by Polites » Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:13 am
Alright, here's my response to the several issues that have been brought up, if I've missed anything please let me know.
1. As Fin mentioned, Davostan is the one nation where we really have no clear idea what would fit, and so we're open to a more detailed consultation with Davostan players. One thing that's been consistent there is Satanism, which is why we're considering a vaguely fantasy theme. But just to clarify, we intend the whole game to remain rooted in 21st century technology, so there will certainly be no elves, (actual) magic, warlocks, or fire-breathing dragons. As for languages, we're considering Finnish and Welsh partly because those are the languages Tolkien used to model his Elvish languages, so they'd provide a vaguely fantasy feel.
I also notice a surprising amount of support for Anglo-Saxon (Old English) as an In-Game culture and language. We wanted to remove that from Deltaria and Vorona since it generally failed to attract significant long-term player commitment. But if there is some support for this, would people in Davostan be willing to see Anglo-Saxon (and maybe even Old Norse) introduced as small minorities there? I think that would square with the fantasy-ish theme of the nation.
2. It is far too late in the game to do a full reset of all cultures, so we're maintaining a lot of potential inconsistencies and cultural mixes that would be hard for people to wrap their heads around, because they have a very long in-game history and loads of RP behind them. We've keeping French and Persian cultures right next to each other in Seleya and we're keeping Mayans and Japanese in Sekowo, for instance.
3. We're going to keep Hawu and we've already reached a settlement on Malivia. The point of this new rule isn't to completely revamp the map to suit Moderation interests, it's to make rules surrounding culture simpler and more straightforward than Cultural Protocols. So we're taking player input into account, and we'll continue to do so, without the complex and confusing requirements behind updating and passing Cultural Protocols.
4. As CCP pointed out, the Hawu are like African Americans but they are not literal African Americans. I understand and agree with that, but that holds true for every other ethnic group in this game. We're aiming for the nation descriptions we will provide (hopefully today-ish) to be as simple and straightforward as possible. So for instance we probably won't provide detailed place of origin information for all the Hawu sub-groups, just like how we will likely not mention detailed sub-cultural breakdowns for all other major ethnic groups. We feel that all that detail, including the manner in which IG groups differ from their RL counterparts, are best left for the interested players to develop and elaborate without the need for Moderation involvement. If it's something that doesn't impact character names and in-game language use, then I don't think it requires Moderation endorsement. As for the 80/15/5 makeup, we're not actually insisting on it, it's our first suggestion but we're willing to change it.
5. In what regards the consultation as a whole, while we did get significant opposition to the new rule, most of it was more along the lines of "Why you making my nation culture X when it's always been culture Y?". We've already reached some settlements and compromises in several such nations, and we'll continue to do so as the consultation continues. We've also received quite a lot of support from newer and/or less RP experienced players, many of whom pointed out that they just wanted to know how to name their damned characters and found the Cultural Protocols rules confusing. So I am fairly confident this new rule has some strong backing from precisely the kind of players who some fear would be turned off by it.