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It's still not a perfect method, but it helps me from nitpicking over things like punctuation (at least most of the time), seems to be closer to the spirit of what admin wants from the approval process, and keeps quality in our designs without beating poor crafters to death with a grammar stick.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
And of course, people can say "Yeah, it's keeping me away from it/it's annoying/I don't like it" but at the end of the day, even something as simple as "let's change the grammar standard" impacts every part of the game. Having different grammar standards for crafting then you would building would be jarring, and things like houses and havens are private so there's no need to have those approved like you would a crafting item. Which is, again, typically assumed to be for public consumption.
Is Aetolia by any means the grammar standard of the world? Of course not, but unfortunately, we already know what happens when you switch crafting standards halfway through, you're left with really jarring things remaining. I know I've seen t-shirts around from days when you could do that, and all changing that would do now is add to the rift.
I look at it in the way I look at animation shortcuts. Is it somewhat unsettling or cringeworthy to see a character's hair or something go through their body for a second? Yeah, it is. When you're looking for it, you see the hell out of it. But sometimes that little irritation is the only thing keeping the animation from flying all over the place and crashing. Admin are already swamped, we know there aren't a ton of them. Altering grammar standard does impact more than just crafting. They are, at the end of the day, hoping to create a uniform front as far as the writing standards goes. You change one, you have to change them all.
I'm trying to make a case about x. That's why I'm here. I perceive x as problematic, you disagree and think the opposite, so I'm happy to have a debate here about x, and why I think x is a problem, and why you think x is necessary. That's fine.
But that isn't possible if you're going to consistently argue against something that wasn't said, that no one is suggesting or even implying. You're debating a straw-man. I called you out on it in my previous post, and I'm pretty sure that by now I definitely sound condescending, but you're doing it again.
There is absolutely no reason why relaxing overly stringent standards of grammar, and being more accepting of different standards, would render any existing items or rooms under the current standard obsolete. Grammar rules change all the time, as was pointed out earlier. I'm pretty sure no one has taken a hatchet to double-spaced documents that the government must have kept during the typewriting era. No one is suggesting they should be made obsolete. In fact, wanting to police things more intensely is exactly the opposite of what this thread is about, so no one is suggesting any new workload for volunteers.
My point is clearly not coming along as I'm hoping it should, however, so let me try and rephrase. My last post was kind of long and rambly so I probably lost my point somewhere in there.
There is a uniform front they are trying to present I'd imagine. Similar grammar between crafted items and buildings, npc descriptions and such. Of course, things like character descriptions and havens and such aren't held to this standard, but they are easily changed and, by in large, will not last as long. Crafting designs, npcs and rooms are made with the intent to be able to last until the game ends. Keeping everything uniform helps add to the immersion. You're a wordsmith, I look at it from a visual aspect. Keeping grammar styles, at least, similar is like making sure all your artists can work in a similar style. It would be really jarring to be playing a game that looks like fallout 4, only to later come across a character model that looks like it was spit out of Oblivion. So, what can you do? Well, you can either try and make sure all your artists are, in fact, up to snuff, try and keep things even remotely similar, even if it ends up looking a little more Skyrim than you might like, or you change the entire game so that that one artist's work doesn't look so out of place. And sure, you can just tell people to avoid the stuff made by that artist, but it isn't super professional looking, you know?
So, in the spirit of that, changing grammar standards, even to be less stringent, because I know that's what you're suggesting, I can see why what I said would seem like I don't, creates that sort of situation, in my mind. To create that uniformity that I believe the game strives for in those things, you either try to keep everyone using similar tools, even if they're a little outdated, or you try and update the whole game, which is a massive undertaking.
Edit: To clarify though, I have no idea. I've never worked on a project like this, but I have worked on other game projects. This is the problem that comes to my mind, but for all I know, it's not even an issue with a game of this nature.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
I'm not a crafter with the exception of sending up my artifacts to be customized (which I'm pretty sure completely bypasses the Crafters Guild), but here's my take on this.
There's a difference between ROOM crafting and ITEM crafting. A room is going to be around until the game is dead, the admins close off that room, the room is shut down, or as you said, the room is paid to get changed again. So yes, having super strict guidelines for rooms is absolutely acceptable.
The thing with item crafting is that its NOT going to be there forever. Every design has a decay time. Its why you have to pay to keep your designs active. If so much time has passed, I'm relatively certain, that the design is ultimately deleted/erased/archived away from the public view (which at that point doesn't matter anymore). Additionally, any item crafted is ALSO going to have a decay time, unless you pay to have it artifacted... which I don't see many people doing. That said, the longest an item will be around for is what.... 2 months? After that, the item poofs and the player has to be some new items.
Being a little more relaxed on item designs WILL NOT damage the game or the immersion factors in any way, so long as a specific blanket standard is set in place. If anything, a set standard that uses COMMON, ACCEPTED, and non-arguable rules would be more than acceptable. The moment you start getting into high end grammar rules (that people typically don't understand or it takes -multiple- people to explain it, and even then is not an agreed upon concensus because opinions) and become a grammar nazi, is when people typically start having a problem.
I don't know if there's a way to meet in the middle, because I don't know what exactly the upkeep of the game entails. Games are HARD to deal with/make/upkeep, but I only know the work with visual games, as stated above. Text games may be a totally different ballpark, I really don't know.
This doesn't change anything from my previous post, in that there should still be a set standard that cannot be argued, regardless of education, region, or upbringing.
Anyway, the obvious reason we're allowing volunteers to have any sway over our crafting submissions is twofold; one, it saves the admin a lot of time and effort having to dedicate someone to crafting (as far as I know, all designs in Achaea are approved by non-mortals), and two, without some sort of check in place, you would see all sorts of crazy in the game. There's such a huge degree of grammatical and spelling errors and to be fair, not everything falls under the 'elitism' bracket when rejected. I don't think "they're" and "there" are interchangeable. I don't think "do" and "does" are interchangeable.
Having basic crafting standards in place is a good thing for everyone. If there is an issue with nitpicking or discrimination, then bring it up to the admins via the issue command, because everyone needs to be able to participate in the crafting system.
@Alexina I think that's what the underlying issue is/was is it seemed that most rejections were nitpick/style differences.
While I have had my own personal dislike of the crafting system since the Great Destruction of 2015, does this change necessarily affect my willingness to craft extensively? Not at all. I'm still -very- hesitant about submitting anything.
More - while I admit I'm not the most grammatically correct all the time - I feel a bit of.. loss on at least the lying/laying change -- Which I admit I've used lying instead of laying because I don't know. It's aesthetically pleasing to the eye and rolls off the tongue, but this does not mean it is correct.
Do I think this change may help spur more creativity again from a larger base of players? I can't honestly answer that question.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
So I suppose my only addition to this thread is this; @Nia don't let people wear you down about game mechanics that are supposed to be fun for you. In the end, you'll burn out and they won't give a shit.
"The smell of dusty fur, sweet smoke, waiting and patience, a thing that time cannot kill. The moth that candles won't burn."
In other words, a better writer can charge more. So chill, because relaxed rules don't stop individuals from writing well and standing out from the pack.