Kaiser

Shut up Trinn I am no longer the Imp lead but the general desire was to disallow groups to immediately make settlements or nations after a conquest. It defeats the purpose of wars of conquest if the entire population ups and moves 45 minutes later. It's not perfect, but it allows for consequences of RP instead of just "My team lost, so I'll take my ball and go home". Stops isolation of playerbases. But that's my opinion and how I did it. This is not the official answer.

why are you so cool

You may have noticed (if you run nations and deal with me) for the last month I have been mostly absent. The admin drama, along with the general attitude of the community, has made my job either too frustratingly impossible to accomplish, or too depressing to attempt to pour time into. Add on IRL responsibilities and I feel I am no longer actively contributing to helping the server's communities health. I hope the work I did is viewed in a positive light, or otherwise is viewed as a good try. I think every staff member can really have fair and valid criticism lodged at them, me included. However I hope I am mostly remembered for earnestly attempting to do good by the community, even if I sometimes made missteps (if at all, I am an unusually quiet staff member for the authority I wielded over the nations). I am not making this overly flashy, nor will I speak ill of specific staff members publicly. I think it's bad form to shit-talk on people (mostly) trying their best. That being said, I will say these two things: Firstly, the server's staff is deeply dysfunctional as a unit. Often that's chalked up to being a norm, since this is volunteer work or a MC server or whatever, but I think it's beyond the pale. Secondly, the community at large is laughably abusive to each other and toxic, for lack of a better word. Why do I bring this up? Only so my departure can, perhaps, shine a light on how atypical this stuff is. The staff do not need to be this messy, and the community does not need to be this nasty. If you've had a vantage point to deal with the server as staff pr a community leader, you understand what I mean -- and I think it makes understanding my resignation easier. It's not just "Everyone/Everything sucks, I quit". I wish you all well. I will still be around, hopefully less. Probably less. My Discord is KaiserThoren. Send me compliments or insults, just be genuine with either. Shout out to my Imps for their work. Shout out to the very cool people I am friends with. Too many to name and list, but if you know me, you know you're one. @Riftbladewas the best admin ever. Please do not +1 I didn't do this for a rep farm.

All 2 Talar'nor players were shook by such an event....

I talked with a few folks about PVP and they all had varying opinions on the meta and what would/wouldn't work. Bucklers included More importantly tho... I think I'm the only staff that ever bothered to ask the PVPers what works and what they like Which is odd...

I genuinely don't know how you did it but you single handedly made me disagree with my own opinion, even though I started this all out agreeing with you

My point is actionability What exactly do you want me/the staff to do? Ban Werew0lf because someone in his Empire that comprises 50% of the server called a cross a Rhodesian Cross?

@Fluffy HorrorI actually agree with you on the foundations of your argument, but your argumentative style is so full of logical fallacies, incorrect information on the history of LoTC, and is so overall obtuse and condescending that I feel that you are actually hurting the argument. LoTC's community does often lean towards edginess, and that edginess can be obscure legitimate hate in our community - There are actual White Supremacists among us... but also sometimes things aren't that deep. It's a newage progressive idea to just assume any and all offensive things are hate based, when often they're just jokes. I know, I was edgy once. Still am sometimes. Rhodesia was most certainly named after the apartheid state. The OSL used to have videos calling Elves "Der Elfen" and essentially portraying Elves as Jewish characitures. The Westerlands had hidden swastikas in the build. I've lived through all that, and I'd prefer if we never returned... But... It's usually always a joke. A messed up joke meant to incur humor among teenagers and dumb young adults. Likewise, yes, the Empire is by definition fascistic, but so are most Monarchies. These just come with the territory of creating an imaginative world, especially one based off fantasy and medieval society. There really is no onus on the part of the players to have some sort of trigger-warning or OOC explanation about the complex history of authoritarian states or blah blah -- it's a game. Some people will RP through it and understand it's fiction, it's not real, and some people will see Hadrian murdering and doing tyrannical acts and go "He's me fr fr". But that's not really on WereW0lf or anyone. Nor are the acts of genocide or other rather deep or heavy events on LoTC worth exploring in basis to real life. You're carrying into LoTC, an overall trivial minecraft server, into the world of Critical Theory, and doing a poor job of it likewise.

I'd say about 75% of the time I see complaints about the Empire, it either boils down to "WereW0lf is a ****" (He is, love you bro) or, worse, that the server's health is at detriment due to one Nation having so much authority. The fact the Empire exists and has an expansionist and hegemonic foreign political philosophy isn't inherently destructive to the server, nor is the fact they conquer, start wars, etc. -- We've had these massive Empires before, and they've sometimes been pretty fun and create fun opportunities for RP. Just because an Empire exists itself isn't somehow a problem, and most people are just very prideful OOCly and don't want to be under the thumb of someone else in RP, especially if they feel that they were 'conquered' or coerced into subjugation. But WereW0lf himself... Dude plays a Djinn on his other persona that is mysteriously hailed as an angel by the church instead of a demon or anything else, running around giving Cassus Beli to his own Empire... Norland got genocided and the King who died (Milenkhov) was, just by mysterious happenstance, gonna play the governor of Norland under the empire on a new persona There are a series of other examples. Even if you believe these really aren't malicious intent, boy do they look like it. Personally, I'm not sure why we have to pretend like that's not because the nameplate above the Djinn's head is 'Werew0lf' (the Emperor), or that Milenkhov and Werew0lf are friends OOCly and obviously worked out a deal. Likewise, the OOC culture of the Empire has a plethora (not all, but a sizable number) of literal goons who don't want to create stories or really care about anything beyond geopolitics, and moreso are only interested in 'kicking down sandcastles' as I've said before. They exist to create a vanity project for themselves, usually due to OOC desire, and to ruin the creations of others to highlight their own project. If you have ever even remotely been around these groups, and you have an IQ of 72, you know what I mean. Swaths of bum, no-life, NEET losers who use LoTC mostly to satiate their own egos. The real sin of the Empire is this sort of stuff, the blatant rule skirting, the obvious bias, the metaplay that's clear as day, the underlying resistance to genuinely have a culture of 'Play to lift' because that's "Baby shit". But this isn't restricted to the Empire alone, nor one person, so it's extremely hard to pin down and say "XYZ person is doing it". It's a culture, a server culture, one that we all hopefully will begin to change in time.

I certainly do

@wowj You a crazy guy but I am thankful for you too buddy

Hello LoTC. Considering there has been a lot of chat about staff often not seeking feedback from the community itself, I thought I’d try and undo that for my own project. Nation Apps are returning soon™, but as it stands I thought I’d raise a few questions to the server and get some feedback. Below are the basic questions that have consistently found their way into the discussions I have had with my team and other players. I encourage you all to speak up on any/all of the topics. You will also have my own opinions and thoughts underneath with a hefty ** to denote what my own feelings are on each topic. Of course my feelings are simply my own, they’re not facts. Before we get there however, I would like to note a few things. Firstly, the actual deciders of these apps. That would be the Implementation team (Myself, Domithicc, MCVDK, SoulReapingWolf, Fimlin, Riverbird, and Bhased). No, the Map Team doesn’t touch the application of nations. Admins may get consulted just for advisory reasons/opinions, but we tend to keep this stuff in-house to the best of our abilities. I trust my Imps to be impartial on these topics, and I hope the community does too. We also don’t exactly vote, we come to a consensus of what’s best for the communities and LoTC as a whole. On to the fun... I. Are the physical requirements of nation apps (player signatures & money) too high or too low? **The current physical requirements are 25 active signature players, and 25,000 minas. Minas and the economy seem to be not an issue, and while it takes time to get that pricetag, an active group of players can easily do it. Whether that’s the best option is up for debate - I don’t feel a community’s ability to generate minas is linked to how healthy their community actually is. However, I wonder if 25 signatures is… inefficient. It’s rather easy to sign a thing, and then never actively participate. Ghost signatures abound, and that will create Ghost Nations. This may also be on us as a team to manage and actually become more stringent on people who sign to these realms, but I hesitate to punish or admonish players for not working for a nation. There are dozens of reasons a player may not be active in a new creation, or only semi-active, and not all of those reasons boil down to ‘Person signed but didn't actually care’. Very hard to moderate these things, and it’s arguably not on us to do that. II. Should the subjective requirement that a nation be unique (or fill a unique niche) be removed or modified? **The two features here are that nations must be unique, and nations must not be recreations of immediate conquests. These aren't 'official' rules, more... guidelines. As for conquest, I want things like wars to have meaning, and weight, and purpose. A nation that is smashed in a war, only to pop up 45 minutes later as if nothing happened, seems wrong to me. It creates a world where there are no consequences for RP or wars. It does not mean you can NEVER come back, obviously. Haense was destroyed last map, by the time realms reopen they’ve obviously had time to experience their conquest, and I’d say they’re free to start anew. And as for uniqueness, it is a tricky subject. Really this just means we/I have a right to deny nations that we believe were created out of OOC spite, or out of pettiness to divide playerbases and decentralize RP. In short, this is about ensuring that a nation is adding to the ecosystem of LoTC. It is however, a very delicate thing, and it is not designed to be “I do not personally like the concept/culture of this nation, and therefore it is denied”. It’s also not to codify what is a valid culture or not. Snow Elves often come up in these talks, and I routinely defend the point that your opinions on a playerbase don’t matter. By every objective metric they obviously qualify, no matter what you feel about that community or history - or any groups for example (sorry to pin you out, snowwies). III. Do you feel there should be a new, separate qualifier for new nations? **This is more an open question, spurred on by a specific event. When Vansk was approved for the last map, I knew in my heart it was not long for the world. I think I can say openly it was obvious it had become opponents to Norland, and I can say that without casting judgement to anyone or any group. It was just an open secret. However, just speaking honestly, it also had no real PVP players, and Norland did. It’s time was limited. I have asked myself if that was, to some degree, on us. Perhaps we should have denied Vansk due to them obviously having almost no survival chance. I eventually came to the opinion that, no, we shouldn’t have a new qualifier for this (Or any other type), and this is due to the following: I believe it is my team’s duty to ensure active, healthy, nations to be created, but it is in no way my duty to ensure those nations survive or succeed. That is for them to do. However, any other prospective qualifiers can be suggested, if there’s something we haven’t thought of. It has even been suggested I should deny certain communities due to toxicity of their playerbase, which is itself a very hairy subject. --------- Those are the questions. I am very open to hearing what you have to share. However… I will be very forward and say I am looking for feedback on improving this system -- what I am not looking for are snide remarks, insults, or suggestions of removing the Nation system entirely. Opinions about how 'freebuild is the best option' and 'activity checks are lame' may be yours to have, but not for this topic of conversation. I have my own opinions on this system, even radical opinions, but for the moment it’s here to stay, and for us to improve. You'll be able to give me your feedback on those topics another day, trust me. Thank you everyone and @Haltfor helping me write this.