Cultural protocol feedback

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Cultural protocol feedback

Postby jamescfm » Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:11 pm

As noted in a previous update, players have had until the end of the day today to submit their cultural protocol for Moderation approval. At the moment forty-one of the fifty-two culturally protected countries have received approval for their cultural protocols. Four other countries submitted updates but did not receive approval (for a variety of reasons).

Over the coming days, Moderation will be making a decision about whether or not to offer approval for the existing cultural protocols in each of the remaining eleven countries. As a general rule, we will endeavour to retain cultural protocols unless it is thought that doing so would be detrimental to the overall player experience in the country, either because the cultural protocol is unclear or inaccessible, or because it contradicts the historic cultural background of the country.

The purpose of this thread is to allow players an opportunity to offer their feedback and suggestions about what should happen to the cultural protocols of these countries. In particular we are looking to hear from players who have played in these countries about their experience. Below is a list of the eleven countries in question, with a link to the current cultural protocol and a summary of the culture.
Alduria: French
Barmenistan: Kurdish
Hutori: Canadian
Ikradon: Ancient Egyptian-speaking African-American
Kalopia: Greek
Luthori: English
Mordusia: English with French minority
Rutania: English
Solentia: Arab
Vorona: English
Zardugal: Esperanto-speaking Byzantine
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby Pragma » Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:32 pm

Alduria: I lean towards maybe protecting. If we are to make a change maybe add in some occitan to differentiate it from the other Frenchy nations

Barmenistan: Unique thus protect, approve similar cultural protocol as status quo.

Hutori: Historically important thus protect, approve similar cultural protocol as status quo.

Ikradon: CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE, language is inaccessible and even if you invested hours of your own personal time into trying to comprehend the basics of ancient egyptian you would get nowhere near to an authentic modern language fit for purpose in the game. No wonder nobody plays in it. I would suggest preserving the ethnic element but finding a new language for the nation. I think maybe just adopt African American dialect as the language. It's a valid dialect in its own right and should not be thought of as undereducated. It is actually highly expressive and grammatically almost ingenious in many respects, codifying it would be an asset to the game.

Kalopia: Unique thus protect, approve similar cultural protocol as status quo.

Luthori: Historically important thus protect, approve similar cultural protocol as status quo.

Mordusia: Meh not a huge fan, not very distinct as is. I think the idea of having a romance-germanic mix is really interesting. I suggest moving towards the adoption of Luxembourgeois. Unique and fits the French meets Germanic dimension that has some potential.

Rutania: BORING. Maybe make inject something unique like Scots, Old English, Middle English, a particular region of the US, etc. Perhaps moving towards something different entirely is worth considering, or going culturally open.

Solentia: I lean towards maybe protecting. Perhaps make it so that it's more Maghrebian arab as opposed to Badara's gulf arab and Kafuristans's levant arab.

Vorona: BORING. Maybe make inject something unique like Scots, Old English, Middle English, a particular region of the US, etc. Perhaps moving towards something different entirely is worth considering, or going culturally open.

Zardugal: Unique thus protect, approve similar cultural protocol as status quo.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby cm9777 » Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:29 am

Having just moved to Ikradon myself after noticing it was empty I notice that much of the variables are obviously memey and trolly. Apparently “Arab Doge” is the leader of something. Personally I’d like to change Ikradon up a bit and if anyone would play here as well, I’d be willing to work with them to work something else. Overall, I’d favour an approach where the players in those nations determine if any changes should be made but I recognise this isn’t always possible.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby Aquinas » Sun Jul 12, 2020 1:30 am

Vorona should be set to Culturally Open like it is meant to be. The circumstances under which the CP there was implemented were extremely peculiar, as I explained here.

For reasons explained in the same post, the introduction of Solentia’s CP was also unorthodox. Given the question mark over whether another Arab nation is really needed in the game, and given also the long history of English/European RP in the nation, I recommend setting Solentia to Culturally Open.

There are serious accessibility issues with the Hawu/Ikradon CP, and yet there is also an extensive history of black/African culture in that nation. I suggest redrafting the CP to make it more accessible, but maintaining the black/African theme.

The other CPs, in my view, should all be preserved.

As a general point, I would support removing the requirement for a player to be in a nation continuously for 30 days before being allowed to bring forward a petition to make the nation Culturally Open. The reason being that all this does is make slightly inaccessible CPs easier to get rid of than very inaccessible ones, because if the CP is very inaccessible, nobody is likely to want to remain there for 30 days! Also, there is no objective “harm” in a player petitioning for Culturally Open status; if the request is considered unreasonable, Moderation can always reject it.

Going forwards, obviously, Moderators need to be conscientious about avoiding getting the Cultural Protocols Index in to such a mess again.

I would support changing the system to one where Moderation maintains a centralised document of all the demographic information for all of the nations, and then players can petition Moderation to make edits to it. This would, I feel, make things considerably easier from an administrative point of view.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby jamescfm » Mon Jul 13, 2020 8:28 am

Just as a note, the players in Rutania have now approved their cultural protocols substantively unchanged.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby Aquinas » Mon Jul 13, 2020 1:33 pm

jamescfm wrote:Just as a note, the players in Rutania have now approved their cultural protocols substantively unchanged.


I’m confused that a Cultural Protocol which has had its future put on the table has been allowed to be updated during the actual consultation period.

Does this count as an “affirmation”, making Rutania’s CP now “safe”?

Can the other CPs up for discussion on this thread also be affirmed and/or updated whilst the consultation is still going on?
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby jamescfm » Mon Jul 13, 2020 3:46 pm

In the Rutanian case, the cultural protocol had already been passed but it wasn’t recognised because it was part of a much longer role-play bill. The purpose of this discussion is to decide what should happen to those countries who have not received approval for their cultural protocols. If they receive approval for them, then obviously no decision needs to be made.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby Aquinas » Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:05 pm

jamescfm wrote:In the Rutanian case, the cultural protocol had already been passed but it wasn’t recognised because it was part of a much longer role-play bill. The purpose of this discussion is to decide what should happen to those countries who have not received approval for their cultural protocols. If they receive approval for them, then obviously no decision needs to be made.


With respect, there is nothing “obvious” about the process you have followed at all.

Reminding you of what you wrote on 28th June:

Providing an update on the process of updating the Cultural Protocol Index. At present there are twenty-six countries that have affirmed their cultural protocols and had them approved by Moderation six culturally open countries and twenty-six countries that have not had their cultural protocols approved.

All of the players in the latter group of countries will receive a reminder asking them to affirm their cultural protocol this evening and notifying them that the deadline to do so is 11 July. If countries have still not had their cultural protocols approved by this point then Moderation will make a decision regarding their position in public consultation with players. For this reason any player who wishes to ensure that their country retains its cultural protocols needs to ensure they submit an affirmation for Moderation approval before this deadline.

Please let us know if there are any questions and we'll do our best to offer some clarity.


Here, you are saying “affirm your Cultural Protocol by 11th July or we will hold a consultation about its future”. Now you are saying it’s okay for nations to affirm their CPs after that date. Obviously this somewhat undermines the value of the consultation exercise. ie. What is the point in players going to the effort of expressing their view about a particular CP, when it can suddenly be “affirmed” and taken off the table whilst the consultation is still actually going on? Besides being inefficient, that’s also kinda not being generally very respectful of our time, to be honest.

You are also now saying this process is only about deciding “what should happen to those countries who have not received approval for their Cultural Protocols”. Yet as I have already gone to the effort of researching and pointing out, most of the CPs on the list HAVE been approved of by Moderation on the CP thread already. If the whole concern here really, genuinely, sincerely is simply to ensure all CPs have been approved on the CP thread, why not focus this consultation instead on the (very small) number of cases where we cannot establish this was done?

Also, given you have now decided to “save” Rutania’s CP, presumably it would make sense to amend the OP to reflect this.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby jamescfm » Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:22 pm

Okay, I apologise if the process was unclear to you. As I mentioned in a previous response to your queries, the purpose of the process is that by the end of it all of the countries on the Cultural Protocols Index will have had their cultural protocols explicitly approved by a member of the current Moderation team. As illustrated with the Vorona case that you have discussed, previous Moderators retroactively seeking to implement cultural protocols has been problematic and this is the reason that we are not doing it. When I use the phrase "cultural protocols that have not received approval", I mean those that do not link to an approval post on the Index.

I don't think that what you quoted contradicts the action that has been taken regarding Rutania. The purpose of the deadline was to identify a time at which Moderation would begin the process of making a decision about those cultural protocols that have not received approval. In outlining the process we have deliberately left some room for flexibility because it is an unusual circumstance and we do not want to punish players for being unfamiliar with the procedures that we are following.

The purpose of this consultation is to make a decision about the cultural protocols that have not been approved. If the players in a country signal that they want to retain their cultural protocols, then I think it would be unfair to them to deny them that on the basis that an external group of players may have conflicting views on the matter and especially if they have followed all the ordinary procedures to do so. As I said in the original post "we will endeavour to retain cultural protocols unless it is thought that doing so would be detrimental to the overall player experience in the country".

As for removing Rutania from the original post, I don't think that is necessary. The change is noted in the thread to make it clear to players and retroactively editing my post would make it confusing for players to then read Pragma offering feedback on the Rutanian cultural protocol. Given that the thread has now been open for a couple of days, I would like to offer some of my own preliminary thoughts on the matter.

The key cases in the short discussion so far seem to have been Ikradon, Solentia and Vorona. Although I understand perhaps some player may feel like the cultural protocols of countries like Mordusia are boring, it is true that English-speaking countries have a disproportionately high number of active players. For this reason it would seem that there is compelling reason to ensure that this demand for countries that have English as a primary language is met. On top of that Mordusia did attempt to pass cultural a protocol update that retained their English-speaking majority, so it would seem that they would prefer that this cultural background is retained.

In the case of Ikradon, one potential option would be to preserve the general cultural background of the country but slightly modify the linguistic component. For example, the "Neter Senek" (Ancient Egyptian) might be retained as a formal or classical language among a certain elite but the rest of the country might be said to speak a more accessible language (like English). In this way the role-play that utilised "Neter Senek" wouldn't be overridden but new players would feel able to role-play with the country in an easier manner.

The truth is that since the cultural protocol was implemented in Solentia, the nation has been almost entirely empty. At the same time we have two other Arab countries in the region that have been generally limited to one active player. Given that the country also has an extensive role-play history linking it to English and the fact mentioned above about demand for English countries, there is a case that making it culturally open would generate increased engagement.

Vorona appears to me to be the clearest case of the group. The current cultural protocol was rejected when it was first submitted for approval but some previous Moderation team decided to unilaterally implement it. I do not know who took the decision, nor do I understand why it was taken. Even aside from the irregular implementation however, the current cultural protocol is unclear and contradicts the country's historic cultural background. Finally the only active player in the country has signalled that he wants the country to be made culturally open.
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Re: Cultural protocol feedback

Postby alaskancrabpuffs21 » Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:29 pm

I do think that countries need to still have the option of being culturally open. Vorona is a great example of this. Vorona can be different from every other nation, unique and that is fine. Not every nations needs a CP. For years I played in Solentia back when it had no CP and players played it like a German Norwegian State. I would like to support the notion of making Vorona Culturally Open!!!!

I also think that a lot of parties that played in Solentia (me included, that is where I started out at first), really enjoyed the English style rp we did. Ever since the CP I agree it has been dead as a nail in Solentia. I liked the days when it was Culturally Open, we should bring it back to that again. As much as I like to see realistic rp, if a country has been one thing for as long as the game has existed, why change it, if it ain't broken, don't fix it...
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