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Trexmaster · 08-21-2025, 09:52 AM

We've had some interesting leaders in the past on Korvara with 4/5 of the originally randomly selected ones since being perma-banned, and the last having left of their own accord.

Looking to the present and future, we've retained roughly the same crowd for the past year or so, for better or worse.

In the present it's seemed that leadership is largely an afterthought. That international discussion is seldom if ever conducted, leaders largely being relegated to points of contact for Eventmins to coordinate with for hosting events that may pertain to that nation in some manner.

It brings the question of 'What are leaders actually meant to do?'. In the past this tended to be handling discussions with other nation's leaders and organizing their respective cabinets to handle the day-to-day of the nation as needed. Korvara in its earlier years, for all its flaws, lent itself to having a more active political sphere as nations closed upon the current status quo we know today.

Nowadays there is little drive, desire, or incentive for the nations to interact with one another on a macro level. Understandably, from what I can perceive, leadership all around Korvara is as a whole stagnant and largely only concerned with their own affairs if they even do anything at all.

So the question comes back: What are leaders meant to do? If there are no expectations, no incentives, and no support for these people who are intended to lead the major factions of Korvara, that inevitably leads to the stagnation we have been witness to. That people are almost entirely reliant on events to produce activity, because leadership ultimately means nothing but being the person who stamps map requests/event requests.

I'd pose the following questions:

1. Are you content with the current state of Korvara's leadership positions? Why or why not?

2. What should be expected of leadership positions?

3. What do you want from leadership?

I'll give my own answers.

1.

Honestly, no. As could likely be guessed by the fact I'm making this thread, I'm of the opinion that as it stands, leadership has been made into a meaningless title that serves only to filter events and map requests.

Korvara was advertised as a place where players could control the narrative and the world they live in through their IC actions. Where certain players could ascend to positions of power with creative licenses over their slices of the island by which they could push the story of that part of the world.

We've had poor leaders in the past and much drama that's since been resolved, and lessons learned. Nowadays it seems people are too afraid of bad actors to allow the status quo to be challenged by new faces in high places. Few if anyone seems to want to get involved with other nations on macro level because the initial dynamic of Korvara, where Geladyne had the metals and stone, Meiaquar facilitated the trade, Telegrad had the food and wood, and Duyuei needed everyone else to sustain their war at the Wall? Everyone gets what they want now, no one has reason to push for anything more. The deals are done and nothing happens to change that.

From what little I know, leaders are given little if any guidance or support by the staff/headmin. They're on their own aside from when they have to be told they cannot develop certain areas. The past inferences at Korvara's launch that leadership positions could be subject to higher forced danger levels was quickly discarded. They're at no more risk than the average player beyond being more prolific by nature.

Much of this is a result of the community's collective desires as far as I'm aware. People largely do not want larger scale conflict, nor to deal with international disagreements be they physical conflict or otherwise.

So quite frankly I'm at a loss as to what Korvara is meant to be if players have no real ability to shape the world nor the narrative, if not a sandbox akin to what we already had with G6 before it was abandoned. Where events are the only way by which one can feel they have impact, as the world we collectively share, Korvara, is seemingly immutable, much like G6 was.

2.

Leaders should be expected to push for activity and growth within their nation. If nothing else to keep a finger on the pulse of the various factions inherent to all of them at this point, and address concerns or stagnation as necessary. They should be held to some kind of standard, and if they don't wish to maintain the position it should be given to someone more willing and able.

It is a position of power and responsibility. That we have seemingly zero standards outside not being a perma-banned player/having another character already in a leader or leader adjacent position/inciting the ire of the vast majority of the community is absurd to me. I understand that nations have lulls, attention drifts and goes toward where the people are. That's only natural.

Allowing stagnation to set in at the highest echelons of power in a nation inevitably results in that apathy trickling down. If the guy above me doesn't do anything and doesn't care to do anything, why should I? Especially when I'm not allowed to contest their spot.

It's a multi-faceted issue. The way I see it, leaders end up in this state not because they have no drive or passion for where they've chosen or otherwise been forced to become leader by the circumstances handed to them. The game is simply designed to have leaders ultimately end up not wanting to try to push for anything, as they'll get push back on anything beyond their own nation when it comes to development. Very few things are allowed when it comes to innovations, and much of the game world is off limits for expansion. Rather than beat their heads against a proverbial stone wall, leaders opt to simply focus inward and try to make what little content they can for those who still care within their nations.

So to summarize: I believe leadership needs change in both how they're handled at an administrative level and how the players themselves act with said position. Either that, or we simply throw our hands up and agree to never alter the current status quo, as we have been for the past year or so.

All I really want is a definitive answer to what leadership is meant to be after the nebulous state it's been left in for all this time. If I can't get one from Dev or the GMs, the community's will suffice. Or well, whoever feels like answering.

3.

If I happen to be the minority in wanting more out of leadership then so be it. I simply want to be sure that how things are presently is the state people actually want, rather than begrudgingly tolerated.

Leadership is but one of several facets of what comprises Korvara's RP environment, though can be vital as a driving force for kick starting and encouraging individuals to pursue their own RP goals. It was among the biggest selling points of transitioning from G6's environment, that players could be the ones in charge. If that no longer matters, what are we left with?

While Korvara's leadership is not the sole contributor to the present issues faced, it's perhaps the one that we as players have the most control over, even if only in maintaining consistent communication amongst each other and pushing for progress as much as we're reasonably able to do so.

Hence why I'm making a thread about leadership rather than shouting into the wind about the fact we barely have any GMs left willing to do active work anymore, the majority of EMs are no longer active with several departures, and EM apps pushed 5+ months back. Look forward to another wall from me around late October if there's still silence on that one.

For now I pose the three questions above to any willing to answer, to see if we can't improve things, or at least identify where most stand on this topic.

Thanks for reading.

Dezark · 08-21-2025, 01:48 PM

Taking the time to think over how to respond to everything for a bit and what I'd say for each on it and such especially after watching the progress of three out of four of the nations and just.. the absolute hell it went through while being in an associated position for a time on things.

1.

2.

3.
I don't have much I can say to this aside for agreeing what got said, it put much better than whatever I can say on that all and I'll leave it with that more or less.

I don't know or expect much to change truthfully.. this is a situation where even when voiced, it one that feels like it'll get sweeped under the rug, but I look forward to reading what others say more so really on it all going forward.

Lolzytripd · (This post was last modified: 08-22-2025, 09:31 AM by Lolzytripd.)

1. Not really, but I don't blame the leaders for it, I blame "event culture" where each nation has essentially become a hub that really only cares about their event lines with guest appearances from other nations, we even see on event signups reserved slots for mostly the nation then a few extra for others. In this point leaders end up under a deluge of event requests from the other players for approval where they then clamber at horde of eventmins asking for one or more of them to run the next plotline for the nation.

2. A role in which the leader should be under a forced stipulation to improve their nation or suffer for their failure, make decisions that will cause conflict. Where it is impossible to make more than minor improvements to a nations status without having extract that cost from another nation scale actor or resource. Negative outcomes should occur if the leader does not take actions to solve a introduced issue.

As an example the nation of Gellybean is told from the admins this is the scenario "you need an extra 50% more food to make it through the winter without rationing, you do not have the money to purchase it at the rates agreed to with neighboring nations, this amount you need will cause undue burden on anyone who provides it to you, you need either 50% of meiaqur or Duyuei's food reserves or 25% of telegrads, we suggest you can either raid either neighbor or coerce one of them into an alliance to raid telegrad, if you fail this then 15% of your military might will be lost as homunculi production will stall and troop readiness will decline, you could trim your army's needs by culling a third of the homuculi in the army, but this will cause unrest"

3. Leaders to be less isolationist in the narratives they are sowing, to have grand objectives, to manifest their nations destiny.

Poruku · 08-22-2025, 06:45 PM

I believe the reason why this happened is in large part due to the larger issue of expectation of perfection that Korvara suffers from. In Korvara, if you want to get ahead as a character, you need to have no functional flaws. You can have quirks, but you need to do your job perfectly. The reason for this is that you're always competing against people who are ridiculously skilled, and any perceived failure, corruption, etc, is held against you when it comes to promotions, unless you somehow manage to make your way into a position at character creation.

The thing is, in my opinion, good leaders are boring. Yet people both ICly and OOCly seem to dislike bad leaders. That's mostly because in the past, most leaders who were "bad" were doing so unintentionally, except in the case of Lexaly, which was the biggest source of "non-event" conflict in history aside from the meia-gela war. Daliah was also a great leader because she created conflict while also being competent. But most leaders in Korvara are mostly content to simply be a manager in the background who performs their duties properly.

In Korvara, there's almost zero IC problems until someone creates one. When a problem arises, people flock to try fixing it. This is because since all nations are player-ran, the setting is intimately tied to people's characters, and thus any problems (even bandits in your territory) can be perceived as a personal failure, both ICly and OOCly in some cases. This extends to the matter of leadership. "Good" leaders may be boring, but at least they're comfortable. Sometimes, it's fine for them to take a background role and let other people tell their stories. But what this means is that anything happening is a disturbance of the status quo, aka, events. And events are cool, but they're not my thing. And not everyone can participate. Events should be seen as an extra thing, not the main source of "content".

I think there should be room for problems in Korvara, and that all starts from the leaders. I think part of the cause is that leaders are scrutinized very harshly, and any deviation from what is "reasonable, western-culture-acceptable" actions is seen as an issue and a failure of a leader.

I think leader players lack a plan. I think they need to be more than just a leader, in fact they don't need to be a leader. They need to embody their nation and direct it towards a goal.

I think leaders put too much work on themselves. Drezdin proves all you need to do to run a nation is drop some blurbs and content on people occasionally. What matters as a leader is the actual actions you take that make something move. You don't need to manage each thing, respond to each problem. Nations manage themselves, there's nothing to manage except when someone needs permission from you OOCly (occasionally ICly). Perhaps they should try to lower the workload they put on themselves and focus a bit more on making things happen with the other nations.

And finally, I think we lack interaction between nations partially because people are burned out of it. What's the point of having conflict and tension when all it does is create constant OOC drama? Maybe the SL2 playerbase isn't actually ready for international conflict. Maybe we're little babies who can't handle anything other than events and that's why we're here. And I understand leaders for not wanting to dip their toes in that shit without a good reason.

But I think leaders could afford to create more internal problems that are not temporary events. I'm talking corruption! I'm talking issues of poverty, instability, inner strife. There's so many things that can happen inside a nation, and we're not doing any of it because I think leaders are too reactionary. They're not interested in creating a problem like a major gas leak at a local mine killing 24 workers because that will reflect poorly on them and all it's gonna do is cause a massive wave of people rushing to try "fixing" the problem as soon as possible, and if it happens again they'll take it as a personal failure and get mad OOCly.

This island might be a prison! This is why I disassociated myself from nation shenanigans a while ago to focus on antagonism. Yokoshura, however, brings a lot of fixes to these issues in having built-in issues that cannot be fixed. I think this allows breathing room for various other issues to coexist, and makes people a little more daring. I think we need more fundamental nation issues to be on the forefront, and created by leaders specifically. Leaders are the ones who have the power to create a fun RP environment for people by creating problems with the snap of their fingers. Boom, starvation. Boom, bad harvest. Boom, a fire devastates 4 neighborhoods. Why don't we see this?

I think leaders need to start thinking outside the box and creating problems.

Collector · (This post was last modified: 08-22-2025, 07:36 PM by Collector.)

(08-22-2025, 06:45 PM)Poruku Wrote: The thing is, in my opinion, good leaders are boring. Yet people both ICly and OOCly seem to dislike bad leaders. That's mostly because in the past, most leaders who were "bad" were doing so unintentionally, except in the case of Lexaly, which was the biggest source of "non-event" conflict in history aside from the meia-gela war.

If this is the kind of content being pushed forward, then I find no fault in leaders and players alike not wanting to be involved.

Poruku · 08-22-2025, 10:51 PM

I omitted to add a disclaimer about how Lexaly was terrible and the player was terrible since it's already been said plenty, but I guess I should have. I'm not saying Lexaly was overall good. But one thing about them is they weren't boring. And most of the issue with them is OOC matters. My point here is that people have rarely played leaders with fundamental flaws.

And of course the war had plenty of problems, once again, mostly on the OOC side. I think it's a real shame that we're giving up on international conflict because the one time we tried, it didn't go well.

Druby · (This post was last modified: 08-23-2025, 03:03 AM by Druby.)

I'm just going to speak on the subject a bit broadly here because, while I agree to an extent that leaders feel kind of pointless at this time, I will be honest with my bias and say that I don't think player leaders are a good idea without a lot of extra work in the background to make it all work, and even then an environment with player leaders isn't the sort of place I'd personally seek out to RP in generally speaking.

I can understand the appeal of players feeling like they can make big and serious impacts on a game world, managing things, or rising in the ranks to become someone important and someone who matters. All of that is stuff that anyone can see the appeal of, I think. However, when positions of power matter, these sorts of things open the environment up to a lot of OOC hassle, drama, and general issues that come from giving people power over anything. When the position matters and means something, when consequences are real, people tend to take things a lot more seriously, for both good and bad. Focusing on the bad parts of it, this is how you get metagrudges or just groups of friends hating other groups because someone did something that (either real or not) is perceived to be a slight on your friend group, or maybe they're competing with you for an important RP political position, and people actually give a shit now so it's much less about the fun and more about actually achieving things or not. This sort of drama might be good from a strictly storytelling perspective between characters, but RP is inherently social with the out-of-character aspect being just as important, and from that perspective, people being at each other's throats is a fucking pain in the ass. This isn't even just an SL2 thing, this is a thing across public RP in general. People get stubborn, or upset, and things just spiral out from there until it's on sight between two groups.

From another angle, players make for inherently bad leaders generally speaking since, as most generally want, they want their characters to succeed. To (usually) be a good person, and to achieve goals they set out for themselves. Failure can be a part of RP, but in most cases, it's not gonna be something very enjoyable for most people on a larger scale especially with lasting consequences, and when managing a group, organization, or a nation becomes the goal, no one really wants to go out of their way to play up a shitty person or leader, doubly so when, in a situation where these political roles matter, doing the interesting thing of having issues with a nation or a culture, ends up with someone else basically having a reason to gun for your spot which you're largely going to be invested in keeping. Hell, people reload RPGs when they realize they've made a bad decision. People in general don't like failing at something. That's just a fact of humans in general, even though conflict and failure are great parts of a story to read.

To speak more from the perspective of what could be done to help promote activity from leadership, I do think one of the core issues with lack of a push for anything is that nothing actually matters. The most immediate and obvious player driven conflict that was set up from the get go would be Geladyne and Telegrad. Geladyne lacks food, Telegrad has food. But does it actually mean anything? People just brush it aside as an RP thing, if it's even addressed at all. It's the crossover between OOC and IC, where it's supposed to be an issue in-setting, but no one actually feels it or really thinks it matters. You can just buy whatever you need with your infinite cash from killing mobs, or farm things yourself with your infinite time if you have a bit of land. In a game that's player driven, the core issue of Geladyne doesn't matter anymore because the players aren't facing the same issues as the nation. There's always gonna be an issue with this sort of thing as a fun game is not a simulation, I wouldn't want Dev implementing a bunch of things that makes getting money or grinding that much more annoying or a hassle, because it's not enjoyable at that point, but the resource issue does not matter. I've spoken on this before, but maybe if there were mechanics tied in the background to the core issues of a nation that leaders had to manage and could not be solved immediately by someone coming up with a super fertilizer, or some amazing farming machine or just sitting around for a week growing tomatoes, you could have more of that nation to nation interaction as balancing it out by yourself should be impossible in that situation, especially if there were certain mechanics tied to it, like not meeting X quota of whatever denying you access to the innkeeper or something. I don't think that's a perfect system in the slightest, as people can just visit other stores or places, but something to incentivize the actual issues or cultural problems at play in a setting.

Looking at other systems and games where player leadership is more important/matters, we're generally talking about games where PVP and player conflict is much more heavily promoted. Looking at Byond, games like Trace/Alter, Eternia, and so on. Conflict there is inherent to the game, and the systems around it support that explicitly. A lot of games like that tend to be wipe-based, not just because of the stat systems, but often times, if things go on for long enough, one side just ends up "winning", and well... It's all over from there. People lose interest and move on cause the conflict is over. That's not really what I'm here on SL2 for to be blunt, and I wouldn't want things like that here, but my point is that if people want player leadership to matter more, there needs to be a lot more focus on player failure and consequences, which is not what the general crowd of SL2 wants from my read on the community.

The tl;dr of it all? Korvara is trying too hard to be a sort of middle ground where more casual sort of public RP, the sort you might find in WoW, Guild Wars 2, FFXIV or other MMOs exist and where the more hardcore/extreme RPers who want things like character deaths to be a risk at all times. And I don't think it does that well, nor is it something easily achievable as they are two very different communities with extremely different wants in terms of what systems support their interests and what sorts of writing they like to do. Player leadership on Korvara is kind of a symptom of that, being a system generally from more hardcore type environments watered down to try and be less of an issue for a more casual playerbase. I don't use the term "casual" as an insult either, I consider myself part of that group. I'm not here to be worried about needing to log on every goddamn day because of politics or needing to keep up with every little thing. I did that week 1 of Korvara playing in Geladyne, and god was that annoying. But without the game itself pushing one way or the other in terms of who it's catering to, I don't think there's any simple solution to this sort of thing. I don't like Korvara, I'm here cause the activity is here. But I can at least respect and understand that the people who enjoy it have their reasons for doing so, and I think that a lot of the systems in place on Korvara attempt to be too wishy-washy.

Poruku · 08-23-2025, 03:55 PM

I have to agree completely with Druby here. Korvara is a very ambitious middle ground type of game where people can theoretically do anything but there's no systems in place to organize any of it, or mechanics to play out a war or any of that. Dev went from not trusting players, to trusting them too much, putting essentially the burden of making the game work on random people and whoever wanted to, as well as a copious use of discord, external documents, and eventmins/mappers.

I don't really blame leaders for the state of the game. Yes we could do more with what we have. But we can't expect people to carry the game on their shoulders. It's basically ours to do whatever the hell we want with it, but making a game fun for everyone is no easy task, especially when you have to try to succeed with your own character as well

Miller · 08-24-2025, 03:05 AM

Korvara is a setting designed for conflict between nations when the majority doesn't really like conflict all that much. SL2's strengths honestly have always been in its sandbox nature.

1) No. Nations in general have led to creative stagnation. Instead of a fantasy setting with several open ended nations of various cultures to explore on your own terms; we got four nations which frankly aren't that distinctly different from each other. Not to say there's no difference, but theres not enough.

2) Just to further drive roleplay within their respective nation, there's really not much you can do without facing backlash if you do actions of consequence; to be perfectly frank, there's also not enough rules in place to support conflict, almost every single conflict I've seen on this game has had OOC oozing out from every post. I'm personally tired of it, frankly.

3) Nothing beyond what's already being done mostly. I don't blame any of the players involved in leadership presently. I just feel like the current state of affairs was inevitable with the community; between understandably not wanting conflict like Eternia, OOC subterfuge and tbe very limited setting.

Like Ruby mentioned, games like Eternia where conflict is heavily encouraged work because the systems integral to those type of games encourage things to not remain stagnant and even then, they're not immune. Wipes and limited character life spans both encourage a steady cycle of new and fresh blood.

SL2 has a complete dissonance with that style of RP, conflict rules here are consent based and there's nothing mechanical or even overly important IC to obtain. Why should I forward an overarching narrative if my character and myself gains nothing from it? If I wanted to force my way into leadership or similar position, it'd more than likely provoke a few stink eyes and ooc ire.

I'm not saying that things should change towards becoming like these games, it's just that SL2 currently favors personal story telling over greater narratives involving consequence devoid of the player's control and frankly I wish it'd lean more into its strengths rather than this awkward middle ground.

TheGreatshield · 08-24-2025, 06:27 AM

Question 1: Am I content with the current state of Leadership?

Can't say I am very satisfied with how Leadership has interacted and progressed coming from a position that has seen the inside and worked closely with it twice now. Apart of that comes down to the internal growing pains of leaders coming and going and the flaws of the governments that deign every action. Because I think its a fair perception to say every government system has its flaws even in real life and it painfully shows in the funny roleplay game where the stakes were clearly not as high. I could list all four, but no need to list every problem under the sun right?

Question 2: My personal expectations of Leadership...

I believe leaders should have a basis of power scaling with the form of administration that is fostered. I see a lot of the time, the Leader is beheld more often than not to base popularity. It does not matter if you are Authoritarian or democratically elected, doing anything that goes against the general population will immediately run the risk of mutiny and your removal or if not, a total lack of compliance. We don't have to discuss the Great Geladyne Coup. Telegrad famously have thrown no confidence votes down on their dukes on more than one occasion and dear lord Duyuei was a wild ride. I wish there was a little job security or less pressure sometimes on the folks who gotta manage it all (within reason, Some of these were certainly justified and a route to overthrow bad rulers always on the table)

Beyond that, I share the sentiments of many that they should facilitate RP for their nation, they should provide direction for the apparatus that works under them. Is it all on them? No, the EM's should be active, they shouldn't always need to be pulled. Neither should EM's be required for literally everything, but a bit of fluid communication between State and Administration could certainly grease the gears. Go beyond Just make sure the ship sails smoothly, make sure guards are doing their jobs and the clinic is stocked with babysitters doctors. I do expect a level of hands on ability, or desire to be proactive in the position and push the dynamic nature of the game. Above all else though, I want more leaders to consider stepping down when they believe the ball is no longer in their court, I don't think its a shame if you can no longer find the time or motivation to play. God please just don't sit on it like a rock.

Question 3: What do I want from Leadership?

I want something more dynamic! Everything in the setting is so gosh darn stagnant! Very little gets done these days, the occasional social gathering event here, the EM carrying the activity there... The Leader's role in these is giving a thumbs up or thumbs down like its Rome. I want tangible tools for the government! I want material and abilities WRITTEN DOWN, trade deals to be more than fudging two people doing guesswork to write up some poppycock that only gave RP to like two other people that leads to nothing at all! Trade deals mean nothing except for like R&D people that gives no actual change other than to put down a checkmark on their latest Dexter's lab invention for a GM to shrug and approve or a builder to get justification for the next 2x2 glorified empty space now with Korv's 500th alchemy table.

I want leadership to be what Korv was advertised if I were to sum it up here. I want them to be trailblazers and RP facilitators, to make interesting RP between nations and their respective Simps players. Trade disputes, border adjustments? (Not war before you say it you vultures) Maybe a big RP to expedition into one of those cute lil new area's dev forced asked the mappers to lovingly craft. It doesn't even have to be something massive. Get an EM to just provide a prompt to a nation once in a while, some RP blurb big or small for the government to react and facilitate RP to, Geladyne's crop import has gone up shorter than expectation, Telegrad is experiencing a new strain of Corn rot and crop failures are beginning to spread! Hell it can be something less consequential like "Meiaquar is receiving a tourist boom from westerners traveling to Luminera." It be the bare minimum at least right?

Most of all, I want Major Nations to have Temporary EM accounts for their leaders to facilitate RP without the sole need of another EM. Not every one of them will utilize it, you'll have to switch the password every leader change but motivated leaders may provide content in times of EM lull's with the best understanding of their nation's situation. Perhaps guidence towards those National Leaders from proper EM's will relieve some of the pressure for said EM's to do all the work.

I think this mindset puts me at odds with the the general population that prefers more interpersonal storytelling. I think we can all agree however that the middle road continues to serve nobody enough.

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