How does conflict start now?

Irruel

I haven't actively pvped since the days the bahkatu still lived in Ashtan.

I've fought in wars, holywars, group pvp, loci fights etc since then, on and off, but rarely ever as a pvper fighting single enemies around the world just for the hell of it. The reason? Basically because I stopped maintaining my system and got out of the habit.

Now, I'm enjoying Aetolia again AND have a good system (thanks to Kaeus). But um...

The game has changed. Before, if I felt like a fight I just had to wander around outside spinesreach, talk smack at NoT, or basically just breath funny in the wrong (or right) place.

I kind of don't know how to get into a fight anymore. How do I make an enemy?

I could make up an rp reason and challenge an org, maybe pick one like the carnifex that I know has decent people in it that will play nicely about it all, but I'd rather ease into a bit slower than that, hehe. I've still got lots to learn and relearn before a move like that is anything other than suicide.

So what's up in the game these days? What do people do for a fight?

Kikon

You can try the Hunting Grounds, as that is mostly a 1v1 thing. You can also join the Sect of Blades for dueling.

Joining lesser fights is probably where you'll find most of your activity, but you can always be old fashioned and enter an enemy cities sewers to yell things until someone comes and fights.

Irruel

Hrm. I had forgotten about the HG.

Sect is about duelling? I think I misunderstood the description of it, I thought it was something along the lines of occasionally being open for random ganking while bashing.

Kikon

You can choose when you want to be open or not I believe.

Moirean

You choose when you are visible, so most people aren't, so it's hard to find targets/duels - to fix this, you can duel in the sect arena, which does blind match-ups with whoever accepts the duel you put out, although there is like an hour long CD, so you can't just be in a sparring mood and keep going (which sucks). Also, it tends to be the same people, so a lot of people have lost interest in just sparring the same few people over and over, and so there are fewer matches being tossed out.

That being said, there's pretty much no ganking from sect membership. People tend to be polite and ask for duels.

There's also always bounties to collect.

Finally there is the fracture - going inside makes you open PK and there's an artifact which announces when someone enters and there's nearly always a darkie idling who has the arti who triggers an announce to the PK clans.

On the whole, PK does seem a bit more blah and mechanical and less organic these days, including in its generation, which is kinda frustrating - when we hopped over to Lusty for a bit a few years ago, it was the feeling of things being so mechanical that eventually got me missing Aet, but there doesn't seem to be as much of that sort of spontaneous PK and lasting rivalries here anymore. People are lot nicer, which is good, but it means we don't get these rarr rarr visceral desires to hunt people down. Look at the news boards from 5 years ago versus today - I was browsing some old posts and realized that things are a lot more tame. I think, overall, that's good and makes for a better play environment, but part of me feels a twinge of nostalgia, missing having that back and forth there used to be.

Part of this might be due to some acknowledged issues that top-level combat currently faces - artifacts/stats are problematic right now while most classes are outdated and don't have momentum mechanics. Not only does this make for an imbalance that can be felt pretty hard, it also can lead to fights that stagnate into stalemates. Attrition is tiring, and most people don't enjoy fights that each go for an hour. 

Anyways, that stuff are issues that people are aware of, and being worked on. I think you definitely do need to make more of an effort these days to get an ongoing 1v1 PvP experience, so you are probably on right track to consider stuff like picking RP fights and actively putting yourself in situations to create rivals or invite PK. Just remember - take your hood off so you can be found!

Irruel

...Fracture?! Hehe.
Thanks for that one, I just read the help file. Sounds like a tense place to visit.
I'll start with picking a few fights in the traditional way, and with the HG. Fracture and sect can wait a little while.

You said: "People are a lot nicer." Kikon said much the same to me earlier when we were chatting about the loss of NoT as a general "talk smack and pick fights" meeting point (blender/food processor/melting pot?). He said lots of people have grown up since those days.

It'd be nice if, in the future, devs considered adding place(s) where people of all sides were encouraged to be without pvp being the immediate goal. A place where arguments can start and roleplay between sides (or factions?) progress into pvp. After all, what's the point in having a more mature playerbase and not capitalising on it?

Daskalos

It's pretty hard to pick fights anymore... I could do  some of the stuff I used to do, but it just doesn't work anymore. Go find a nemesis and fight them. (I'm waiting on you, @Kikon, to finish that system!)

Ezalor

Sect is nice. I guess technically you are open PK any time, but I've never been (or seen anyone be) random ganked for Sect. The help file does state that it's for honourable duels rather than ganking and most fights happen in the Sect arena in any case.

Draiman

Sect is just a glorified combat rankings.

Jensen

@irruel I wouldn't mind picking up an RP nemesis, but I won't be available until next week since I can't use my laptop

Xiuhcoatl

The best way and the most fun to get conflict started is to use the FTSUA or Unicorn That/Their Unicorn Up Approach.#TradeMarked

The approach is that you see something immediately deface/attack/kill/eat/steal/in some form mess with it for the negative of it or FTSU. This approach is very much the easiest way to start conflict. See a mount? FTSU. See a newbie, FTSU. City forgot to enemy you? I guess it's time to sneak into the city and FTSU. Look someone is bashing for gold, time to tail them, take the gold as it drops, and then when they get uppity FTSU. 

Disclaimer for the FTSU approach: You hereby acknowledge that when you decide to FTSU you will do so within the rules of Aetolia. Once you've FTSU, you acknowledge that the individual whose unicorn got unicorned go on a hard unicornable cooldown. Nobody likes to have their SFU by the same person multiple times in a several day period.You are also solely responsible for all the unicorn you unicorned up. Any new wooden appendages are bonus features. If you repeatedly use this feature, natural PK enhancement may occur. 

Valdus

It is very much not recommended that you 'FTSU' in regards to newbies.

Slyphe

Xiuhcoatl said:

The approach is that you see something immediately deface/attack/kill/eat/steal/in some form mess with it for the negative of it or FTSU. This approach is very much the easiest way to start conflict. See a mount? FTSU. See a newbie, FTSU. City forgot to enemy you? I guess it's time to sneak into the city and FTSU. Look someone is bashing for gold, time to tail them, take the gold as it drops, and then when they get uppity FTSU. 

Intentionally and repeatedly doing just about any of these things just for the sheer purpose of stirring up conflict because you're bored can be considered griefing at the very least, and harassment at most. 

Acts such as the ones you've listed are not conductive to a positive game environment, which while not by any means an obligation of yours to create, is something that everybody should want to work together to maintain.

Irruel

@slyphe @valdus
Done responsibly, picking fights like that can be a positive experience. Isto was good at it, working in a little rp at the same time.

While @xiuhcoatl describes taking it further than I could feel comfortable with, he did state that doing it repeatedly isn't nice for the victim (meaning he does actually care a bit about people's feelings) so compared to some of the assholes of earlier years, he doesn't seem too bad. And really, there needs to be a bit of that sort of thing going on when there isn't anything else happening, otherwise things get boring.

I was in a guild once where the GM oocly asked a known active PKer (griefer by today's standards) to target his guild for a while. He wanted an enemy for the guild to unite around fighting and learning to fight. This sort of thing can have its place if not taken too far.

 

Valdus

I'm fully behind picking fights and trying to generate conflict; I know I did more than enough in my time. However, the best conflict requires some degree of consent, even if there is a loser, and some mental/emotional investment from all parties. There's a difference between instigating conflict and harassing someone; if the other party clearly does not have any interest, then even if PK is generated that person is not going to work to extend it, much less enjoy it. Of course, as you stated: doing it repeatedly is the crux of the problem. It's still technically fine to attempt to bait someone into a fight with the methods described if done in moderation.

That all said, it's never okay to employ that logic on newbies. Our goal is retention and there's no way we can advocate harassing someone new to the game in that manner. Introduce them through group or organization centered conflict and allow them to make the choice to participate - they are far more likely to come back and try again if it's presented as a way to elevate their experience.

There are remarkably few good conflict arcs that begin with someone butchering a newbie's mount.

Daskalos

Part of the problem with conflict, as I see it, is the fact that there are far too many 'safe' places now. As an example, a player recently slew another's mount. He even shouted about it, taunting the other. He's also attacked me several times unprovoked. Every time I go after him, he map paths back to his home city and then goes to his haven and will sit there for hours or until I logout.

I've done my fair share of PK over the years - I used to sever Vampire's minions (who were known to fight) to start fights with them, or banish entities. I'd break into vampire houses and  then sit there (alone) until people came to evict me. Even now I'll raid from time to time just to put a bounty on my head so people can come try to kill me. I drag along novices and such to lesser because it's a good introduction to combat in that there are no consequences.

One thing I've noticed, that used to spawn a lot of conflict but it's because of this 'never lose' attitude that players have, I remember 'back in the day' you'd have a young person being bullied by a bigger player, like Xiuhcoatl described above, and as a result, you'd have a bigger player come to the young players aide and  champion him in a duel or what not. The problem nowadays - and this is why I believe conflict has dropped off - is that the bullies won't go  for the champion, and will outright refuse, because all they want is to kill the easy to kill player. They don't want the challenge or the risk to their ego that they'll be on the wrong side of deathsight. I think the reason PK has dropped off is a lack of maturity amonst the PK'ers - a lot of the older PK'ers just don't care anymore. Look  at Kylan and Saybre as examples. They -can- PK, they jut choose not to. Searoth was the same way. He got to a point where he got tired of dealing with the BS and lack of consequences for people doing dumb stuff and then being perpetually safe. It's why I'm glad custom wings rooms are no longer a token item.

Seir

Balance of the game aside, I have to agree with the points raised above. A lot of the problems that I have with conflict stem from the fact that there is zero accountability for another character's actions. I understand that people view their character as the 'hero' of their own story and it sucks when your character dies to another or dies at all. However, when people begin "utilizing" mechanics as 'safe zones' in order to let their character talk smack to another character who is far more established at combat. If the safe zones weren't there, I'm about 97% sure that those characters would NOT be talking the way they were because the person they're taunting would come and pretty much establish why they're good at fighting. In this particular case, the mechanics are actually hurting roleplay as well as conflict.

The other reason conflict suffers is the loss of a war system with consequences. While the ylem system is innovative, I feel it lacks the certain high risk/high reward system that the old war system had. You can definitely say that the old war system had too many disadvantages to justify its existence and I would agree, but I feel that Aetolia doesn't have a really meaningful conflict system between organizations and individuals now. There's nothing that really encourages conflict. The recent downgrade to the hunting ground items, I feel, actually may have hurt conflict more. For one, there's less incentive for someone to go risk their neck for an item they'll have until log off. You're potentially getting stuck in the Hunting Grounds with someone else and potentially stalemating with that person for a good hour or two (it has happened) for an item that you'll lose upon log off or when you need to idle. I'm also not sure if the changes also accounted for custom wings rooms. People may not be able to go to their havens now, but a lot of people have their own wings room and will just go there to idle with their items if possible.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

Teani

I agree with those above. Safe zones and the ability to hide yourself away with ease with numerous trinkets and whatever makes interaction and conflict difficult. Very few people actually man up and accept defeat as something that can happen if you go on the offensive, because hey, I can hide.

I remember playing Ecikoria and getting repeatedly defeated in duels, because she's stand up for what she thought was right, go out and slam down the gauntlet and get crushed, but that's what it was. She was respected for it, even if she died. Now people seem to care too much about being seen as a loser.

For a while there someone would start a conflict because they were bored, then when a champion, such as Daskalos mentioned, was brought in and they'd immediately run and get their friends to team up, and before you knew things were out of control and no one knew the reasons. Now... it's hiding instead. I'd like to see a change in attitudes, but it's not very likely in some cases, as some people can't stand to look like they're "losing the game".

Piper

Teani said:

I remember playing Ecikoria and getting repeatedly defeated in duels, because she's stand up for what she thought was right, go out and slam down the gauntlet and get crushed, but that's what it was. She was respected for it, even if she died. Now people seem to care too much about being seen as a loser.

I've tried to initiate duels on several characters even when it was stacked WELL against my favor. I don't think anyone's ever taken me up on them, before. Usually I just get taunted or put down gently in a patronizing way. Very sad.

Moirean

As I said above, 1v1 combat doesn't feel as engaging these days, though that might just be me personally. It's not that I can't stand my ego taking a loss - I very often portray Moi as physically weaker in RP conflicts, because hi Imp, and let people beat me up and toss me around. Actual PK, though? I just have other stuff I'd rather spend an hour or more doing, so I tend to just go nope and avoid a fight unless I'm in the mood. Fights are TIRING these days.

Regarding people hiding in cities, I've told my citizens not to make trouble and then sit behind guards and Spines has been tossing around the idea of removing guards as a "what if" concept, but I suspect it wouldn't actually fly if we decided to put it to a city vote. Carnifex also have the whole "finish fights you start" law - 

- but here's the thing. Trying to be a good guy and push these kinds of outlooks on my people, and use them myself, usually just ends in headaches and getting burnt. People will shout your own rules/efforts/goals back at you when it helps forward their own agendas, even if it's really not even applicable. For example, we've had situations where it's someone randomly jumping Carnis, and then getting indignant and upset at me when the people don't want to sit and just be killed, claiming that we HAVE to fight them because of our guild's laws. That's just silly, and tiring. 

Same with attempts at individual conflict or smaller-scale fighting: partially because there is so little PK, people all want to jump in, things get out of hand, we've ended up branded the OOC bad guys/bullies, when our original intent is nearly always to help generate individual/smaller-scale conflict. For example, look at the conflict over the Great Rock the other day - Macian asked me to help him give the Shamans a bit of conflict, so we decided to set up a rivalry between Carnis and Shamans over the fate of hounds. Lifers who weren't Shamans joined in, and even Dhar eventually started handing out favors for killing us, and we ended up with a huge fight on our doorstop...but we got involved because we were ASKED to HELP make a smaller-scale conflict for a specific org, yet we got piled on anyways, partially because people were eager to join in PK period, which is pretty understandable...but it kinda ruins the attempted conflict.

Less silly, but even more tiring, is when people bring up legitimate issues about problem citizens or guildies - since the very first wars, there's always been this higher-level dialogue between org leaders if certain people get out of hand, and I quite like that we have checks like that. However, this doesn't mean we're miracle workers, nor are we constantly obliged to handle issues like that, especially if the people are headaches to work with (hey, even a good CL doesn't adore all of his or her citizens, let's be honest). We also, at the end of the day, are looking out for our org first. It's really exhausting and feels a bit unfair when you try to help out and minimize things like people rampantly issuing or excessively teaming and your efforts are either ignored when it's convenient or, for whatever reason (and there are legitimate reasons), you can't or don't want to get involved with a problem situation - in some cases, us org leaders may not even agree that a situation is a problem (eg team sizes, vs citizen morale/engagement).

It's gotten very frustrating to try to promote a decent gameplay mentality because of being burned or stuff backfiring or there being inherent distrust in intentions behind conflict attempts (such as the issue with the Carni raid on Jaru). However, I think one major source of not only conflict, but good attitudes/outlooks towards conflict should be org leaders - to cite an old article Mihaley wrote for Gamasutra, org leaders are basically opinion shapers for the game world, and we are in a unique role to help  pass on viewpoints and opinions to the people in our orgs (eg, if org leaders actively say, hey, we shouldn't kill mounts or try to give them a fair fight, that carries more weight than a level 10 newbie saying it). Right now, there's frustration from player leadership in a variety of forms when it comes to conflict, ranging from the player-level (there's a lot of political infighting atm, something that becomes more common, in my experience, where there isn't external pressure on the org like an invading army), org-level (eg feeling under attack when your own org's rules get thrown back at you, or feeling frustrated because your org can't seem to win), to the game level (there just isn't a lot of conflict, period, especially meaningful and engaging conflict). This makes it hard for us, as leaders, to stay positive and good sports about stuff, and it kinda makes it seem a bit futile to try to create conflict on our own.

So, bit of a tangent/musing rant, I guess, there. Take from that what you will. Be nicer, I guess? I think the type of really engaging conflict a lot of us want to see is org-based stuff, which means more pressure on leaders to basically work together OOCly to orchestrate that sort of stuff in a fun way, which we won't want to do if we feel like it just makes more of a headache for us...so ideally, we can do what we can to mitigate that headache.

Moirean

Re that above, not trying to paint myself as a victim. I've definitely been guilty of this stuff too.

Irruel

Every time a thread begins to talk about the inherent problems with conflict, which occurs every few months (this thread wasn't supposed to, but it served its original purpose and I guess it was always going to turn into this), it eventually boils down to this:

People get so excited when something happens, that they all want a go, so small-scale is impossible and the conflict is ruined.

That said, we had a conflict thread just recently, do we really need to repeat it all again already?

Moirean

That's not really what I was saying. I cited it as one example, but I was more talking about the issues leaders face atm in regards to fostering conflict - the game is direly in need of conflict mechanics and without them the onus falls onto player leadership to create that conflict (or the divine, who are already busy enough). Just giving some thought on why it's tiring to try to help support/create that conflict as an org leader.

Irruel

Right. Sorry, I think I should have spent more time explaining myself.
It does boil down, in the end, to a feeling that we need more stuff to fight about.
Quite a few of the headaches you described wouldn't be there if people weren't as bored.

• Problem citizens/pvpers? An asset when they have plenty to engage them.
• Half the world pitching in when it is meant to be a small fight? Not going to happen if everyone has fights of their own that they actually care about.
• People being bitches and trying to use your guild laws against you to stir up fights? Who'd bother if they weren't really bored?

I'm not trying to blame everything on the game or the devs or whatever - but I do think that more optional stuff to fight about on a daily basis, both as orgs and as individuals, will improve everything.

Teani

 I think the general idea with creating small-scale conflict has to be negotiated in some way privately. I think what Moirean and Macian were discussing and creating is a good idea, so long as people let them have their conflict. The same goes for small private stuff. As long as everyone is aware that you can say NO to a conflict (if you're not the one who started it) and communication is open, then it should be fine poking someone with a stick. It just has to do with raising that awareness.

So, going off to Spinesreach and starting a bar fight after some RP can create some RP resentment, which can then be built on to create a personal conflict. Same goes for starting an argument with someone zealous from either end of the spectrum, shooting down ideas and making it personal. As long as the person knows to say enough is enough, a conflict can be maintained or ended quickly. I'm personally considering picking up some of my character's resentment towards Vampires and see where that takes her, once I have enough time to actually play it. Might get me tossed into jail in Bloodloch, but hell, that would be so much fun!

In short, if handled properly, and if everyone's aware they can end conflict if they take also handle it with common sense, yes, conflict can be created, but I'd make sure to start it off with some form of RP, even if it means stumbling in, drunk as ever, and punching the first person you see.

Arbre

I was sad when the war system got disabled.  It had a lot of bad parts to it, but on the whole I felt like it was a good thing; at least it kept us busy.

Kikon

It would keep you way too busy if you were in charge of troop management :P

I always felt that if the system was less of a 24/7 affair it wouldn't have been so bad. And maybe something to give troop strategy a bit more depth.

Aishia

Be better if it as more of a chess game and less of a clusterunicorn.

Arbre

Gnehehe clusterunicorn.