Venomous_Pup

He had us in the first half, not gonna lie.

[Obligatory joke reply too lazy to type one] But for real, idk if I'm just stupid but I chalk most of the issues up to the 'Gamification' of LotC. The only thing that 'technically' & mechanically matters if the Nation you are apart of has activity, regardless of quality behind the Roleplay going on in the Nation. If most people were willing to stand on some principle of making a decent space to provide people the ability to make RP, instead of chasing numbers for the sake of numbers the server would be a different place. I've seen and heard people get blasted OOCly for decisions they've made IRP, people get called r slurs over basic CRP that has no real stakes because both sides will monk respawn anyway, and I just don't understand why as a leader, you'd allow such miserable people run out decent people from your community. All that to say its difficult for anyone to put in the effort to try and make compelling characters and stories only to be blasted OOCly and treated with little or no respect because people are more focused on a 'game' rather than a narrative and having OOC consequences for doing what your character does in roleplay (sometimes even think lol), which leads to an issue where Roleplay standards drop in an understandable way, I can't imagine anyone willing to type out detailed and meaningful emotes if they're going to get ignored and 'marvel-quipped' at, nobody is going to type out decent emotes if they believe the other side is operating even slightly OOC or in poor faith. The only real way to bring a change and only at a minor level is to always try put out the best you can. The only other option, I look at groups within LotC like tables, everyone at the table has their own preferences, likes and dislikes, views on RP and LotC and how it should be, then RP styles. If you don't enjoy the table you're at, you can try and change it, but there is plenty of other ones you can move to or even try make your own if that doesn't work out. Staff solution is higher quality on Whitelist apps (because some of them straight up are really, really bad) and some form of intervention to encourage better Roleplay, however, it comes down to if the time to do such is worth it.

I'm boutta get slapped

Wish me luck everyone, I'm getting a plane ticket to Aussie to preemptively prepare to find Pallo's burial site after Joel takes him out back.

Someone send this to [REDACTED] for his crimes of starting guides. I think however, decoupling guides from being a requirement is actually beneficial to what you want. Most of the time all the effort got put into the main post, then basically guides were copied and pasted bits and pieces from the actual lore page and then they were never really updated or maintained, if guides are removed from the requirement I think we might actually see people put more effort into them and hopefully get higher quality guides than if they were basically an after thought made into making lore pieces.

I think that can be answered by the following he said above. The quality has drastically decreased where I've seen a recent post in which the veil between IRP and OOC was completely obliterated by the inclusion of a Discord screenshot and an artist depiction of their persona at a computer in a reply to a missive. While I do find that post funny, it goes entirely against this in the Roleplay Standards. I can understand given the situation in that post it could be considered 'justified' but the rules shouldn't be bent over subjective interpretations of if someone deserves to be clowned on IRP as I believe it leads to a slippery slope and results in the community feeling fractured as it is now. And I agree with what was said above, why should we in anyway excuse toxicity, poor roleplay or whatever? We should actively be punishing people that consistently break rules and go out of their way to be disruptive with low effort RP, and encouraging people that legitimately want to enjoy the server to do better over crashing out. Focusing back on the matter of narrative posts themselves, they'll simply always be a tool, and like such that can be used for 'good' and 'evil', effectively or amateurly. The main issue lies under intention of the poster, are they trying to create an impactful narrative or simply opt for the 'effective' route and clown on the player/group until they give up/quit the server. The biggest problem when it comes to moderating these posts is it is impossible for staff to look at someone and instantly determine if the intention behind the post was good or bad unless it is so blatant (though some would argue some of the more recent posts, are that blatant). I should perhaps ask for you to clarify by narrative post do you mean a post detailing Roleplay that has occurred, or any RP based posts such as missives and personal RP experiences? If you mean the personal RP experience I believe they are mostly fine, I have a few hang ups but they're mostly minor, it is more so missive posts because they can be incredibly demoralizing entire player bases on an OOC level when they see an overwhelming number of people starting to clown on them for something they likely didn't even personally partake in.

I hold no hard feelings over it, I just assumed something given the timing of it, but to further explain I do believe there was meant to be a bit more of a follow up regarding after that post but due to concerns, Dio wasn't really interested and that ended up falling through to focus on other things then a bit of a schism formed due to an OOC situation. I'll admit full well that persona is something of a cowardly sort which is why I have them rely on missive posting in some situations but I also understand some of the frustrations you highlighted in regard to what you mentioned as meta baiting. The mindset I always try to operate off is trying to create something compelling for both myself and putting myself in the shoes of the other, them as well, I don't think it would be compelling in any sense of the word to have missives contain the entirety of all the information my persona knew about Lumbridge to give other groups the ability to have every 'reason' to know about your group and KOS your people, its playing a game rather than telling a story. Unfortunately that fell through as I mentioned and it isn't like a book where I can 'delete' what has happened in order to rewrite to better suit the changes that happened, but nevertheless, that shit sucked and why I try not to hold people to mega high standards, given we're all a bunch of nerds essentially acting and writing all in one take. Looking over the other points you detailed above, I definitely agree, and it is partially why I just find myself despising a lot of the situations that unfold, as you can sum up the new 'meta' of conflict as basically this. There is no real 'meat' behind conflicts recently, literally just "You're cringe and I can rally more than you so die." Having been roleplaying for ages, LotC is the only server I think I've struggled to integrate with in terms of mindset given how divisive the community is, some people to me treat it basically like a factions towny PvP server with some light RP elements, while others yearn for complex story lines you might find in big novel series, movies or TV shows. There is a lot more I would say but to prevent myself going into a complete tangent, I think LotC needs to decide what community it wishes to cater to as it isn't sustainable as it is, and on the smaller scale of missives, how should they be handled in future given their incredible ease of access with how unbelievably effective they are as an OOC weapon. I believe more moderation is a step in the right direction, but do we think trying to 'gamify' missives a solution by actually making people have to post these things in game rather than a flick of the hand wave birds and couriers and this gives people the ability to counter it in game by taking them down preventing people from reading it, maybe for JUST for RP posts hide the rep ratio rather than outright removal so only staff can see it, what further rules should we include for missives in regards to what you mentioned prior 'meta baiting', I've personally had a distaste for missives that have included screenshots of letters to show they weren't forgery or evidence, as it treats missives more akin to Facebook/Twitter than an actual piece of paper mass produced, do we make people have silly lil in game builds to represent printing presses before they can send out missives, etc. I think when it comes to a revamp of how missives are handled we need to juggle the RP sensibility of it, along with it not being overly complex to post a missive.

In some regards I'll agree and disagree, to me alot of the issues I think that happen on LotC are born from small things, and eventually end up to exploding. I've seen constantly what could be considered 'minor' jokes, incidents, incorrect handling of situations leading to a boiling point in which a player just blows up over the fact. The whole concept of Roleplay relies on cooperation and it just feels like little of it occurs and ends up becoming OOC games of trying to get people removed over OOC dislike and grievances rather than if they're actually a problem player. There is just a weird intersect with OOC and IRP because a lot of those Cnor issues are just in my eyes born of the fact two players weren't able to cooperate OOCly and OOC mis/information which affected RP and you can't really deal with OOC via IRP, which is another thing I hope gets touched on outside of missive forum posting.

No beef but I made a joke rather than report the information to staff? Looking back I'm unhappy with how I was personally back in Cnor but the only person's DMs I was 'OOCing' it was one individual trying to explain to him how I had a bunch load of people unhappy with Cnor and that they all related to a certain player, I tried to reach out to said player, they didn't want my help, people involved didn't want me to tell names because they didn't wanna deal with them and eventually it lead to me leaving Celia'nor rather than trying engage with it further. But again this just highlights my point, instead of taking the correct action, you just took matters into your own hands lol, you could have DMed me or reported whatever you thought was an issue to staff and let them handle it but instead decided to say an entire magic group deserves to be meta gamed over one individual, joke or otherwise, but the prior conversation indicated to me you weren't. The only reason I included the screenshot was because you said it in OOC, and was an example to me of what was discussed in which OOC popularity, where you can seemingly get away with breaking the rules if you have enough or the right people backing you. The main reason your comment irked me so much was because of the conversation that was in OOC chat awhile back during the Problem Player post where you lamented the fact you'd had issues with people calling you out for issues of past Ferry Men, given they've had them, I think it is fair enough that it annoyed but seeing you make that comment makes you come across as a complete hypocrite to me. I'm not really going to say anything more because I don't want it to become tic for tac but if you want to have an actual conversation then hit me up on DMs than vaguely gesturing that I've been OOCing when the whole topics I'd discussed in DMs were unfortunately influenced by what appears to be someone at some point OOCly lying.

Being vaguely referenced in this post by one of the status comments included I wanted to say regarding my post in particular this one, its incredibly disappointing being included under various categories without any thought that might have lead to my character wanting to spread such propaganda, my persona met Astark back during early Celia'nor days, was given let privy to one of her plans regarding shunting a feat both of the characters had. She mentioned to Astark that she had issues with Xionism because she saw the ideology in practice made them nothing but bandits with ghost powers and that there was a fundamental flaw of what would actually transpire if Gods died as was discussed. She watched while under Gashadokuro as she attempted to rally the Xionists to get revenge, only to witness infighting, apathy and nothing really happening, so she waited for Astark to be in prime position to be swayed and when she saw the missives put out regarding Astark she was in twisted joy because she believed Astark was at that precipice of change, and then she was killed. Prior to this my persona had a distaste towards Xionists because of the fact a Seer was killed by one of their members when they were also tied to Xionism, after Astark's death another Seer which she found out was butchered by them, and recently another Mystic spreading information (via missive) resulting in what she perceives as a threat to her existence, regardless how indirect it is because I know OOCly she isn't the target. Nothing in that post includes any useful information is just basically her saying "You are going to die because of your own actions." My main OOC desire with that post is to try do something akin to a Dark Oracle of Delphi, I find whatever information I can, determine what might occur and make a claim what is going to happen. I don't think we should assume the worst out of people doing it for the sake of rep farming or otherwise OOC trying to manipulate the situation via forums posts, while I might agree, I think it comes down to finding a solution to making missives more engaging and RP friendly, as I replied to your status update, LotC is probably the only server you can do legitimate propaganda posting and to wipe it away because a few bad actors is going to suck. I do agree with other aspects of this post, however, I wonder how the implementation will be handled and wonder if the way forums missives are left the way they have been is simply the ease of it. Trust with most Nations and Staff as of right now is at a low, the idea of attempting to send missives like that in future via actual in game action of personally going to those places to pin them up, establishing a legitimate spy network to enact out such for me sounds incredibly fun and generates more RP but then there is that worry in the back of the head the missives simply get torn down not for any real RP reasoning, just a simple OOC fear of "If we have this here, x, y, z might think we are supporting these people and instantly warclaim us" and resulting in whatever people getting ostracized as a result for trying to put in real effort for RP. I also agree with the statement of Roleplay being trumped by OOC popularity, this issue extends outside of the topic of forums and ultimately makes the server a shitty place to RP. The screenshot below to me was just incredibly mindblowing to me and highlights how the attitudes talked about extend past the forums. The solution to our problems shouldn't be to encourage toxicity, rule breaking, metaplay, etc. against groups we dislike, it shouldn't be that difficult to talk to one another about our problems or report to staff when people are legitimately in the wrong, there is more to delve into regarding Roleplay being trumped by OOC popularity but I personally don't believe forums being the cause of this, merely a symptom of this gross mindset that has festered in the community that needs to be ripped out if the server is going to get any better. Its crazy to think about how much avenues of communication we have with one another with Discord existing yet the only thing that seemingly has resulted from it is just a growth of shitty plays and behavior.

Sometimes I wonder if LotC is just designed to maximize suffering.

I just find the way 'tests' in general have been employed incredibly lame and boring and never really lead to any meaningful RP afterwards. It feels like most of the time people just get treated like legit NPCs with no regards to the consequences of literally cutting someone open to test if they're a Dark Creature or w/e. If I had a dagger stuck through my hand IRL I would be out of work for sometime which means if I'm unable to secure some benefit to sustain me I do not get money, and I could not eat as a result, if any governments employed anything like this there would instantly be revolts but it is incredibly stacked against players due to how rules are, as you can pretty much just instantly evict people without much reason listed for it. The main issue I just find and this extends past testing is select people have just 'optimized' RP and it has cascaded to EVERYONE else having to do so as well to avoid issues and just creates a terrible environment for people to make cool RP because they can instantly be blindsided with sub-par RP with extreme consequence. Its incredibly limiting to the potential of the world of LotC, as seemingly every character has read every part of every lore page regarding magics, this is a world where we have literal Demi God like beings that can be played by players, yet everything is basically catalogued in an efficient manner to only reflect what is playable, not what is possible. Even Non-Dark Spawn characters suffer and can be killed over it and then nothing happens afterwards, no one changes outside some character that despises the Church but can't do shit all about it because all the rules and protections put in place. Ultimately, I think the server would just be a better place if people just could cooperate with each other when it comes to these matters and abandon this mindset that seems intent on winning over trying to provide decent RP to both people, the amount of complex stories that could be told through this medium but will never see the light of day due to the OOC environment is sad. The community sees time and time again to put in effort is not worth it and you might as well just play cookie cutter good guy, bad guy types of characters and just treat the server like a game akin to OSRS Wilderness and PvP default for max fun rather than putting in the work for intricate stories or conflicts. Feel free to hit me up on Discord or w/e if anyone wants me to further explain view points or w/e.

"Who could have predicted this." Spoke a Witch of Chaos who predicted exactly this, and she became intoxicated at the thought of watching Xionism burn as she'd seen in her fleeting day dreams.

Chef-odium more like

Upvoted but didn't read lol.

You can just straight up take Goat horns and Graft them on or otherwise they may be just bone horns? Considering with Grafting you can replace missing limbs which entails bones. Given what the lore page says you can just straight up slap a dog's nose onto someone.