As I stated in the OP,
"We do not see everything that goes on in the game and it is more than possible there are things we have missed or got wrong - so we need our experts (that's you guys!) to point these out to us". In other words, everything is still to play for and the current document is not set in stone. This has not all somehow been sewn up in advance. We have opened a consultation thread (this very one you're reading!) and we have messaged the nation-board of every nation in the game inviting every player in the game to take part in it. This is an open process and we are hoping for as many players to make an input as possible. We want players to feel free to discuss all of the options - and of course that includes the option CCP advocated, of abolishing the rankings altogether.
If there are aspects to the rankings you disagree with, that's fine - you can argue your case for changes. As explained in the document, the plan is that the criteria for the rankings are:
- To recognise, assist and encourage high quality role-play, most especially forum role-play.
- To reflect, so far as reasonably practicable, the consensus of informed opinion amongst players who are actively interested in and participating in role-play, most especially forum role-play.
So in other words, if you can present a good role-play case and persuade members of your argument, then you're well on your way towards achieving the change you want.
As previously stated, the document as it reads now is not final, but even going by how it looks now, it is not "glacial" in comparison to the
previous rankings. For example, Hutori and Kalistan have both shot up - in both cases in response to good RP over a prolonged period. Hawu has shot up most dramatically of all, by 2 ranks, from Weak to Strong in both the military and economic rankings. Again, that was in response to good RP done over a prolonged period of time.
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Concerns have been raised about Istalia's military ranking. Like others here, I think Axxell has been an asset to Istalia, to the Security Council and to Particracy in general. We did take note of the work that has gone on with Istalia, and we proposed raising Istalia's economic ranking from Average to Strong and military ranking from Weak to Average.
Should Istalia's military ranking have risen two ranks, to Strong? The view we took was that although Istalia's contributions had been impressive, its forays into international role-play had been a much more recent thing, seeming to begin around the time we introduced the Security Council. It was not like the Hawu case, where there was a much longer period of active RP involved. We took a view that changes by more than one rank at a time should not be common and should be reserved for the more exceptional cases. So we increased Istalia's military rating by one rank, leaving open the possibility it could go up another rank next time, if it it continues in the same way.
But as I say, that decision is not set in stone; we can do some rejigging, if that is wanted. Do we have a consensus amongst players for a higher military ranking for Istalia? I would like to hear more views on this, if possible.
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It is becoming apparent that some here are seeing Istalia as becoming a great power in Terra, so much so that I wonder whether we are in a situation, or moving towards a situation, where some would favour it swapping places with less active nations in the top categories, like Indrala. Now this is frankly somewhat uncomfortable for me to do...but I do have certain concerns about what the consequences of that might be, and I feel it would be wrong of me not to lay those on the table, so members can at least have some awareness of them.
As some but not all here will know, for a long time - going back years - Istalia has had more problems in terms of the language compliance rules than any of the other 57 nations in the game. By this, I mean players playing the game solely in Italian without English translations. I do not 100% understand the phenomenon behind this pattern. To some extent it is to do with the same players doing it over and over, modifying their actions for a while when asked to do so by Moderation, but then lapsing into using only Italian a while later. That may not be the whole story here, though; I suspect it is simply the case that some Italian players discover Particracy, find the nation which is most alike Italy (and even bears a similar real-life name) and then settle there, without considering the Game Rules requirement that English is the official language of the game.
But whatever the reasons behind all of this, the fact of the matter is, as I said, that for a number of years, there have been issues in Istalia in terms of the language rules not being respected. I am aware that at times it may have gotten a bit ugly, with clashes between English-speaking and Italian-speaking players.
After entering Moderation in June 2015, I became much more aware of the Istalia situation than I had previously. In particular, I discovered to my alarm that a long-term Istalia player had created a bill in the debate section telling players they must communicate only in Italian or else they would be expelled from the nation. Whilst this bill was an obvious violation of the rules, interestingly in another sense it was about the only bill in Istalia at the time that complied with the rules, in the sense that it was about the only bill where an actual full English translation was provided in order to fully ensure English speakers could understand it. The rest were just in Italian.
Needless to say, I resolved to try to regularise the situation, deleting the bill and asking the players to respect the rules, meaning that whilst non-English text is allowed, it must always appear alongside a full English translation. This has been hard work at times. Periodically, new players have arrived there and not followed the language requirements, and older players have lapsed into not providing English translations and needed to be reminded.
Obviously, it is important for all nations in Particracy to respect the Game Rules and to be accessible to all players in terms of meeting the very basic requirement of conducting themselves in English, the game's official language of communication. This is arguably even more important if the nation is in any way "officially" recognised as a big power in Terra, because that will mean it has a more significant impact on players outside of the nation in role-play terms, so it is important for players to be able to go there and play there, and also just to see what is going on there.
Is Istalia sufficiently accessible in this way? I would like to be able to say I have no significant concerns, but it would be more accurate if I said there is a long-term recurring issue which continues to need to be watched.
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Concerns have been expressed that some of the nations in the Strong and even Very Strong categories have not been actively role-played recently, and in some cases, they have not been actively role-played with for quite some time. To repeat what I wrote up-thread,
Aquinas wrote:The reason for this is that a lot of Particracy players, especially the longer-serving ones, are understandably averse to things changing too dramatically and too fast, which means some nations are retaining their high rankings on the basis of perceptions which were created through role-play done in the past. With the draft rankings, we tried to strike a balance between not unsettling players too much by making radical changes, and allowing nations to rise to more prominent positions on the basis of much more recent/current role-play. Did we strike the balance right? A question worth reflecting on, perhaps.
Bear in mind that although role-play is one of the criteria for the rankings, the other criteria is the views of players.
Both are important. But are the current lists over-ranking some of the less active nations? Maybe they are, I don't know - tell us! Again, please give us your views, everyone. We can have a good discussion and talk over any changes people want to propose. Also, it would be nice to see more specific proposals, in terms of the arguments for moving specific nations up or down the rankings.
