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(Web): Abhorash says, "Nerds."
(Web): Abhorash has left your web.
Alela's Affirmations
a. The PK. Huge, organized group combat over various objectives (Mamashi, defending the cities, raiding Bloodloch) - it was all done in such a way that the concept of griefing didn't even occur to me. Punches were pulled when enough was felt to be enough, and I appreciated that.
b. The story. As an Enorian citizen, I honestly had no clue what hostilities were brewing between Bloodloch and Duiran until the call to arms was raised. After joining in and finding out about the story behind the Monolith and how it was impacting the land, while also serving as a barrier was pretty cool in my eyes.
c. The cities' leadership actually drawing to conclusions, like.. I don't think treaties and pacts were ever made like this in any of the previous wars I've been in. They all essentially boiled down to troop elimination and burnout, whereas this one concluded with several RP points intact as an ultimatum for the ceasefire.
d. The banter. Shouts are usually annoying and pointless, but a fair majority of the shouting going on during the war educated me on a number of things and introduced me to a bunch of characters I would never have truly -met- outside of just PKing them. Big props!
What I didn't like:
a. The shrines. I have always been fairly hesitant about Order stuff, having been the sole active and combat-ready member of an Order before whose shrines went under attack for weeks on end for no real reason other than to draw me out and PK me some more, usually in a 3v1 or 4v1 scenario. As soon as Shrines became involved, I made it a point to not stick my nose into any of that business and to try and speak up for the lesser-populated orgs who might have found themselves under attack.
b. The War mechanic. CITY RELATIONS and an RP standpoint are one thing to a war, but when the war is literally initiated over something like the Monoliths, I was kind of hoping there may have been an actual, mechanical interaction to be had other than just laying waste to each other in the Mamashi over a Monolith that remained at 81% corruption indefinitely. Troops can be brought in and destroyed, but then what?
For me, it was a fight that started because of a call to arms. Initially we believed the war to be breaking out between Duiran and Spinesreach after the Copperhead event, so Enorian's citizens were led to believe that if, and only if, Bloodloch joined the fray, then we would rise up to join them. When it BEGAN with Bloodloch, some of us were like "Well, Bloodloch is a part of it so let's go!". Many of us did make a mistake in jumping in without joining the Militia, but I'm pretty sure all of those cases were rectified after the fact. Then our RP justification for fighting was fueled even further by some Divine being, basically encapsulating us in this conflict. For me, it was specifically fighting to preserve the Mamashi. That was my personal justification, and with no real means to such an end, it felt a bit obsolete and devolved into just joining for even numbers. I know it's a big ask for administration to incorporate specific, war-related goals to wars that spontaneously break out, but if something like that were possible then I feel a great number of people involved would feel more comfortable participating.
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Overall, I think it was a splendid conclusion to the year, and I'm glad it didn't devolve into just straight griefing for days on end. However, I do feel for any Orders that got crippled during and after bc that stuff sucks, and I am also of the belief that more mechanical aspects to the war itself would benefit the participants greatly.
My assumption was that someone would submit and OrgReq and the war would end in some kind of small event that would keep the monolith's influence contained so it wouldn't turn the Mamashi into a desert anymore (at least, that's what I understood the problem was) and Legyn informed Saidenn and Elene IC that the Archivists would help with anything involving the monoliths, especially since he didn't trust Duiran to handle them responsibly. I'm actually not sure what's up with the monolith now.
I like PK. I'm not going to be anywhere near as 'honorable' a player in open world PK as I would be in Sect, because I am much more playing my character in open world than I am in Sect (or at least, I've invented a character constraint that he'd be more honorable in organized sect pk). He's not going to duel a lot of people, because a lot of people he would not consider worth that time and effort. He's also not going to let people gank other people in the middle of the city or 2 feet out, even if they have cause to attack that I agree with OOC. Why would he?
For the most part, the PK portions of the war were fine. I didn't get a lot of milestones done because I was fully aware of what being in the militia meant in terms of where I could walk around. Fortunately, even when people don't have cause on my character, I don't have a lot of reason to wander around at the moment so I didn't lose out on a lot of RP that I'd usually get. With that said, I definitely have some points where I think the war system in general currently fails.
1. We had no real way to press objectives beyond pushing a war of attrition and making sure it was our troops meaninglessly fortified on the monolith. I think this is part of what lead to shrine targeting initially (the later shrines being targeted as a result of the Farsai business).
2. To be frank: I don't enjoy raiding, I don't enjoy defending raids. It's just not the most engaging content. I will do it if that's what the war system encourages, because there's not really another way currently to engage with it that seems popularly accepted.
3. Killing quest npcs is also pretty obnoxious.
4. Spawn camping is also pretty annoying, and happened multiple times, repeatedly.
5. Running it down into city guards for like 20 deaths in a row really just highlighted how absolutely meaningless death is as a consequence in this game, even if you aren't an undead.
I don't mean this to come across harshly towards anyone in particular, and especially not the Pools - the war system is old, outdated, and it not being very good isn't really anyone's fault because I don't think anyone really saw this war coming when it did. And at the same time I can't and won't really blame anyone for working with what the war system currently is (there are obviously lines not to be crossed, but I didn't really see those get crossed? i'm not going to pretend I saw everything, though).
From a Spirit perspective, I think things were kind of dying down a little before the failed trap at Farsai. Bamathis and Severn's actions there absolutely reignited the IC passion a lot of characters might not have really been feeling at the moment, and I think that really showed with participation afterwards. I've said before that just winning through numbers isn't particularly fun, losing through numbers also isn't. But I still kind of liked it from an IC and OOC perspective of everyone grouping together for a cause that my character is a firm believer in.
First, I will start by saying it felt like most of the playerbase stayed very very mature, and I was pleased to see how well people were doing despite the endless shouting, dying, rebuilding, routing, etc. The butthurt was minimal and people just dusted off, got back up, and went for another round. That is always enjoyable to see.
I also enjoyed how the conflict grew organically. There seemed to be an IC reason for everyone to be involved in the war, and none of it seemed too paper thin to seem as a super flimsy justification. I appreciated it and I was sad I didn't get to join in more conflict and do more stuff during the time.
Now, that said, with the lack of mechanical objectives, thing definitely did stretch and boundaries go so blurred it made me wonder why we even have a city vs city war other than to throw an "Open PK" label on certain players. I respect, appreciate, and encourage RP, but this is also a game, meaning that while we don't want too many barriers to limit our rp, we also don't want every conflict to just turn into an endless brawl of "who has the most people with the most time to play right now". That isn't fun for either side, and can even see people sit-out when they look at the ball of the opposing team and go "why try?" It is a bad mentality, I 100% agree, but I can also understand the perspective of looking out and seeing 3:1 odds and trying to get hyped to die 15 times in a row.
The war system is antiquated so it needs more goals AND more gates. Yes, cities like Enorian can RP all day they are the White Knights to Duiran's lost boys and Bloodloch stands next to Spines just cause they are hungry for some blood, but that then defeats the entire purpose of a war system of city vs city. At that point it will always and endlessly turn into a war of numbers and who has the biggest deathball the majority of the time.
The other idea with gates, too, is the timing of things. While I know raids happened and troop movements happened during prime time, there troop movements and raids in the middle of the night EST too. It didn't feel like, and this can be said to either side who did this, there was a pulse check of "hey do you have active defenders?" to ensure people weren't just bashing troops/guards when there was no one around to stop them. That's the kind of shit we should not tolerate. At all. It is bad for morale. It leaves a sour taste in the mouths of everyone. And there is no counter-offensive other than hoping you, too, have people in other time zones and/or odd sleep schedules to be around to intervene.
Overall? I was satisfied how the war went in what little I and Spines participated. We had our IC reasons for not participating, and I also had some OOC feels from the players in the city as to why we needed some time to recover from recent events. War was planned, but BL/Duiran beat me to it. I think we need more conflicts like this soon. Better objectives, perhaps, something more concrete so we don't spend a month or two just endlessly killing each other, and a better way to ensure that every city vs city doesn't just end up being tether vs tether, because RP concludes that it almost always will, every single time.
TL;DR - great time. Much fun. Better objectives/mechanics. Rails to ensure we can have actual org vs org conflict, not tether vs tether conflict every single time (which is why I think Holy Wars are rarely used, but should be used more). Lets bash each other around again soon.
- - Multiple 'types' of conflict. Each type determines the objectives.
- - You can include allies for each side outright, and the defender gets one 'counter offer' where they can list everyone going with them.
- - The attacker can then cancel if they got flexed on too hard.
Conflict types:
- Turf. Designate an area and a duration (1 RL week default). Every org now has some sort of flag it can raise with similar rules to shrines. Each flag raised gives you 1 point per tick (hourly? x times an hour, but random snapshots? who knows!), most points at the end of the duration ends.
- Slaughter. Designate an area or 'global', and whack each other. Best K/D wins.
- Hearts and Minds. Only works on a village, spawns quests every once in awhile. Most completions of a quest wins.
- War. City vs city only. Uses the troop system, which gets a mini-overhaul (or at least change how troop cap works).
- Skirmish. Spawns a little 4 room 'outpost' for each side, with quest npcs. Spawns enemy npcs, some little 'objectives', little point system (1 point per soldier killed, 5 points per quest complete, 2 points per enemy head brought in). Open pk in that area.
System doesn't have to be too in-depth, it just needs to have some rudimentary scorekeeping, a way to limit deathballs (original offer, for example Ivoln v Sentinels), and a way to limit counter-deathballs (attacker can decline if the counter-offer is Ivoln v Lifers). There's no expectation of admin involvement either, so this slap fight is just that. So if someone is just spamming like Lifers v Maghak's, they can surrender and try to find ways to break up the alliance.
Maybe put a cooldown on conflict declarations just because people are people.
I'd also like a re-focus back onto the ceasefire agreements in-game, now that we had time to process alongside spend on IRL festivities.
I'm still highly interested in pursuing this research collaboration with Duiran, and hope that the conclusion of the war with the ceasefire agreement doesn't mean to people on both sides that (conflict and) RP just stops here abruptly.
Hmmm. Where would the Mamashi Grasslands monolith conflict fit under, with these proposed conflict types? Treaty contents will explain why we're having a fight, but the types don't seem like they will conclude any of the concerns we were having. Troops/War, I guess?
This feels like too much, but I may be spoiled from ideas of unmitigated conflict from games like EVE Online. I wouldn't want the ubiquitous Alarm Clock POS Bashing from that, but going the opposite direction of having to ask "is this a fair enough fight" before engaging seems just as bad. Fairness is a fine goal, but no one should be expected to pull punches to make fairness happen. It would be like going into a Sect duel and asking your opponent to take it easy on you if they're a higher rating than you. That just doesn't make for a fun system to engage with.
What this all seems to come down to is the same issue we face every day in ylem conflict: how do we (as individual players) engage with conflict (lessers or war) in a satisfying way when we are grossly outnumbered? Some people find their own ways without any changes, but I think any updated war system should have more concrete and meaningful solutions to that issue. That is going to come down to re-imagining what conflict looks like. For that, I could imagine something leaning on some of the newer tools in the game:
Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
Aggressors in raiding (caravans, guards, troop movements) do not currently show any readiness to engage in combat other than agreeing to a War for RP reasons. In this case, it would be more akin to finding another Sect member, even if they are AFK, and simply killing them and stating that them joining to Sect means they agreed to fight whenever or however. Or, in converse, targeting AFK militia members simply for being in the militia despite not actively moving or even outside a city.
A fun system is where all parties involved can actively ENGAGE with the system. Late-night raids with no defenders or extremely small numbers does not allow both parties to actively engage. It allows one party to engage in the system and take advantage of the other party's inability to engage for their own benefit. It is visiting a rival's baseball field, hitting a ball off a tee, and claiming you won a match against them.
Fairness can be hard and nearly impossible to obtain. And, of course, people may lie if you ask them so you can always make the choice to look for known defenders, too. But the point is that, when it comes to city raids or things that directly impact another org through your actions, if you are only thinking of your own 'fun', then that is the entirely wrong approach in a community game.
At the very least, they shouldn't have to ask "are there enough defenders online" because that question is incomplete and impossible to properly gauge. We see it all the time with Lessers. Just because there are X players in Shadow and an equal X in Spirit does not mean X players will show up to a Lesser from both sides. In reality, Lessers happen and you either show up or you don't. The numbers are even or they aren't. There is obvious discontent with uncontested Lessers and uneven numbers, but the alternatives seem more broadly unpalatable.
The point is it's not a baseball game and it's not a duel. We're imagining a broader, more open-ended competition, where uneven numbers and "late-nights" (or "work hours" or "we're all mostly AFK right now eating dinner and we're not coming back to defend") need to factor in fairly. Imagining a system where we get together and arrange a series of evenly matched encounters (like baseball) just does not seem interesting, and it's not how I would imagine a war at all.
Edit: As an example of creating space for late-night tee-ups while keeping prime time engagement essential, imagine if there were IC-daily war caravans. Obviously, there will be periods where you would expect to have no defenders, like late at night EST, but caravans might still need to reach troops. It would be a failing of the system if the optimal strategy would be you and your friends setting your alarms to 4am, waking up when no one else is around, and then raiding for a free win. That doesn't mean that we should just lock caravans up tight from 12pm-8am, or just ignore caravans during those hours. What would be better is if we could gamify the timings a little. Imagine:
- Every 24 hours, your city gets 24 war commodity "points", which need to reach troops for some effect.
- Every IC day, a caravan can leave. We will assume that there are 2 "prime time" caravans, 2 "late-night" caravans, and 2 "off-peak" caravans (where you might expect some defenders being available, but not necessarily always ready for a fight).
- Each caravan can be given a point allotment by their cities, from 0 to 6. 0 would mean no commodities, no points, and therefor no caravan that day.
- In theory, you could lock up caravans from 12pm-8am, giving the "late-night" caravans 0 points. However, that would leave 4 caravans with 6 points each. Now you have a trade-off and a decision that you can engage with.
- Do you lock up your caravans at night, now valuing "off-peak" and "prime time" activity equally at 6 points across the board in exchange for that certain safety overnight?
- Do you sneak a few points in the "late-night" caravans, accepting the risk in exchange for reduced risk in the "off-peak" caravans?
- Do you sneak in a lot of points in the "late-night" caravans, until you get punished for it by a late-night raid?
Ultimately, it would not be incumbent on the aggressors to pull punches to get a fair fight, as defenders have options that don't rely on full-time availability.Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
However, if I'm faced with "having fun" and "not being a dick to other orgs/players", I'm going to go with the latter, and unfortunately as the system currently stands, late-night activities with no defenders is the latter of the two, even if it can incorporate the former. I would prefer if we do not fall into a "You don't pay my sub" mentality when it comes to how we define fun. Our community is already small and, as I previously stated, waking up to find that some people killed 50 of your guards, 300 of your troops, or nicked several of your caravans, and you had no action against it other than to respond in kind, leaves a sour taste in the mouth for the people involved. The fair portion should not be "Well you can be a dick too if you want".
Refining the war system and giving it more depth, hopefully, will eliminate some of that, though, and here is to hoping we see more from it to give more people different ways to engage.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WalDGw-uTCNqPMvuS7hFULmEklZaneSsbjLOkW9AStw/edit?usp=sharing
I hope that link works anyways.