[Poruku]

It's a little ironic to me that the status quo we're all too familiar with from G6 came back in full force. Almost like the problem wasn't the design of the game itself entirely.

I feel like the issue is more so a lack of design, as in, we went from being restricted by rules to being restricted by others due to a lack of rules. Since the nations have all the IC power, and untold amounts of NPCs, they can do anything they want to neutral parties. There are no rules on this, it's just what happens when people have power: they use it. I mean it only makes sense for nations to do things they want to do within their sphere of influence.

Someone does something on my territory? Well, of course I'm gonna do something about it. I am literally stronger than them, I can do anything I want. This kind of unrestrained IC power is what makes nations such an issue for the Korvara environment. On one hand, it only makes sense that a country would have 10k soldiers available. On the other hand, maybe the issue with Korvara is that it makes too much sense....

Really, any sort of limitations on what nations can and can't do would be a huge step forward for Korvara. The idea behind this expansion was that "if we give players full control they will figure it out". Problem is, it's not the players' job to make things fun for everyone. People are here to play a game. They get dealt a hand of cards, and use them as they see fit. Frankly it's incredible how much good stuff players have done. Lore documents, countless organized meetings and political things, player-run events and all sorts of cool moments. But we can't expect people to perfectly regulate everything, especially when it comes to things like having to keep track of who lives where and whether it's fair or not and what is reasonable, when there's no guidance and basically no common agreement on a myriad of things.

This kinda ties back to the issues with the war, where people simply didn't agree. All it would take is some numbers. "This nation can take x amount of land. Aside from the land owned by nations, a group of players gets to have x amount of space if they actively rp there. If you want to take someone's land you need to organize the following-..." etc... As long as we don't do some kind of mechanical system where the guy with 10k iron ore gets to colonize the whole world, any kind of proper numbers would seriously help, even if it's merely a loose guideline.

[Miller]

I feel like the issue is more so a lack of design, as in, we went from being restricted by rules to being restricted by others due to a lack of rules--- /snip

I agree and also disagree a bit; but it's an extremely fair point nonetheless.

There's so little rules that could benefit breaking the mold that it does end up hampering things a fair bit; the lack of defined war rules was one of them, along with the unchecked power of nations. I have nothing against any players of said nations nor do I blame them since we're all playing with the cards that we've been dealt like you've said, but there's been times in the past where agency was robbed by virtue of IC power being way off the deep-end for sure.

That said, I believe the issue is less-so the lack of rules per say; not to discredit the inclusion would've been a strict benefit back then, but I largely believe that the problem mostly stems from the community at whole not favoring these sorta conflicts in the first place. You can make a ton of good rules to everyone's benefit, but when no one is having fun playing by said rules, there's no point right? Of course, we don't know if that's actually the case given we never had any real set rules.

Which is why I believe the removal of certain player-controlled creative tools to be the key problem in why things have gotten so stagnant in my eyes, though I do understand your perspective.

[Slydria]

While I do agree that some places that aren't active should be repurposed or removed. It's hard to actually gauge that in practice. It's not like G6 where you could suspect a house wasn't in use because of the contents of the house (e.g. the house is blank; ergo nobody's actually using it) or later on where it was automated by whether anyone is actually entering the place or not.

At best, we'd be going off of suspicions or details like "player who asked for this no longer plays the game, ergo it's probably not in use"

Only real idea I have is something akin to a demolition notice on the server that goes "well, we suspect this place isn't in use anymore, so we're gonna have this place axed in the next major update, if it's still in use, give a holler and we'll not go through with it"

But since it'd still be based on taking a player's word for it and there's not really a fair way to gauge how used somewhere actually is, it may just result in erring on the side of caution and barely anything changing to begin with.


All that aside though, if people want more land, it could be arranged potentially, even outside of future "expansion" updates. In fact, I'm sorta doing that for one of the map requests I just did... That said, I'd advise considering requesting such in a way that isn't going to be a hassle to implement.

For instance, adding extra maps to the interior of the donut wouldn't be a great idea, since it'd add time to round trips around Korvara and might be a bit hard to suspend disbelief for it to work. Not to mention there'd be the maps outside that ring to consider since they'd no longer line up with the interior ones. But if you, for instance, wanted a new cave dug out somewhere, that'd should be do-able without any big issues.

[Poruku]

Korvara: subterranean expansion.

New mole (kael) and gorgon (ancient) races.

4 new large-size maps representing the entirety of korvara's underground cave system. Each map is connected with the other, and most existing caves contain passages to the large maps. Never need to see the sun again! A brand new way to cross the continent!

5 new mushroom-based recipes and 1 new mushroom type. Mew mushroom chair, mushroom table, and mushroom tent placeables.

2 new fish and associated recipes.

Not a single new dungeon or enemy.

Plenty of space and cool environments, featuring:
- big cool glowy crystal
- glowy mushroom patches
- rat critters that flee into holes
- big hole
- underground sea
- spooky underground sea
And more!

Come get lost in a labyrinth of caves that will remain mysterious and cool forever! Start a family there and open a tea shop!

[Miller]

Korvara: subterranean expansion.

New mole (kael) and gorgon (ancient) races.

4 new large-size maps representing the entirety of korvara's underground cave system. Each map is connected with the other, and most existing caves contain passages to the large maps. Never need to see the sun again! A brand new way to cross the continent!

finally the content korvara needs

[caliaca]

Hi.

I thought I'd address some of this stuff since I have insider knowledge or whatever you wanna call it.

Firstly, Worsong is claimed by Duyuei as it is tied to their ancestral history (there was a meeting about this when the new areas came out) and Meiaquar has claimed the tundra and is intending to use it for economic development. The tundra is not a good name for it, you're very right.

We'll probably work with you on pretty much anything about wanting a group to exist on land. I haven't really had anyone come to me about this and nothing has been posted from witchi/others in castle about people coming to them in Geladyne except one idea we talked about of yours polk. And it still wasn't a no, it was just a reconsider these aspects.

Secondly, we had a very, very in depth proposal for the usage of the Badlands. We had a heavy map built up for it about crop reviltaization etc. For various OOC reasons over the past year, this has been heavily delayed, but the attempt/want is still there. It will likely come as soon as our internal house is fully in order.

The firelands stuff is additionally temporary and used to warn people about current things going on, and the stuff around the farms is because of continued and constant antagging around that area for the better part of two months. I think it'd be foolish for a response to not be there.

Thirdly, I find some confusion in the unhappiness about these developments. When Korvara was advertised and launched, it was done so in the idea of a great sandbox with the ability for player changes and interactions to fully shape the world. The world, thusly, has begun to be shaped by these things, and I think it weird to value one particular development over another. These things are a tapestry that tells the history of Korvara and how it's changed, and I think having them just crumble because it appears to someone not doing stuff with them that they're inactive would be both short sighted and uncaring of those who put so much effort into these works.

Fourthly, the note of people living in caves and tents being everything, is that not people claiming their corner of the world like you wanted?

I do certainly agree we could use some more spaces and ruins though. That'd be pretty cool. My only hope is there's a continued sense of equality with the changes. I liked that with d1 but granted I'm not against there not being since d1 ended up with stuff claimed anyways.


Small edit; I've championed the idea of back end numbers a lot but it seems to be shot down or unwanted every time. I agree it'd be nice to have.

[Poruku]

It's not so much a matter of being able to do things, but rather the issue of needing to be under the wing of one of the nations in order to get anything done. I could make a group, say, somewhere in the mountains. But that would make us a Geladynian group. If we do anything Geladyne doesn't like, we're going to be reined in by the government because we're on their land and we need to obey their laws.

In other words, Korvara is a great sandbox yes, but the 4 nations hold the keys to it.

Sure you can settle somewhere. If all you want is just to exist and hang out in a house you can ask permission and do it. But what if you want your own constitution, your own laws? Or to truly own the land you live on? I'm not saying that Geladyne was wrong in their desire to assimilate wanderer's vale, but it certainly set a precedent. Same with fairview. That being neutral in korvara is not possible.

So yeah you can exist on claimed territory, and you might be able to do things you want to do, but you will belong to the nation. Like, we can't start a new faction without permission. And if you do intend to go against one of the 4 nations, you are 100% certain to lose.

[Miller]

Individual agency and creative freedom is at an all time low. Nations hold the large majority of IC power and can simply deny you at any step of the journey if they want to. While I don't mind nations holding power/weight over the environment around them, it often means that to accomplish something as an individual you need to push heavily against the tides to get anything remotely going.

The steps to get something remotely going in the world for long as a player usually requires:
1) GM Approval if the idea is questionably outlandish in concept.
2) The approval of the nation who owns said land.
3) The approval of the mappers who will adjust said land for you.
4) Not overlapping too much with other players. (IE: Clinic #5)

You can argue that some of these steps aren't a big deal and I'd agree mostly. But having to go through several channels of approval, one of which can deny you solely based on their IC agenda and there being little to do due to the fact they carry far, far more weight in the world than you. This isn't to say it's being done maliciously, but it can absolutely be a limiting factor towards creative goals. None of these required steps for approval were remotely required in G6 besides the occasional nudge towards a GM to see if things were fine.

I'd like to stress that even though I'm framing it like this in a largely negative light, I don't think nations are explicitly bad; the nations are fine if you enjoy them. It's just that people who don't wish to be under their purview are simply forced to cope with it.

Though, really I actually agree with the sentiment of not freeing up spaces; people put a lot of work into getting their spot in the world and to just rob them of that because it's perceived as inactive or they're just away from the game for a bit would suck. But I do think we'll genuinely run out of reasonable space to slap down new stuff eventually, even with map expansions outside of the big groups we got in D1.

[Druby]

I won't get on my soapbox again and wave my flag about player housing as I've already done that, but I'll just say again that I really think player housing would just be the solution to all of this as it immediately gives players a place for them to make whatever it is they want to make and leave a bit of something of themselves in the world without needing to compete super heavily for overworld space.

A little more productive of a topic though, I also don't think that simply adding extra maps is going to be as helpful as some people might think. While I sympathize with the desire to have areas remain neutral, or for the feeling of the borders of nations closing in on any neutral space, simply dumping more maps won't solve that problem, and if anything, I feel like they might exacerbate other problems. I do think Korvara is in a bit of an awkward place regarding how it feels about map-sizes, where it both feels too large and too small at the same time.

Korvara is filled with stretches of nothing, where there aren't enough players to fill all that room and keep activity flowing, but at the same time does not have enough space for all current players to actively have their own places to make or set up groups, homes, or sub-faction spaces. Miller's covered a lot of the red-tape aspect which I heavily agree with as a major contributing issue to the latter.

However, my primary point is that, the addition of more map space isn't going to do all that much if it just remains unused. There is a question of dev time to how much value you get out of implementing something. A cave map would be cool, but we also already have a ton of random caves that see some occasional use, and are primarily just claimed as semi-housing. I don't really see what a cave map underneath Korvara would add, especially when we don't really have the players to keep existing wilderness spaces occupied with RP. If anything, it'd further dilute that and make it ever harder to find RP, or just not be used at all.

I sympathize with the issue, but I don't believe that more room in a place that barely has enough players to keep what it has occupied is the proper answer.