FPC wrote:OK everything has clearly gotten out of hand a bit here. We want an open consultation where everyone is allowed to voice their opinion and we apologise if any negativity has got in the way of that.
CCP wrote:LukasV wrote:this map does not replace cultural protocols, nor does it railroad RP in any certain way. This is more of a way to solidify one element in a nation as kind of an identifier that players ought to be aware of and could use to maximize their RP potential in the game. Cultural protocols are still malleable enough for players to create minority classes, to break away from some of the traditional norms here and there, and ultimately players still have the ability to determine the general direction of their nation and culture in this way. I believe that this map is more of a nudge towards having a general idea of what cultures are where, so that it can be used as an RP tool for international affairs between nations, etc.
You seem very sure of this. What gave you this impression? Have the moderators stated somewhere that CPs will be preserved if this new rule and their map go into effect? Can you link me to those statements if so? I have understood that the moderators are proposing to remove CPs from the game. If they're just proposing a guideline map instead, this whole thing seems unnecessary because we already have such a guideline in the Cultural Protocals Index thread.
"You believe you have dominion
So you force your lame opinions on me
And my eggshell mind"
Polites wrote:Ok, let's all take a breather for a moment. Clearly this is something that a lot of people feel very strongly about, and on my part I apologize if I've come across as rude or disrespectful.
Now, I'd like to address some of the points that have been brought up:
1) Under the proposed system, Cultural Protocols would end up replaced with some rather minimal and simple descriptions, and in many cases this may end up overlooking some of the more complex and detailed Cultural Protocols. This is a feature, not a bug of the proposed reform. A lot of Cultural Protocols (some of them actually introduced by myself as a player, but that should not be relevant to this discussion) we believe are overly detailed, making them hard to understand at a glance and thus making the nations in question less accessible to players that do not care much for world-building. In moving to a brief and simple description there is the risk that years of detailed world-building and cultural RP may be underestimated. However, we feel that the elaborate details in question are best left to those players that are committed to working on said details, without the need for Moderation involvement. In practice, for the average player that just wants to play as the Social Democratic Party in Hulstria (to give a random example) it makes no difference whether the Hulstrians are a direct copy of RL Austrians or a German-speaking colonial minority revolting against Victorian Britain thousands of years ago and then imitating the latter's political system. If anyone cares about where exactly Hulstrians came from, what music they listen to and what food they eat, what their relations with the Kunihito are, how they see the former metropolis, etc., they can find all of that on the wiki, and I don't think Moderation should get involved in determining and/or protecting these details. If they don't matter for day-to-day RP and gameplay, then they only matter for a small number of players.
2) As you may have noted, the very detailed Cultural Protocols (and as a matter of fact most Cultural Protocols) are the work of a small but dedicated minority of players. Most players are here for the political simulation, not the world-building. Under the proposed reform we believe that those players that do not care about world-building can have a greater voice in determining the cultural makeup of their nations.
3) Cobura actually is a good example of the problems that arise from the current system. As it stands, it is a mix of Ethiopian, Byzantine, Egyptian, and Serbian cultures, until recently with relatively equal weight for each of them. It is a fascinating nation (which I helped develop myself), but the problem is, that ethnic mix is not something most people could easily wrap their head around, and Cobura's player number throughout its history reflects that. And as it turns out, the current makeup of Cobura is the result of Cultural Protocols rules which allow minute changes and only after considerable RP, which means that difficult cultures can only be modified after a (very) long period of time and in practice only by the small minority of players that care about such things. The current makeup I think owes more to the fact that Coburan RP has been boxed in a particular combination stemming from the very first Cultural Protocol (that included Slovak, Celtic, Spanish, African, Arabic, Russian, and German cultures), gradually modified over the years, than from the desire of Coburan players to establish an Ethiopian-Byzantine-Egyptian-Serbian mix.
4) If you check the Base Culture Documents you will see that we are in fact trying to maintain RP continuity in most if not all nations.
5) The final number of English-speaking (and English-culture) nations will be slightly larger than the current Base Culture Documents.
6) The survey - we called it a survey and not a referendum, because we're not looking at the final vote count to determine the winner, precisely because it can be manipulated and it is not clear how much each individual player may have understood from what is being asked from them. We wanted to see if there is broad consensus for the proposed reform, and we believe that consensus exists. We provided additional details (including a link to this very thread) to all players and/or nations, and we answered a lot of questions that we received privately. So we're confident we have a pretty broad and informed consensus.
7) Yep the point of this reform is to replace the Cultural Protocols with centrally-defined brief nation descriptions. We are using the current Cultural Protocols as one source of information, but not exclusively so.
8) We did our best to emphasize those cultures and languages that would be accessible to the average player with a brief Google search (and mainly languages found on Google Translate), what "exotic" cultures are still there in the description?
"You believe you have dominion
So you force your lame opinions on me
And my eggshell mind"
LukasV wrote:I thought this whole thing was to help establish a dominant culture in these nations to ease the RP in that manner. Summarizing the CPs in a more understandable way seems much more preferable than to just assume "yeah, things are overly complicated, let's just wipe things and open it up a bit so that people can just determine their own direction." Seems overkill to bother with such a thing. But if that's the intended purpose of this map and this proposed ruling, then I have clearly misunderstood and stand opposed to have something like this replace that which can be considered as centuries of work and RP.
LukasV wrote: Yes, you can argue that people like the English nations because more players play in them; however, why should that actually have to result in more English nations as a whole? There is no more dominant culture that spans over more nations than the in-game "Anglosphere", and it doesn't stand to reason to have to arbitrarily create more of them.
LukasV wrote: Now, why do I say first batch. This is because I would also presume that, not unlike cultural protocols, there would be an element of cultural drift that would be appropriate in each nation, based solely in RP, be it domestic or foreign. Of course, the determining factor would have to be the amount of time that would need to pass before each such change, but I'm sure we can settle on something reasonable that will work for all parties. But we must make a focus on the RP elements of this, so that, as was previously also mentioned, the preexisting cultural protocols aren't simply trashed at the whims of inactives and new arrivals and such.
CCP wrote: So your philosophy as displayed in this thread and your map is very clearly not rooted in protecting players' hard work for years down the line. In fact, your map actively searches out countries where years of RP have been done and arbitrarily reworks those countries. The only play styles that seem to be protected by your map are those of players who prefer a RP stasis (meaning that Terra's societies basically never change ethnically, culturally, economically, or militarily) and players who like to jump from country to country inserting new (and often historically esoteric) ethnicities often without any RPed basis like Polities and lately James tend to do. Apparently the rest of us will be stuck negotiating with whoever you and Wouter decide to choose as moderators. And when those moderators tell us "we're going to wipe out all your hard work for the sake of simplicity and straightforwardness" or "we're going to wipe out all your hard work for the sake of sense and realism" or whatever the story happens to be that day, we players are just going to be shit out of luck.
Polites wrote:A lot of Cultural Protocols (some of them actually introduced by myself as a player, but that should not be relevant to this discussion) we believe are overly detailed, making them hard to understand at a glance and thus making the nations in question less accessible to players that do not care much for world-building.
16.3.1 The Cultural Protocol bill should be presented in such a way that a new player could glance at it and very quickly be able to identify the key demographic data. Cultural Protocol bills should be short and simple. They should not include an excessive amount of text and extraneous information.
Polites wrote: 2) As you may have noted, the very detailed Cultural Protocols (and as a matter of fact most Cultural Protocols) are the work of a small but dedicated minority of players. Most players are here for the political simulation, not the world-building. Under the proposed reform we believe that those players that do not care about world-building can have a greater voice in determining the cultural makeup of their nations.
Polites wrote: 3) Cobura actually is a good example of the problems that arise from the current system. As it stands, it is a mix of Ethiopian, Byzantine, Egyptian, and Serbian cultures, until recently with relatively equal weight for each of them. It is a fascinating nation (which I helped develop myself), but the problem is, that ethnic mix is not something most people could easily wrap their head around, and Cobura's player number throughout its history reflects that. And as it turns out, the current makeup of Cobura is the result of Cultural Protocols rules which allow minute changes and only after considerable RP, which means that difficult cultures can only be modified after a (very) long period of time and in practice only by the small minority of players that care about such things. The current makeup I think owes more to the fact that Coburan RP has been boxed in a particular combination stemming from the very first Cultural Protocol (that included Slovak, Celtic, Spanish, African, Arabic, Russian, and German cultures), gradually modified over the years, than from the desire of Coburan players to establish an Ethiopian-Byzantine-Egyptian-Serbian mix.
16.7 Moderation will not accept Cultural Protocol updates which introduce, on a significant scale, cultures which are likely to be insufficiently accessible to players. In particular, for all significant cultures in Particracy, it should be easy for players to access and use online resources to assist with language translation and the generation of character names. Moderation reserves the right to amend Cultural Protocols which are deemed to have introduced significant cultures that are not sufficiently accessible and which are not being actively role-played with.
16.5.1 Whilst significant changes should always be justified by role-play, where certain factors are present, Moderation reserves the discretion to adopt a more restrictive or a more relaxed approach to proposed changes. These factors include:
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to protect or promote cultures regarded as under-represented in the game world.
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to limit or reduce cultures regarded as over-represented in the game world.
- Where there are issues involved with a culture not being sufficiently accessible to players.
- Where players not present in the nation but with a strong connection to it are deemed to have presented a strong case. In particular, the nation's recent players, as well as players in the surrounding nations, may be deemed to have a legitimate interest.
16.5 As a general convention, players should be able to provide good reasons if they want to significantly change Cultural Protocols which are less than 30 in-game years old. Where the Cultural Protocols are more than 30 in-game years old, then a change to any of the categories by 5% or less will generally be accepted without question. If the changes proposed are between 5 and 10%, then players should be prepared for the possibility of having the changes queried. If the changes proposed are over 10%, then players should always expect to need to provide strong role-play justification for the changes. Changes of over 15% will never be accepted unless the grounds for justification are exceptional.
15. Requests for Culturally Open Status
15.1 In order to become a Culturally Open country, a bill requesting such a change must first be passed. It has to be supported by a 2/3rds majority of all players with seats (not just those with seats who vote) and over 50% of the seats in the legislature. Also, at least two of the players sponsoring the bill must have been currently continuously active in the nation (ie. no inactivations) for at least 2 months.
15.2 A request for approval of the bill should then be posted on the Requests for Culturally Open Status thread. In order to become official, the request must then be approved by Moderation. Moderation reserves the right to reject such a request where such a request is motivated by malicious intent or the targeted culture is deemed to be under-represented in the game.
15.2.1 Moderation will not approve of such a request within the first 96 hours of it being requested. This is in order to give other players a chance to query the proposed changes, if they wish to do so.
Polites wrote: 4) If you check the Base Culture Documents you will see that we are in fact trying to maintain RP continuity in most if not all nations.
Polites wrote: 6) The survey - we called it a survey and not a referendum, because we're not looking at the final vote count to determine the winner, precisely because it can be manipulated and it is not clear how much each individual player may have understood from what is being asked from them. We wanted to see if there is broad consensus for the proposed reform, and we believe that consensus exists. We provided additional details (including a link to this very thread) to all players and/or nations, and we answered a lot of questions that we received privately. So we're confident we have a pretty broad and informed consensus.
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