!CAUTION!
This thread is about mini empires! If you are easily offended, don't like being told you're wrong, don't like to roleplay, don't like me, or you partake in jumping on bandwagons (ex. "mini empires sucks because its not even real"), IT IS ADVISED THAT YOU CLOSE THIS BROWSER!
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK
MINI EMPIRES
Quick terms for those of you unfamiliar with Mini Empires:
RP - Role Play. A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterisation, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.
Definition courtesy of RagnaTheBroedgeMini Empires - A game mode much like a freebuild, however with a dedicated theme. Players build miniature-scale THINGS, be it a plane, a crane, a house or a lake, it's always "MINI"
MERP - Mini Empires Role Play. It takes the elements of role playing, and includes mini empires that people often 'control' and interact with. Often times, intra-player interactions are highly common, and most times necessary.
GODMOD - Verb. To godmod is to play mini empires unfairly. Ex. Player1 and Player2 are at war, each have 10 units in the fight. Player1 is winning the fight after 30 minutes of role playing, and Player2 gets mad and doesn't wanna lose, so he spawns twenty catapults and claims that he's the victor, because of his catapults. This is godmodding because the catapults were spawned randomly, irrelevantly, and in the heat of battle when a player was on the verge of losing.
^^ Those are common terms ^^
vv These are less common terms vv
Dwarven MERP - larger sized Mini Empires, the focus is still on 'miniaturized' builds, however everything is made slightly larger than a standard mini empires. This is often the most realistic sizing for mini empires, allowing for high detail and fairly large builds.
HIGH BRICK COUNT. This is also the type of MERP
OP plays
Host Honor Code - Within MERPs, sometimes hosts take up a code of honor. When a player wishes to be stealthy, sneak attack someone or save a secret weapon, they must notify the host for it to be a valid usage, otherwise it is considered godmodding. The honor code comes in place when it comes to this information: The host cannot give away this information, or use it to their benefit.
Dup Plate - A dup plate is where dedicated MERP players store all of their buildings. The term 'dup' comes in when it comes time to use or play with a dup plate; the player loads his/her dup plate, and 'dupes' their creations into the battlefield/map. This allows for well-made/pre-made units and structures, without the hassle of building everything on the spot.
THE ISSUE AT HAND
Lately within Blockland, there have been increasing amounts of low quality MERP and Mini Empires servers springing up, all attempting to bring in large groups of players, and only lasting for about a day at most.
Here are the problems I've found with this:
• It is a waste of time for everyone. MERPs are much like a book; they require a beginning, a middle and an end. Writing only the beginning of a book leaves a feeling of incompleteness (in most cases) and is a bad feeling to have. When you create a race of sentient beings, and you give them homes and creatures and weapons, and you defend their land against attackers and war, you grow fond of your creation. You create an emotional attachment. Much like how in a book you grow emotionally attached to a character. Except for you, it's an entire mini-country.
• just as evil begets evil and good begets good, building poorly begets building poorly and vice versa. Many hosts put little effort into their servers, mostly with the intent to get involved in MERPs for the first time, and end up catching roughly 10-20 dedicated MERP players. For experienced MERP players, this is like opening up a box of chocolates, to find a big, ripe turd. For inexperienced players, they see this and believe "Oh, this is normal, I should build this way, as this is acceptable." I got news for you;
it's not.• We talk about you. Just like all the furries know eachother in and out of their thread, the MERP players know eachother, and we talk. So when a new player hosts a server, we all check it out, and 80% of the time we leave and laugh about you behind your back about how bad the server was. Want to avoid this? The solution is coming...
• GET EXPERIENCE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO HOST! This is difficult in some scenarios, I understand. On servers like Gentoo's Mini Empires, he requires players to be knowledgeable of MERPs and fairly familiar with the building style. On other servers, players are much more willing to show new players the ropes of roleplay and how to build. Art is all about developing your own style, but you can't expect to paint a portrait before you can hold the brush.
• They last for 1-2 days, then they quit. We WANT people to join the MERP community! servers full of exotic and attractive empires are fun! Wars with 6 people and tanks and turrets and bombs are EXCITING! And you can be a part of that! But we CANNOT do this if we have seven servers that host every day, and only one or two of them have legitimate builds, and then one at best has some good role-play functionality.
Because I can't address these points any further without actually discussing it between members of the community, I would like to reflect my thoughts on what I most commonly find on other MERP servers in terms of builds. This part* is difficult to do sadly, but I'll do the best I can.
!!DISCLAIMER!!
Not everyone is perfect. Not everyone can paint a picasso. Not everyone can figure out how to event a brick to explode. I know. Everyone has their varying degrees of skill. What ISN'T okay is carelessness, or bigotry in the face of suggestions and improvements.
GOOD SCI-FI TANK BAD SCI-FI TANKThe tank on the left is much more realistic than the tank on the right for a variety of reasons, the main one being scale: The tank on the right can hardly fit ONE person inside, and it would be cramped. The tank on the left has room for your standard tank crew of 3-4, the turret is a seperate unit from the body of the tank, and overall the tank has room for electronics, munitions, engines, etc etc. The tank on the right is a cardboard box with a peashooter for a gun.
GOOD SCI-FI PLANE BAD SCI-FI PLANEThe plane on the left is fairly large and capable of carrying multiple units/light vehicles, has suitable emitters, a smooth and attractive roosterpit, some form of wings/aerial propulsion, etc. The plane on the right is a twig with wings and some flaming engines. Seriously. Stop with the fire emitters. Planes don't emit fire from their engines. Not even jets do that. It's basically fuel leaving a showerhead and then being lit on fire, then re-pressurized with compressed air that pushes the plane. The wings and overall proportion are that of a glider at best. These are too damn common. STOP.
GOOD COLONIAL HOME BAD COLONIAL HOMEThe home on the left ACTUALLY FITS A FAMILY. The home on the right is a TOOL SHED. Look at the size of a single unit. If one person takes up a 1x1x2F area, your 2x2x1 'house' cannot comfortably fit 12 people. That's complete bullstuff and you're overcrowding. The home on the left comfortably fits 4-7, and includes other details like a chimney, door, lights/windows and a second floor. Also: VARY YOUR BUILDINGS. Quit duping around the same damn house 100 times!
GOOD MEDIEVAL WALL BAD MEDIEVAL WALLThe wall on the left can actually mount soldiers. It has parapets so soldiers can duck-down to avoid line of fire. It is made of wood and has support beams bellow the tower. The walls are not freakishly large or tall. The wall on the RIGHT... I'm not even going to bother you guys should get the picture by now.
literal side note:
Yes I am still working on CityMod's build, however I like to build and play with my mini empires now and again, if you have any problems with this please message me your complaints and we can sort out a time for you to build an entire city for Vaux and Bran in your free time to meet the expectations of an estimated 200-2000+ players
Show Posts
