We can and have played for extended periods of time of time without a minigame. So, right off the bat, I'd like to note that that doesn't necessarily make Agora boring or mean that there isn't anything to do. I mean, we have stuff to do now, with practically no players using the map. Sure, the game is _less_ interesting that way than with a good minigame, but good minigames are hard to come by.
One possibility, which I've raised in the past, is that we could reimplement the politics system Alexis came up with last December. It looked like an sound system and was already starting to create interesting gameplay. It had a few major bugs, including the one that netted me my Champion by Politics title, but nothing that can't be easily fixed. Honestly, I think repealing it to make way for land was probably a bad idea in the first place. Land could have been an interesting system, but repealing something you know to be good in the hope that the next thing will be better isn't a good strategy. Reinstating politics is the route I'd tend to go if we decided to repeal land, which I'm known to favor doing. I'd also like to get something like points passed so that we can have an economy that isn't entirely dependent on the implementation details of the present minigame. As I'm sure everyone knowns by now, I'm of the opinion that forcing people to play a minigame is actively harmful to the game as a whole. We should have a good minigame, but it should be something optional that players can do for fun, not a required cost of getting anything done. I'm happy to write up proposals to implement something like these proposals if they are agreed upon, but I've learned my lesson about how unsuccessful it is to try to convince Agorans to do something they don't want to do. For the record though, my vote is FOR full repeal. -Aris On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 5:24 PM Reuben Staley <reuben.sta...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Inevitably, the question had to come up again: should we get rid of the > land mechanics? Five months and some change have gone by so far and it > really doesn't look like it's going to continue much longer. > > This has been heavily argued before (specifically, when Aris brought up > the question a couple months back) and most of the points that were > brought up back then are still applicable here. > > Additionally, now that both G. and Corona, two people who supported the > subgame in the first place, have become disinterested in the mechanic's > continuation, it remains that the only active players are D. Margaux and > twg. > > Moreover, it's just not that fun. It feels like it's less of a strategic > game based on trying to own the most stuff and more of a > going-through-the-motions type deal. When there's a land auction, a few > bids are cast and no competition ensues. Then you do the rounds and > collect your assets. Then you wait for the next week so you can do it > all again. > > Additionally, I'm just burned out at this point. Making reports each > week is more of a chore than anything. I'm not interested in playing all > that much. > > So, what are our options? > > We can repeal all the rules and stop playing. This solution would be the > quickest and easiest. We should also implement a different currency like > points in place of coins. But the problem is, the rest of Agora isn't > actually all that mechanically interesting or unique so we'd be left > with a hole in the ruleset. > > We can rework the Arcadia rules. New assets, new map, new everything. I > would try to get back into the swing of things if the mechanics sounded > interesting. But notice how it took months to get to where we are today > where the map is more interesting that a few squares of land in the > middle? Yeah, that sounds boring as heck. > > Or we can continue on this path. I would probably stop being the > Cartographor just because I'm really not interested in doing more of this. > > I currently favor a full repeal, but if someone has new and innovative > ideas about how to save Arcadia, I'll listen. > > -- > Trigon
