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Light Thoughts About Conflict
Jensen
Corruption's Butcher
Spin off from the guard and pk thread. Just interested in what Life/Light would like to see for engaging pk conflict both offensively and defensively. Darkies feel free to comment but don't attack view points, I really want to see what they want.
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Eeh.
For myself, I think the problem with conflict in Aetolia is in us, the players. There are simply too many that care only about their org, or their clique, or their friends, or their half, whatever.
Too many of the people that like conflict are the people that don't play well with others, and no amount of administered medicine or neatly coded avenues is going to change it before we do.
All we're going to do is find some way to abuse or troll or cry or complain about everything that gets sent from the top down, because we're essentially a bunch of children bashing our toys into oblivion and then blowing them up with firecrackers.
There are personalities which have a bit of an OOC " Unicorns you " attitude, and generally they are easy enough to ignore, and even then under that attitude there is a reasonable person who really is more for showmanship and somewhere generally does care about the environment in the game.
There are people who are expectant of a "certain" type of conflict on both sides, that want to play it that way and without laid out guidelines expect it to go that way whilst participating. That being said there is a line that appears during the conflict where various parties feel that they have been wronged, or have been pushed to that point of -too far-. This is different for everyone so when that threshold is met, the beginning round of frustration begins. Like a tiny snowball it accumulated and begins to roll. Once more reach that threshold, on either side, it then spirals...into the web, then to the clans...then to severe frustrations IE - Issues, or in another sense, the forums.
There is a limiter that we do not have and that is conflict guidelines which are clearly presented aside from one side being told kill, and another side being told defend, and that ultimately is left to the community then to duke out and abide by the rules we have, PK and at a lesser level Organizational Laws, which puts us in a bit of a pickle because for no one organization are these the same.
It is something that has been presented, and in the current event I have to say -all- parties from observation have been (generally) level-headed. I have talked to both, even esteemed, and appreciated those for roleplaying, where it may not be particularly their forte, even if it is thinly veiled roleplay it is still an attempt, I have seen roleplayers trying to take the brevity of combat in stride and keep a cool head, myself included, which is great.
Though...it rapidly approaches....the lines.
-Where do we know when to stop or continue, where can we make it enjoyable for all parties or at least explained in a manner where we know when we can and can not cease an administratively run event and resume activities of organization or personal enjoyment.
That is an expectation I feel we should focus on when running an event to perhaps include so that all parties kind of know where the expectation is, with War we at least knew where boundaries and soldiers were moved, and kind of knew what the battlezone is, as we do with lessers and open PK areas the same.
Sorry for the rant, just a bit of thought vomit from me
I don't think guidelines need to be instituted, that would be completely childish. To be given training wheels just to get conflict started? Yeah, no thank you. What we need is to grow as a community and as players. We need to stop complaining about everything little thing that happens in any sort of conflict. If you don't like the way the conflict is going, do your best to stay out of it. If you want to stay involved but still don't like the conflict, maybe find IC diplomatic solutions to expedite the completion of the conflict that is currently at hand.
In this event, for example: Not only was there PK in the Vortex and doing Event-related things, but now anyone who participates at all is open PK at all times. The lack of any off time to enjoy other aspects of the game (other than qqing) is something that discourages people from participating. Seeing Rajazel 4v1'd, or Coby 2v1'd, while those individuals may not mind, is something everyone else sees, and contributes to the decision-making process of "Is this something I want to open the door of?"
Yes, we as a community need to grow up. Unfortunately, sometimes training wheels are needed because individuals (or herd mentality which rises on both sides) are utterly incapable of demonstrating any restraint (see Aura being introduced with leylines). Both sides are equally as guilty of the whining, but we will get nowhere if OOCly we just mock and deride the other for trying to voice frustrations as to why the current interactions just are not "doing it". A lot of times from this end, it feels like we as people are just NPCs in your (the aggressor/shadow) world, as many of the purist PKers play and approach this game as if it were a single-player game that you just happen to be able to team up with your buddies with, but the mentality is the same.
All of this is a two way street and responsibility is carried on both parties. It isn't purely the job of the receiver to make things 'fun' for the other as well as themselves.
This most recent event with the vortex has been confusing as fuck, and until there was PK I was interested in, I didn't really care one way or the other about it --I still don't care one way or the other about the conflict. Maybe it's bad RP on my part, but unless a person is tangibly involved in the majority of the mob-pos interactions (something that's nearly impossible for those running the event to implement for every single player), it's pretty hard to know what all is going on. Even if you are there, unless you're one of the central players interacting, it can be hard to weed through what everyone is saying and discern what's relevant to the situation and what isn't. As a result, it becomes hard for me to believably RP a solid opinion formed or stance on the situation, or at least, have one that drives me to participate actively throughout the entire event.
What's been good about this event is the admin leading the event has allowed players to muddle what would otherwise be a black and white scenario, creating a dynamic conflict that was intriguing and interesting to be part of. I've said it often, but life should be dangerous. Some of my most fond moments of playing muds have revolved around being in a situation where I was on the brink of losing my cool, or even going through lows in the game where it was frustrating and not fun, but then feeling the camaraderie of an ally coming and enduring it with me. Sometimes we'd prevail, sometimes we wouldn't but bonds were forged, the world felt more realistic and suddenly there was tangible reason for my character to care and form opinions over the world.
Hell, after @Ezalor killed one of the kiddos and realized he didnt have runes, he apologized and gave him some chocolates to help bash up his level again.
-They aren't monsters, they are players just like you and me.
Aetolia is small enough that a few players can dominate the entire scene, and just a couple of good PK leaders can turn the tide in favour of their side in almost any situation unless extremely outnumbered. I don't think this is a problem so much of 'sides' as it is a game design one: it just takes massive amount of effort to go from no combat experience to even survive thirty seconds against a capable combatant. There's frankly nothing intuitive about Aetolian and IRE combat in general, leading to a steep learning curve. When you try to climb that learning curve and face nothing but defeat over and over again, you'll get bored and try something else instead.
Anyway. I am a lazy person. I play games for entertainment. Some games are more complex than other games. Very few games are both super complex in that you have to script automated offense, script automated defense, learn your class (or classes') different win routes, how to spot the route your opponent is going for, and so on and so forth, while also requiring you to continuously update your scripts/add new techniques/whatever as liaison changes are made. Other muds have stayed pretty much the same for five-ten years, or sometimes even more. New pieces of equipment might be added, but the general sense of tactics stay the same; melee fighters are tanky and deal consistent damage, wizard classes have high damage but low defense, rogue classes use the element of surprise to kill the enemy extremely quickly, et cetera.
I am not complaining about IRE's/Aetolia's combat system, just pointing out that in games with relatively small playerbases, making systems that are inherently exclusive will easily create a situation where a few players can utterly dominate the other players. I think this is what we're seeing in Aetolia, and that is probably part of why the Light/Lifer side shies away from conflict -- loosing all the time just isn't fun, and there really is not been a whole lot of situations recently where they've felt that 'wow, we just outbattled the darkies' or 'that was such a close battle, how exciting, let's do it again'. There's times when smaller Ylem skirmishes take place or when they bring a lot more people to the battle than we do, but that's hardly engaging PK conflict, nor is it readily available.
I like MUD combat where you can participate competitively without knowing how to script extensively, instead requiring class/skill/area knowledge, good chasing skills, and smart use of mob behaviour (aggressive mobs, guards, etc). I play Aetolia for other reasons.
But @Alexina deserves the credit in the end, she's the chocolate sugar momma.
I am not, by and far the biggest combatant on the face of the earth. I do not even come close and many of you are likely aware of this fact. That said, there are two things I wish to state before I continue:
1. While I am not a PK-heavyweight and probably never will be, I do not begrudge people who have put that much effort into becoming one their hard-earned script-fu prowess. It absolutely has a place in the game as a whole.
2. That place should not come, at any time, at the expense of roleplay or other, less PK-inclined players and certain types of combat events for teams and city-states should keep this in mind, including raids. Different players have different strengths, and the game should not rely so heavily on PK as the only outlet for in-game conflicts or even as the sole rating of one's 'power' in the game.
That in mind, I would like to see something along the following lines (among a vast array of other changes) in the game:
An objective based raiding system with tangible outcomes/results/impacts for both failure and success, including varying degrees of success, that would encourage both RP and PK, as well as having (potentially) larger strategic considerations involved.
Q: "That sounds good and all, but how would this work, Sarkis?"
I'll lay out what I thought of as a system (I hate suggesting something without having a practical or at least moderately reasonable solution to the problem).
1st - Consider that raiding generally serves as a micro to meso scale (small to medium sized) activity. In the scope of military consideration, raiding generally has an objective or specific outcome to it, generally one that will hit weak-points in the enemy's organization, such as their logistical train, their lines of communication, transportation routes, or general defensive/offensive capabilities.
2nd - Consider that this list of potential targets for a raid offer a wide range of rather interesting potential scenarios for which PKers as defenders or attackers need to consider and learn about (providing increased depth to conflict and giving a sense of urgency to the activity of defending or attacking).
We would also need to consider the actual size of the raid in relation to the type of target and the options available when committing to that target. So I think we should also consider making raids a formalized mechanic that has two sizes, small and large. Moving forward with the explanation...
City-states would contain five potential objectives for a raid (large or small) to hit. Each would have some sort of negative impact on the city-state should the raid succeed to some greater or lesser degree. As an example, striking at the city-guard barracks might create a period of time where guard-responses would be slower against enemies, with the effect being most pronounced if the raid is overwhelmingly successful, and a total failure resulting in reduced response times (I.E. you done goofed on the raid and now the Guards are even more alert and ready to react). Another example of a possible (remember, POSSIBLE) outcome is a strike on the city commodity warehouse that could temporarily increase general commodity prices if the raid succeeds (with varying degrees of success) and a failure having the opposite impact on the attack city's commodity market***.
The idea being if you attack the target and you screw up royally, you can end up in a worse situation than you (your city) had before the raid, and if you succeed, you can reeeeaaally irritate your opposing city without causing permanent damage.
The target for a small-raid and its outcomes would be significantly more limited than a raid that got designated as a large one, and there would be a hard cap on how many raids can be conducted within a certain period of time, so that you're not trolling any cities. Such hard caps on the frequency would need to include the following, though the numbers I'll provide for example would really have to be play-tested out to see what strikes the most acceptable balance:
a. You could not strike the same target multiple times in a row to increase or stack the effects, if the raid was successful. There's a couple reasons for this and I'll explain them in brief. First, we don't want to overwhelm a city, any city, with a massive stack of negative effects that could outright cripple it or otherwise break the city outright. Raids should not be a replacement for full-on large scale warfare and they should not carry the same sort of effects, ever. Second, realistically speaking, the raid would have damaged the structure or general organization of in question sufficiently to damage it, there would be an upper limit on its effect anyway (since new or backup systems would presumably be used while the primary one is being restored to a functional state). A raid that failed would allow raiders to attack that target again, but they'd need to be aware that the failure still results in a faster guard response (See below).
b. The more raids you make, in a shorter period of time, would result in exponentially faster and heavier guard response (I'll explain how this would differ from what currently exists soon), due to the heightened state of alert your raids placed the city in. This prevents a sudden stream of raids being committed in short order, especially when player levels are low for a particular city, because it would result in a wave of guards compensating for the lack of players. If you're going to attack a city in the game, it's fine to attack it when they're low on numbers, but it's not fine to -abuse- that to the point it makes the entire endeavor no longer fun for the defenders.
c. After a certain number of raids, in a certain period of time (I.E. three raids in a five day period and/or five raids in an eight day period), the raid system against the target city will no longer function. Essentially, you won't be able to just endlessly raid a city. The more you raid, the less likely each raid is to succeed in a short period of time, forcing the raiders to plan their raids more carefully and allows the defenders time to do other things in the game aside from defend the city from an abusive level of attacks.
The system should flat out reward, in a structured way, successful raids and punish unsuccessful ones and encourage careful consideration of what targets should be hit in what order, giving a much more interesting dimension to the effort for players who might not be great fighters, but have a knack for organization, leadership, or tactics.
The raid targets themselves should be instanced once the raid party has successfully infiltrated the enemy city, so that the city cannot simply stack guards there or lock those targets away from being accessed. Furthermore, guard response within this special instanced area should be set on a series of conditions that will determine how and when they arrive, depending on how the raiders act. Furthermore, the attackers should have a much harder time recuperating their combat losses during the raid than the defenders (who can send in as many players as will respond at the time of the raid).
To explain the guard response, they would first off, come in waves. As an example I'll provide what the process of events that would happen in a small raid:
1. A raid is declared over the city channel for the city that wishes to lead a raid. The scale (size) of the raid is determined by two basic factors: How many players are in the enemy city at the time the raid is called and how many players actually join the raiding team. Potentially, city-rank or rank in the city militia could affect the size of a raid a person could lead. In this case it's either off-peak hours or only a handful of people want to participate and small raid rules and impacts are applied.
2. The raid team forms and plans. The raid leader would be someone of sufficient city rank in the city to have called the raid in question and the raid leader is in command of the raid organization, selecting what their objective is and determining their plan to seize it, how they'll infiltrate, etc. They do not need to be the best fighter ever, simply be able to organize the raid and provide leadership during it. This allows someone to select who can be thier XO/backup raid leader (preferably a veteran who is familiar with the whole process) who can also fill in as a web caller or whatever. Because this is a small raid, there will be no secondary objectives: Small raids must strike their determined objective. Large raids can select two potential secondary targets, but the outcomes of the raids on these secondary targets will scale at the small raid level I.E. be much smaller.
3. The enemy team infiltrates to the objective, and triggers the guard response. The raid team then has to decide if they will set members to handle the first few guards or to try to finish the series of objectives in the small, arena like area that the raid takes place in before more guards/defenders show up. The guards will respond with increasing numbers and faster, the longer the raid goes on, with the ability to skip steps in the table of escalation (i.e. scale of response) depending on how quickly the guards are being killed. Defender deaths will not change this response table.
The enemy team also must contend with the fact that when they die, they have a timer (separate from normal deaths, but still have exp loss) from the point they die to the point they can respawn. The longer the raid goes on, the longer this timer becomes. If the raiding team is either completely killed or alternatively runs from the fight, the raid ends. Depending on how many of the objectives they accomplish will determine the overall success or failure of the raid. The worst case scenario is that during the infiltration, but before they reach the objective instance, the raid team is destroyed or the guard response timer reaches a certain level before they reach the objective (basically, sudden death condition).
4. In this case, the small raid team successfully captures 3 out of the 5 objectives at their raid target before being wiped out. They selected the City-Guard Barracks, and successfully destroyed their communications area, their stables, and ruined their armory, but you did not succeed in killing the Guard Commander or burning the building, so the impact on guard response times in future raids is not huge, but still noticeable. This sets the stage for future raids over the coming five to eight days being more successful, because your raid had a moderate degree of success in causing disarray in the raided city's guard organization.
Anyway, this is the short, uber condensed version of what I've been thinking over. I actually have way more details written out elsewhere and an explanation of how this would fit into a much larger conflict system. Much larger. Like, bordering on insane in terms of details and layers of overlap... it...it would be beautiful ;_;
At any rate, this is the sort of raid that I would be extremely interested in participating in, either as an attack or defender. It would self-moderate itself, it would allow for players to play to other strengths (like tactical skills or organization/leadership), and it would make the urgency and impact of raiding that much more. Not just that, but the system would encourage new variety and new reasons for players to become involved in conflict and learn at least the basics of combat in the game, which could not be a bad thing and help new players feel involved in something that has some sort of impact, that isn't a per-determined event outcome.
***(Frankly, I think we should really have a whole economic rework to include macro (huge) scale economic activity and more than that, tie it into a larger conflict system, but there is neither space nor I think the inclination for people to read my in-depth thoughts regarding how that would operate. Though I am working on it...)
YES. I KNOW. I JUST PERFORMED AN ACT OF NECROMANCY (OH GOD MY TETHE- wait, monks are neutral. HA!)
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin