by GreekIdiot » Tue Sep 19, 2023 11:08 am
Hello everyone. It seems we've strayed off the discussion; let's re-focus.
Here's what I see:
1 - This is just a game pretty much all of us just want to play together.
2 - We have some disagreements on the age old argument between binding rules and non binding rules.
3 - There's a need to bring in some clarity on the constitution of game rules and how players/RPC/Moderation interact.
This community and by extension Terra, a fictional world loosely based in real life, is so goddamn robust it takes my breath away. And it's not robust because of its randomly generated indexes that "keep the peace", it's because of its player base doing 2 things:
1 - Having fun with roleplaying, you know, real fun, the one you have playing a game you like to play. I like geopolitics, Lig seems to like navy boats, Hyr likes intelligence and culture, Farsun likes military and structure, Svet likes conflict, James likes, eh, apparently corrupt mobsters, Zanz likes in-depth culture driven geo...camel milking; you get my point. We can pickup on what we like, we can ignore what we don't like.
2 - Having fun with each other. The actual problem is here.
Now, let's take a closer look at the problem. Our tools to properly play with each other:
1 - Game Rules, we disagree on the how
2 - Cultural Protocols, we disagree on the how
3 - Dynamic Rankings, we disagree on the how
4 - Populations
5 - Oil & Gas Index, we disagree on the how
6 - Resources Index, we disagree on the how
Seeing as how we're disagreeing on the how, we're getting back to the root(s) of the age old argument and the game rules themselves. I may be at risk at stating the obvious but I'm gonna go ahead and say it anyway as clear as I can:
1 - Everybody doing whatever they want and everybody ignoring them because of the lack of a set of binding rules.
2 - Nobody doing anything and nobody trying because of a set of binding rules.
Insofar as the resources index is concerned, as Aud also said, we may have locked them down but since we can't really go through thousands of forum posts we will be more than happy to readjust if we missed anything substantial (no, 1 forum post with 150 characters 500 years ago doesn't count). I already spoke to Aud about injecting some flexibility to the tools in a manner of "everybody can play with uranium, but if you really wanna play with it, here's a list of nations that have it in big chunks because that's how Terra looks like" but we have concerns over "everybody playing with uranium negating those actually playing with it".
There are problems with it? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Does it need time to mature? Yes! Will we consider everyone's feedback, corrections and input? Yes!
What seems to be the actual need is for Moderation and by extension the RPC to circle back on all these tools by:
1 - Focusing on the balance of these tools so as to enable and not deter players from having fun.
2 - Revisiting aspects of these tools and mapping out needs on pillars of a) clarity, b) accountability and c) guidance.
3 - Providing updates to the community in a manner that enables players to not only stay up to date but also provide feedback.
4 - Dedicating some time to improve the user interface (aka forums) on where and how these tools are updated.
Having said that, this will need time and in the meantime will require understanding and guidance on all sides (incl. the resources index).
Now, would I be crazy to assume that we're all arguing here because we all want to keep improving the game?
If I'm not, then stick with me; we've done so much together already.