Community Issues, and Potential Rectification

[Typrop]

Given the quantity and popularity of threads throwing dirt in the direction of the development team, and the moderation (something that I myself am guilty of), there should be at least some discussion of community faults to balance it out.

One of the issues I have seen, is thus. The community mindset that, you make a ship for a faction, you act as one with that faction, like a unified body. Either due to ooRP drama, or simply out of a desire to not cause anything in general, it's created a more or less, factional hivemind. Interpersonal RP seems to be given significantly less importance relative to "Faction RP." To put it simply, I am defining Faction RP as such: Operating within the confines of a faction, to the detriment of the character's concept as an individual. Simply put, less investment in the character itself compared to "staying in the faction." Most comms are inter-faction, or dealing with factional things, frequently without much room for personal opinion or development.

This mindset is understandable to those in an OFL position, given that they spend most of their time doing management, and likely are fatigued from playing wrangler to the rest of their faction, and playing party face in inter-faction diplomacy. It is less understandable from those in middling-rank, or grunt positions. What the mindset should be, in the context of RP, is that individual in a faction is just that, a person. An individual. It's understandable if you want to have a character to play in a faction, you don't have to go off the rails and defect instantaneously (not that we need that anyways, given the fact we have defectors like a foreclosed house in northwestern Florida has cockroaches), but at the very least? Develop, develop through interactions, experiences, and changing behaviors.

This is going to sound distinctly insulting, but take it more as a criticism. Creating characters as a flimsy excuse because "I want x," is poor play. It is shameful, and arguably one of the biggest community-controlled reasons why this game has people dropping out. Why? Because simply put, characters built because you want a position, with minimal thought applied after the position are boring. Keep track of traits that distinguish your character, and eventually you come to conceptualize individual boundaries, and come to an approximation of a person. It's genuinely not that difficult to create a character, it's essentially a few words tied to a thing you want to do, that are associated with behavior, or personality. Things like, reclusive, standoffish, dimwitted, pure-hearted, ignorant. Please, spice things up, generate tension, interpersonal conflict. This is a roleplay server, and you know what? Act like it. We spend a bunch of time constructing metagame arguments as to why x, y, or z is poor. And that's all fine and good, except that arguably, more urgent problems, aren't developers being distant from the community, or grand moderation cliques.

It's a drought of interest. It's a drought, of people, of ideas.

Of progress.

Personal progress.

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