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Implemented Submissions - Priority to what Star Army Needs

Andrew

SARPiverse Culture Dreamer
Staff Member
🌟 Site Supporter
FM of Tsenlan
🌸 FM of Yamatai
Submissions Reviewer
🎖️ Game Master
Alright, I know this is not the most popular topic or idea. I know no one is going to be bouncing on the upvote but hear me out.

Star Army needs more culture, location, and event articles. We need to flesh out these factions beyond the Starships and Weapons they have.

Where do people live? Shop? Work? Civilian Life? Holidays? We're coming into global peacetime on Star Army. I think now is the time for us to make a decision that creators should drive towards creating what the site needs. People submit a lot of guns, a lot of weapons, a lot of gear and yes it is all really cool. The site and some factions are missing key culture articles and details. Some Star Systems are just copied text from Star System Generators, they lack plot hooks and interest.

We need to place a priority on the development of the setting.

What I propose is that for every military/weapon-based submission you submit. There should be a need for 1 submission of a non-military oriented article in one of the above categories.

and YES, I did downvote weapons submissions on the NTSE. When I see someone who is repeatedly submitting weapons, submits military submissions (and sometimes lacks RP posts). I will downvote and move that into a lower priority for review. Lower priority doesn't mean they won't be reviewed, it just means priority will be given to other categories of submissions.

So consider this a plea from someone who tries to work hard to get your submissions through, to help enter data on your wiki structs. Help me and help Star Army.
 
This suggestion has been implemented. Votes are no longer accepted.
I'm really glad you brought this up because this is another thing I wanted to use Aaron to develop as well.
He's the type of researcher who looks for information in its complete context. Which means the significance of it to the culture, the origin of the information, etc

So I would love to help! I just don't know how much I can help.
 
I'm downvoting, because on an individual level, people have aptitudes and preferences for writing different kinds of content.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and we in the NDC have been taking our own measures to ensure we're creating a balance of content (And I think we've been doing a pretty good job at it through 2020 and into 2021), but I feel that it would be wrong to force people who are only good at the more technical side of writing to write a location or a cultural article and vice versa.

If this operated on a faction-wide level, where people can choose what to make in order to keep things balanced on a cultural/military dichotomy (Someone keeping track of new submissions in each category, and if military exceeded cultural/location/etc no more military articles could be submitted, and allowing individual creators to choose which side they were going to work on), I'd be cool with this.

I'd be fine with this as a recommendation/guideline, but not as a rule.
 
I havent voted because im for and against it.

For because especially for nep we need to really expand our factions territories lore and make it more interesting. Some of our worlds are practically dead on fluff and crunch (some on purpose because they where brought back after ligma. And i haven't had the time to work on them...). Yamatai has 10,000 systems to play in but nep not so much so we should really get our gear at some point and make what we do have more flavorful!

Especially since the kikyo sector is cramped as it is for non-yamatai. Nep has allocated space north of its borders to expand but I don't want to go that route until what we already have is more fleshed out. And what few people ive found interested in that have left or been removed from the community unfortunately.

Somewhat against because in the past couple years nep has lost 200+ articles to various malicious people and still has a lot we need to replace and 90% of it was military and also we have a lot of old stuff that needs blatant replacing or upgrading and that increases our (read me and krimson at this point) workloads 100%. And ive only barely scratched the surface on those replacements or remakes of such things.
 
I agree we need to have a expanded culture portion and at times for Yam it seems we have a explosion of weapon and new equipment (honestly at times too much for what we have) but to force it this way I got to disagree.

That being said in the case of yam faction wise I think we should hold a weapon expansion pause for the coming year. Also inregards to what Charm said lets not cap them honestly they got butched (I mean a few years ago I joined and its still taking a while to get sorted though I know i'm not helping but I can understand the trouble there going through).
 
What I propose is that for every military/weapon-based submission you submit. There should be a need for 1 submission of a non-military oriented article in one of the above categories.
I've seen a lot of talk lately about not wanting to limit the creativity of members with rules and regulations. While it'd be great to encourage really prolific weapon creators toward other non-weapon/non-military setting elements, some other creators only make one-off setting elements every few years. Maybe something like "if you have submitted and gained approval for X military articles in the past six months, your next article must be a non-military article." Even then, I'm still iffy on this overall because FMs ask for what their faction wants and, ultimately, the site is called Star Army Dot Com and thus is primarily about Yamatai's space military. People join to RP in a military and create military wiki articles so coupling any given person's creativity to non-military RP might not be the best idea.

Always love to see more background setting elements, though. They give the setting itself a lot of flavor and charm, and provide important trinkets and locales for people to incorporate in every aspect of their experience.
 
One of the things I'm rather curious about here is this...

What are all these weapons being used for?

The majority of factions didn't participate in the global war until it was almost over. There is no PvP and I haven't seen a lot of small-time faction-level enemies around. I'm curious where does the say 14th designed handgun of the same strength fits in exactly. What are all these weapons for? Someone said a few minutes ago on discord that some people just want to RP. We're headed into peacetime, they're going to need places and things to RP.
 
(Lets not get into the whole kuvexian war conversation right now cause it won't end well if we do.)

As for weapons. It never hurts to supply players and GMs with tools to play with to add variety. You can have a shadow mindy, a TARSA, a stealth suit, a camo-cloak and all of a sudden you have OPTIONS depending on how the GM wants to take stealth in his plot. He can have a powerful suit of PA, yeah. Or he could have lesser alternatives that offer less rule-of-cool and more intrigue and stealth and players problem solving.

Options are good!

Hell i'd make 1,000 more plotship sized starships if starship articles weren't so annoyingly exact to have to fill out and would require 10+ sub articles to each one just to make them different enough to differentiate between other ships and how most of what i make becomes a battleground in the NTSE (and its not always me being headstrong or wanting to get my way). And some ships I've made just to have background lore and RP just to save nep does have X that fits X role.

Am i planning on playing all those ships? no.

Am i making them for power creep or super fleets? no.

I would make them to give GMs and players tools and variety to choose from; Because no two GMs want to make a plot in a bison or carnivore or a bastard if someone else is. Some things are overmade to death, ill admit. We have 100 super-handguns across all the factions combined and some of them are the same (Like an OP revolver) after all. But that just goes to show its what people like and want.
 
Options are great! My point is exactly @Charmaylarg Dufrain . Options are what we're talking about and I'm highlighting a section where we AS A SITE (this isn't about faction) are in a deficit of.

Especially when it comes to having culture, history, locations, and information that helps players make their characters and the setting better.

If we do make this about faction - The faction with the better setting elements has a straightforward CCG, etc will attract more new players.
 
NDC is currently hard at work trying to fill in our own, with a lot of feedback and help from wonderful minds like @RaWolfe. We're aware of our own lack of such material and are trying to address that. There are also a number of locations that sadly don't get used across setting as they've lost relevance. It would be nice to possibly find some way to make them relevant again, and therefore sort of RP tourist locations/stops.

As for cultural stuff, and just common things like food, landmarks, customs, holidays, and so on. Are never bad to have more of, as they add more character to the setting itself imo. The setting is the best character of any roleplay, and should be shown ample affection for that role in the form of meaningful detail.
 
See I'm not suggesting that a hold be placed on weapons or military stuff. What I suggested is, that we as a site put PRIORITY on what we need as a community.
 
I used nep and yamatai as examples as they fit the best for what i was going for. Yamatai has a lot of locations and are all very interesting after all, And I've been making a good number of ships for nepland for the reasons i stated~

And i agree and think having culture, history, etc. Are all super important and we should have those things.

But it shouldn't be forced upon. Content creators in the community arent a majority and adding work load to them as a toll for wanting to make something or many somethings kills more creativity than it creates.

Ill be so bold as to use myself for an example because I'm so self important. Im not imaginative or all that creative; Anything i make you compare to old-nep articles there's a clear different in the quality.
I recently learned when trying to revive deleted nep planets and systems and trying to make my own that i am so horribly trash and bad at creating interesting locations its not even funny.

I know military stuff, I'm a military man after all~

I don't know jack about culture or locations or anything that can make them interesting and considering my track record in the NTSE and how i dread every single articles submission adding +1 article or update or submission to my workload in subjects I'm that bad at is a nightmare to me.
 
Then it is a great time to reach out to those people on the site who are good at designing those other features for some help, right ? @Charmaylarg Dufrain
 
See I'm going, to be honest. This was a trap. I did warn in my original post that I knew how this discussion was going to go. That is because I wanted it to come to this place where it is right now. Where I state very openly and plainly. When we think about the setting in Star Army we need to stop thinking about what hat we're wearing, what flag we're usually writing under. We need to think as a community. We need creators that design for this one big faction called the SARPiverse. We got lots of Yams, Neps, etc as we call them but we have fewer and fewer people lately who are thinking about things outside of their box.

We're going into peacetime, it's time to crawl out of the faction boxes and the faction holes, and it's time to think about Star Army as a Community when it comes to what we design. Designing stuff for YOUR faction is great, but the deficit I identified is sitewide. It's a Star Army issue...Not a Nep, Yam, NDC issue.
 
If people want to do nep stuff and help improve nep I'm all for that and have always encouraged it. You wont get any pushback from me if you wanted to improve one of neps barren (lore wise) worlds. Ive been shouting from my soapbox since i was co-fm that people can have a nep world to do with as they please on the sole condition they take an already existing nep world.
 
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Second post cause mine came out after Andrew posted that.

Ive been trying that forever. Almost all my attempts have ended in harassment or toxicity. And if people want to say they haven't i will spend the rest of the night scouring the GM forum and the discord and come up with more than enough proof. We proposed stuff for interacting with others and get told off all the time and have those very things thrown back at us like we never proposed them in the future and tsk-tsked at when we point out how toxic certain people were/are about it.

Nep is doing some stuff with the nesh and NDC right now, which I'm happy with. But they are the only two who have reciprocated any desire to even interact with other factions on equal terms without faction bias getting in the way or belittlement taking place by the faction-biased chest beaters.

Nep was even invited to the glimmergold battle and is taking part in it but not before nep was literally ejected from the whole event at one point, and then in the discord was harassed and belittled by not only players but certain members of staff which has happened so many fucking times its not funny and makes me want to leave this community every time i try to make an effort only to receive toxic harassment.
 
Ive been trying that forever.

My response is simple. Try again. I'm not interested in the past. I'm interested in the future. @Charmaylarg Dufrain

I have friends that are joining the site. Kore is one of them, and I have a few others who are getting interested in it. Their number one feedback is that the front line information like the CCGs, basic info about the cultures and histories of the factions are NOT clear and are NOT easy to understand. Now, these are my friends so I can do a good job explaining but that makes me wonder, how many new players look at our frontline material that has taken a backseat to the 125th handgun design for years...and throw up their hands and leave?

Some factions are barely seeing traction, barely seeing a few posts a month. Everyone is good at pointing fingers, but the reason you're not getting players is that the front line information, the basic locations, history, culture of your factions, and the things linked into the CCGs across the board are unclear, fragmented, and not polished.

If we aren't getting new players in the door, past the initial stages of recruitment...then the cool options you have for your military ships and guns are just things on a wiki.
 
Please keep replies to the topic at hand. It's devolving and it's just about adding non-military articles to the site, not taking or giving personal insult.

I like Alex's idea that it's faction specific. Updating Andrew's statement with it: "What I propose is that for every military/weapon-based submission submitted for a faction, there should be a need for 1 submission of a non-military oriented article in one of the above categories for that faction."
 
See I'm going, to be honest. This was a trap. I did warn in my original post that I knew how this discussion was going to go. That is because I wanted it to come to this place where it is right now. Where I state very openly and plainly. When we think about the setting in Star Army we need to stop thinking about what hat we're wearing, what flag we're usually writing under. We need to think as a community. We need creators that design for this one big faction called the SARPiverse. We got lots of Yams, Neps, etc as we call them but we have fewer and fewer people lately who are thinking about things outside of their box.

We're going into peacetime, it's time to crawl out of the faction boxes and the faction holes, and it's time to think about Star Army as a Community when it comes to what we design. Designing stuff for YOUR faction is great, but the deficit I identified is sitewide. It's a Star Army issue...Not a Nep, Yam, NDC issue.
My stance remains the same, it's not about factions, it's about the fact that I don't think it's right to force people to do work on a site designed for relaxation and play. Wiki creators should not need to double their workload, especially if they prefer writing one kind of content.

To everyone; remember that when you upvote, you're not voting for your version/interpretation of the idea but only for what is being presented in the original post.

To Andrew; it's easy to say to Char "Fix/make more cultural stuff" but the fact is he's vastly understaffed over there in terms of wiki helpers and is dealing with the fallout of many people tearing down their stuff and leaving gaps that he needs to fill and is too busy to make/renovate location and cultural articles ON TOP of running several plots ON TOP of real life.

We're all doing our best, but being told stuff like "Your CCGs and cultural articles and history pages and so on all need fixing." It just tells us that the problem we already know exists is a problem.

It's always a bit irritating to see people that are all but Yamatai-exclusive in terms of characters and wiki contributions, with its massive wiki team, telling people in Nepleslia and other smaller factions to "Fix their stuff" or to "Think about the broader community when they're making things" when it's quite a lot harder to do that with only one or two people aside from the FM able/willing to do the work and the situation is all the harder in Char's case.

Char needs help, so when people criticize Nepleslia (or any other faction for that matter) for needing work, I think they should be willing to put their money where their mouths are and pitch in.
 
Ill try not to sound the pessimist and say I've tried so many times and been bitten so many times because of it that ill take the initiative with people who show they are willing to as well.

People who refuse to interact with us or belittle us constantly will have no problems because we won't interact with them either.

People who want to RP with us will find no problems with that and we will reciprocate in kind and do our best to get some Faction-Faction rp going like we are with the nesh/NDC. And I've proposed this in the faction/GM forum to the point of even offering small-scale conflicts from nep that can even end with nep as the bad guy or loser in the end just to get some interesting RP where its not just a casual meetup and tea-party between leaders but more interesting scenarios.

For the submission topic Ame got us back on track I've said my piece and would prefer it if things weren't forced on me other other community members. The last time somebody even chose to acknowledge the written rule about "every time you make a military starship you must make a civilian or enemy one" was Legix after all with the Jackdaw/Terrene YEARS AGO and that was an incredibly stressful disaster despite him being the only one following that rule.
 
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