A year or two ago, EMC member Chascarrillo did some player interviews but has seemed to stop, so I decided to start doing some interviews also, starting with Kephras. Here it is! Q: What is, in your opinion, the best and worst things about EMC? A: The best thing about EMC? I'd think "community" would be the obvious answer - for the most part, players are helpful, friendly, and generous, and most of the staff do a remarkably good job balancing their authority with a social grounding. That is, they can drop the banhammer when they have to, but still be friendly and sociable with regular players. The people make the game - the people on EMC make it a damn good one. The worst thing though, is probably the phrase "Play Your Way." I don't mean the feature - setting your own level of difficulty is fantastic. But since it was introduced, players have abused the phrase to justify anything and everything they want or feel entitled to. It's like how "the customer is always right" ruined retail by encouraging management to bend over backwards to please everyone - "Play your way" doesn't mean anything goes, just that there are systems in place for you to tailor your experience. Q: If you could make someone a mod right now other than yourself, who would it be? A: I wouldn't wish that on anyone. To become a mod means giving up a lot of the freedoms and activities regular players can enjoy. It's like being a volunteer at a convention - everyone else can go off and enjoy the events, but your job is to keep the peace and make sure everything continues to run smoothly. That's not to say you can't mingle and have a little fun, but it severely limits your capacity to just play and enjoy the game. Bottom line, I can think of a couple people who are mature and responsible enough to handle it, but that'd have to be their choice. Q: If EMC were to expand into different games, which games would you want servers on? A: First choice would be Space Engineers, no question. It's basically SMP Minecraft in space. The only drawback is, there isn't really any PvE content, the multiplayer component is very PvP oriented, which doesn't quite mesh with EMC's cooperative atmosphere. A Terraria server also has some appeal, as does most anything else that centers around the "Build, Explore, Adventure" concept. Being able to hang out with friends and create cool things is what appeals to me most in (large-scale) multiplayer games. Q: What would you add as a feature on EMC and what would you remove? A:Features are a tough question - EMC does most everything right when it comes to the core Minecraft experience, and my only significant beef was with the Enraged and Miniboss additions in the Survival Update. The difficulty settings and months of post-release tweaking have since resolved those issues. (I wonder how many readers were thinking I'd say "Remove the Survival Update!" ...?) One feature I'd like to see expanded on is the ability to trigger [message] signs. Right now they work by button and pressure plate, but I would love to see it extended to include tripwires and redstone signals. As it turns out, [message] signs are probably my favorite feature simply because of their storytelling potential. I suppose the most honest answer I can give, to what feature I'd see added?We're already getting it. Just a matter of time, and somewhat low-priority, though hopefully it's out before Dragon Tombs themselves - the idea of "setting up" the lore to come and giving EMC a unique narrative is something that really appeals to me. As to what I'd like to see removed? The Survival Update! ...Hehe, just kidding. Actually the one thing I think should probably go is the Blog. Which isn't to say I'm ungrateful for having contributed to it (and plan to continue doing so, if only my damn Muse would cooperate). However, I hate the design of it with a fiery passion, the background image is both dull as dishwater and makes meliterally nauseated (the FOV in that screenshot triggers a motion-sickness response), and it doesn't seem to serve any defined purpose beyond increasing EMC's visibility in Google search rankings. It feels more like a distraction than a feature. Plus, Aikar's decision to intentionally keep it graphically "disconnected" from the main website has always bugged the living hell out of me. Q: And a fitting end to all interviews, would you rather fight ten duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? A: Ordinarily I'd take one large enemy over a swarm of small ones - it's much easier to concentrate on a single target (however imposing) than several. In this case however, duck-sized horses aren't threatening. I used to play soccer ("football" for everyone who isn't American) - if for some reason tiny horses were hostile and attacking me, I'd kick hard and go for distance.
I remember these I liked them and looked forward to them. I did sign up for one, but the waiting list was really long and the week after I signed up Chascarillo stopped them :c Anyway, learning a bit about Kephras' stance on things was cool and made for a nice read. I'm confused as to why he said the Empire blog needed the go, since it seems more like he wanted the design to go and not the actual blog
I liked this! I hope to see more in the future. When did Chasca start/stop doing them? I can't seem to remember them...
Great to see you are continuing with this, if you want to, I will be ready to participate in one of these interviews: P
I'm glad to see the positive response And I agree with the others, Legit, I look forward to seeing who else you interrogate. That's a fair question. And while it's the design I truly, honestly hate, the main reason I'd vote to see it go is actually because it just feels so extraneous. Between the Site<->Blog graphical disconnect, bland overall design, and topics that generally only relate tangentially to EMC at all, it feels like a part of the Empire that's tacked on as an afterthought because "Hey, this will help bump EMC up in Google Search indexes." And maybe there's some value in that, but my personal feeling is, if it's not going to be treated as part of the Empire experience, it may as well not be there at all.
Make a poll for next person interviewed XD Kephras has yet to fail me with his responses...... To anything you throw at him
