19-02-2026, 01:03 PM
I am following along and trying to keep up - but I admit I'm struggling. I don't know that I have too much to add at this point, but I'll make a couple of observations.
Hopefully something in there helps advance the conversation.
- I like the general thrust of this effort. I've only really found it fun to play in countries that are RP'd as fairly underdeveloped, and from my vantage point in these nations, nearly everywhere looks incredibly economically powerful with little focus on RP around the drawbacks of development. In spirit I support the aim of making it easier for players to build more a realistic and believable world.
- I consider myself a fairly bright guy, but I get entirely lost when we start talking about currency exchange, credit markets, etc. I recognize that those are realistic tools and I could and probably should know more on these fronts, but I just don't. Two specific pieces of feedback on this front:
- Anything you propose here is going to have to be all but entirely automated for me to be able to use it meaningfully. I do not understand how trade works, how currency cost works, etc. If you want me to use these things as RP devices, you're effectively going to need to slap me in the face with how I'm supposed to do that. This isn't necessarily me saying "don't do this", this is me trying to give you a realistic read on where at least some of the rest of the community is on this, which is square zero. You could implement currency exchange perfectly and I still wouldn't be able to use it to tell an interesting RP story.
- I do not understand why the "old way" of treating currency - where 1 LOD = 1 USD - is functionally any different than what you guys are discussing re: a TMU. I get that there's a cache attached to tying a specific country's currency to "be" the USD, but aside from that concern, it feels to me like we had what you're describing once already and it obviously was not the Eden we're seeking. What am I missing? (Hard mode - explain to me what I'm missing in terms I'll understand)
- Anything you propose here is going to have to be all but entirely automated for me to be able to use it meaningfully. I do not understand how trade works, how currency cost works, etc. If you want me to use these things as RP devices, you're effectively going to need to slap me in the face with how I'm supposed to do that. This isn't necessarily me saying "don't do this", this is me trying to give you a realistic read on where at least some of the rest of the community is on this, which is square zero. You could implement currency exchange perfectly and I still wouldn't be able to use it to tell an interesting RP story.
- On AI: I think we need to be very cautious when we pin our hopes on AI as the crucial factor in making things that have always been hard in this game less hard now. We're at risk of doing on a micro scale what is happening macro right now: betting on the promise of AI without reckoning with the reality: who's going to do this stuff you describe? AI won't just set itself up, and (no shade to Greek) we've got plenty of other work for Greek to do before we could reasonably hope for him to make progress on this net new ask. It's a matter of triage - do I think someone clever could make AI do post monitoring and active classification of events in game - yes. Do I think that should be Greek's focus right now, when we have a bunch of work already on his plate? I am not sure.
- On asking Mods to enforce stuff like EPs (or any concrete proposal): I am on board. We're volunteer and have lives, so anything that relies on us must not be TOO onerous. So long as a proposal keeps this in mind, we are open as a unit to proposals on how to make the game better. If you bring us a specific thing you want us to enforce, and the community is given a chance to voice feedback, I'll certainly be arguing in favor of it in mod discussions.
Hopefully something in there helps advance the conversation.