To prevent the useless cluttering of the Folde thread, the discussion is now stored here.
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Iâll start off by saying Iâm speaking on behalf of others here.
It is obvious the leaders have a clear vision for folde which is understandable. However, there is a sense that there might be too clear of a plan which is limiting builders. People have pondered that builders are being used as âbuilder toolsâ without being given any respect nor being able to give any input. The ridiculing of projects behind closed doors like my 2nd grader cousin does, and the meme creation and continuation of said memes to mock a simple mistake should not be something that takes place in the community. Critique should be and is cherished, it is what makes ArdaCraft stand out.
Not only the lack of creative freedom but the lack of respect for peers is where the problem lies. There is no builder on ArdaCraft that cannot handle the banter but the extent of the scrutiny is obscene. A quote from a builder who has been Arda for over a year âhe lacks basic respect to other builders its ridiculous. I was relieved when he left the serverâ. Another quote, âtbh the reason I have not been on a lot recently is a big part of listening to all that bullshit, I play games for enjoyment not to be disrespected by someone for every build I make, and I get they are supposedly just fucking around but gets annoying afâ.
A builder tried to create a new design to make a project more unique and they received good feedback from a range of members in the community, just to get shut down repeatedly by the same person and be made the meme of the day. and told itâs not how they want it, and it should be a clone of this and that.
And these are not empty claims, this is, in fact, the first time in the history of ArdaCraft two project apps have been taken down in such a short space of time.
I do encourage the rest of the community to add to this or counter it.
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The Folde is a massive, and immensely important project to this server, with one of the most important locations on our map, namely Edoras.
I know of a few builders who are unwilling to work on the Folde at all right now, and this could hurt the serverâs progress as a whole. The Westfold is done pretty well, it was very well researched, executed and we were all having a lot of fun building in it. This needs to continue in the Folde.
You may not like certain things personally, everybody has that, but just know that there are many others who do like that certain village, or building, or whatever.
Leading the Folde means setting a standard, and overall buildstyle yeah, but also realizing that itâs not just your overall project, but also the personal project of a local leader who applied for a certain village or homestead, who has his own ideas about the place.
Just some input from me.
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Well said, I agree there should be a overall style for the region, but there should be some uniqueness and personalisation to different areas within the region.
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First point Iâd like to make: two projects were taken down quickly because one was a terrain mismanagement that will take time out of our landscape âexpertâsâ hands, wheellee, that could be better spent elsewhere. It might have been a communication slip up; but the should haves, would haves, and could haves donât matter much now that we need to fix some issues with terrain. The other, I have no clue. Layout, design, issues over creativity? Iâm not around to see what goes into making these villages, so I only have to trust bits and pieces of what I see. And it is well within Micah or Eaglz right to do so, to shut down projects that arenât up to standard or projects that are causing issues.
I appreciate your feedback on how we can all conduct ourselves better, but this is where youâre not going to like my response as it only gets less constructive from here. Your leadership of the Eastemnet left nothing to be desired, you did a good job. Your leadership experience is enough to where I wonât scrub your opinion completely.
Second Point: But if I remember, at the start you threw a fit at criticism levied against your early designs. When I tried to give my opinion of how you handled that criticism, you accused me of trying to put myself into something that wasnât my business. Accused me of defending Wheellee when he could clearly defend himself, right? Where was your spirit of accepting someone elseâs creative input then?
You had a vision for Eastemnet. When your creative decisions were questioned, you got quite as defensive as I expect Eaglz or Micah to be if their creativity was questioned as well. You had the authority to shut down projects, you just didnât use the opportunity as much as you could have.
Final Point: Dale was shut down for too many hands making too many creative decisions that didnât reflect the intent of the original project design. Creativity run rampant is like Picasso, art, but not the kind we settle for. Mithlond was redone because of this, it was poorly executed at first. The Hobbit museum of trinkets had to be redone because we decided to throw away excess pluggin based models. The layout in Annuminas and the palace were redone twice. Beathaven received a lot of shit for using schist in his fireplaces in Dale. I got shit for making my cliffs too steep in the Shire on my very FIRST project that I was entrusted with. We all give each other shit. We all bully each other from time to time. But I see nothing wrong in what Eaglz or Micah have done in leading the Folde. I would have done the same thing.
Iâm not just white knighting their cause because I think Iâll get some of that sweet NZ ass either.
*One edit Iâd like to add, this is no attack on Creepyboy666. Weâve all made our massive mistakes before. I very narrowly fixed Mithlondâs harbor when Dak and I decided to nuke it. We ended up moving the dry harbor to the other side of the city just to make it work and that ended up being a sensible solution as it is now next to the lead shipwrights home. Wheellee pasted in a Dwarven hall into Mithlond. Darth fucked up vegetation density in his Arnor section. Creepyboy is not the first and wonât be the last. I hope he learns from this and we get another great terrain artist from it.
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Right, firstly Iâll add that while I appreciate your concerns and what youâre trying to say, the amount of passive-aggressiveness youâve felt the need to include in your message is absolutely unnecessary and immature. When you write something up like that which is directed at multiple older and core members of the server you risk setting off a shitstorm which is the last thing we all want.
Most of what youâve written up there and what youâve undoubtedly directed to more people than the project leaders is to me more of a community-based issue more so than an issue with this project in particular. Yes it has come to light through two particular instances that were associated with this project, but you cannot simply lay out such claims and expect it to be solely associated with one project and not something that if you deem it necessary should be brought up in a more broad community sense. If you want to continue this specific topic that is community-centered and goes beyond what this project thread is for then youâre more than welcome to do so, but I will suggest for you to take a look at previous threads about a similarly related issue https://forums.ardacraft.me/t/mcme-drama-thread/1065/2. So on that note I donât think talking about this in a project thread is the most appropriate, but I may be wrong. Regardless of that Iâll address what youâve said relating to this project specifically.
Iâll agree with what youâve said about the way criticism has been given out lately, it was certainly a bit more harsh than it needed to be and it was unsuited for âparticularâ members of the server which I hadnât expected, but to that I apologize nonetheless.
Of everything you have written in your message, this one puzzles me the most. We have been actively encouraging anyone and everyone to give any feedback or criticism they may have, whether that may be about the style, layouts, realism, structure etc. Everyone always has the opportunity to give their opinion on just about anything if itâs within reason and appropriate to do so. Obviously there are limits to doing this and has been more or less a core principle of the community, and that is if you have nothing of value to add to your criticism outside of saying things are wrong and not doing anything of value yourself (whether that may be contribution to the overall project or whatever else) then that is something that is generally frowned upon on ArdaCraft. The loose example of Atlan springs to mind. Now iâm not accusing you of this, far from it. You are absolutely in the right to give feedback and criticize things you deem are not good, as you are doing at this very moment. However I donât see this being a big enough issue as everyone who is associated with this project is encouraged to bring anything to mind. You may argue that the way weâve been handling criticism in the recent weeks is what contributes to this possibly being an issue for a select few, but I will get to that later.
I think this is again more of a community-related topic and goes well beyond this particular project despite arising within it, but Iâll bite. Here on ArdaCraft weâre very uncensored with how we deal with eachother, and that has been a commonplace ideal that has been upheld for years. Obviously there are also limits to this as there are for almost everything else. In this instance there is certainly a divide in the community that can be noticed, between members who are active in the community and participate in the way we banter around with ourselves and our fairly lax filters on what is appropriate and what isnât, and members who may not participate to the extend others do whether that may be with banter or just the community/voice/text channels in general, to which there are certainly a fair portion of members even in Overseer positions. Neither of these two loosely defined groups are of higher value than the other, and are both absolutely vital to the servers progress and achievements. Yes, one group have a bigger voice and tend to be the ones who are the face of the server and how it looks to other people, so in a way they have a larger responsibility of upholding the servers integrity and reputation. This âdivideâ for lack of a better term can naturally create instances of differing opinions. People who are not so deep into the vocal side of the community and either donât engage in the bantering or donât understand it can in some particular instances have a bit of a clash or disagreement in how that banter is delt. Now you have been on the server for around 4 months give or take, so itâs understandable that you can find some of the banter a bit excessive and intrusive. In the case of @creepyboy666 I will absolutely admit that despite the humorous nature of what happened, the amount of jokes and memes that were thrown around that day were fairly excessive, to which I have already privately contacted him about. In the nature of how our community runs, jokes and banter can and will on occasion affect other people who donât appreciate it as much as some of us do, thatâs just how it works and I apologize if sometimes things get out of hand and you or anyone else for that matter gets offended.
Right now onto your issues regarding the building aspect. Iâll start this off with that fact that you had not contacted neither Micah or myself about starting a project that begins half way through the succession of the sections. When we write section 1-5 and write up a timeline of what happens when, we expect people to follow that and be sensible with what projects they want. If we all applied for random projects in sections 1 through to 5 then the whole project would be a catastrophe. Yes, we made an exception with @Beathaven and @Ytsen regarding their Aldburg, which starts in section 4. That is because we formally talked about it beforehand and agreed that itâs the best solution since Aldburg is a very large (almost Edoras-tier sized) project that is rooted in the lore and needs to be done to perfection. So I donât see why youâre kicking up such a fuss for something that should not have even been claimed in the first place, not least in the way youâve gone about it. I gave you the benefit of the doubt to plan your project anyway since some people may need a longer time to do plan their projects and possibly donât have enough time to commit to planning it in a way that is quick enough to follow the sectional succession. But seeing as youâve kicked up all this storm about it I figured Iâd let you know. If you do decide to apply for a village again then please apply for something in section 2, we donât write up paragraphs of planning for people to just dismiss it. You need to communicate and communicate more effectively for this stuff.
Now onto your mention of creative freedom.
This is more or less redundant in your village but Iâll state it for future reference. Seeing as youâre clearly referring to me here, I did not âshut you downâ for what youâve built. Yes I gave you criticism and told you to change things, that does not equate to shooting down your ideas. If youâre referring to your wall design when you say that it got positive feedback, then that is either plainly not true or youâre mixing something up. Building hedges around the top a fortified wall is simply not realistic and Iâm sorry if you donât like my decision but I will not accept something that is blatantly unrealistic and nonsensical. I gave you reasoning as to why, and if you desire to talk more about it I am absolutely happy to discuss it with you for as long as you want. You are always free to come to me and talk about it, as is everyone else. I much rather you talk about it with me and actually explain to me what your problem is rather than kicking and screaming about it on the forums and make a public cry of it.
As to the criticism of the freedom itself, I can agree with what Guan has said. The plan was to be more strict and disciplined with section 1 as to set an example for the future sections that people can build off from. I noted this at the end of the message I gave @iNamelessi, but Itâs understandable that not everyone read all of that to the end. More creative freedom will be given after we finish section 1 so that we can assure that future applicants can base their work off of something thatâs relevant and not just another carbon-copy of the Westfold. Thatâs also why I said that Mearhdenu is not a suitable style to base your current village off of, and that is why I was more strict with the criticism I gave you. Again, I apologize if it came across as offensive, as I didnât mean to shut down your idea but instead to make sure that what youâd have come up with will be a good build and something people will enjoy looking at. And yes, this whole debacle relating to what you base your village off of would have been avoided had you followed the sectional succession or came to me beforehand.
Thatâs all Iâm going to say about this now, if you or anyone else has something to add then contact me via PM on discord. Sorry for the long post.
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Here is what I will say on this matter:
First off, it is completely irrelevant and quite frankly hypocritical to talk shit about Eaglz despite a few sentences earlier you claimed you disliked people talking about ridiculing of projects behind closed doors âlike my 2nd grader cousinâ. Never have Eaglz or I spoke bad about your character or the decisions you decide to make, and we surely wouldnât bring it up in a topic concerning the Folde. Nothing more has to be said about that.
However, Guan and you, Nike, do have a point. I think our true intentions werenât yet made fully public regarding our plans with Section 1. I canât speak for Eagz, but it is my understanding that both of us do want creative freedom to be expressed, and the two Homesteads and the Village in progress now are both expressing that, and we are allowing it. Like Eaglz brought up, section 1 is meant to be a set âguideâ of how the buildings should look and feel, and how we want the Folde to look. Guanâs point is valid, the Folde is possibly the most important location we have so far on this map, and maybe we have been too harsh with criticism, but it is our intention to create something impressive. Past projects I have led ahem Vale of Anduin, I had very little control over the projects and I donât think it ended up as amazing as it could have been. It seems a meet up in the middle is necessary, because complete creative freedom leads to potential shit. Eaglz and I plan on finishing Section 1 and using that as a frame for everyone to look at and compare to their future homesteads, uniqueness and personalization is always needed but to a certain extent.
Iâd like to express my apologies to @creepyboy666 for the memes you had a part in, we never meant so much offense. As Hearth said, many have made mistakes, and many will continue to make mistakes, and I hope it doesnât stop you from being part of this server, we all appreciate your hard work in the Misties. And I am sorry to see both of your posts being taken down, however, Nike, saying that âthe first time in the history of ArdaCraft two project apps have been taken down in such a short space of timeâ is extraneous. Despite whether this is true or not, it doesnât matter regarding the issue that is going on, just another jab at our management of this project, and I wonât even go into the hypocrisies in the Eastemnet thread, because itâs unimportant.
I thank you for the feedback on how we can manage our project better, and you did a good job in the Eastemnet, and for that I can commemorate you, Nike.
It is evident that some sort of action needs to occur to somewhat better this project, it was never our intention to deter people from working on the Folde, but I believe we both have pretty high expectations on how projects/plans/styles should look and we want to reinforce and solidify those ideas. Because the Folde is such an important project we expect more quality builds and more quality plans than the Vale of Anduin in my case, and Westfold. We want people to enjoy themselves and we want people to have fun, and we respect everyone on this server. I have been criticized and told what I was doing wrong for as long as Iâve been on this server, itâs part of learning and growing, and I find it to be a substantial part of this serverâs community. The way Eagz and I have been approaching criticism may be a little off kilter, and we hope to improve as the project proceeds.
Eaglz and I are happy to assist you, in a more mature and kind matter in making a plan and some ideas in order to create something that is truly great, and maybe something that is closer to happening, say something in Section 2? It was never our intention for you to make a post on the forums, or have a huge discussion about our management choices, but bringing it up we can attempt to fix some of the issues that have been occuring. I would always appreciate a message before hand considering issues with your village, me or Eaglz, and we could have dealt with it accordingly. Apologies if anything Eaglz or I said was offensive.
Feel free to pm me on discord, or talk to me directly if you have anything else.
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I will start off my reply by saying this: I am split down the middle on this, and will continue to be. In some ways, I agree with Nikeâs talking points. In others, I agree with Eaglzâ point of view. Iâm going to try and make this concise (if possible).
- A regional project is, at the end of the day, at the behest of the leaders of the region. While I believe outright rejecting an application (as two have been) is too harsh, a dialogue should be created on each project page and the applicants allowed to continue posting and receiving criticism at the behest of the leaders of the region, until it is either A) going somewhere and can be accepted, or B) rejected. A style can be unique; the styles eaglz and micah set for each region are not set in stone, and can be variable, but they have to match the umbrella style, as to maintain a sense of cohesiveness.
-to avoid this from being too much of an issue, perhaps this should be better clarified by the project leaders on the thread itself, and a better guide for each regional style should be created. That way, people can understand the overall regional style first, and then create their own variations as they see fit without it becoming too alien or westfold-like. Miscommunication is a potential issue here on both sides. Buildings and locations can be unique, but they can also be unique within a certain vision. Creative freedom is very important, but remember that by applying in a regional application, you are signing up to be a part of a creative vision that is also not entirely your own. The exchange goes both ways, between region leader and individual project leader. An easy way for a situation like this to be avoided is by setting up a dialogue with the region leader yourself, and making sure you both have proper communication with one another.
-Feedback from other people is important. Criticism is important. But on the flip-side, you shouldnât use majority rules in its entirety. Fundamentally you should place the person whose region you signed up underâs opinions as important; even if other people view what youâve done as ok, we have only really done the Westfold region of Rohan so far for basis of their opinions. Some of the overall rules for the Westfold donât always carry over here, and vice versa, so again, communication on both sides of region and individual project is important.
- I agree the memes may have went too far this time around, certainly. I myself am guilty, but I will not say they are not deserved. I have been the target of a bunch of them throughout ardacraft history, and (in complete honesty), am the cause of the majority of fuckups on the server. Itâs something that has always been a part of AC culture.
-To go along with this, server chat is public. It is not behind closed doors. I donât know where this idea has come from.
-The quarry isnât solely a simple mistake (it is much more fixable than youâd think, however), but it could have been handled a bit better by both parties. However itâs in the past, and to be honest quite irrelevant to this conversation, so I wonât touch upon it here.
Regarding rejections, be more specific with advice, and set up an individual dialogue with each-other beyond solely the project thread. Heck, even sort it out ingame in a private call. Talk to each other you dipwads!
-o-0-o-
This âdramaâ (though honestly, itâs just a conversation) could also have been avoided if it were carried out as a PM first to the region leaders or in a group-chat with forn or beat as the mediator, and sorted out there; afterwards it could have been carried to the forums if the resolution wasnât satisfying enough for any one party.
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I couldnât have put it better myself.
I think the central issue here was touched upon by Eaglz. We have two loosely-defined groups on AC - one that enjoys shit-talking and banter, and the other that doesnât. This is an issue thatâs come up before with kingorrik and Iâm sure itâll come up again.
Something Iâve learned after over four years of leading this project is that as a leader, you have to adapt the way you lead to the particular person or group of people youâre leading. Some people can deal with harsh criticism just fine, and some need more encouragement. Some work better alone, whereas others prefer teamwork. Itâs all about finding ways to get the best out of people. In order to do that, you have to have open communication on both sides. As has been said before, if Nik and Eaglz had communicated better, this whole situation would have been avoided.
Now, as the leader of a region - especially one as important as the Folde - you have more responsibility than an average builder. @eag_inc - this means that you cannot act in the ways that you usually do. Referring to a village as shit is entirely within your rights normally, but when you say that to the person who led it and who wants to help you out with your project, is unacceptable. Posting memes continuing to mock people in this serious discussion is unacceptable. Referring to someone making their opinion known on the forums - something I have encouraged since day 1 - as them âkicking and screamingâ is unacceptable. Doing those things and then telling someone off for risking âsetting off a shitstormâ is rank hypocrisy.
Micah has responded much better to this whole situation, and it is a reminder of why he is an Overseer and you are not. You have been given a great deal of responsibility in the Folde - step the fuck up.
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Right so after having a chat with @Fornad and others, Iâll try and cap off this whole discussion so we can move forward onto more productive things. Everything has been said already and nobody is going to change anybodyâs mind on the forums going like this.
Iâll start off and concede that I definitely have a big portion of blame in this whole situation, to which I again apologize. Maybe the way I wrote it earlier wasnât as clear as it should be, apologies if it came across a bit too heavy-handed. While I do still carry my personal thoughts and opinions on the matter, it shouldnât be given out in the manner it did with the responsibility I have as project lead.
However this isnât to say that one party is necessarily right and one is wrong, things naturally get a bit nuanced and everyone has their own opinion on what happened/should have happened/could have happened. But hopefully moving forward we can all take lessons on what went wrong and do them properly the next time around. Because tbqh weâre all equally raging autists playing a block game at the end of the day building some epic minecraft creations 
As for moving forward specifically with village 5. Iâve already noted that Iâd appreciate only claiming things in section 2, obviously since section 1 is already fully claimed (outside of the lumber camp). So as for @NikeBisou and @Chevy_the_cat please let me know via discord PMâs how youâd like to move forward in terms of your village.
If anybody has anything more to add, please do not hesitate to contact me. As I stated earlier Iâm always up for an honest chat.
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one raging autist to another, i think this has been a valuable vent session and im sure we will all work better with all the cards on the table. i appreciate your apology and I admit the communication on my side could have been better
edit:
and Iâm happy this happened on the forums, so its atleast discussed
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