Treshure

Changed Status to Pending

Changed Status to Under Review Hi there! As you can see, your app is almost ready! Just a few changes you need to make, but don’t worry - you are doing great! Your Character Biography is missing some lore references! Please remember to include at least two! These can be major events, wars, religion, etc. Here are some links that may help you find some! https://wiki.lordofthecraft.net/index.php?title=Almaris https://wiki.lordofthecraft.net/index.php?title=Races You’ll be given 24 hours to correct the changes above. I've tried to add you on Discord, but it seems like something is going wrong. Feel free to add me below if you have any questions. Once you are done correcting, please contact me! Whenever you are done, or have any questions, feel free to message me via the forums, or in-game with /message Treshure! If I’m not around there, you can add me on discord at Treshure#1736 If you still need help, make sure to check the wiki! WIKI If you need to contact me, or need help, you can join the LotC Discord here : https://discord.gg/fwEQA2F

The portals will update to the most populous settlements at the current time, in addition to the core racial capitals. The maximum number of portals haven't yet been set, but we're trying to score a balance between inclusivity and making sure the new player isn't overwhelmed with options.

Feedback noted. Jokes aside, good suggestions. I'll ask for CT members to get thrown into the ping, perhaps with a toggle command if the influx of new players becomes overwhelming. The Discord webhook is also a brilliant idea. I think that's what @NotEvilAtAll was alluding to as well. Perhaps a blanket role & channel can be created for new player pings across settlement discords. Nation Leaders would then be able to choose who they want to receive the notifications and how ping-y it would be for the average offline player. I'll pitch that idea as well.

1. That's just the issue. "Server bureaucracy" is just too large and vague of a term to tackle. Don't get me wrong, it's still very much a real thing. It's reflective of our player-ran community. I firmly believe that the best experience a player can have is one they are not conscious of. When I think of bureaucracy, I think of having to constantly reimagine systems for the economy, war, and nation charters. I think of rules on top of rules that have to go through multiple channels of people. I think of bias, and a biased perspective on how successful one system was or was not in times prior. All of that is very conscious. All of that rips you out of your immersive experience and lays bare the crude mechanics behind our fictional world. If this system were not a plugin, it would involve constant work of dozens of team members. That's bureaucracy. Complex systems behind roleplay, like War or our mina economy system, aren't bad. But they can be tiring to interact with. I personally think that plugins are the way out of dancing through litanies of rules and hoops. We ought to automate what we can to free ourselves up for more important things. And, after coming onto three paragraphs of typing this response, I haven't scratched the surface to a solution on any of these aforementioned issues. This takes time. We need to take one step after the other, measure our success, make improvements, and keep on marching. Only that this time, we won't have to retrace our steps years down the line. It's a process, but it's all we can do. 2. I wanted to make sure that we were inclusive of non-racial settlements that had worked their way to stellar activity. We're still going to review our design and make sure the sheer selection of portals isn't overwhelming, but I will want to include every racial capital (Halflings included). But if it's activity you're worried about, I'm sure we can have the Halfling portal route to Elvenesse instead. The broadcast about a new player is actually not an original idea. The broadcast used to be made server-wide every time a new player joined. This was in practice for all of LotC history up until a few years ago. It was great for having new players greeted and veterans reaching out to give them a helping hand. It was however removed because warring factions would camp Cloud Temple as a recruiting spot, irrespective of the new player's racial origin. I think that regional players can handle having some broadcasts made to them a few times a week. Besides, it's a relevant announcement that a newbie is trying to find them. Who could really hate that? As to your second point, I feel that the depth that Vortex aims to achieve needs to be distilled into a consumable format. It's what the Quest Tome might be best at: gradually exposing the player to the complexity of Vortex by having them discover its elements through quests. I like where your head is at, but it's my personal opinion that the survey questions are 1) too obtrusive and 2) forcing choice. I'm a big fan of letting the world of LotC influence your character. Predetermination is a precursor for static roleplay and dissatisfaction with your character. if we're trying to use these questions to tailor parts of our server (or Vortex) to new players, we should make it easily consumable and leave the rest to the player. Video content is very easy to watch and requires little engagement on the part of the new player. Compacting our different experiences into easily digestible nuggets might be the way to go. Definitely something I plan to create in the future.

That was a point the Techs immediately raised after the proposal. We pulled out a map and traced out the lines between the hubs & cities. I believe the compass will adjust to help keep the newcomer on the road/on land. Shouldn't be too much of an issue, though. The lines are surprisingly straighter than I thought.

Immediately after the Player Retention Report was made, we got to work. Each and every reply on that thread was taken into account and considered. Much of the task was distilling actionable player feedback from the broad (but still valid) criticisms of our server experience. I want to use this thread to unveil what we have been working on and listen to your feedback once again. There's a lot to improve & perfect on LotC, but I believe that this is just one move of many in the right direction. The first steps are usually the hardest. The reason why this solution to the Community Team's Retention Report has taken so long largely plays into long term efficiency. The easy move would have been to immediately set up a player-ran system to address the new player experience. I think that this is just a gesture. It's very hard to motivate entire teams to dedicate even more unpaid, volunteer hours into just one issue that needs addressing. A player-ran solution also wouldn't solve our primary problem: consistency. New players typically either receive a fantastic experience or one that drives them to quit. We have too many players joining every day with too few CT members to match. I believed that only a well-designed plugin could provide the quality and long term consistency that we were looking to achieve with player retention. Moreover, data can be easily retrieved from the project and tweaks can improve it even further. Project Genesis was drafted a week after the Retention Report. It received unanimous Admin approval a few days after that. I asked my good friend @Llir to add the proposed plugin to his enormous work queue. Without him, none of this would have been possible. It's been a long time coming, folks. The plugin is now nearing the testing phase. With "Project Genesis" on the horizon, I'm excited to finally reveal the contents of the plugin. This is the Google Doc proposal exactly as it was originally proposed. Please give your feedback in the comments below. This will influence how we adjust the plugin for release. Project Genesis This proposition comes in light of the Player Retention Report, which covered some very worrying numbers surrounding the new player experience. For instance, 60% of new players will quit in their first week of the server. One consistent highlight from player feedback was that the server’s increasing bureaucracy and restriction has suppressed the spontaneous roleplay that initially attracted them to the server. Of course, this does not cover the breadth of what the players have voiced in the thread. This proposal is an effort to address the primary issues surrounding the New Player Experience™ whilst staying true to the playerbase’s expressed desire to see more dynamic, fun roleplay when joining the server. While this proposal is not to fix every issue we’d like with activity and player retention, I view it as a measurable first step to hopefully build on. -- The time between which a player joins the server for the first time and the aforementioned player is “integrated” into a community is critical. A new player will quickly quit if they cannot engage with a group of players and join their circle. Simply guiding a new player to a settlement is also tricky, because the settlement must first be A) active and B) ready and willing to receive them. Discovering a city of sprint jumping, closed off circles of roleplay will be as effective as having not led them at all. Neither are shallow acts of integration, such as recruiting said new player into the city guard, linking a Discord chat & skin, and logging off. Players come to join epic adventures. If this is all the attention they’ve been given, they’ll give us none of theirs. I think the logical solution to this is in providing a clean, automated way for new players to easily find populated cities whilst embarking on an immediate “adventure”. Here’s how. The Quest When a new player exits Tutorial Island, they are usually placed at Cloud Temple. Instead, I propose that they be placed in front of a venue of portals. Each portal lists a major settlement and, if applicable, the race it belongs to. The current amount of players in that specific settlement’s region are also listed. The player will then have the choice of which capital they’d like to embark to. The likely event is that the player will either choose an active settlement or one that matches up with their race, such as Elf → Elvenesse. While this may become a compounding benefit to already active settlements, it is far better than losing the player entirely. After the player selects the settlement, they are teleported to the travel hub that is closest to their destination. For demonstrative purposes, the player has chosen Haense as their destination. The player is spawned with several items, Compass - A compass named after the target settlement, such as ‘Haense Compass’. It will point in the direction of Haense, and display a counter above the health bar in meters (blocks) detailing how far the player is from Haense, such as: ‘Distance to Haense: 308m’. The compass will disappear from the player’s inventory as soon as they enter the city’s region. Bread - A stack of 64 bread. Quest Tome - Soulbound. A book that lays out the new player’s very first quest: navigate the roads, pay caution to the signs, and arrive to Haense. Once the new player arrives in the region, that quest line is “finished” with a line through the quest name and its brief summary. Sample quest prompt: “It is the 13th of the Sun’s Smile, Year 9 of the Second Age. You have arrived through Cloud Temple, and now seek the fabled northern sprawl of Haense. Follow your path and compass carefully, and read the signs along the roadway. You may meet friends and foes on your journey. Be wary, these roads are dangerous.” Instruction Manual - Soulbound. A book that links to our forum’s Guide section. Alternatively, it can contain simple text of our more useful tips & tricks for a new player. Disappears from inventory after the “New Player” tag has expired. The Compass, Instruction Manual, & Bread are all in the spirit of facilitating confidence in the new player. They will have a set destination to arrive toward with plenty of food to sustain them. Additionally, the Instruction Manual can provide the new player with a further depth of knowledge as they start their journeys on LotC. The Quest Tome is intended to give the player a sense of an “objective” once they join LotC for the first time. It can also be used for several other purposes (unrelated to this specific proposal), such as assigning gathering quests to help players better understand Vortex, or event-tracking for ST eventlines. As soon as the player enters the outermost region of their target settlement, a broadcast is made to every player in their selected region, Haense. The broadcast indicates that the new player (username) has joined the world and is currently attempting to navigate towards Haense. It also encourages the players in the region to set out on the road and meet them. This is intended to provide the benefits of announcing a new player’s arrival without the negative attachments (aggressive recruiting from separate factions). Alongside Haense’s regional broadcast, Story Team Actors can also opt in to receive broadcasts about new players joining server-wide. Once receiving the broadcast, ST Actors can follow the new player and set up an encounter across the road. It may be things such as a creature encounter, or exploring a shimmering light in the forest. The events need not have depth; whilst a wolf hunt may be a tired cliche of veteran players, it’s the most exciting thing that can happen to a new player that has freshly joined the server. It's also a great way for new ST Actors to hone their craft. This feature will first be test-ran to make sure it is an effective use of ST resources. The Result In the worst case scenario, no players come from the city to greet the new player on their journey, and no ST Actors provide the new player with a short & spontaneous event. Despite all this, the new player still will have a deliberate path towards their city, the sense of a quest, and an additional manual that will answer further questions. In the best case scenario, the new player will begin their journey to shortly be greeted by strange, new, and friendly faces. As they begin to acquaint each other and head towards the city, they are beset by a curious and spontaneous event. The new player has undergone a quest, players eagerly seeking them out, and an event all within an hour of joining. The greatest benefit of this system will be removing the possibility of chance. Currently, new players lie in the good graces of a CT member to be available to guide them. CT members are still welcome to help guide new players along their journey, but it would now be styled to provide more to the new player in a more consistent manner. In addition, a Player Retention Report will be made for the month prior to the implementation date of Project Genesis. Another report will be made afterwards (in a second post following the project’s announcement) to see if retention data has improved, and if this system is due to stay (according to player feedback).

oh yeah baby spend that budget

A young man sets out to find his lost grandfather. Was a little too impatient to wait to post this little labor of love on the weekend. Enjoy!

Absolute gold, you need to post more of these.

No one should ever have to feel that way. Communities on our server all too often associate IRP goals with personal goals. I've seen roleplay conflicts tear apart friend groups. It's not fun. I hope that when you come back, you're able to surround yourself with people who see you for you, and roleplay for roleplay. My Discord DMs are always open, Proddy.

Mostly because if I render at 4K, I might as well give you more to look at. Believe me, I'm not usually a fan of texture packs. But Patrix is one of the only high resolution packs that I feel stays true to Minecraft's default, and only adds the detail that one might assume would be in a pack with 8x the resolution size. For instance, When resolution doesn't matter and we're comparing two builds from afar, Patrix and default textures look virtually identical. But if we go onto the ground and observe the details of the build, you can instantly tell which is from which. Check out the way the sun hits those 3D grass textures, or how the rose bushes are more full and defined. Moreover, notice how stylistically, it doesn't detract from default textures at all. It looks the same. It just adds a level of depth that otherwise wouldn't have been there. Few other texture packs do this, if at all.

Most of my YouTube videos are designed to use common language to draw in new RPG/Fantasy fans. It's why I opted for "Imperial Rebellion" in the title, rather than Sedan or anything specific. Vassal is an accessible and expedient term. I'll be more punctual next time, though.

I was in the process of editing a future video when I caught wind that there was a fight about to unfold. I cobbled this video together over the next day. I hope you enjoy! Let me know if you'd like to see more videos in this sort of style. P.S. Recognition to @grnappafor firing the first shot of the war.

[[RP]] First Name: Xavier Surname: Avalon Age: 20 Reason for Interest: A renewed interest in the history of our ancestors, and the unending commitment to God's design. [[OOC]] Username: Treshure Discord: Treshure#1736

The folks over at Haelun'or were kind enough to let me take a look at their upcoming build. This is a mix of a Haelun'or teaser and me messing around with the next stage of shaders I intend to use for videos. This build was an excellent playground for it. Enjoy!

First off, I want to thank the community for the crazy amount of engagement our latest video got. Llir checked the forums and confirmed that the post has entered the top 10 rep'd threads of all time - and it wasn't even a feedback thread! Getting your foot in the door with YouTube is notoriously difficult, so the massive boost these videos get from y'all don't go unnoticed. Every comment and every share helps promote LotC content to new audiences and gives me the extra motivation to make more videos. So seriously, thank you. On to the topic at hand. I want the exploration of our world (ICly & OOCly) to be the main focus of the videos that I produce. There is a stupefying amount of content that has been generated here in the last ten years. If you give it any prolonged thought, you'll soon realize that there are a million angles you can take on LotC and roleplay at large. Retelling of roleplay history, artist spotlights, build showcases & timelapses, roleplay mechanics & theory, skits, highlighting staff team work, and the categories go on. I and any content creator will only represent a small fraction of what Lord of the Craft is. We've only seen so much, and of that, only have been thoroughly involved in a tiny part of LotC's story. I can still make plenty of content based off of my experience, but it will be inherently biased to a limited human and elven experience. We can't possibly hope to know every single awesome creative that pours their energy into this server. That's why I'm reaching out here. If you're an artist who wants their creative process to be featured, contact me. If you're a builder who wants more eyes on their work, contact me. If you're a storyteller who wants to see their tales come to life, contact me. If you have any stake whatsoever in the story of LotC, contact me. It doesn't matter if you've just joined yesterday, or are a veteran who has chronicled sagas on this server. Every story is important. Contact me on Discord: Treshure#1736 I can't guarantee that what you share will be featured. My last video took over 80 hours of editing alone. Albeit I am new to the process and getting more efficient, there will always be more ideas than there is time to make them come true. But at least with this way, the content creation process will be inclusive to the grand story of Lord of the Craft. Furthermore, I can use this thread to answer any questions you might have about the videos I plan to make, so don't hesitate!

I went down a very similar path as yours, Skylez. It's easy to look back at Mineman and say, "God, what an escapist hell". And for some people, it's a genuinely good thing to stay away. But remember to stay true to yourself. In recent years, I had gotten so caught up in doing what I thought was the most socially acceptable thing that I forgot what I personally enjoyed. My advice is to live your best life, but make it yours. I found this server during a difficult part of my life, and it without a doubt was escapism. But I found a community and a group of friends for life. I would have never discovered my passion for storytelling without it. Bad circumstances can lead to good things. And sometimes, it might not always be black and white. Take that with you wherever you go. Take care, man.

An elder Ithelanen stirs in ancient forests, his spirit roused at the promise of warfare again.

A month and lots of editing later, I'm proud to release the first of a new series of premium MineMan videos. I felt a need to explain the underpinnings that make Minecraft RP truly unique, something I've always wanted to expand on since some of my earlier videos. From myself and all the really talented people who've helped me with this (Thumbnail creds to Basket!), I hope you enjoy!