[zericosmic]

We've been having this discussion a lot lately, but I feel as though the world of Korvara has grown stagnant, and dull, and people don't want to deal with largescale player conflict/consequence and all that stuff.. As it also happens to be, the nations are now all friendly with one another, and perhaps for the best, this will not be changing any time soon.

 But I feel like a compromise could be made, that avoids treading on peoples toes.. A nation that is straight up evil, that is within the control of the EMs, GMs and Dev, but allows for player characters to be a part of it. This way, any large scale conflict would generally happen in an event controlled environment, and sporadic content such a PvE encounters, but it would also allow for players who wish to be part of this antagonist nation to create smaller scale conflicts around the world, and potentially use it to further its story, also it would allow for these antagonist characters to have an actual place in the world that can't be cracked down upon by everyone in a matter of seconds, and that could actually give them resources to not instantly get gibbed by a nation's attention being turned towards them.

Think of something like The Lich King from warcraft.. This nation would have to be more powerful than the player nations, to give everyone content without having the combined effort of all the nations instantly crushing it, but its large scale efforts would exist in controlled environments by EMs.. And the players? Well the players would have a reason to provide conflict to a stagnant world, having a place where they can actively RP safely, whilst also being able to easily work with other antagonist characters, rather than having to go on discord LFP or DMs to find them, not to mention that it would provide these player characters with a whole new reason to antagonize.

It would exist as a threat for everyone to consider, it would exist as a thing people could be connected to in their backstories, and also potentially suffer distrust from other characters for having come from said place. Drop a race of something like ghouls that tend to be the large majority of the force of this evil nation, and now those players would have to deal with the consequence of the first introduction of their people being from a monstrously evil kingdom. (This is also mostly just an example, insert whatever type of evil kingdom you want in here)

You could have year long campaigns of fighting this nation, and potentially even in time, destroying it, ALSO GIVING THE PEOPLE WHO ALGINED WITH IT THE CONSEQUENCE ROLEPLAY OF THEIR NATION BEING DESTROYED, AND PROVIDING SOME AMOUNT OF ACTUAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE WORLD, AN IOTA OF CHANGE. And this is something that I personally want to discuss, as the game progresses, we keep getting more PvE, more balance, all good stuff, but despite stuff like the raids of Duyuei existing, very few people are interested in engaging with them on a roleplay level, and often this content gets abandoned for long periods of time, that is because this game is populated by roleplayers, and roleplayers are interested in narrative conflict, in narrative consequences, there are no narrative consequences to failing the Duyuei raid (hell some people prefer to fail it to just spend time repairing the wall), there is no feeling either of narrative triumph by completing something like the Duyuei raid, because the threat feels artificial. This game is incredibly mechanical for a game which people play to roleplay. People sign up to events in droves, and would much rather have interesting interpersonal roleplay than do PvE, because there is so much more fun to be had with a narrative back and fourth, over just a mechanical one.

A threat like the watcher, generated an insane amount of interaction between the characters of this world, characters that potentially never would have interacted had this eventline not happened, and I personally think it was doing a world a lot of good to have this constant interaction, to have characters gather to plan against it, and discuss what can be done, and how they feel about this threat, It generated a lot of roleplay. And I as a new player at the time, felt very welcomed by this, because I did not have to be part of a group to participate in this, I could hear about it from almost everywhere, and I could act on what I heard without having to be part of a nation's guard or some group to be able to join in on this story, and I could make friends by interacting with strangers during this story.

In a few month old survey now, when asked for what kind of event content people would enjoy, a large worldly threat, a thing to actually wage war against was easily the most popular answer given, in fact iirc, almost everyone who did the survey, answered that they wanted this.. So I personally feel like its worth giving a shot.. Hell if it goes poorly, we can just end it with the storyline, right then and there.

[caliaca]

Hi.

I suggested this months ago and provided the results of the survey that I made. The thing referenced in the post is what I designed/brainchilded.

The modmail for it hasn't been answered yet.

Here was my suggestions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------


I've noticed, during my times EMing and leading the following things.

1. People want conflict and adversity. They want something to drive their characters forward. However, in general, they don't want that conflict and adversity between players. The ywant it against something they feel they'll eventually win in and will have real stakes and impact.

2. People generally want smaller events that are broken up and part of a whole. Like 4-8 person events or 4-16 person events that contribute to something greater.

3. People want things to be cohesive. They want a world that makes sense and has some definition but not too much to be restrictive.

The main problem that we have right now is that most events and lines can't really provide this. The stakes aren't big enough, and in the case they are, every one want to be involved in the same place at the same time. This is the Watcher case. These don't make these events bad, it's just not people really getting what they want in the end, at least not the core desire.

So how do we actually provide something that does? I think there's a solution here. There's an event line I want to do that would involve the invasion of Korvara by a force beyond the island, one equal to the four nations so people would have to defend their homes and band together all scruffy and rambunctious like.

Die fighting beside a Geladynian? Nay, die fighting beside a friend.

This has some MAJOR, MAJOR first steps.

1. Actually judging a poll of interest to see if people would be interested in something like this.

2. Clearing with the EM team to make sure everyone is on board and willing to run stuff.

3. Clearing with Dev and GM team to make sure it'd even be feasible.

But the idea from there is that there'd be several different events on the same day across the isle. Instead of having a 30 person defense event in telegrad, we'd have an 8 person event in Geladyne, an 8 person event in Duyuei, 10 in Meiaquar, etc.

Not only that, but we could make heavy use of NPCs and set dressing, up the production value to really make sure that the scale is felt even with the reduced amount of players. Make sure that we're getting really good writers and prepping stuff a few days in advance so that we have some killer narrates going. Tap people like caboozles for images and sound, maps for the battles and custom battlefields.

Let *everyone* contribute but in smaller events spread out so that they can get together after and talk about the experience.

I have way more on it but this is a good over view?

[Lolzytripd]

I would definitely like something like this to give the current nations a threat to fight as the good guys while giving providing a nation level umbrella for antagonist actors to fall under (with the the understanding that their side will lose/be pushed back).

My two ideas for such a adversary kingdom would be one of two options

A) A island off the coast of korvara, current location unknown, that would raid korvara, deploy spys, attempt to sabotage and undermine various groups before beginning proper invasion attempts. Depending on how evil or lore changing we want to go this could be a home of liches, dullahans and other darker, fouler beings.

B) Zeran pirates- an alternative, much more short term in duration idea, but I think such an antagonist group that players could join would make a somewhat interesting group so long as the expectation of their eventual defeat was understood from the get go.

Either way I feel each should be open to players being some of the actors in these groups. For players playing in these groups, I believe a single hub map as a base of operations, with bdp's oocly provided as a means to level up and gain items would work. In combination with the new LFG system and some sort of teleporter and Item to teleport them back to their hub they could then schedule raids or go to korvara for villainous rp, such as spying or sabotage.

[Sawrock]

It could be a giant mechanical island that literally sails up to Kcorvara and smashes into the side. There'd be a source of power (THE RUBY OF MOOOOVEMENT) that allows the island to function as an island, giving a source of defeat other than "defeat all the bad guys"- remove the ruby? Island sinks. They could come to Kcorvara because of the invention of mechanations- they sent out scouts and (find mechanations unholy/want to keep it as a trade secret for themselves/are mostly population by mechanations and want to free their brothers and sisters no matter the cost/other, pick one). That way players who already made mechanations gotta deal with that roleplay interaction.

[Trexmaster]

me when the wall falls so i can harvest boulder and carapace more easily (it is the only source of carapace in the game)

How are we meant to take anything seriously when not even what was toted as one of the most important things in the lore bar the central ruins is treated with any sense of gravitas? I understand it's a mechanical thing but that's how you get people to stop taking it seriously in an IC perspective.

Thus we're left to look toward events for any sense of consequence when the world we're given refuses to offer any. This is of course a combination of the player's wishes and the direction the game has taken.

My primary issue with the reliance on events is consistency. All events generally play by their own rules, with far more creative freedom. Power scaling is somehow even more convoluted. The safest way to handle it is to simply avoid any overlap with other events. This creates a similar situation to G6. About five or so years ago I talked about this, where individuals would effectively have created their own reality bubble in which only the events they're apart of are canon. This is what's happening now, on Korvara. Is this a bad thing? Not inherently. It becomes a problem when only some individuals are allowed to do this.

By introducing a more central antagonistic force this would allow everyone to truly be in the same sandbox and avoid the aforementioned issue of event overlap/power scaling nonsense. Otherwise we have nations and subgroups split up into their own event lines that are for the most part entirely separate from one another despite using the same world. It makes it far more difficult for newer or uninvolved players to get into these stories when they tend to be so isolated.

I only hope to give everyone the same opportunities that others are afforded.

[Poruku]

This would be monumentally cool

[Mewni]

As someone that cracked my head until eventually I could make and work towards a place in Korvara to safely have antagonists exist, this idea can work very well.

However, leaving it at the hands of everyone to be able to antagonize at their leisure is more likely to turn very sour than not, a lot of the major story-lines that afflicted nations left people burned out and wanting peace for a while, having to deal with a constant that seemingly can happen at random would be very bad. The bad actors talking smack on the people playing peacekeeping forces of any degree would be crazy, as I saw quite a few folk getting discouraged by "We have to do this because {insert the guards of a place} are useless" and vitriol of the likes.

Unless the antagonistic happenings would be sporadic and scheduled, then I can see this working very well, it would likely need a rotation of sorts to not have a place being hit too often and let people have their time of tranquility, which is one of the main factors why the Watcher stuff worked so well.

[Ray2064]

me when the wall falls so i can harvest boulder and carapace more easily (it is the only source of carapace in the game)

How are we meant to take anything seriously when not even what was toted as one of the most important things in the lore bar the central ruins is treated with any sense of gravitas? I understand it's a mechanical thing but that's how you get people to stop taking it seriously in an IC perspective.

Thus we're left to look toward events for any sense of consequence when the world we're given refuses to offer any. This is of course a combination of the player's wishes and the direction the game has taken.

My primary issue with the reliance on events is consistency. All events generally play by their own rules, with far more creative freedom. Power scaling is somehow even more convoluted. The safest way to handle it is to simply avoid any overlap with other events. This creates a similar situation to G6. About five or so years ago I talked about this, where individuals would effectively have created their own reality bubble in which only the events they're apart of are canon. This is what's happening now, on Korvara. Is this a bad thing? Not inherently. It becomes a problem when only some individuals are allowed to do this.

By introducing a more central antagonistic force this would allow everyone to truly be in the same sandbox and avoid the aforementioned issue of event overlap/power scaling nonsense. Otherwise we have nations and subgroups split up into their own event lines that are for the most part entirely separate from one another despite using the same world. It makes it far more difficult for newer or uninvolved players to get into these stories when they tend to be so isolated.

I only hope to give everyone the same opportunities that others are afforded.

Please force people to interact with the setting of give my soul for it please pleas please

[Raigen.Convict]

As someone whom wanders in search of rp but struggles to insert himself into important dialogue because reading tge room id look like an ass... This sounds fun. Im all for this so we have reason to be the way we are. Reason to wish to protect the weak. Reason to be strong.

[Snake]

It does really look like a good major update thingy, I'd support however I can.