[WaifuApple]

We've reached a general point in Korvara where simulation of an experience is at a degree of low compared to scripted storytelling - the kind of thing that eventmins provide. To me, that comes as a general result of something I feel like I've noticed over the later few months of the game. That is to say the dynamics between nations have shifted. While characters get by at making jabs at other nations on a very small scale, the very nature of these nations interacting feels to have slowed down to a crawl. Activity shifts between each location, some slow down due to a combination of less events and quieter leadership, others pick up with new combinations to explore and a more active leadership pushing for more things going on around there, but for the most part inter-nation things are largely muted or very scripted now.

That comes in good part down to a lot of the nuclear conflicts. One side pushes, another side doesn't want it, and you get this sour spot in which you either keep going in the interests of playing through and it ends up muddled in the end. People have largely rejected that, on some scale. Or you just don't have it happen. It's very hard to get things that are organic but long lasting between two nations without putting in a herculean amount of effort that, in the end, might as well make it feel scripted anyway. I'm not going to talk much on the war, though - rather, this leads me to my next statement.

I've decided to expand upon my perspective somewhat because there aren't many wall of texts outlining a larger point of view from someone who didn't already like G6 more to begin with. A lot of what people seek to make their world more 'simulated' is actually just something I feel like is people saying 'I want more G6, or I want it back', which is a prevailing opinion of some, and fair enough - but you don't get enough people from the Korvara crowd on the forums, largely because the discord has pretty much made coming on here a moot point outside of mechanics for a lot of people. Which leads me to want to speak on the flaws of that - I don't think G6 was very dynamic, honestly. It was the most 'Storytelling' place we've had.

This is down to something specific, I believe - isolation. And I'm not just talking about 'people and cliques'. That's a long contentious topic and I'm sure people have talked about it - debated it - for ages. People, in large because of the nature of G6 being very uninteractable as a locale, were making very isolated worlds and environments. Very much only loosely respecting the world they were in because, let's face it, there just wasn't much there. But that ultimately brought with it a big flaw - in most cases, everything felt isolated. Each successive group or space would feel as if it had no correlation to the last, it would feel like nobody had any particular grounding. Just making places and groups for the sake of making places and groups. People were telling isolated group stories, not simulating a world or an environment.

And this is something I generally want to keep in mind when looking towards the future of Korvara. Grounding everything within, well... Korvara. Korvara has been, in my opinion at least, the most cohesive a world as we've ever gotten by itself. Sure, there's the big stickler of how detached it is from a lot of the G6 lore, but if you look at it as just Korvara, things connect. Nations have ties with one another, groups have ties with nations, you can tangibly get to any location without needing to know where it is first, by pure accident sometimes! Sure, isolation to some extent has settled in between players - I'm not going to retread the steps of other posts that state that because the isolation of players from one another is not the kind of isolation I'm talking about, but those ties are very much still there. Those links are still there to be worked with for anyone who wants to for their stories.

It's easy to get lost in what once was, but there's also a fair share of flaws in what that was. Keep the world connected, enhance what we have. A story in which every actor brings their own set pieces can get overwhelming very fast, so while I'm always for expanding the environment we have to make room for, well... more in general, for a simulative experience to truly work out we should never lose sight of the ground we're on, and work to make our ideas and experiences reflect it and shape it. Not escape from it. The map's a little small and doesn't expand fast enough to keep up with demand, but it's a lot of team effort to do, and hopefully more mappers will help with that. But I think the fact that for the most part it's all on map is just part of the magic for me. Events expand into whimsical domains but when it comes down to it you make do with the environment you're in, because that's the environment you're simulating, those are the stories you're telling. Just got to expand on that environment some more.

A little rambly, but that's my perspective on things. That I want a see a world that flows together, one in which the only thing stopping you from going to certain places is the IC, even if that IC is as simple as you being escorted off premises because you stepped somewhere you shouldn't. A world that is more supportive of more groups, but not one that breaks shape all the time. Part of the experience should be how you fit in that world, how the things you wanna do make sense in it and the environments it has. A bigger map would be nice but I quite like the concept of what we've got, we just need to work towards scaling it up because we've sort of run out of space.