Story Railroading.

[Haste]

Then what's the point? If we the players have no effect on the world, and will continue to have no effect, including all past, present, and future roleplay, what's the point?

Same as any other roleplay setting that's "bigger than the players". Play out your character's role within the setting itself, focusing on the character's development, inter-character relationships and whatever else. See where in-game interactions lead your character. I suppose this is easy for me to say as I've generally focused on lower-ranking, more independent characters. Playing a very high-ranking officer without major story influence is of course tricky and restrictive, but then there's nobody forcing players to make all their characters The Big Cheese™ of their faction.

If you're actually honest with your opinion that players should have no involvement in the story, then you'd better put your money where your mouth is, and get rid of official factions and player controls of laws/governments/etc entirely.

Yes, I am actually honest when I say that I believe players should not be deciding the major story arcs and big sweeping changes in Sirius, such as House wars or, more generally, large-scale conflicts between factions. I don't think official factions are currently adding a whole lot to the game and would like to, at the very least, change how they function. Currently players are still given the illusion that OFs have a say about their NPC faction's direction, when I think in reality all players should have an equal chance to write a good story development request about any faction, and what faction they are part of should not matter. Of course, this relies on the Story team to be able to properly vet these requests.

Like I said at the end of my previous post, I do think region DMs that have an interesting story (or two) to tell are an idea we should consider. This might provide players who can't live without some major e-power a place to try and influence a part of the story. Plus it's just kind of cool in general, assuming it's executed at least half as well as Treewyrm's stuff.

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