztherak sorcerer themselves. 
• The magic has very cool mechanics and the end game rocks. Genuinely. Lots of work has been invested by the community as a single body to make the lore better, even if people in role-play don't agree on much of anything.
• The changes to disconnection have added stakes to the magic. 
• EXCELLENT character development, great descriptions on part of the writers as to what happens to your character. 

 

Negatives:

• It is too easy to be granted an Inferis. I think that Zar'eika and Imps should have timers, and costs for their creation like Kloning. That way, people can't just pump endless amounts of them, which go AFK, then we have a stack of unactive Inferi sitting around.
• The player base has too many internal debates on themes that can more or less be solved by each respective side minding their own business. An acquaintance of mine Gomi was mocked for wanting to try their hand at playing a Warlock who attempted to remain good, this was more or less trolled to death on the out-of-character level. The point of the magic/CA is that the character is more or less at war with themselves and will always fall prey to their bad decisions, and to their malices. I understand people have their own beliefs on what qualifies as good role-play, but this is an example of a situation where I feel people should have been more tolerant. So long as a Naztherak isn't going around sipping tea all day, I don't personally care how they develop their character, as long as they always fall prey to their malices, and do not do stereotypical anime protagonist RP when they're at best a satanic idiot who's been duped by one of the five evil Pentacle Lords into being an errand boy.
• I feel like the lore can use polishing when it comes to the Demonic Compendium, and that Moz'Strimoza itself requires more elaboration as a lore location. I also think language can be clarified more on the lore thread and some passages can be shortened or explained differently. 
• I think that this is going to be my most unconventional opinion and one that might attract outcry, but I believe that Naztherak should be able to have a mele route they can choose, and instead of being a caster they have a cursed weapon. Additionally, I think a future addition should emphasize the deal-oriented nature of the magic and add in spells that are for pacts between individuals. 
• This opinion will draw lots of fire, I think it would be interesting to have Naztherak who refuse to progress to T4 or T5 (thus being fully dedicated to evil), and that tricksters could steal the magic and be constantly hunted by Inferis and Naztherak. It'd be cool to have people who steal the abilities and as a consequence end up hunted down for trying to do "good guy" or "anti-hero" things. This should have immense costs, but I love the idea of Inferi hunters who practice Naztherak. I also like magics on the server being open-ended. A big part of why I love Templarism is that its focus on courage doesn't necessarily emphasize good or evil. The character's own values shape their use of the magic, they just aren't allowed to be a coward.
• Inferi characters should be rarer and given more autonomy, rather than Warlock slop summons. They should have a real, elaborative contract. If they fulfill this contract, they should be given their freedom in return, and be able to roam on their own. 

 

Since I've dipped my toes into player-maintained communities involving magic (whether useable magic or simply "magical" entities), I've come to scrutinize and ask for clarification on these various communities and what they are about. I have a pretty sound grasp of necromancy & mysticism now and have enjoyed playing the pale knight that @King_Kunuk& @Sewer_Ratgave me.

 

Can you or someone else playing Naztherak give me a decent, descriptive explanation of what Naztherak are? This is one particular fictional invention on this server that I don't understand and likely because the few players overtly playing Naz have done a rather poor job helping the audience (myself included) build a mental image of them.

[DizzyGrey 1229]

I’m not a Naz, strictly an inferi player. I really rather like the mentality of inferi as these singularly evil creatures, but I feel (as it seems others do too) that they need to perhaps be fleshed out more into their own entity as hellish nightmares that, with a more than a few of them, are capable of playing the game just as well as any proper Warlock. Sometimes better.

 

I also am of the opinion that there are a lot of requirements for cooperation and teamwork amidst a magic that lore wise incentivises being a selfish and singular git of a person, which doesn’t really click in my head. An opinion I’ve expressed a few times is that I don’t believe Zar’Akal should be making more Zar’Akal, as they’re currently the only CA that can threaten each other with true death (outside of OOC consent for druids), and the infernal climb/mentality wouldn’t want to be empowering someone that could potentially become a rival or betray you for their own benefit.

 

Of course, from an OOC point of view, you’d want your buddies that have worked hard to have the chance to play an end game CA that doesn’t ACTUALLY come at much of a cost for you. I’m all for that, I just think that in some cases the mechanics damage the fluff.

[Unwillingly 18113]

1 hour ago, DizzyGrey said:

I also am of the opinion that there are a lot of requirements for cooperation and teamwork amidst a magic that lore wise incentivises being a selfish and singular git of a person, which doesn’t really click in my head. An opinion I’ve expressed a few times is that I don’t believe Zar’Akal should be making more Zar’Akal, as they’re currently the only CA that can threaten each other with true death (outside of OOC consent for druids), and the infernal climb/mentality wouldn’t want to be empowering someone that could potentially become a rival or betray you for their own benefit.

this is the only thing I'd like to respond to but the thing about the infighting among naz is that it's less so to be approached as "every man for himself" and more so a psychotic sense of factionism that's meant to reflect the infighting of the rokul. in moz lore the rokul don't just slaughter everyone that isnt themselves or their loyalties, there at times can exist very crude alliances and conspiracies and backstabbing plots etc between each of them, its very fluid. the politics and relationships are constantly changing in moz so I think it makes perfect sense for this to be reflected in game. and also the reason zar'akal make more zar'akal from a lore perspective is because 1. a zar'akal can be an aid in the revival rite, and 2. they can be an aid for disconnecting other naz, as well as the aforementioned need for alliances or whatever other subjective RP reason etc

[squakhawk 14038]

23 hours ago, Nectorist said:

I agree (most people should), but to what end? Feels like a consistent problem with 'evil' magics is that it's essentially impossible for them to get even close to winning on a scale that allows them to measurably impact RP. I get this isn't always in the hands of the ST, but the result is that even a well-organized antagonistic force is either going to basically be a player-led event, or its victories will be so inconsequential that they won't matter at all.

 

i fully agree

 

while we've taken under the policy of giving st support (gradually), there faces an issue that fundamentally there is a part of the server that can very optionally engage with these people and conflicts, and ultimately can't do much harm. i think maybe with some more rulesets (or more freeformity in vandalism, raiding, looting, etc.) we could see some of this stuff come to fruition, but akin to how theres a world war ongoing (but no actual war), you dont really have to engage with these people, and other than CRP that inconveniences you they're harmless.

 

I've talked about it a little over the years but fundamentally the server has a very anti-dark bias, and i dont mean like ppl shitting on bad guys, i mean that its systematically disadvantaging you to be an antagonistic player. Further clarifying, that isn't to say theres a problem in being a hero, or everyone wanting to be a hero (i believe more people are inherently wanting escapism in roleplay TO be a hero and good than otherwise), its a problem in that bad guys cant do much other than declare war on you or inconvenience you with CRP you may not want which ultimately comes to no harm if you die, because you just respawn.

 

its a really nuanced problem and im meandering when i talk in the above statement but its a big multifaceted thing that i dont think really can be tackled. A lot of people see issues like this and get disillusioned and say we have to restart, but as im extremely familiar (in my aformentioned comment) with how total restarts/rewrites do not fix problems, they only move them somewhere else and often create new ones. 

 

I think ultimately ST support is good, but its a new step in a direction we're still extremely cautious in, mostly because people at large shit their pants and scream whenever a staff team does something for or against them, and the ST left holding the bag kind of vows to never help people again because it changed how people viewed them. I think more rulesets that dont require staff teams is a great solution, I think rulesets that allow more give and take roleplay to be a good starting step. Im shocked that still raids are fundamentally, on this roleplay server thats been around for over a decade, walk to X place and pussyfoot for half an hour and take some kits. Something I always liked the idea of was raiding depots, burning places down, destroying fortifications, looting villages.

 

Would people still shit themselves and scream? absolutely, I think people do this already, but it'd probably be amplified, at least for a couple months. But without even scratching the skim off that surface, we have what we have now; an incredibly sterile environment where roleplay more or less has to be enforced by staff to have any sort of lasting effect or consequence, or take two people "in charge" to make some agreement come to life. 

 

Its lame and inorganic, and its what the server wants, even if they don't say it so. I dont think this should stop us by any means whatsoever, and is why we still do the ST support stuff, we're just (to my admittance) still a bit on the too-cautious side. On the contrary of ST support for antagonists, there mirrors an issue where it becomes less about player conflict, and more about interacting with certain events and lore figures which becomes really lame and sucks the life out of an antagonistic force when its no longer player driven or interacted; there's only really one major conflict i can describe as having gone down this path, and while its no longer ongoing, its set a firm ruling internally about how we do ST support particularly. 

 

Everyone wants to be important, and that's okay. Everyone is their own main character, and that's okay. 

Antagonism on the server will never flourish until we establish a culture in which there is no permanency, and there is no OOC protections for IRP actions or consequences. We're trending toward that, albeit extremely slowly, but we are trending. 
I don't believe my proposed solutions or thoughts are flawless, or even ideal. But I'd like to at least recognize there is a problem, and make suggestions on how to tackle it. Otherwise, sterility, which is how the server's been but I suppose that's just fine. 

 

Ultimately nothing changes until administration becomes anything of an grown up adult conversating team, and I fear for how long now thats been going on, things are going to continue to just keep going on how they've been. A state of could be, would be, should be, might be, but won't be until just a few things move forward on their own time. I don't know what the endgame is. I just hope that changes.