Memorial Characters

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

 

Personally I think if somebody had a passion for this game and played it then who would we be to deny them an in game memorial? 

 

I take the point that some players made a greater impact than others in game, and (at least some of them) are recognised with their avatar in game. I think I generally speaking trust the community and dev team at large to make that call. We trust our devs with everything else regarding this game including our PCs, so why would this be different? We're a better community than I think you credit us for here. 

Players already get memorials. Other players have to make it, but that is the purpose of the Fallen but not Forgotten thread. To be a memorial for our departed. And as others have stated, we can make our own tributes and memorials in our bases and then make that open to others. The arguing over who gets to have an in game memorial and who does not, where said memorial should be or not, which of the however many characters the player had should be the memorial, the limited space in all the zones, the constant or near constant updating for memorials in the game as more people pass, and the sheer volume of likely memorial requests means in game memorials are a non-starter. You are simply asking for too much. Even if this was a full-time, full size, paid development team, constantly updating zones for player memorials is itself a full time job with a daunting expected workload. And you are requesting it from our small, volunteer working on the game in their spare time dev team.

[Scarlet Shocker]

23 minutes ago, Rudra said:

 And you are requesting it from our small, volunteer working on the game in their spare time dev team.

 

I'm not requesting it, so much as suggesting an option which is a significant difference

 

My thoughts of forum threads and SG bases is that by far the bulk of the player base doesn't use the forum and SGs are very often single player or micro-SGs for tiny groups and their alts. 

 

 

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

SGs are very often single player or micro-SGs for tiny groups and their alts.

 

Which in no way prevents anyone from creating a memorial for a friend or loved one that has passed on.  A specific SG and base can be created with only one member and its only purpose can be a memorial park or shrine of some kind.  

Edited Monday at 05:52 PM by ShardWarrior

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I'm not requesting it, so much as suggesting an option which is a significant difference

Seriously? This is your response? Okay, fine. For the sake of clarity, when a person makes a suggestion on the forums, that person is making a request to the devs for it to be added.

 

6 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

My thoughts of forum threads and SG bases is that by far the bulk of the player base doesn't use the forum and SGs are very often single player or micro-SGs for tiny groups and their alts. 

So? Do you really think Random Stranger That Passed That Most Players Never Knew Or Met is going to be someone that everyone should be putting in the effort to go to memorials for? The memorials are for those who knew the person and were affected by the person. Who cares if not everyone sees the memorial to that person? Grief is a personal matter, not an everyone matter. (Edit: I am so damned tired of hearing from grieving people that because they lost someone, absolutely everyone else in the world needs to also be grieving that unknown person. I respect when someone is grieving. Try to give that person space and even be there for support. But expecting me to be bawling out my eyes singing praises for someone I never even met is asking for too much. And your comment reeks of that attitude that everyone should be grieving the person you are grieving, and if they aren't they are terrible people.)

 

Edited Monday at 05:57 PM by Rudra

[Scarlet Shocker]

Just now, Rudra said:

Seriously? This is your response? Okay, fine. For the sake of clarity, when a person makes a suggestion on the forums, that person is making a request to the devs for it to be added.

 

So? Do you really think Random Stranger That Passed That Most Players Never Knew Or Met is going to be someone that everyone should be putting in the effort to go to memorials for? The memorials are for those who knew the person and were affected by the person. Who cares if not everyone sees the memorial to that person? Grief is a personal matter, not an everyone matter.

 

I'm simply contributing to an extant discussion offering ideas and alternate options. I'm not getting dogmatic about it just putting things out there as possibilities. If I'd felt passionate about it, I might have started my own suggestion thread. 

 

As for your second point, I think it might have greater validity if the player base was huge, but in a small community, there are fewer "Random Strangers" by default. 

 

I see this entire thread as a discussion not as an agenda or direction of action. Of course I have preferences but I am entirely aware of how limited resources are with our small volunteer team but that doesn't mean every contribution should take the dev team's size into consideration.

 

This is more of a distillation process if anything at all. Throw ideas into the pot, see what might, would and wouldn't work and take it from there. 

 

10 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Which in no way prevents anyone from creating a memorial for a friend or loved one that has passed on.  A specific SG and base can be created with only one member and its only purpose can be a memorial park or shrine of some kind.  

 

I didn't say that it would be preventable (except that a one-player SG is very unlikely to get a memorial, and possibly we should be afraid if it did) 

 

As @Rudra pointed out, grief is very personal, but I know from my own experiences in other online environments that it can be heartwarming to see how a community has responded to the life and passing of others and seeing those tributes can be quite moving, so having those spaces in the public domain is arguably more beneficial than having them in a micro-base where they would be likely seen by only a tiny section of the community. 

 

There's a reason why cemeteries and graveyards occupy some of the most prime real estate globally - that is part of human nature. Tucking a memorial away seems less worthy than not having one, but that's just my thoughts. 

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

As for your second point, I think it might have greater validity if the player base was huge, but in a small community, there are fewer "Random Strangers" by default. 

Homecoming has six servers. With Excelsior being fairly heavily populated (it routinely goes red) and Everlasting being fairly robustly populated. And we have multiple self-declared soloists like me just on the forums, so who knows how many in the game. The likelihood of a player being a random stranger to most of the player base is likely quite higher than you seem to think.

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I didn't say that it would be preventable (except that a one-player SG is very unlikely to get a memorial, and possibly we should be afraid if it did) 

 

I believe you have misunderstood.  The point was that creating a super group with the sole intent of building a memorial or shrine as a base that will be open to the public does not require the roster to be filled with people.  Most bases are purpose built or built with a very specific theme in mind, and not all of them have the available space to build a memorial honoring members who have passed on.  There may also be a desire to keep things how they are after the person who built the base passes away.  I inherited the Amazon Army SG after @Heraclea passed away.  @Heraclea built the whole thing the way he wanted and was very proud of his work.  I could very easily build a shrine to him in there, but I prefer to keep it intact as he built it.  I could, however, very easily roll an alt and start a "Heraclea Shrine" SG and build a memorial to him in there.  Each of us can do the same and create a separate SG from our primary one.  Anyone can build whatever memorial they want.

 

5 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

As @Rudra pointed out, grief is very personal, but I know from my own experiences in other online environments that it can be heartwarming to see how a community has responded to the life and passing of others and seeing those tributes can be quite moving, so having those spaces in the public domain is arguably more beneficial than having them in a micro-base where they would be likely seen by only a tiny section of the community. 

 

Bases are in the public domain so long as the entry code is publicly available, and the base will be seen by as many or as few people as those involved with creating it want.  Advertise the code on Discord, here on the forums, in-game and on social media and people will visit.  There is also a base directory listing for each server.  

[El D]

3 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Personally I think if somebody had a passion for this game and played it then who would we be to deny them an in game memorial? 

 

I take the point that some players made a greater impact than others in game, and (at least some of them) are recognised with their avatar in game. I think I generally speaking trust the community and dev team at large to make that call. We trust our devs with everything else regarding this game including our PCs, so why would this be different? We're a better community than I think you credit us for here. 

 

It's less who would we be to deny it and more who are we to demand one. At least in that particular format. A massive, public memorial that only the devs can manage, and thusly have to update from an unending petition of names, bios, and handles to account for every deceased player before and afterword, does not seem likely. Especially so given how stringent the devs already are regarding NPC memorials even existing as well as them being deliberately unobtrusive. It's asking them to change a very reasonably held approach they've maintained for years to one that adds a new commitment that'll last until the servers shut down for good, and if it's not properly respected in every instance it will result in some rather angry players. I've seen how upset folks get about proposed powerset changes; I don't have any doubts the thought that the devs were disrespectful to their deceased friend(s) or family would be much worse. 

 

As some of the other posters mentioned, holograms, customizable NPCs, and bio plaques for bases could resolve this much more proactively. It'd let players to make bespoke memorials actually reflective of the passed player - the act itself also letting them honor the person they knew - in-addition to offering every other conceivable use that holograms/customizable NPCs/plaques would have for bases. It'd also nix any requirement of active dev involvement, too. Vastly improved ways to respect fallen players, empowerment of the community, and no eternal hot potato for the devs seems like a win/win/win here.

[biostem]

What they could do is create a generic "Lost but not forgotten" type of memorial, with a SG base portal next to it, and perhaps have a plaque on the memorial link back to a special section of the forums where players can post special SG base access codes...

[ShardWarrior]

8 minutes ago, biostem said:

What they could do is create a generic "Lost but not forgotten" type of memorial, with a SG base portal next to it, and perhaps have a plaque on the memorial link back to a special section of the forums where players can post special SG base access codes...

 

Even this is too much effort.  This just invites debates into where the memorial should be placed, what zone, what area, what it should look like, what shape the plaque should be and so on.  Again, we already have the flexibility to create a memorial however we see fit inside a base and can provide as much or as little access to it as desired.  No need for any HC involvement.