Just as a general rule, I'm sensing a lot of
Slippery Slope arguments and unnecessary panic herein. I'm a bit worried some people are reacting to the words "Expiry" and "Repeal" without looking at the proposal in depth, to see the deliberately crafted conditions specifically designed to prevent raiding.
If I did not believe this document was suitable for the purpose of protecting cultures from nation raids, I would not even submit it for your collective consideration.There's a lot of misunderstandings which I think are based on this panic and not on reading the proposal's content. So, to that effect...
Three big collective misunderstandings I would like to shatter right here and now:*
Existing Cultural Protocols are not going to die overnight. They will become the stricter version by default unless a nation chooses to opt for the relaxed version.
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The Expiry clock RESETS upon a single culturally-relevant action. This proposal does not spell doomsday for an active culture on a technicality because someone forgot to pass a new version in time.
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Existing cultures MUST be recognised as minority cultures in new Cultural Bills. This way they can be restored to the majority culture in future, with existing, returning and new players able to play the minority cultures to at least some extent.
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SelucianCrusader wrote:I voted that I disapprove of Repeal system in general, although I could just as well have voted that I disapprove of the Expiry system. Back when the CP:s were created, the time for a country to "float" to cultural void was 500 IG years, i. e. 10 years.
...which was to give an overarching protection to a country with an established second OOC language. That's 2 RL years a nation could be locked down. That's a game engine nation often noticably restricted for new players.
SelucianCrusader wrote:While that might seem draconic, I'm not sure that I want such a system in place at all. Why would a country of Jelbic-speaking Muslim nomads or Emperor-worshipping German Japanese just suddenly start speaking English and elect a "President" and a "Congress"? There is no excuse for vandalism that makes sense from a role playing-perspective. I'd favour having a relaxed interpretation of the cultural protection system for players engaging in RP in countries that have been effectively culturally dormant for a long time, meaning that the players interpretation of the nation's culture may be allowed to vary a lot and deviate form the original if they make their country contribute to RP once again.
Firstly, the slippery slope argument towards US-style Anglophone systems is not the only case, as much as protections are necessary. However, we need two tiers; there are multiple interpretations of the existing system, so we need a hard and soft version.
I prefer the relaxed interpretation with enforcement upon complaint, but throughout the long history of CultPro, it has been apparent that two camps exist.
SelucianCrusader wrote:Regarding the COO, that's probably my biggest problem here. I can't help viewing it as a way to legalize nation raids. If a group of players come and wants to turn Luthori, Dankuk, Indrala or whatever into America, they shouldn't be allowed through do that through an "opt-out" from the rules. We should rather help people to play the game by the rules and read up on their country's lore instead of acting against consistency and common sense.
I'm all for innovation, but it shouldn't come at the expense of hat came before. The contributions of previous players or plain common sense should never be an "opt-out".
I refer you to section 2.4:
2.4 Passage. Upon passage of any of the above Cultural Framework Bills in accordance with the terms in Sections 3-5 as appropriate and in the absence of any currently valid alternative, Moderation should be informed on the forum or by PM with a link to the passed bill so that it may be recognised.
A Cultural Opt-Out CANNOT be used to instantly displace an existing culture under the terms of 3.4, 4.4 and 5.4 as appropriate. The bill has to have been around for at least 25 IG years up to 50 IG years
since the last reference to the culture was made, the players doing so all having to have been in the nation for at least the same period of time themselves and being in unanimity.
One reference to the original culture by roleplay by a player and the clock on this first condition is entirely reset.However, if you feel the time limits are too short, that's largely what this thread is about. Suggest what you believe to be suitable limits.
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Polites wrote:1. Expiration is hard or outright impossible to justify IC.
As current rules on CPs stand, major and sometimes drastic cultural changes are allowed if RP justification is provided. That is of paramount importance, since, even if a certain degree of fluidity is realistic and fair, major changes will not disrupt the narrative continuity of the game and each individual nation. In contrast, expiry would remove the requirement to provide IC justification, and thus break continuity as well as ruin immersion (not to mention that it would be unrealistic).
If there is no active player to provide demographic and cultural changes over the period before an expiry period of suitable length, why should the situation at the end of it be exactly the same as if an active player had proposed a new census five years later?
No culture will suffer damnatio memorae under this proposal: 3.1.2 and 4.1.2 state (and 5.1.2 has a weaker version of this clause which may be strengthened if needed):
A ACI/CP Bill should recognise previously protected Cultures as minority populations.
The recognition of minority cultures along with the rule therefore requires the co-existence of the new culture and the old one after the period of 100 years; RP not recognising this transition would be recognised as unrealistic and so be subject to the usual scrutiny of moderation.
If you feel the clauses would be better phrased as "must" in order to more strongly assert this need, then so be it.
Polites wrote:2. Some cultures are inherently unpopular.
Looking at player distribution, it is obvious that larger numbers of players prefer English or Open nations, and non-European or PT-specific cultures attract fewer, but more RP-active players. That has pretty much always been the case, and the only way to create an even distribution of players would be to make all nations Open or English-speaking. While that would likely put an end to permanent 1 or 0-party nations, it would make Terra as a whole less diverse and more mono-cultural. Look at Indrala, for example; although it currently has a large number of players, for most of its history since it was orriginally defined as Chinese-speaking it's been a single-party nation. While making it Anglophone would attract more players there, losing the game's only Chinese-based nation would be a great loss to RP and the cultural diversity of Terra.
However valid some of the observations, this is a bit of a fourth-term argument: as much as comments were present in the previous thread with regard to the large number of one-party and vacant nations in the context of not providing many open nations, for the above argument to be true on this rule change, it would require there to be a penalty for single-party (and therefore single-player) nations. Such a penalty does not exist.
As stated in the rebuttal to a previous argument: to prevent expiration, all is needed is a single culturally-relevant action and the clock resets. It doesn't matter to this ruleset whether one player did nothing in a nation, seven players did something in a nation, the country had no registered players in or -- in the extremest upper limit -- a freak database accident reactivates all the parties that ever existed in a nation and none of them did anything: the key criterion is inactivity.
Polites wrote:3. Lack of players does not mean lack of interest.
*snip*
...and again, this proposal does not penalise single-player nations provided they remain active. New players are not prohibited from joining new nations. A new player can join and with their first culturally-relevant action and reset the expiry clock.
The historical argument is mooted by the preservation of previous cultures in the proposals as stated above.
Polites wrote:4. Representation of cultures is horrible.
One problem that the game suffers from more than the uneven distribution of players is the extreme underrepresentation of anything that isn't European or Middle-Eastern. For most of the game's IG history there was only one nation with an African-based culture (Talmoria), and even there it was almost constantly under minority white rule, while there have always been at least five German-based nations and tens of Anglophone ones. Allowing cultures to expire would affect those underrepresented cultures far more than it would the European ones.
However true the observation, when the number of game nations is finite it does not serve the player base to preserve a nation as a museum. Empty nations should be test beds for new ideas to grow.
For any cultures to be useful for the RP in the game world, someone has to be an active roleplayer within it. Bemoaning these losses is understandable, but people are often too busy protecting their own patch to jump in to save another.
Polites wrote:5. Nobody owns a culture.
Just like no one player owns a nation, cultures are not anyone's property. It is true that new players should not be obliged to keep the seat warm for older players who've gone on holiday, but they should also not be allowed to disregard and ignore the collective effort of previous players. If they want to change it, they can do that with RP, therefore contributing to rather than destroying the collective storytelling device that is Particracy roleplay.
Conversely, tying strict cultural protection to active RP would ultimately lead to the entrenchment of players in a single nation, as they would have an incentive to stick around indefinitely so that the strict rules will not expire. That may have been the norm in the past, that's no longer the case these days, where older players tend to roam all around Terra, as Aquinas explained in the previous thread.
This has no bearing on the proposal. The proposal preserves past cultures as minority cultures -- which could even be restored to the main culture in a future bill -- and no culture gets completely obliterated. The reason cultural proposals are passed in nations is that the nation variables need protecting.
Many players went between several nations back when I first started playing in 2006. This is not a new thing.
If people want stricter protections for a culture, it is only reasonable that they should continue to invest in the culture. But, as stated before,
a single culturally-relevant action and the expiry clock is reset.
A culture may not be "owned" by an individual player or nation, but this is about protecting active game players who are active roleplayers from having their culture vandalised, not using the game nations as locked-down repositories for a culture.
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I would even go so far as to suggest that the adamancy with which some people protect their cultures in certain nations at the moment prevents the nations they are created in being used to play the game as Wouter designed. Granted, I am currently in Jelbania alone (with the original intention of resuming work on the language, bringing the nation to life again and RP-ing), but the Cultural Roleplay has, in parts, transcended the game engine and often, single-player nations only use the engine as an archiving tool for the very same cultures. Some of the cultures, war RP, Economic Protocols etc. leave so little to the game engine, that half of the people on this forum who use it
don't actually need the game itself!(Which after largely agreeing with Doc's points about the desire for fluidity in some nations and the Wiki for archival leads me on to the next argument...)
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Reddy wrote:I want to explain why I now think Cultural Protocols should be radically reformed or even abolished. As long as I've played this game (since November 2012) much of the community's energy has been focused on these cultural conflicts. There are several threads on this culture and that one... and harassment of new players who don't immediately adopt whatever complex culture their new country has. We have to recognise some cold hard facts. The vast majority of the community is Eurocentric and countries with such cultures generally have the highest number of players. Countries with non-European cultures generally struggle to even keep player. Just a week or two ago I counted 7 empty countries. Guess how many of them had Eurocentric/open cultures? Zero.
I'm not saying the contributions of previous players should be ignored but what would be the point of maintaining, say Beiteynu's Yeudish culture or Kalopia's is, if the countries spend half to three-quarters of the year empty? It's an online game so all this 'we should have different cultures just for the sake of it' argument means next to nothing to me. The mission to make PT realistic at the cost of player retention is a very bad idea. The two should be balanced in favour of the later. I personally feel more outraged that we have so many one party states and empty ones than by the fact that we don't have more African or Asian countries. Good RP has nothing to do with culture, it's about being imaginative and creating interesting scenarios. You can have the most elaborate exotic culture but if it's just window dressing, what's the point?
It goes well before 2012 (2009 at least) and as the original proponent of these -- however much more broadly now they are applied -- I want to put this right. This is why I wanted to rewrite them and composed the draft based on the discussion.
I want to use this to protect some nations for free play because there are so few that Cultural Protocols have not yet consumed, but at the same time want the active cultures used for RP to be suitably protected to encourage the richness of the forum community.
Reddy wrote:As for this proposal, I question if now is the right time to consider more reforms. There have been several reforms in the past few months and maybe we should give them time to evaluate their effects so that if we do choose to adopt them, we would likely be more informed about the negative effects.
It could be a while before anything gets implemented, if at all. This may have invoked a long discussion but any further points on the existing tweaks -- some of which were for the right reasons -- will be evaluated as test cases emerge, while we discuss this more radical proposal.
This is a total overhaul (rather than a chain of amendments) to try to make something suitable for all purposes and allow more nations to open up for in-game play.
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{Edit: Since this was written, I've inactivated in Jelbania and applied to reactivate elsewhere. I can still work on the Old High Jelbic language.}