Merry Hapmas & State of Play 2022
Category: Community Broadcasted on 22DEC21 - 00:21:12hrs Author Zayth Kadrim Comments: 4
Hello there, and a merry Hapmas to one and all!
I am going to attempt the impossible this year and keep this one short. Well, fairly short anyhow. Fortunately, despite the unpleasantly rushed anticipation of the holiday season, there’s ample snow around here to slow down the mind and body, and a customary mug of glög was already consumed by the end of this first paragraph. But hey, let’s get back to keeping this short!
It has been a transitional year in many ways, with its downs and downs for expectations and the game itself. I am happy to see though that we’re ending the year on feature development on a very positive note, with the development of R&D in particular having seen some serious work poured into it in the past months, regardless of how much more mundane crunching still lays ahead of them.
Should they succeed, and have it released in parts or completely during the coming year, a whole new frontier of game mechanics will open to us. With that, the dull silence of waiting may well be replaced by the sudden cry of an infinite credit vacuum opening, with a roar of a capricious power competition not witnessed for a decade once more sounding across the galaxy.
Which would be great! For us and the game at large it’d be great, though not necessarily easy.
We have spent enough time by now seeking to outlast rather than outcompete, and it’s something that has become perhaps even the norm for groups waiting out the years. Sure, we’ve happily often found ourselves on the forefront of testing the new things even then, but the features haven’t offered the sort of depth or opportunities that would’ve altered the course for us. The streamlined structures, widening contrast between community life and the larger faction responsibilities, an emphasis for greater automation and less paperwork – all outcomes of the state of the game, at times even more so than of conscious guidance. This has of course been most evident to those of you on the RHAF end, and to anyone who still remembers our civil service era, but they are familiar topics over at our industrial arms as well. In fact, the same main trends and issues are familiar to all established groups out there, whatever their size.
New game mechanics will challenge our place in the galaxy in addition to our long-standing policies, and are best met with foundations well in order. Whilst it’s more than slightly disappointing that a number of our more immersion and community orientated projects for the year did not reach completion, I am confident the better ideas will not only persist in waiting but become more polished, for when we have the (ooc) skills and time available to see them materialized.
In the meanwhile, even as we are once more interested in filling more positions in areas such as diplomacy and intelligence, and are still looking to expand our volunteer research teams, as well beef up participation across the government service, I am hoping that the most apparent changes to more of our members will be the moves in the months and year ahead to expand conventional command structures, as we stirs from the years of slow burning slumber.
That does not mean that we’ll suddenly start incessantly badgering our beloved lurker population for Tuesday night fleet ops participation – all badgering of that sort remains opt-in – but that for better or worse, some improved form for smoother mobilization and coordination seems inevitably needed. If it can be something as low paperwork as a user-friendly web services powered C3 system, then great, but for Hapes as the smallest designated Core Faction(™) in the game, we need to continue to punch above our weight together if we cherish the role we have chosen to play in SWC.
It is therefore not for me to tell you what you should enjoy or not, but as yet another new year dawns on us, for all of us on this shared path, it is one taken under a single banner.
Thank you thus to all of you who have helped keep things running again this year in Hapes, who have kept volunteering their time on necessary if less visible responsibilities, and who have brought meaning to writing still another one of these state of play posts.
To reel this in, while I can still claim it to be shorter than last year’s address, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and very pleasant holidays to come out there! Our Hapmas games of the year are well underway, the bonus wage round has run, and that’s about… Wait, oh no, there was that thing about the Archais Initiative to still get to, wasn’t there.
Right, the one that always got away, Archais Initiative.
So, very briefly, after the holidays we are moving forward with releasing the newbie benefits, as well as collecting all the various community services and member benefits under its umbrella – number of which already existed in some form, but either weren’t formally maintained or scalable enough to be listed for everyone. The third segment, the ‘magic sauce’ stuff (which started off as a needlessly complicated exchange system idea, but time has driven past it) that has kept the whole thing in limbo for years, of introducing social spheres and advanced functions, will still be kept held on the drawing board for the time being. Or more specifically, till the supporting coding and art prerequisites can be met, and we are satisfied with the concept’s their overall feasibility and net gains.
As a first member gift through the system, to anyone interested in a strong reliable retinue of Wookiees, you can check out the topic on the integrated message boards. And what are the Sequins of Hapes, you might ask? A story for another day, I dare say.
With that, once more, thank you all, and take care out there, however far or close you may reside.
- Z
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