oblivionsbane

<insert bear waving .gif>

The bandits are going to abuse whatever rules you make or change. The question is, “how easy is it to abuse these rules?” Them running off to avoid consequences is one thing, but giving them the power to basically kill anyone they happen to see after they shout halt is stupid. Yeah, I read what you said about villainy blacklists, but you must be new if you think that the GM’s are capable of putting their foot down in any capacity. You’re basically suggesting to go from annoying to hell on earth without knowing it. 

Minecraft Name oblivionsbane

Discord oblivionsbane#5430

What can you bring to the World Dev Team that is Unique?

I had some ideas when Atlas was being made that I think would be excellent for LotC. Particularly, I want there to be special event regions that are considered impassable by their very nature, think firelands with volcanoes dragons or a tangled swamp filled with gnarled mangrove trees creating an entire underwater environment beneath them with air pockets and all sorts of creatures living in the depths. These special areas are where events can be based, and it will give the reasoning for certain beasts like drakes and other event creatures to be roaming about. It would eliminate the question of, "where do all these things come from," while it would also give a good place for ET's to tie into their events. Another cool idea would be to implement some sort of dungeon function with these areas, where they are so crowded with beasts that you can reasonably go in there, kill many of them, and there will still be enough for many, many, many more adventurers to try their luck at exploring these places.

What do you think the most important decisions are when it comes to designing a world?

The most important would be how it functions and if it works. Obviously, you can make a very beautiful map, but that doesn't mean it will be good for building towns or being used by people in rp. The best example of this was Ceru in Axios. There was only 2 or 3 areas on the entire continent that were good for building a town, a house, or anything really. Otherwise, it was mostly wooded with hills that went up and made sharp cliffs, mountainous, or just a freezing wastleland with nothing in it. On that note, I think that when designing a world you should take every single area into account for "why is this the way it is?" and "what function does this place serve?" I think back to Athera, where it was a tiny map, but content was squeezed into every inch of it. That is why people liked Athera. There were many interesting things in it. This is in contrast with Atlas, which is huge and empty and until recently had very little going on. This is why Anthos was so widely well-received, it was both big AND had a lot of content squeezed in AND had a lot of stuff going on. So I think the most important decisions are the ones that make each area, and the map as a whole, interesting and useful rather than dull and useless.

When working on smaller projects such as a village, a cave or a ruin; what is your aim?

I want to say, 'depends on what it's for,' but to be honest, every build should be able to provide roleplay or something interesting to people who enter it. If I'm building a ruin, I'd build it so other players can ask the question, "What was this for." If I'm building a cave, I'm going to focus on what goes into the cave and also the entrance being in a good place (Whether it should be kind of hidden or very obvious). Personally, I also like to give players more hints than just, "Here's a build," because eventually if they can't figure it out on their own they are just going to give up and figure it's a boring build with nothing more to it. It's like, imagine finding a ruin of a village where only stone foundations remain, but you happen to find a secret hatch that goes down into a basement that has not caved in, and you find all sorts of interesting tidbits about the village. That is the kind of thing that breathes life into builds. If a build is boring, simple, and serves little purpose, then it's not good. Although at the same time, if a build is not good looking then someone else should build it. Builds should both look good and offer a lot to the player in terms of roleplay.

A large part of the World Developers job is finding new ideas for environments. Give a brief synopsis of an idea that you have had in that regard.

I mentioned it earlier, but I will elaborate on the idea once again. I think we should have large regions devoted solely to creating and enriching events. The poster child for this would be a firelands of fire, brimstone, lava, and volcanoes, where all dragonkin are very, very common. The area would be largely impassable and impractical to siege. As such, it would be a place that would be a constant threat to the descendants and it would be the source of the many different dragonkin beasts that attack the descendants throughout the map. Although, I've been fiddling with the idea of expeditions into these lands meaning to defeat a number of these beasts in a form of dungeon, and the nature of the place would mean that new paths, caves, etc could reveal themselves all throughout the map's life. All in all, this idea adds a TON of content while also allowing an equally great amount of utility. It can be used for many, many, MANY things. These are the kinds of areas we need to see more of in LotC.

If you could, what would you change about Atlas and why?

Atlas is a bad map. It's mostly empty and what little things it does have are more for flavor than anything. The most interesting place was the Wonkawoods because they did have something to them and to a lesser extent the snowy wasteland down south. Everywhere else is pretty boring and one dimensional.

How much time are you on average able to contribute towards being a WD?

Depends what I end up doing. I'd say a reasonable amount of time. If I'm working on some big project and have a deadline I'll obviously work more than if I was working on a village with no deadline.

The World Developers Team is a diverse group with a wide array of opinions, meaning disagreements often happen. Discuss how you handle disagreements or criticism when it comes to your designs.

I'm pretty open as long as other people are. If someone points out something legitimately wrong with something I've built or envisioned I'll be pretty accepting of it, but I also want that same respect. If I point out something bad about someone else's ideas, I don't want a "I don't think so." I want to know why they don't, because it could be they are just convinced they are right and are being stubborn. It's what I ran into a lot in the Dominion and it was brain numbing. I like a place where people are interested in making something worthwhile and good and not just furthering their own agendas.

Please include any examples of your design work below!

Oh, I made Caras Eldar. The walls and upper district weren't my work though. That was Twilightwolf. I oversaw the construction of 90% of the forest district, and I pretty much built the base for the original port myself. Not only that, but when I got handed the, maybe 30-40% completed city 2 days before map release, I set a deadline of the next wednesday and found every builder I could to help with certain things and managed to finish the city in a week. I didn't built a lot of it, aside from the port and some treehouses, instead I had people build certain things like the library, the tavern, the square, the clinic, houses, etc, then I figured out if they were in the best spots and edited them to make them look even better. This culminated into what might have been the single most successful Elven city ever for a month or two. It has been so successful, that in my opinion it is what kept the Dominion playerbase active for so long, and the activity has only died down thanks to countless administrative and political errors. Granted, it had a TON of other issues too, like the upper district wasn't that great, the forest district was too large, the port district was meant as a setpiece more than a functional place for people to live, and many other things, although these almost entirely come from twilightwolf's work rather than my own.

https://imgur.com/a/TRTDJvk Here's a link to a short discord album showing some stuff about Caras Eldar and a cool boat I made.

Other Comments (Not Required)

Looking forward to work

3 minutes ago, Treshure said:

That depends. I am a RPer? Yes. Do I PvP on behalf of my nation allegiances? Yes. That is most of the server.

When people refer to a PvP playerbase, in my opinion, its players that care more about PvP than RP - and I can't support that.

If it helps you, I consider myself an RP'er who just knows how to PvP some. That's why I went with RP'er rather than "in between."

yes

He'd be excellent +1

You'll probably get GM. Maybe you'll do good, maybe you won't. In my opinion I think you're not the best fit. The reason I say that is I've seen that when things aren't going your way, you can get really defensive and your attitude sours. If I had to go out on a limb here, I'd say you don't have a very high stress limit and you're not patient. What I do find interesting is that you're an FM. If your time as a forum moderator has been good and active, then I think you'll do fine as a GM too. Obviously, I don't know how you've been as an FM so I'm just going off of what I do know. All GM's are going to be biased, that's a given so I'm not even touching that. The only thing I'm worried about is that when you get into some of the higher stress situations like managing raids or making an unpopular decision that gets you attacked, you'll not be able to handle it well.

+1 Eli is a good guy who puts a lot of effort into things he is a part of

-1 WrOtHFuL

"They have what?" Said Mark Lander as he was delivered the news of these underwater ships countless nautical miles off the coast of Atlas. He'd sit back in his chair, it emitting a creak, as his blank yet thoughtful vision panned to the ceiling, He'd finally emit a sigh before righting himself and looking to the one who had brought him the report. "Contact engineering with the report and tell them I said to begin developing countermeasures. Let them know I'll be down there to help them with their work soon enough." He'd give the messenger an affirming nod, to which he'd receive one back, before the man would make his way out of the large, nautically adorned office. Mark would teeter back in his chair once more in thought. "If they're underwater that means they can't attack ships. Even if they want to ram they'll have to get close enough to the surface that my cruisers should be able to fire on them." He'd rub his lips together in thought. "Maybe some sort of slow sinking explosive barrel might work. They can't possibly outrun the..." And on and on Mark would ramble to himself thoughts and ideas of how to counter a threat he'd likely never have to face.

Kalina would sit back in her chair in front of a crackling fireplace after hearing of the event. Thoughts of what-ifs and how-thens would be racing through her mind. She'd lick her lips, dried by the fire's heat, as her head would bob low to stare at the ground in front of her. She'd let out a sigh with a shake of her head before looking back to the flames.

Kalina would hear of the missive, and she'd not care.

6 hours ago, TJBMinecraft said:

The **** is the King's Third Banner?!

Event faction, vaeyl

How does the empire lay claim to that area in the north below warhawkes? I don't see any real settlements up there. What duchys/lands are up there?

"Can we get a map?" Says man

hi i want to play a raguk please

...I'm just along for the ride, keep scrolling....

I think raids are fine. I know you're mainly talking about the Dominion here, and for the Dominion, a raid that happens when barely anyone is on is great. You get several days that you can keep your gates open with barely a worry. I've said it to people before, if you raid the Dominion it doesn't matter if you win or lose, the Dominion still wins because they get to keep their gates open.

On the other hand, I do think raids should be taken more seriously. OOC references, trolling, and memery during a raid has to break rules and shouldn't be tolerated the way that it is.

If anything, I'd say the problem with late night raids is that the raid rules don't let enough players take part in a raid to reasonably raid at peak hours. Of course, the problem with unhinging raids like that is OOC relations like this post is bringing up. Players on here will fight alongside their OOC friends, even if there's literally no RP reason to. Of course we all know how it goes, you make up the reason as you go. I remember a ~15-20 person raid Oren organized in Vailor I was in the TS for. They just were going from TS to TS getting random people to go do a meta rally to meta rescue a guy they had no idea about. For you old Dominion folk reading this, if you remember that one raid where people showed up on horses and Artimec ended up getting lashed by one of the Oreners, it was that one. Then there's also raiding because of OOC feelings which frankly is a side affect of the toxicity problem we have. There's not much we can do about that without intrinsically changing how the server is, and the staff would all have to come together and be of a single mind if they wanted to make that happen.

Kalina would hear of the news and give a bob of her head. "Unexpected but welcome news under these circumstances." She'd say to herself.

Mark would hear of this much later than most, many, many nautical miles out at sea. In a mountain that echoed with both jeering and laughter, he would slowly tap a mina on a desk, sitting back as he thought, "How many of these empires am I going to see before I die?" He'd take a deep breath before turning around to stare out of a large window, looking down at the many ships moored at the Rock. "Empire's going to lack a competent navy as usual. This shouldn't disrupt me." He'd then turn back around, head still filled with thoughts, opinions, and memories as he'd get back to work, quill scratching the surface of a book with a map to his left.

12 hours ago, Sky said:

 

Once the person tells the parents, it wont hit passed that, why do I say this? Any sensible parent would then promptly have whatever site had this (in this case lord of the craft) promptly blocked from their ISPN.

I think that telling the parents is what should be done. They are going to be able to understand the implications of the situation in terms of legality in their nation, region, or culture and what is best for their child better than anyone else. That said, with the great variety of those three factors in the world, it might be best for LotC itself to make a distinction on what exactly it considers pedophilia. We're an international server, and what is considered a crime and offensive in the United States might be considered completely ok somewhere else in the world. What do you think?

Yeah, I've never liked blah. It takes a certain kind of person to say wub or shiniez and not feel like they're playing a moron. The words should be moved around to be more guttural. There are also words like latz and throm'ka, and the like that I think are pretty cool, and I wish all the words were like these.

For an inexplicable moment Torick would consider something, but he would shake his head and go back to carving orc tusks. He would finish and stare at the depiction of a bear in the Orcish bone, and his lip would draw back into a sneer.

501, I think you're a great guy, and I'd call you a friend. I have to say that you have issues though as an administrator. To note, while I was GM team and I interacted with you, it always seemed like you lacked leadership and management skills. When Tahmas left the team along with most of the GM staff my first time around, I wanted you to tell me everything was going to be fine and put down my fears since I had just lost all my managers, but instead, I had to encourage you to do that. Also when I was a GM this last time, I remember in a meeting on war rules you weren't sure how to even do the meeting. I ended up saying write down some guidelines on what you want done and we can try and make rules that accomplish it. I'm trying to point out that I, as a subordinate staff member, should have not had to push you towards making more effective choices. That was a while ago and maybe things have changed, but I don't think this was merely incompetence. I think that you overwork yourself, and that affects how well you can get new work done. Also, the sheer attitude of LotC currently has to drain you. I'm not going to discredit the massive amount of work you've done though, and for every failed project I'm sure you've had a successful one (like the economy from last map). The thing is, if you get hung up on any of that you're going to have problems. You have to just keep moving forward and be prepared to innovate because the server is always changing. My final critique is that you don't lack vision; you lack the charisma, skills, and resolve to push your vision forward. You can change little things, but I've never really seen you crack down on major problems like toxicity. Your lack of skills and charisma make me think that you should take some kind of a break or hiatus to recharge.

I love you ❤️