My Personal (And Subjective) Issues With War & Nationhood

[Javert 9615]

WAR

 

 

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The thing we as humans are all too familiar with. War is a cathartic release of energy when so much tension boils beneath the surface that societies of people have no further method to resolve their issues than the shedding of blood. Talks break down, swords are drawn, and ideologies clash just as much as armies do. We as humans are natural at it. It's what has shaped every society on earth, big or small, whether a humble city-state like Monaco or the modern hegemonies like the United States or Russia. When we look back at the wars that shaped human history, it's easy to view it from a lense which comes from our post-war circumstance. It's easy, for example, to go "Well, it was obvious that the Confederate States were going to lose the American Civil War. They had less than half the industry and population the Union did!" But for the people at the time of these conflicts whether it was the American Civil War, the Unification of the Mali Empire, the Risorgimento, or the Wars of the Roses, the outcomes were all but certain.

 

Uncertainty is something that while in real life we as people tend to want to avoid, in media and literature it's the bread and butter of a good story. Take George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for example. People who are first time readers (and who have somehow avoided show spoilers) have no idea that the Red Wedding's bound to happen until it does. They have no idea that Stannis Baratheon will lose the Battle of the Blackwater until it happens. Hell, most signs point to Stannis winning the Blackwater without the intervention of Tywin Lannister and the Tyrells.

 

But why am I bringing this up?

 

Lord of the Craft is not a geopol server. It's not a map painter. It's not a Total War game. It is advertised as a Fantasy Roleplay server where on the very front page it proclaims that you can, to quote it directly, "Build your own nation, learn and cast powerful magics - Become a King, an Emperor, a Wizard, or a Warrior. Your path is your own, what will you chose?"

 

For all the jaded veterans like me who have played this server for five, eight, or even ten years, imagine yourself in the shoes of a newcomer to LotC like you once were. Imagine you see that and become filled with the hope of creating your own legacy on the server with your friends and leaving a lasting impact. A lot of what we see in LotC is new players coming in, thinking of starting something up, then quickly becoming discouraged due to how grindy it is to actually create your own nation, or even to keep your group alive without being slaughtered because you refused to conform to the server's primary religion while playing a human. Some of these are community-rooted issues, but to me personally it has to do more with the difficulty of actually getting your boots on the ground.

 

To create a Realm on LotC, it is a whopping 25,000 mina and 40 (if I remember correctly) player signatures. Forgive my language, but what the ****? If I were a new player and I saw those numbers, my hopes of getting a group together to forge my own Kingdom would be immediately shot dead. There is the option of becoming a Settlement (which is still a crazy 10,000 mina and an admittedly more manageable 20 signatures), but playing as a Settlement has a lot of issues with dynamics that I'll dive into in a moment. To get any amount of mina over 5,000, you have to be someone who is wholly dedicated to grinding out mina, selling items, voting, maybe even robbing. What I'm about to say is not at all intended to be a shot at a specific group of people, but most casual roleplayers don't have ten hours a day to hop on a Minecraft server to grind those numbers. Most of the server's demographic are people entering their early to mid 20s, with a good minority group of both teenagers and maturer adults. While I can completely understand a teenager having the free time to grind LotC (I was one of them), people who are older or entering their adulthood just do not have the same time to devote to it. I myself am getting a job and will thus be strangleholded with my time soon enough.

 

Think of it this way: You've just come home from a 9-5 job. You boot up your xbox to play Call of Duty expecting a few hours to chill and blow off some steam. First round you enter, you get bodied 20 times in 2 minutes by the same sweat who's got way too much free time on their hands. This is why they add skill-based matchmaking to these games which, although flawed in its algorithms, is meant to keep the competitives playing against competitives and casuals against casuals. Now obviously LotC isn't in the position to do skill-based matchmaking. You can't just exile the teenagers or no-lifers to their own half of the server where they just grind all day and truthfully, they play their role in the server dynamic, or "ecosystem". I wouldn't want them kicked out anyways. However, recently I have noticed that LotC appeals more to the competitive players than the casuals. Have a 9-5? Well sorry, you've been outpaced by 15 year old Timmy who now has enough mina to wage a death war against you.

 

This has led to an unfortunately predictable cycle. The people who play LotC competitively outpace more casual players; they build the strongest realm, they conquer all the little guys, the biggest realm implodes because the competitive players get bored, repeat. This is not a callout against the Holy Empire of Man. This is simply a cycle that, with almost six years on this server, I've seen happen again and again. So how do we fix it? Simple: Make LotC less grindy. Instead of 20,000 for a Realm and 10,000 for a Settlement, bump it down to 10,000 for a Realm and 5,000 for a Settlement. In conjunction with that, make war costs cheaper. Get rid of the cost per player for individual warclaim types - It's ridiculous. It's only meant to punish big Realms for attacking little guys which, while some may say it's a good thing, it's actually a very very bad thing. All you need is to increase the cost of per-tile travel per-player to say 25 mina and you're good. Furthermore, give Settlements the ability to actually wage wars. I know the point of their existence is that they're meant to be a small Proto-Realm, but if you're worried about Settlements conquering each other, just restrict Settlements specifically from using the Conquest or Subjugation CBs and let them use the Pillage or Raid CBs only.

 

What does this help, I hear you ask? Well for one, it makes it possible for the little guys to fight each other instead of just the big guys fighting big guys or 10 little guys vs 1 big guy. For another, it gives the little guys the opportunity to actually make a server impact instead of being eaten and forgotten within a year. I have always been someone who says that the best wars on LotC are little guy v little guy wars. Avistra v Drusco, aka the Margrave's War which I led and fought in last map, is a prime example of this. Just two communities of roughly equal size (if not one being slightly bigger) just fighting it out. What also made that war fun was its unpredictability. There were times when Avistra had captured the leader of Drusco and if we had managed to hold onto him, we could have won the war. There was a genuine chance for both sides, not just the one. I feel like the current war prices and Realm/Settlement prices just encourage and will continue to encourage big man v little man scenarios, which is predictable and overdone. This isn't a wholesale fix because I'm not an expert. I'm just a dude who wants unpredictable story elements where the ending can surprise me. I've been on the sides where I've won and lost - No matter what side I'm on, no matter who I'm fighting, I can firmly state that predictable conflicts are not fun. 

 

In conclusion, and to the Admins who may or may not bother to read this, just loosen up your grip on the server a little bit. Settlement and Realm bloat fixes itself if you give people the means to fix it; it's a moot argument. Don't be afraid to put the fate of the server in the hands of the casual and competitive players.

 

Javert

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[MailC3p 2402]

How to stop predictable wars is to, unironically, stop making concessions to the attackers. They knew what they were getting into when they made the warclaim, no one forced the attackers to invade a nation. Yet, I see time and time again mods giving advantages to attackers who, usually, already have the numbers and skill advantage. There has not been a war in which the defenders won since Arcas during the Siege of Helena, by the way, that was before I joined the server 8 years ago. 

[BaconAvengerII 117]

I just wish that more RP was done on the RP server, and less PvP.
All war comes down to PvP.
People with poor connections, or the inability to click quickly, will always be steamrolled by the dedicated PvP people.

...and if the RPers are unlucky enough to be the 'losers' of the war, everything they were working for in their towns is liable to get destroyed, changed, or overtaken by the new leadership.
...and ... much like before, people log on long enough to get enough time to participate in Warclaim, and then only show up for said Warclaim.

 

It kind of removes the motivation to spend that much time and Mina on a tile, if somebody can WARCLAIM you, take you to PvP, and destroy you.

...or ... say you WANT to claim a tile, and somebody threatens to Warclaim OOCly just to stop you from claiming said tile O_O

 

I'm here to write, and war on this server makes that kinda' hard.

 

 

[SethWolf 2340]

Insightful. I won't speak on most of the post as it is ofcourse your own personal opinion, but I always thought of the number-requirement and 'applying' to be a nation to be an outdated and silly idea. Nations come from people and the changing of the times. When I first joined, it was pretty mid to mid-late Almaris and one of the most interested places conceptually to me was the Harvest Confederation and its eventual transumation into the kingdom of Aaun. It happened organically, with many other kingdoms and powerful indivuals overseeing the process. There was politics, itrigue, skullduggery, and interested parties all peaking their noses in and influencing this new nation.

 

And it all happened organically. Or atleast, it happened because people roleplayed in somewhere that already existed, and they did not 'ask' a staff team for permission to exist Atleast to my knowledge. This to me is the fundamental core of LotC. I think how this server advertises itself is slightly misleading. A new player should not come into LotC with the intent of creating their own nation, they should come in with the intent of being a part of the narrative that already exists. Nations are created and destroyed in response to what is going on in the now, and that I think is how things should be as a standard.

[_AzureLexi 766]

I'd also personally like to see war given more depth and RP basis. Big PvP events for major battles is cool and all, but if you can't make it to them? The only tangible difference war makes is that most gates are closed. And if you work Saturdays, you never see any of the "meat" of war.

 

I would personally love to see more objectives to sway the tides of war (of both CRP and PvP) that players can participate in beyond warclaims because in my experience, war has never felt like war

[Spoopy_Duck 3217]

18 minutes ago, Javert said:

just restrict Settlements specifically from using the Conquest or Subjugation CBs and let them use the Pillage or Raid CBs only.

Writing some quick takes as I skim this making breakfast.

I like this idea a lot.

 

19 minutes ago, Javert said:

Get rid of the cost per player for individual warclaim types

This one I have two different responses too. The first is that I originally pitched it as an experimental idea to try and see if it would incentivize bringing back the lesser stakes wars than just every war being lets delete the nation. Since the ability to fully dissolve a realm was added in 9.0 every war has used this so this was just an idea to see if it would work. So far we still have dissolve nation wars. 

The second response is that I think that the issue does not correlate in the way you think it does with smaller wars. By nature a smaller war is smaller so the costs are not as extreme when put against each other versus a 100+ v 50 where the attackers have a crazy high cost.


I think ultimately the state of the server is weird because of the empires presence and that when that bubble finally pops (always does) we will get to see a better version of how the systems actually look so I do think it is at least worth waiting to see what things look like under different circumstances. That is just my quick take on this post though nice post.

[DarkxWalker 248]

Over the years, the server shapes itself in the carcass of its playerbase. Freedom in roleplay is vindictive of being "let people do whatever they want," and in practice, just as you said, that translates into dominant realms consistently crushing the small guys. We've seen how that played out in previous maps over the past decade, and on Azuras per the Urguan v. Empire war. However, this one was warranted as Urguan were the provokers in this ultimatum.

 

I just disagree with one thing, lowering the cost won't actually create a better story in my opinion. It will accelerate burnout by decreasing realm cost from 25,000 to 10,000 mina. This, while in practice, will improve accessibility while ignoring long term realm bloat. We've also seen this across multiple maps. When accessibility becomes too cheap for those with the aim to make meaningful nations, you suddenly have a big map with a large separation between its playerbase, short-lived groups that suddenly dissolve or get absorbed after a short amount of time.

 

I believe that 25,000 mina isn't unrealistic. At the end of the day, the 40+ players should be coming together to contribute financially for a new realm, a new culture, and a new leadership for their own benefits. With collective effort, with something as simple as voting, a group can, within a realistic timeframe, get the amount of money needed alongside the signatures. At ~23 minas per day per player, that's ~690 minas per month for each individual (27500~ collectively). Voting takes less than a minute on a daily basis, so even if you work a 9-5, a 15 year old Timmy cannot outdo you in that regard. It sounds practical, unrealistic, but can be done within a few months timeframe with collectivism.

 

But honestly, I understand. I've played the side of the losers before, the side where all that hard work dissolves just because one big guy defeated the smaller guy (me, in that perspective). It's disheartening and not ideal for the losing side. But I also agree with altering the war rules and giving settlements more jurisdiction as pseudorealms, also wouldn't mind decreasing the price for settlements, but not realms

edit; correction, 20000 mina not 25k, even lesser and much more doable.

Edited April 4 by DarkxWalker

[PrimnyaQuorum 3999]

"war" is a excuse for weekly PvP slop where we all get to watch war-mods bend over backwards to make it "fair" for one side. It's not surprising the last 7 WCs have been a fustercluck in the same manner with different people overseeing it and the same people involved. 

 

Terrain advantage? Sorry, our plugin cant accommodate that, we're voiding your terrain advantage. No RP explanation required or anything, we just don't think your well-placed fort deserves its terrain advantage.

Build inside a mountain? Sorry, its not "fair" for the attackers so we're adding more ways to negate your advantage. We're going to make multiple different entrances into your fort that didn't exist in the however many years before this WC was declared. Oh, no RP explanation for this to its just to make the Saturday WC server easier for the other guys.

The idea of war as an expression of RP is laughable when you sit and think for 5 seconds how wildly OOC it is, and how staff will genuinely bend over backwards to make things "better" for the warclaim "Experience" that only recently has not been a laggy, 5 hour slugfest. The sole reason I am looking forward to what necroist/the church is doing in the south is because he's openly expressed a desire to try and not do a PvP WC. 

 

If you believe the same 10-20 people making effectively throw-away human personas to join multiple wars on each side is conductive to "good" RP then I dunno what to really say in return. I sure dont enjoy seeing 10,000 pings about doing mining runs or joining the "war discord". Permanent gate closure alongside the fact keys have now been synced across multiple realms via a plugin that is effectively controlled through discord and not any form of RP feels completely opposite to what the intended goal of LoTC is, but it has become this way to accommodate the war server; we just tolerate it outside of the WC months. 

 

I would think at this point if the vast majority of WCs have been just to erase realms/structures because its the simplest and easiest method in the WC system, that system would be squinted at more closely. That, atop build rules being some handwave wishy-washy thing that mods will have enforce by their own internal logic and half enforce by whats actually listed on the forms, makes the whole thing just seem like the first guy to attack will get mods to cave in and hand them the attack on a platter, so long as they dont make the most grotesque "siege camp" known to man. 

 

Can't even blame the empire for doing it either. Why would you bother doing anything else if you can just take the simplest path baked into a system. Why force your vassals to actually be "vassals" by the realm system when letting them retain realm status means more mines with more nodes, all with synced keys? I don't think it would even matter so deeply if staff just came out and said up front the WC system is just designed for ease of OOC use and is effectively beyond RP [as it is] instead of pretending theres some deep and profound RPing going on based around this slugfest we repeat every saturday

[Werew0lf 24179]

I might see this from a different lens entirely, but I do not think 20,000 mina is a lot for a Realm; although this server is falsely advertised as a cool roleplay fantasy server to make epic Kingdoms and all that fazzaz, it does not help much. You run into two issues: either, one a) realms are scarce because of how expensive they are, or b) realms become too easy to make, causing the map to get bloated with dead ghost-settlements and nations. My opinion is that the realm system right now is quite fair, and also, nothing is stopping these settlements from not making a realm eventually -- kingdoms do not just spawn in, you build them up. You start as a settlement, and eventually, invariably, you get enough people and resources to become a realm. 

 

Unfortunately, the war system was not written in mind for the current server dynamic, it was done quite poorly, in all honesty. They wrote a lot of the system in hopes of seeing the 'little guy vs little guy' wars, but these never happened, because no little guys were left to exist. However, at the same time, I do not think big nations should be punished for having more numbers. Evidently, I think these past two warclaims have been heinous -- poor judgement on defender build standards (wait until the Empire blows up and then trying to make the defences these guys did, where 500% more leeway was given) and also poor judgement on how sieges work (war-goals, holding places, so on). A lot of war-goals also just seem like fluff and will probably never be used.

 

The only good thing going with this current dynamic is the opportunity for little guy wars to happen internally, as you exampled, Avistra vs Drusco. At the same time, I find it quite ironic that we're talking about wars as of now being similar to COD lobby's when Avistra vs Drusco was just your side logging on at 4AM and jumping 15 year old boys. I also do not think 20 hours in a month is a strenuous playtime requirement when most of your rally met that requirement (because they were playing actively), or they didn't (because they didn't want to play). 

 

War costs are fine IMO but they might become an issue for the little guy wars. The Urguan-Horde stuff is probably going to ring up around 80-90k (perhaps) or so. Most nations wouldn't be able to afford this, it will 100% get reduced, we were just told 'eh but empire can afford it innit'. Trying to finance the payment for 6 other nations barring myself was alright because we were making enough money to pretty much sub-cut it, also Urguan flaking twice made it cheaper for us, but if they hadn't? We would have lost a lot of $$$, and I do not think the increased movement cost is going to assist. Doing 25 mina instead of 15 mina with the subsides costs would probably ring up to 100k mina.

 

I agree that the server is in a bit of a competitive state, but I wouldn't say that is primarily unique to the Empire -- as you've stated, it has existed for the last 6 years. I wish there was a way to make wars cooler, and more epic roleplay wise, but that will never happen. War is always competitive, and it can stress nation leaders out.

 

I think the moving forward of this is to:

 

1) See how settlements work with the current system in place before changes are made.

2) Change the war rules after this whole fiasco to outline concerns, a lot of bits and bobs were left unwritten or unanswered, or written in a way where it would either screw over the small guy, or screw over the big guy.

3) Assess the build standards for defences in this war.

 

Also, one thing to note, these little guy wars, if done in good favour, can have agreements. Reduced realm join activity, or reduced playtime. For example, with the Empire-Salvo war, I agreed to let Salvo have a reduced realm join time (instead of being in the realm for 2 weeks, we cut it down for 7 days so people from Urguan could join the Horde realm and continue to fight). Unfortunately, wars are never done in good favour. No offence to you, Javvy, but when you were NL and leading the 'war', it was like talking to a brick wall and so compromises didn't really exist in the Horde-Urguan-Empire war. 

 

That is all.

[Hush 112]

One of my biggest issues after returning from a long hiatus was that literally nothing changed in terms of the bullying aspect and how too-seriously people take things during war times. A lot of times I visit Human cities and for a while I played a figurehead in the South to which many people thought that gave them permission to attack me in the middle of human cities when I was just going around shopping or roleplaying. I'm especially upset that the server makes it so daunting for new players when it comes to making any sort of mark on the city and also makes it so hard for people to get settlements back. I've been part of the Haelun'or community for a while now and we had one of the best builds in the server as our home be stripped from us twice, and the process of getting back even a settlement has been hell. I'm hoping that things aren't necessarily made so easy that there's suddenly a million new settlements, but I do hope that perhaps some action is taken to make things just a little easier.

[truelarper 593]

13 minutes ago, Hush said:

 A lot of times I visit Human cities and for a while I played a figurehead in the South to which many people thought that gave them permission to attack me in the middle of human cities when I was just going around shopping or roleplaying. 

"i am the enemy. i am in enemy territory. why are my enemies attacking me?" what?

[Widu 535]

This is probably one of the most well-put reflections written on the current system. I recall hearing quite a bit of criticism about Arcas's war system, yet in retrospect, that was also the last time when we saw some of the truly balanced warclaims (War of the Two Emperors, Siege of Helena). There has not been anything on that level happening after the switch to itdontmatta’s war rules.

 

Unfortunately, there is also a dissonance between the server’s vision of fantasy roleplay and the reality of a grinding factions server.

Perhaps this discussion will help bring some overlooked solutions to light...

 

 

P.S. 2020 truly was the best generation

[MailC3p 2402]

25 minutes ago, Werew0lf said:

I might see this from a different lens entirely, but I do not think 20,000 mina is a lot for a Realm; although this server is falsely advertised as a cool roleplay fantasy server to make epic Kingdoms and all that fazzaz, it does not help much. You run into two issues: either, one a) realms are scarce because of how expensive they are, or b) realms become too easy to make, causing the map to get bloated with dead ghost-settlements and nations. My opinion is that the realm system right now is quite fair, and also, nothing is stopping these settlements from not making a realm eventually -- kingdoms do not just spawn in, you build them up. You start as a settlement, and eventually, invariably, you get enough people and resources to become a realm. 

 

Unfortunately, the war system was not written in mind for the current server dynamic, it was done quite poorly, in all honesty. They wrote a lot of the system in hopes of seeing the 'little guy vs little guy' wars, but these never happened, because no little guys were left to exist. However, at the same time, I do not think big nations should be punished for having more numbers. Evidently, I think these past two warclaims have been heinous -- poor judgement on defender build standards (wait until the Empire blows up and then trying to make the defences these guys did, where 500% more leeway was given) and also poor judgement on how sieges work (war-goals, holding places, so on). A lot of war-goals also just seem like fluff and will probably never be used.

 

The only good thing going with this current dynamic is the opportunity for little guy wars to happen internally, as you exampled, Avistra vs Drusco. At the same time, I find it quite ironic that we're talking about wars as of now being similar to COD lobby's when Avistra vs Drusco was just your side logging on at 4AM and jumping 15 year old boys. I also do not think 20 hours in a month is a strenuous playtime requirement when most of your rally met that requirement (because they were playing actively), or they didn't (because they didn't want to play). 

 

War costs are fine IMO but they might become an issue for the little guy wars. The Urguan-Horde stuff is probably going to ring up around 80-90k (perhaps) or so. Most nations wouldn't be able to afford this, it will 100% get reduced, we were just told 'eh but empire can afford it innit'. Trying to finance the payment for 6 other nations barring myself was alright because we were making enough money to pretty much sub-cut it, also Urguan flaking twice made it cheaper for us, but if they hadn't? We would have lost a lot of $$$, and I do not think the increased movement cost is going to assist. Doing 25 mina instead of 15 mina with the subsides costs would probably ring up to 100k mina.

 

I agree that the server is in a bit of a competitive state, but I wouldn't say that is primarily unique to the Empire -- as you've stated, it has existed for the last 6 years. I wish there was a way to make wars cooler, and more epic roleplay wise, but that will never happen. War is always competitive, and it can stress nation leaders out.

 

I think the moving forward of this is to:

 

1) See how settlements work with the current system in place before changes are made.

2) Change the war rules after this whole fiasco to outline concerns, a lot of bits and bobs were left unwritten or unanswered, or written in a way where it would either screw over the small guy, or screw over the big guy.

3) Assess the build standards for defences in this war.

 

Also, one thing to note, these little guy wars, if done in good favour, can have agreements. Reduced realm join activity, or reduced playtime. For example, with the Empire-Salvo war, I agreed to let Salvo have a reduced realm join time (instead of being in the realm for 2 weeks, we cut it down for 7 days so people from Urguan could join the Horde realm and continue to fight). Unfortunately, wars are never done in good favour. No offence to you, Javvy, but when you were NL and leading the 'war', it was like talking to a brick wall and so compromises didn't really exist in the Horde-Urguan-Empire war. 

 

That is all.

 I do not agree with Werew0lf on a lot of things but I agree that that 20,000 mina for a realm is just, not a lot... I mean think about it, do the math. 20,000 mina divided by at least 40 people is 500 mina. Anyone can get 500 mina by just voting for a few weeks. Likewise, the 10,000 for 20 is the same, 500 mina per person, which again anyone can do with just a bit of voting. Likewise; it doesn't even take that much effort if you know what you are doing to make mina, I mean @LobsterLarryhas 12k mina by himself and he has a life outside LOTC as far as I know, likewise my other friend @molly molly mollyhas like 6-7k and she just got lucky with an end of map event loot drop last map. 

[TrendE 1347]

It's basically all I comment about now on Discord/the forums, but the server really does just need to return to the PVP and war setup of Atlas/Arcas. It would solve so many issues, including the material costs of being involved in conflict.
 

[Tentoa 3160]

29 minutes ago, Hush said:

 

That's just conflict RP - why did you, an important target to another nation at war, go into a nation you were enemies with? Very nonsensical, that's kind of like William Wallace walking into London at the height of his rebellion. I don't necessarily think that's what anyone here is talking about