Althanas Suggestion Thread

[Atzar]

I can support the idea of raising the ‘Basic Judgment’ benchmarks to 50/60/70 to make it a relevant choice, but I’d like to see the Workshop score remain at 65. It’s that high for a reason.

The Workshop was designed to accomplish two things. First: it greatly eases the burden on our judges. Nobody joined this forum to be a fucking judge. It’s a tedious, often thankless task, and judging burnout has cost us too many great writers and people over the years.

Second: it lowers the standard of writing for the site. This is a good thing. Flamebird mentioned this site being about loot now. It was always about loot. It was just more subtle in the past. All the best loot – EXP and GP, but also the juiciest IC spoils like rare materials – were locked behind a quality wall. As a result, Althanas always struggled with the perception of elitism. Many people would go out of their way to write with the best writers to piggyback a JC or to grab some loot that would otherwise be beyond their reach; meanwhile, the best writers would form cliques to keep their scores high. The existence of the Workshop – and its high score parameter – has helped to topple that elitism to an extent. Now that everybody has an avenue to a score that is viewed as ‘very good’, it’s no longer a sacrifice to write with somebody who isn’t INDK or Letho.

The Workshop is doing its job as intended right now.

[Abomination]

Second: it lowers the standard of writing for the site. This is a good thing. Flamebird mentioned this site being about loot now. It was always about loot. It was just more subtle in the past. All the best loot – EXP and GP, but also the juiciest IC spoils like rare materials – were locked behind a quality wall. As a result, Althanas always struggled with the perception of elitism. Many people would go out of their way to write with the best writers to piggyback a JC or to grab some loot that would otherwise be beyond their reach; meanwhile, the best writers would form cliques to keep their scores high. The existence of the Workshop – and its high score parameter – has helped to topple that elitism to an extent. Now that everybody has an avenue to a score that is viewed as ‘very good’, it’s no longer a sacrifice to write with somebody who isn’t INDK or Letho.

I'd like to offer a counter-perspective on this. For me, it's never been about loot. EXP, GP, items, those are just numbers that go up. I can go to any other game and do that. I've already gotten infinite amounts of all that stuff anyway, and none of it has gotten me anywhere. In a closed quest, or really any non-competitive thread, does it even matter what your level and wealth are? You can pretend to have whatever you want, because it's your story.

The incentive for me is collaborative writing, and the reason this perceived 'elitism' has sprung up, is because there are a diminishing few amount of people that are willing to put the work in to make something interesting, to really go at it from every angle, edit it until it is free from error both grammatical or literary, and this huge amount of time isn't worth sharing with someone who just wants to have a simple role play. The remaining cliques are just people who write with their friends; the so-called 'elitists' are gone.

I feel that the thing that made this place stand out for all these years was promoting excellence. There are hundreds of sites with EXP/whatever, that's not really a reason to stick around. While I'm suffering from a years-long writer's block, I still stand by my initial goal of writing something interesting. Just offering some perspective from those that try to get JC's, in that, they're not symbols of superiority-

They're proof that you made something that is worth reading. Not saying that anything outside isn't worth reading, but as a highly self-critical writer, it tells me that enough people thought it was a good idea to display it as a showcase for the world.

"These people tried to capture your interest, did they succeed?"