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Concordia Thread
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Already super into this game! It’s been amazing already! Went to do research for another player and we got a GM scene!
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I randomly discovered this BB post earlier this morning, apped a character and had a nice scene. Very nice launch day to staff, now go rest up!
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My quick thoughts after about 24 hours.
Pros:
- A very unique theme and lore that I’m quite eager to see how it’s explored. It takes a certain twist on the L&L formula that many of us have seen and I think there’s a lot that can be used for driving plot that possibly either hasn’t been very often or not at all.
- There’s a lot of potential for upward momentum. As in, once things get rolling, it’ll keep rolling and I’m rather excited to see how that’ll turn out.
- The theme has a good blend of establishment and mystery involved without feeling like things are hidden too much. Feels like there’s a low bar of entry to be able to jump right in and play. I think there’s…maybe 5-10 pages of text that you actually would do well to read? Certainly not a novel, which again, makes the game pretty accessible.
- Staff is very responsive to questions and concerns and is willing to take constructive criticism in stride. I can’t emphasis how important this point is to be willing to have a dialogue about topics.
- The player base is pretty welcoming on the whole and eager to help/assist other players.
- The wiki layout and presentation is well done while not burying players in a large amount of lore that needs to be digested in order to play. It’s also formatted in a way that makes reading up on theme and lore rather easy, with a number of links baked into text.
- Looking at times where things are ran there is a slant towards UK/Euro players, which even as a US player, I think is great, because that’s one thing I haven’t seen done very often.
When I list the ‘Cons’ I want to stress that I don’t think these are bad things, but rather things I could consider as pain points or potential concerns in the future:
* There appears to be a strong emphasis on roster characters over OCs, and I’m unsure if OC characters are going to get left behind both in regards to plot and XP, as roster characters do seem to start with a higher amount of CG XP with OCs in a perpetual chase to ‘keep up’ or be valued to the same extent that rosters are(granted, I have also been told that this is likely to change in the future).EDIT: Staff has already corrected this today, which I think is a great move.- No Age-based XP. This is a personal preference that I think any game that has a XP bonus for having older character, roster or OC, is a good thing that encourages a wider range of characters. I was honestly surprised that this game didn’t have it.
- Limited staff. Due to the game’s size, I am concerned that the two staffers the game has may become overwhelmed with the initial flood of players or the game explodes in population size. This may end up being a non-issue a month or so down the line, but it was something I did notice. If the player base size stays to where it’s currently, they may want to consider adding another 1-2 staff to help ease the work load.
Things that are neither pros or cons
- It’s Alpha. I mean, there’s going to be changes. There’s going to be fixes, that’s just part and parcel to any new mush. Some players may prefer to wait until the bugs are ironed or. Others may wish to actively help in finding them. So I don’t there’s any pro or con to this.
- To limit or not limit CGen: Some games have been, for the sake of staff sanity, limiting how big the game is going to get, leaving CGen open for so long before closing it off. There are both pro and con cases to be made on this, so while on the one hand I’d rather not see a game close off CGen, on the other hand, I completely understand why games do it. As of this writing, Concordia has not gated it’s CGen.
- Grid vs Portal: I’ve heard(strong emphasis here, feel free to correct me)that staff would prefer that players use the game’s grid as opposed to the Ares Portal. And again, I’m of two minds on this, because I see the benefits and drawbacks to both. Which I won’t list them here because this topic has been discussed at length in other threads. So take that as one may.
These are just my initial thoughts after the first day. Overall I give this game a solid A-. If you have free time, I highly recommend taking a look at it. And I feel like a lot of the cons that I brought up won’t still be cons after a month or two.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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Someone should probably split this off the ads thread and make a discussion one:
@Testament said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
No Age-based XP.
Just a note that the game is using FS3 and FS3 does not support age-based XP. So that’s not so much a game decision as a system limitation.
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@Whisky Good luck bud happy to see things taking off.
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@Faraday I think that just means allotting a certain number of xp points to character based on age. Or just granting a chunk of xp to an older character to indicate they have had more experience in their life than younger characters. I don’t think it necessitates code. It is definitely a game decision.
The game overall seems interesting enough. I’m not a player of lords and ladies games, so maybe this is a genre thing, but I’m surprised no one has made mention of the fact that characters in the ruling house have to be white with blond hair and blue eyes. There’s a specific mention that all the houses have some commonalities, but this one you have to stick to.
Is that a common thing in these types of games so that no one else is bothered by it? It definitely tripped a flag for me. Or is it one of those situations where people just trust it not to be as icky as it sounds and give the benefit of the doubt?
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@Warma-Sheen Hi there! Spes from ConcordiaMu here. There is a very specific thing in the story that causes the members of House Skyborne to have little pigment in their hair/eyes/skin on birth. We tried very hard to make sure that we had a diverse cast of characters, and are open to constructive feedback from anyone from a community that is feeling unrepresented.
That said, I think Faraday asked that conversation be moved to another forum. If you want to start a thread over there to further delve into this topic, I would be happy to engage further.
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@Warma-Sheen White-haired princess is a hallmark of the genre. Maybe someday we’ll all escape it.
For what it’s worth, I brought up a concern about a racially-coded aspect of the game that made me uncomfortable, and the response I got was positive, respectful, and seemed open to course-correcting.
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@Warma-Sheen said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
I’m surprised no one has made mention of the fact that characters in the ruling house have to be white with blond hair and blue eyes
Thanks for getting that out of the way for all zero people who were hung up about it.
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@spes said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
That said, I think Faraday asked that conversation be moved to another forum. If you want to start a thread over there to further delve into this topic, I would be happy to engage further.
If the staff can do that, I’d appreciate it. I think they just take all the comments after a certain point and throw them into a different section.
So as I mentioned, I’m not familiar with the genre so I was immediately struck with a ! on it. I wouldn’t have thought something like that was still a thing. And I’m sure that’s just my POV which informs how I took to that specific detail. If its a staple of the genre, it just is. I don’t know about it, so I asked. And it it wasn’t just that it was a house with those features, but that its the ruling house and there weren’t any exceptions.
It wasn’t meant to be an attack, but a genuine curiosity. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.
ETA: It does help me to know that there’s a story reason for this detail and not the game runner saying ‘in my world view these are are what the leaders should look like’. So I do honestly appreciate you answering to the question. to me there is a big difference. Apologies if it came off as something else.
@KarmaBum said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
Thanks for getting that out of the way for all zero people who were hung up about it.
Obviously, there was x > zero people who noticed it. So I asked questions. Big deal.
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@Warma-Sheen said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
Obviously, there was x > zero people who noticed it. So I asked questions. Big deal.
No, you didn’t. You made a side-handed, presumptive comment rather than address the concern or bring up a question.
“I’m surprised @Tez hasn’t forked this yet” ≠ “Can you please fork this, Tez?”
Only, mine was less passive-aggressive.
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Yeah. With this genre, if you file hard enough, you can almost get the outline of George R. R. Martin’s serial numbers filed off.
File even harder and you might even erase the Michael Moorcock (although IIRC Elric was a singular figure born with albinism and he definitely had a specific political agenda as he usually does) ones.
Anyway, I think this is sort of a thing that just de facto raises eyebrows in this day and age. I took a peek and was like, “eh…I dunno, this could read badly.” I’m glad the gamerunners’ hearts are at least in the right place.
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I forked it. Pls do create discussion threads rather than hop onto an ad thread in the future.
she/they
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Moved from Game Ads by
Tez
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@Warma-Sheen said in Concordia Thread:
@Faraday I think that just means allotting a certain number of xp points to character based on age. Or just granting a chunk of xp to an older character to indicate they have had more experience in their life than younger characters. I don’t think it necessitates code. It is definitely a game decision.
The game overall seems interesting enough. I’m not a player of lords and ladies games, so maybe this is a genre thing, but I’m surprised no one has made mention of the fact that characters in the ruling house have to be white with blond hair and blue eyes. There’s a specific mention that all the houses have some commonalities, but this one you have to stick to.
Is that a common thing in these types of games so that no one else is bothered by it? It definitely tripped a flag for me. Or is it one of those situations where people just trust it not to be as icky as it sounds and give the benefit of the doubt?
So, you don’t play L&L games but you have a problem with a game you’re not going to play with a genre you don’t even like? LOL why are you here commenting at all, this isn’t even constructive.
Anyway @Whisky and @spes good luck, have fun, don’t listen to the haters who aren’t going to play your game anyway
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@Tez I will do that from now on sorry. I was just throwing out praise to help the ad.
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Besides, you know you’ve officially ‘made it’ once you get a discussion thread going about your game on a forum.
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@KarmaBum said in Concordia: A Lord & Ladies Ares Game:
No, you didn’t. You made a side-handed, presumptive comment rather than address the concern or bring up a question.
I didn’t think I needed to pass it through a UN speechwriter. Sorry not sorry that it didn’t pass your standards. I’m not sure why you’re on my jock so much and feel the need to make snide comments wherever I post, but I meant what I wrote and I meant what I asked.
As others have mentioned, they noticed too. I didn’t even question the policy. Its their game and they can do what they want. I was glad for the clarification though. Apparently, others were too.
My point was that I was surprised that no one else had brought up something that was very noticeable to me and asked was that something that was just common in the genre.
@bear_necessities said in Concordia Thread:
So, you don’t play L&L games but you have a problem with a game you’re not going to play with a genre you don’t even like? LOL why are you here commenting at all, this isn’t even constructive.
I was considering playing it. I came across that in the files while looking into the game, which as I mentioned earlier, looked interesting. I haven’t played those games before, which is why I asked. Because I didn’t know.
It may not be constructive to you, but it is a determining factor to me why the gamerunner needs the leaders of the world have to look like the Aryan master race, without exception.
So I asked if it was a common thing in Lord and Ladies games. If it was, that probably wouldn’t be for me. Racial politics wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy.
No one was hating on the game. Geez Louise.
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@Warma-Sheen said in Concordia Thread:
It may not be constructive to you, but it is a determining factor to me why the gamerunner needs the leaders of the world have to look like the Aryan master race
@Warma-Sheen said in Concordia Thread:
Racial politics wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy.
See when you say things like ‘Aryan master race’ and go about two steps away from outright calling the gamerunners racist, but then slap on ‘constructive’, it does not make your argument actually constructive.
I didn’t see a single help file that suggeted there was racial politics in this game. I don’t know where you caught that assumption either. Honestly based on the PBs already, this is an encouragingly diverse game and race doesn’t seem to factor into anything except your own head.
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@bear_necessities said in Concordia Thread:
I didn’t see a single help file that suggeted there was racial politics in this game. I don’t know where you caught that assumption either. Honestly based on the PBs already, this is an encouragingly diverse game and race doesn’t seem to factor into anything except your own head.
Pretty much this. I read through the files for at least an hour and a half yesterday and no where has anything been said about conflict based on how people look. In fact, given the rest of game policy I’m pretty sure anyone coming into the game trying to do just that would be shown the door quickly.
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I’m just going to be real with you all. I put in a request letting them know I felt awkward about the gods being white, and my non-white noble house worshipping a white patron god. And you know what? They were like, ‘good lookin out, this is on our list of things to review.’ And it made me feel immediately more comfortable.
I don’t think this beef in the comments is in the spirit of the game runners.
