[Discuss] Any plans to introduce a new island?

[Vinnie]

2006/9/21, Tom Vogt <tom at lemuria.org>:
>
> LilWolf schrieb:
> >> Quick fix: Tell people not to message the whole realm with every
> >> piece of nonsense.
> >
> > That doesn't work. They'll just ask for support from the others
> > responsible for nonsense messages and steamroll over the dissenting
> > voices and the silent majority that doesn't care about anything but
> > getting their hands on the latest orders. They'll say that's what the
> > message system is there for. Some people use it for long OOC talks in
> > front of the whole realm that have nothing to do with the game(e.g.
> > they're getting to know the players behind the characters in front of
> > the whole realm), because that's the only easy mechanism the game
> > provides for discussion with other players.
> Now you know why there isn't a "reply to all" button. It'd make this
> extra-easy. People who keep a discussion running with messages sent to
> everyone are taking an extra step to do so. They are intentionally
> annoying. Put them on ignore.


My point still stands -  try a reply-to-all button on one continent and see
how it works out.

> It just boils down to the issue that the message system does not
> > handle discussion within a small group very well and people are trying
> > to use it as some sort of a forum that allows free discussion about
> > everything.
> Yes, if you use tools for things they weren't build to be, then it gets
> messy. Nothing new there.


The point is that most of this discussion isn't *pointless*. It's just that
not everyone cares. However, since you don't always know exactly who cares,
you get to send things to the entire realm. And that duchies don't work
because they don't include all the people you want to reach.

Really, a reply to all button would solve most of this mess - people would
reply to the people they know are interested instead of messaging the whole
realm.


> Now, we did talk about this a while ago on IRC and a few ideas were
> > thrown around. I remember most notably personal message groups. The
> > king can already form message groups, why not let an individual player
> > to form a few private groups that only he himself can see and use?
> People wouldn't use it because it's "too much work" to update them every
> now and then.


Maybe, maybe not. Why not try it?

Only thing I see as possible is
> a) user eduction - ok, that was a joke, it never worked in the past in
> any area, why in BM?
> b) adding a "this is spam" button to messages, and locking the "all
> realm" temporarily for people who sent too much spam.
>

Please, that's the last thing we need. What we need is realising the current
message system isn't suited for larger realms. We might as well realise that
it's a bad system, and that you just won't notice that as long as you keep
your realms small enough. And then we could argue why the all-in-realm isn't
just some sort of forum.

Anyway. We're not going to get a new message system. So instead, why do we
need big realms? I get the impression Tom wants us to play with larger
realms (playerbase) than before, but I'm not sure why. It's more annoying
and less lightweight. It hardly adds anything. I also believe smaller realms
to be MORE FUN.

The only reason I could see is that creating new continents is
time-consuming, but that shouldn't be a reason really. I'd be happy if you'd
make another Atamara-copy and force half of Atamara out of there. That would
be much more fun.


PS: Tom, I read on your CV that you hate manual processes and that all of
the neccesary manual things quickly find themselves automated. Is automating
much of the "make-new-map" process impossible? So that all that would need
to be done is drawing the map and coming up with a list of region names...
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