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Not sure if this got mentioned here yet before, but @Moirean suggested I post it.
There's nothing stopping three orgs from incessantly dogpiling another org and declaring conflicts over and over, turning the game into an unending grind of war. Oops. Not good.
So we started with this thought: maybe an organization can only have one conflict declared against it at a time, though it could certainly choose to declare conflict at the same time, if it wanted.
While that's probably a good first step, it's still not good enough, though, because then you can have two orgs ally and alternate, saving resources while forcing the enemy to exhaust theirs. Since on any feasible-looking world map, who shares borders isn't constant - Duiran, in particular, would border everyone else - this creates some asymmetry right off the bat.
So what we came around to was that maybe you have a cooldown period, after a conflict ends, in which you cannot declare another conflict - although one can be certainly declared against you! We decided that in the interest of fairness, this ought to be two RL weeks after the end of a conflict.
This means that, even if Duiran has theoretically annoyed everyone else, the three orgs could hammer them for about nine days. Afterward, Duiran still gets an eight-day break. In more reasonable scenarios where the cities coordinate by tether, there would be eleven days of downtime and six-day periods of conflict.
Similarly, it might be smart to have a cooldown once an area has traded hands - it's locked in for the next IG season or so, at which point it becomes available for the taking again.
In reality, fighting a 9 day war would not exactly be a good/ideal thing. I do think a single organization should only be allowed to have a single conflict going on at once before getting a break (unless they chose to start the war themselves with a secondary org), but I also don't want to detract anyone from being able to meat out vengeance on a large scale if some huge dickbag fuckery has been going on.
So this change would allow players to fight/bash/administrate/quest/roleplay for their conflicts without spreading their own city playerbase too thin. Additionally, with a 2 week no-fight cooldown after initiation, it allows emotions to cool off, stress levels to drop, and overall subjectivity to once again get to a neutral and appropriate place of acceptance. Additionally, it allows people to coordinate with each other so that they can learn from their mistakes.
I'd leave the ultimate decisions up to the Admins though. That's why they get the big bucks.
We've operated under RPK pk rules since day dot, surely lacking a war system means this sort of response is justified and allowed, so long as some care is taken with newbies, and a player-agreed surrender system/list used?
In the long run, Enorian would be basically involved in a siege on Spinesreach, except they would be the side suffering from a lack of supply (without admin intervention, or Duiran intervention).
Maybe that's just something I see?
Who knows, we could maintain a handful of people or people will return after emotions stabilize.
It would just be really nice if these surges of activity could surround meaningful conflict that doesn't alienate the losing side or damage the community.
That way we could have the benefits of the surge without as great a risk of losing people.
Also, Enorian technically didn't lose. They got their commodities back. So no real loss was had short of a few players getting strung up in their emotions and deciding to jump ship. Like I said before, let emotions calm down and we'll likely see players return. Additionally, sometimes the losing gets a larger surge because some people are like "Hey, they look like they could use some help. I'm gonna grab some other IRE friends and convince them to join the side that just got destroyed."
Lastly, conflict and activity is like Schrodinger's cat. You have no idea what its gonna do until you do it.
Such a conflict system should offer something valuable enough to be fought over, of course. I don't think I've really played enough to give good ideas what that might be - I thought the orrery bonuses or even just denying the other side them was super valuable, but I don't think most older players did.
It would also need to be really inclusive. I think that's one of the biggest problems with conflict in Aetolia - that it's really hard to get into. And yeah I know, ylem battles don't cost xp etc etc and leveling up is super easy and all that. But if you're a new player, and you've worked hard solo to get to level 90ish, and you even bought into the no-brainer lessons, you'll be well short of tri-trans and even with no offensive artifacts I can still ZEAL you to death in 8 seconds flat (also someone should look at crescent dmg, maybe making it more % based? it's hilariously shocking on anyone under 100). Why compete if you're going to get unraveled or autobashed so fast you can't even do anything? And even if you survive for a little while, it's simply good tactics to hit the soft targets first. So the newer people are going to get steamrolled regularly.
Or even if you don't - in order to have a meaningful offense, you'd need a team that's going straight damage (which I haven't seen a whole lot of) or you must have already set up affliction tracking (which is no small task!) or have something in place with the express purpose of teaming with whatever team composition you're with at that moment.
It's a loooooooooot for a newer player. And then, even if you do everything right (FOLLOW JORY for 8 hours to hit level 100, and install someone else's system with a point-and-shoot hands off offense), things go so fast! Everything scrolls by quicker than you can even register color triggers and you just sort of cross your fingers and wait to kill or die, not really sure which is happening when. Eventually, you learn to speed-read and skim for important stuff, or move the essentials off to their own window. But man getting started is rough, and it's sooooooo easy to get discouraged if there's nothing you can do. As someone who's been 'raising' a litter of lowbies for the last month or so, I feel like I've done more cheerleading than actual teaching or coaching, because it's not the mechanics or lack thereof that makes them shy away. It's the power gap.
Anyways, I'm not saying change the whole system, because that's kind of radical and probably not helpful. But if we get another conflict mechanic, please please please add ways that people can contribute indirectly (ie gathering globes at the orrery). Things that are simple, mechanically, and that we can teach newer players to do and that have a meaningful impact on the outcome. Maybe things like - channeling a command to influence an objective, or gathering items or planting flags of some sort.
Also, a new conflict mechanic should include both a cost and a reward - but a reward that's reliant on performance. Right now, I think people fight generally because they're bored or because they can. Attaching a cost to it (whether it's something like consuming ylem to shoot down a barrier and expose an objective, or consuming commodities/gold to equip soldiers who help, or even some other abstract material that isn't in game yet) will help to eliminate the 'lolz' raiding/fighting, which I think is the most unhealthy kind. If there's a good reason to do it, people will gather up what they need to pay the cost. If it's because they're bored? They're less likely to. And attaching a reward to it (maybe potentially higher amounts of whatever the cost is) should motivate people to use it, despite the cost, because of the potential for gain.
So this got a lot longer than I was planning! tl;dr:
o Shift conflict away from cities
o Create ways everyone can participate, meaningfully
o Attach costs and rewards
I'm not prepared to downplay the significance of what happened just because technically nobody actually lost. I think the real costs are hidden and unquantifiable, and I also think that we shouldn't be so quick to preclude the possibility of their existence.
Schrodinger's cat doesn't strike me as being an especially useful comparison, either. We're aware that activity tends to flux downward in December, upward in the summer between school semesters, that there are peak hours... there are observable trends in when and how people play the game, and to say that it's all random is inaccurate. It's somewhat random, but average trends do exist. Yes. Good post, good thoughts. I like the idea of shifting conflict away from cities. I do want to keep raiding, but it should be much rarer, much more of a Big Deal, and much more expensive to do. Some sort of formalized system for it - I'm aware Achaea has one - would be kind of neat.
We have the start of a design doc for a raiding system. It's tough to sneak into the schedule, but you guys are making me consider moving it up.
PvP death in a city is like, 5% exp loss for a person now. We figured that's big enough to slow down raids.
edit: 'Plans are starting' means we have a plan, and it's being coded.
Valkyrior system
Which is good, I think.
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.
Why participate when the rewards are subpar and it doesn't really directly affect you or your city?
Just something to think about.
Valkyrior system
(I am by no means perfect, but I've tried hard to step back from the people I cannot interact with and at the same time enjoy the game. I know several others who have done the same, and others still who have far better ways to deal with such issues. I write the above to prevent people from considering my words as some kind of "holier than though" thing. I'm just saying that spreading hatefulness will never help the game.)
We have a lot of really great people in this community. I know the game has to be us vs them, but we really need to try and make sure we don't let that extend to ooc stuff. It's clear we all have the same desire to have a good, fun time. Like, heck, I've had plenty of times I've vented out anger and now some of those same people are folks I rp with the most. All it takes is an honest conversation!
If you want to have meaningful conflict systems, you need a community where people are more concerned with having fun, and less concerned with actually winning. If you have a conflict system where people are concerned with winning at all costs, you end up cultivating an environment where no one is going to want to participate because you're just going to get stomped anyways, whereas if you have a system where people are concerned with how fun it is to actually PVP, then it won't matter if you're winning or losing, because you're deriving enjoyment from the engagement to begin with.
These two points come together when I state that I don't really feel you can have an environment where PVP is rewarding in that way, where you have a community that is being mean and disrespectful out of character. It's a toxin that drains any enjoyment out of the activities fairly quickly.
Valkyrior system
Family friendly fun competition is always fun, but never meaningful. People don't train year round for one volley ball game in the middle of the summer vs their relatives at the next family reunion, because it's not meaningful. It's for fun and fun only. But for meaningful competitions? You'll find kids staying for 4 hours at the gym after school shooting game shots at game speed, or adults playing in a championship game with the flu. That's because those games, those conflicts, are serious and meaningful, and because they're meaningful, winning usually takes priority over participating just for the sake of fun. You'll have fun along the way when you compete vs. people taking it as serious as you, or as a byproduct of winning, but if it's meaningful, winning is the goal. If winning isn't the goal, it's not meaningful, and you can focus purely on fun.
Saying that something cannot have meaningful rewards and also be fun basically flies in the face of the entire gaming industry so much I don't even know where to start rebutting the point.
Valkyrior system
To me it sounds like Evalyne is using it to mean "enjoyable to participate in with enjoyable rewards for those who win" whereas Emir is using it to mean "truly competitive with impactful consequences to both winners and losers".
Valkyrior system
*edited for reiterative clarity