Feedback: Political protocols

[dannypk]

I already discussed this through Discord, and I'll repeat that I'm also frustrated by the fact that new parties come to a nation without respecting a possibly realistic RP. While the reason why I started the discussion yesterday was because of a party not respecting an RP law made by an inactive party, and as james told me, it wasn't approved by moderation and no other player was active in the nation to enforce it, the law was still followed by a couple of RP events and situations.

So, imagine I joined a nation, had full control of it, and then passed an RP law in which I banned non-leftist parties as I did in Trigunia a month ago. Everything goes okay, everyone respects it, but we all go inactive and a new party joins, ignoring all the RP we've been doing: working on the establishment of a socialist state, a new constitution that "controlled" RP in our nation. The new party will become right-wing, will start doing a lot of changes and destroying all the RP previously done.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these parties are trolling or doing something bad, but it's unrealistic and kind of makes people who works a lot on RP think their RP is meaningless, and that they need to be constantly controlling it to make sure it isn't suddenly, through unrealistic ways, destroyed. I believe these players are people who genuinely want to have a fun time here and probably still need to get used to mechanics, the community, etc. So what we should do is help them and try to arrive at an agreement to make these changes realistic, even at the expense of more time to pursue those changes.

The reason why I didn't sign this all is precisely for what both Aquinas and james have said, it sounded disrespectful and didn't offer any solution, but only complained (again, in a disrespectful way). And despite agreeing in some parts of it, I couldn't sign it.

I personally think that it's not moderation that should really create political protocols, but rather enforce political protocols created by players in their respective nations. I'll use Trigunia as an example of political protocols not approved by moderation itself, when I made the constitution in which, amongst other things, I prohibited the existence of non-leftist parties, this was merely to protect the RP of a socialist state that didn't end up being ruined by a right-wing party suddenly winning a majority soon after I start working on a socialist state. And all the new parties that joined (excluding a probable troll party) respected this without me requiring to tell them about this constitution, they read it alone and followed it. But if a party now didn't follow it, I would tell them, without being disrespectful, to follow them, and if they didn't want to RP a socialist party and wanted to stay in Trigunia, I would put the RP law in vote again and make moderation officially approve it.

But again, I'll have to agree that immediately jumping to the conclusion that they're trolling, or that they're ignorant, or anything of the style, isn't the way to fix these issues, and I doubt a 90% of the cases it's been trolling, being ignorant or any of the mentioned.

[moderates]

i think political protocols would be good for improving RP as well as stopping systems being changed by players who may then inactivate. For example, if a player joins a country now then they may have the sole aim of changing the poltiical system (republicans in a monarchy etc), and not actually do any RP that is not based around that. Granted, RP about changing the system is a good oppurtunity for RP but if someone just continually goes on about it and doesn't RP much about it that hinders theirs, and other players in the nation's RP.

Also, it means RP is consistent. if someone joins then changes a system from Republic to Monarchy then it upsets the RP. It can also upset RP for new players, as in the Republic to Monarchy example, older or newer monarchist parties may just change back to Monarchy the second they get into government, so it may just be a long drawn out battle of changing back and forward to Monarchy and Republic. This means that probably no or very little other RP will happen, and that nations can retain some consistency and have RP that is not related to changing political systems.

[DueWizard70]

Even though I did sign this, I must admit that the language used can be somewhat offensive. Apologies.

Now, the in-game mechanics themselves are not necessarily "stupid", but I do believe that at times they can be very limiting for RP. This is because if a player that visits once every 3 days wins, any sort of reform is halted for the next IRL week or so, or until the next election. Same thing with new people who don't RP.

Now, let me be clear, I am not in any way blaming them. When you are new to the game it can be difficult to RP. I also know that many of the people who don't RP as much have other things to deal with. And I am also not saying that they are actively trolling, at least not the majority.

I'm just saying that having these protocols could make it a bit easier to RP without the fear of someone who does not RP winning and making significant changes that go against what the established RP of the nation is.

I also know that many of the people who don't RP as much have other things to deal with.

[moderates]

Exactly, I don't think they're stupid but they can be annoying if you have RPed something for ages and then the mechanics just "ruin" it by allowing a new player to get into government and change it. And it's true that about 99% of new players don't join to maliciously troll and ruin well developed RP, but that they just want to change it, which I get can be annoying for old players in that nation.

[moderates]

I also apologise if some of the language used was offensive.

[robmark0000]

Yes, the language was little bit French, I am sorry for this, the cause of it is simply that I was really frustrated at the time because of this. However, this is still don't changing the essence: political protocols are NECESSARY.

The letter really doesn't was an explanation, it was a complaint, what's goal was to restart the discussion about political protocols. And as the Moderation can see, the political protocols isn't a question of should we do this anymore, but it is a question of how we should do this. So I propose to Moderation to create a plan, a compromise what good for every parties of this discussion.

[jamescfm]

Thanks to everybody who has responded for sharing their thoughts, it is clear that some players feel strongly about this issue. Over the next few days, the Moderation team will have some internal discussion on the subject of political protocols and talk about the concerns that have been raised here. At the moment it would be difficult to say what is going to happen next but we will consider the suggestions that have been made. For now I would only like to make a handful of general observations about the feedback and comments that have been shared within this thread.

The first is that a significant portion of the problems that are being raised by players in this thread are already manageable under the current Game Rules. As has been pointed out a couple of times the rules around "nation raiding" specifically prohibit players from colluding to undermine role-play in a manner that is targeted towards particular players or their role-play. Likewise if there are players who are cheating the inactivation system and disrupting the experience of the game for other players then we have a couple of rules addressed at this, specifically the rules on "party sitting" and "dodging inactivation". The extensive scope for role-play laws that exists performs many of the roles that players seem to want political protocols to fulfil.

The second point has been noted already but I want to re-emphasise it: Particracy is not only a role-playing game. Section 6 of the Game Rules summarises this explicitly when saying that "at its core, Particracy is a political simulator". No player- regardless of the length of time that they have played the game- is obligated to engage in role-play. At some points in this thread a couple of players seem to be operating on the assumption that players who role-play actively are somehow entitled to dismiss those who only utilise the core game mechanics.

Like many of you I enjoy the role-playing aspects of the game the most and I would encourage all players to give role-play a chance but the Moderation team is not going to punish players who choose to play the game in a different manner. Particracy is a political simulation game and that means that new players and parties will arrive and win elections eventually and that they will enact policies and legislation that you do not agree with or that contradicts the in-character preferences of your party.

Nothing about this behaviour constitutes "trolling" nor does it ruin or remove role-play that has existed in the past. Players do not owe it to you to provide a role-play explanation for passing legislation or supporting changes to political policies because they do not owe it to you to role-play in the first place. If you aren't willing to accept this fundamental component of the game or you find that you are unable to adapt to a changing political environment then (as was already suggested) it might be a better experience for you to focus on the forum-based ("Third World") countries.

Finally any system of political protocols would be a substantial change to the duties of the Moderation team and would be potentially very disruptive to the operation of the game. At the moment the active player community is relatively small compared to where it was a few years ago (primarily because of the new game that Wouter has been developing) and approving changes that are likely to discourage new players- which political protocols most certainly would- is something that we would not do without a strong and compelling reason.

In a similar way it would significantly alter the tasks that Moderators are expected to perform, in that we may end up in a position where we have to remove bills from active parties on the basis of the variables they propose to modify. Unless we were confident that the changes would substantially improve player experience this is not something that we would take on.

[jamescfm]

Following up on my previous response and having considered the matter for some time (taking into account the other feedback we received), Moderation has decided that we will not be implementing any system of "political protocols" for the foreseeable future. The basis for our decision is well-covered in my previous posts but it is primarily motivated by the extensive provisions that already exists to protect players from trolling behaviour. For this reason we do not feel that it is necessary to make a fundamental change to the functioning of the game in the form of political protocols to deal with this problem.