Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby Elf » Tue Dec 26, 2017 2:07 pm

Strongly in favour. Actually, when I and Reddy were mods, we discussed making it opt-out instead of opt-in. But I'd rather be in favour of removing it altogether and just enforcing it no matter. No nation in PT is an island were players can pretend they're in their own universe. If some aren't interested in military RP or whatever, just don't engage it in...
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby Corvo Attano » Tue Dec 26, 2017 2:18 pm

When rp moderators told me to change something in rp I negotiated and followed their directives.

When the same told me to scrap my inter continental ballistic missile program without room for negotiation the only thing I asked was if I could rp the program getting defunded and pushed back rather than scrap my whole RP.

If new players can't do simply things like this and immediately complain about being oppressed then I my opinion is that its not moderators or the rp accords fault.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby Reddy » Tue Dec 26, 2017 3:08 pm

As Elf stated, I'm in favour of making it an opt-out system in place of the current opt-in one. I don't have any strong feelings about the idea James presents here although I can foresee quite a bit of backlash. The idea that there's a small clique of players who run the game and act as a snobbish elite remains strong, although in my view, there's no such organisation. If there's any kind of oligarchy, it's an oligarchy of active players and that's the perfect kind. :) I think we can improve the current system and will present a few suggestions and observations below
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We should be careful not to overstate the problems related to god-modding or power playing. It is exceptionally rare and in my experience, virtually all of the god-modding players come to comply with the established norms. We should also pay mind to the fact that the vast majority of our 300 player base is entirely absent in active roleplay or any kind of participation beyond proposing bills and voting for them. This is a serious issue and I am simply not convinced that these players are not interested in RP. Rather, there's something that might be putting them off RP. This should be investigated.

The other real problem, in my view, is a general lack of confidence in the RP Team. The RP Team is viewed by a considerable number of players as filled with cronies, lazy/unavailable players and even players motivated purely by self-interest. The ranking system itself is not open enough to the public and this encourages all kinds of speculation. I believe it has improved remarkably in the past few months. As long as this PR problem of the Team is not resolved, we can only expect problems related to the low uptake and compliance with the Accord to continue. It has been argued that the historically low activity on the part of the Team is caused by the low ratification of the Accord. I have faith that this can be remedied a great deal by publicity action on the part of the Team itself. As Mod, one of the things I realised is the low amount of knowledge several players have about basic functions of the game let alone the stuff located on the forum.

I urge the RP Team to develop a strategy to mentor new players or at the very least, increase their awareness of the RP institutions of the game in a manner that does not intimidate or overwhelm the target player. I watched with envy when James created an organisation a few days back and within several hours, it had about 60 members or so. The same should be done with the RP Accord before we consider more comprehensive reforms. There's definitely a strong interest in RP, we just need to find a positive way to nurture it .
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby jamescfm » Thu Dec 28, 2017 12:53 pm

Reddy wrote:As Elf stated, I'm in favour of making it an opt-out system in place of the current opt-in one. I don't have any strong feelings about the idea James presents here although I can foresee quite a bit of backlash. The idea that there's a small clique of players who run the game and act as a snobbish elite remains strong, although in my view, there's no such organisation. If there's any kind of oligarchy, it's an oligarchy of active players and that's the perfect kind.

An opt-out system actually sounds like a better idea, now you mention it. The whole "clique" angle is why I never pushed for this when on Moderation or the RP Team because there are people who just can't stand to be evenly mildly inconvenienced from their version of playing the game.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby CCP » Thu Dec 28, 2017 8:49 pm

jamescfm wrote:The problem is the minority of players who act like their nation is some isolated piece of land on its own rather than part of a much larger, more complex world.


Could you give a hypothetical or real (meaning it happened in-game) example of the specific sort of RP problem you're trying to address (I'm assuming the 10,000 nukes was an exaggeration for effect). Because there are some RP areas where I'm personally not opposed to mandatory standardization but in the areas I have in mind, I think it's possible (and maybe easier and better) to get there with more surgical/less blanket solutions than a mandatory RP Accord. But I don't know if you have in mind the same kind of problems I'm thinking of, so please describe your vision a bit more.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby jamescfm » Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:37 am

CCP wrote:Could you give a hypothetical or real (meaning it happened in-game) example of the specific sort of RP problem you're trying to address (I'm assuming the 10,000 nukes was an exaggeration for effect). Because there are some RP areas where I'm personally not opposed to mandatory standardization but in the areas I have in mind, I think it's possible (and maybe easier and better) to get there with more surgical/less blanket solutions than a mandatory RP Accord. But I don't know if you have in mind the same kind of problems I'm thinking of, so please describe your vision a bit more.

I don't want to be too specific in terms of singling out players or events because that's not fair on those players, obviously. Nonetheless, I can give you a sort of general description of what I mean. I'm referring to players who will totally disregard any outside opinion on their role-play, especially that of the RP Team. Oftentimes, this means behaving as though their nation is significantly more economically or militarily powerful than it is and ignoring it's rankings status. What happens then is that because they can say "look at all this RP where nation X is behaving like a superpower", the RP team are forced to improve its ranking.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby Maxington » Fri Dec 29, 2017 11:51 am

When I had initially joined the RP Team and was in-charge of military centred role-play I got many messages about players bringing my attention to people being unrealistic. A fine example of this is Corvo. When i first interacted with him it was on the premise of making his role-play more realistic. He was extremely cooperative (for a new player) and also brought ideas forward on how he could coupled the suggestions i made which would have brought him back on the road of realism (with respect to his RP). Now, I have not had any negative interaction with players where it pertains to RP, especially military and economic. If an issue was brought to him, I messaged the person in question and outline to them where they have gone wrong (in the eyes of the RP Team) and i have suggested ways of improving their RP. Some players have asked me to make a "military information bill" for their nation and I have.

What james is saying i don't really agree with. Let's say that a small power (both economically and military) moves to build an aircraft carrier. Now he lays out all the necessary RP that would justify his decision. However, the RP Team WILL and explain to the player that it would not be possible for a small power (economically and militarily) to field an aircraft carrier. Now, some player may say "Well screw the RP Team then, I'm going to do what i want". There is one thing that they can never ignore. That is being left out of role-play events that could increase or decrease a nation's standing with respect to rankings.

I don't know whether the RP Team before the incumbent had the interactions I had. But when i say "Hey, your a small power on the military ranking, it would be unrealistic for you to be fielding this kind of equipment." players are usually extremely eager to improve their ranking. This sparks my response in which i outline to them what must be done.

In the past, I brought the concept of "If you are a middle power and lower and want technology (that is not an aircraft carrier or nuclear weapons), cooperate with either a great power or a regional power. I worked with Zanz in Rildanor to create ships. I worked with Hutori to create aircraft, I worked with Vanuku (when Kazulia was a regional power and Vanuku was a great power) to create a multi-role amphibious assault ship.

I guess what I am trying to bring to people's attention is the fact that not everyone is a dick that is going to ignore a rational suggestion that could improve their standing either in the interim or in the future. Although there are a handle of such people, they are easy to manage and can be worked around.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby CCP » Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:35 pm

jamescfm wrote:I'm referring to players who will totally disregard any outside opinion on their role-play, especially that of the RP Team. Oftentimes, this means behaving as though their nation is significantly more economically or militarily powerful than it is and ignoring it's rankings status. What happens then is that because they can say "look at all this RP where nation X is behaving like a superpower", the RP team are forced to improve its ranking.


Okay thanks, that does give a little more insight.

The issue though is how're you going to force the country in your hypothetical to comply? Let's say the Mods make the Accords mandatory game-wide. Now let's use Hawu as an example because it's a fairly well-known RP Team Rankings controversy and because it largely involves me and I'm here to defend myself, no one else will feel called out. So let's say the Accords are made mandatory today, then tomorrow Hawu continues as it always has -- engaging in military and econ RPs as it pleases, using volume and quality of posts to demonstrate its military and econ status. Now let's say after I've posted a news report about a large naval deployment from Hawu including Amphibious Attack Vessels and the like, the RP Team makes some public statement that says: because Hawu is listed as a small military power, no RP about it deploying Amphibious Attack Vessels can be done. And let's say I refuse to go along with the RP Team statement and continue RPing as I had been doing. What will the RP Team do at that point? Will it announce on the forum that me and Hawu aren't complying with the Accords and so every other country is require to ignore Hawu RPs? Well what if I find one or two players willing to continue RPing with me despite that? Will the RP team delete my forum RP posts, the ones they disagree with? What if I post new ones? Would my Wiki articles be reverted and edit-warred? Would I be banned from the Wiki? Would the Mods ban me from the game for RPing actively but in a way that the RP Team disagrees with?

Perhaps the answer is yes. After all, don't players get deactivated or blocked from re-activating if they don't comply with Cultural Protocols RP? But military and econ RP aren't as simple as changing the names of your characters and the title of your party. Back to the Hawu example, it took many hours and days to draft a single military RP post for Hawu. That's because I've always obsessed over quality when RPing. Let's say others also view my RP as high-quality and maybe high-volume, but they still believe I should be banned from the game for RPing contrary to RP Team statements. What that means is that a punitive comply-or-we'll-ban-you response could result in the most active or quality RPers being banned from RPing ostensibly for the purposes of improving RP.

The enforcement problem is the reason that Reddy's and Maxington's solutions seem the most effective to me right now. Maxington and Reddy say we don't have a big problem with rogue RPers. Maxington says a quick conversation with the worst offenders is usually enough to resolve any concerns. Reddy says the RP Team needs to get more players involved in RP possibly through some kind of marketing effort. In short, engagement rather than enforcement.

A good example of Engagement Rather Than Enforcement for me would be if the RP Team responds to objectionable RPers by RPing with or against them. For instance, if the RP Team thinks I'm RPing Hawu's military as too strong, the RP Team could test the Hawu military in RP. If I say Hawu has an Aircraft Carrier, the RP Team could bomb it to see if I can really sustain the force capacity I asserted. Or they could add a large debt to Hawu's government expenditures to represent the procurement of the Carrier. For the many players who only RP inside their countries and never visit the forums, the RP Team could post on their nation pages detailing the foreign policy impacts of those players' domestic RP. Or we could bring back a limited version of the Multiple Accounts Experiment and allow RP Team Members-Only to create multi accounts to RP against parties/players inside their countries/on their nation pages. Or the RP Team could use your (Jamescfm's) National Oceanagraphic Society (Indrala) example where you addressed the problems of non-standardization and local disagreements by asserting a standardization solution in the territory of the map you controlled. I don't know if you've started a party org for it, but you could obviously draw up a treaty asking governments to recognize, legitimize, and abide by the NOSI's body of water naming decisions. Because your NOSI RP has been high-quality, I think most players will sooner just accept than object to it, because objecting to it would mean having to do at least as much work undoing the solution as you've done fixing the problem.
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Re: Removing the RP Accord (Discussion)

Postby FPC » Sat Dec 30, 2017 11:56 am

A good example of Engagement Rather Than Enforcement for me would be if the RP Team responds to objectionable RPers by RPing with or against them. For instance, if the RP Team thinks I'm RPing Hawu's military as too strong, the RP Team could test the Hawu military in RP. If I say Hawu has an Aircraft Carrier, the RP Team could bomb it to see if I can really sustain the force capacity I asserted. Or they could add a large debt to Hawu's government expenditures to represent the procurement of the Carrier.


I like that idea
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