The problem, fundamentally, that Allegiance has can be summed up by one thing Kage brought up:
KGJV wrote:QUOTE (KGJV @ Aug 11 2016, 12:02 PM) So first fix that freaking default keymap ffs (even I, I'm waiting on this to play again).
Then and only then we will talk more.
This goes back to "release early, release often" theme of things sort of, but basically the problem is this:
There is no "leader" for Allegiance. There really hasn't been since, well, Pook.
What we have are a bunch of effective administrators:
PKK is probably one of the greatest server administrators I've ever seen. AEM too. Whenever things need to go out, they're there to put it out. Whenever things need fixing, they fix them. They've got their wheelhouse and they're $#@!ing great at it.
Blacksun puts on incredible events. He's managed to consistently breathe life into the game with things like the anniversary game and the dev game. He has a passion for putting in the work to bring the pieces together.
But at no point since Pook has there been a unifying voice that puts it all together. Partly because being a leader requires a certain quality that the people I mentioned either lack or don't utilize: a certain command of respect that really just comes from wanting to listen to that person. I remember waaaay back when (set the wayback machine) and being a part of Spidey's core dev team. Spidey had the ability to say "we're doing this" and every member of that team said "ok." What Spidey said we were going to do, we did, even if we disagreed with him (and Spidey made sure that he surrounded himself with people who would disagree with him). Then he thought about the pros and cons that we raised and made a Captain Picard style decision that lead us forward.
If Spidey, or Pook, were in charge right now and realized that the keymap was such an issue, they'd just grab a keymap and install it as the default. There'd be a whole bunch of community whining about whether or not this keymap or that keymap is better or worse, but at the end of the day his team would build a keymap that functioned and slam it onto auto update. Then when it turned out the keymap was broken as $#@! (this happened... you weren't there for 35s IC miner rip time) he'd fix it and release a fix. (RERO).
But despite the fact that on PAGE ONE someone is freely offering their time, and their not-inconsiderable expertise, to do @#(! for this community if only we did one stupid thing, a thing that everyone agrees needs to be done, we're still here five pages later arguing about whether or not we should pull the trigger on something. That's because no one running this place has the reproductive organs necessary to pull that trigger damn the consequences full steam ahead.
I'm not saying I'm the one to do that, God knows any success I have as a commander in this game is *despite* my leadership skills rather than *because* of them. There are a few people hanging around here; however, that I know from experience that I listen to whenever they speak just out of a deep respect for them... and that the vast majority of the community would listen to and whose decisions they would respect.
If, for example, Shizoku came down and said "this is the keymap that is going on autoupdate and it is the new default keymap for allegiance," I firmly believe it would happen. Someone might whine about it, but Shizoku wouldn't give a $#@! and at the end of the day Kage would be playing. And newbies would be less frustrated. And the overall experience would be better.
(Shiz would never want the responsibility of course, but this is just an example).
Until we find someone who's willing to pull the trigger on implementing anything, we'll never get anywhere. We'll just have another two months of debate about stupid things, at the end of which side A will be convinced they made their point and side B will be convinced they made THEIR point but still NOTHING WILL BE DONE BECAUSE NO ONE HAS THE GONADS OR POWER TO DO SOMETHING.
So I'm going to say it here: Shizoku for Dictator for Life.
