Ramping up conflict

Blujixapug

thread sux

Jurixe

I really should be at work doing work <.< but this debate is always fascinating to have.

As a leader, perhaps especially in Mhaldor where the two different archetypes exist that you've mentioned - the hardcore roleplayers and the hardcore fighters - the challenge for us as leaders is trying to make it a fun environment for both sides. You want your city, and by extension Achaea, to be balanced.

You don't have to personally like sermons or rituals. There are plenty in Mhaldor who are almost exclusively ritualists as well. But what you do need to recognise - and the reason why this works in Mhaldor - is that both sides must respect each other and understand that they play equally important roles in the city's success - a viewpoint further bolstered and reinforced by the admin. Sartan especially has been extremely supportive in not only directing and punishing/rewarding aggression efforts, but attending various RP events like conversions, sermons, and so on in various guises. This way, both sets of players feel appreciated and coexist peacefully in the knowledge that what they do is important without generally (I'd be lying if I said there weren't the occasional clash) trying to downplay the other's relevance.

Combat is a very important part of Achaean conflict, no one can deny that. I have no experience with former Shallamese leaders and can't comment on what their priorities were. But while combat may play the starring role, there's certainly no reason to -not- try to find alternative forms of conflict to diversify the gameplay experience and to allow more people to get involved. However, if a leader or leaders are focusing on one element over the other, assuredly that is an imbalance and it's natural that the 'neglected' side might feel discontented. It's not an easy balancing act though, so you have to cut the leaders some slack as they're trying, ultimately, to find the solution that works best for everyone.

Aktillum

"that means that people who -can't- think up a solution will either just throw something crap out there or won't comment at all. Adding crap ideas is just distracting."

See, I disagree. I think random, crap ideas are integral to the brainstorming process. To quote P. Diddy in Get Him to the Greek, "ideas are what we need. Share with the group.". I'd rather fire off 100 bad ideas that get the ball rolling, than try and develop the perfect TL:DR solution that gets shot down anyways.

I think the difficulty in generating ideas (from the forestal's side) is that you're trying really hard to not come up with solutions that involve PvP, because Eleusis is generally not as interested in PvP as Mhaldor. I mean that as a universal "you're" and not you specifically, Eurulis, because you've already suggested some re-works to the war system. You're going to find yourselves sorely disappointed, because:

Sarapis said:

Eventually, all avenues of conflict are going to be around PK, because ultimately, the decision to employ force is the most fundamental decision you can make in a conflict. It is a unilateral decision and nothing trumps it (heh, well, except maybe issues!).

Eurulis

I think you neglect diplomacy. Diplomacy is a huge factor in PK, as it generally tells your faction what is okay to kill, what you are -encouraged- to kill off, and what you -forbidden- to kill. Problem with diplomacy is, we don't want to end up with Mhashtan and Shaleleusis again. We want each faction to stand out on their own. Which means we need to address the problems for each faction, and why they do not like (or in possible cases, like too much) PK.

But onto a different problem, claiming that PK is the -only- way to win tells everyone who is not interested in it that they're worthless. War is the only method of being successful. I think you misunderstand that statement as just because conflicts revolve -around- PK, that does not mean PK is going to happen. To claim so with Achaea's inherrent problem with artefacts is just really kicking those people in the teeth.

Also, I think you misunderstand the problem. I don't think forestals hate PK because they don't want to fight. I think they hate PK due by association with Extermination, and the negative experiences with it that they bring. Extermination is always a lose-lose scenario for the forestal side.

Edit: You know? It just hit me that we've somehow spiraled out from discussing avenues of conflict to a more metaphysical argument about conflict as an -idea-. Maybe we should get back on track here. I got an idea, but I'll put it in as a separate thread.

Aktillum

"Which means we need to address the problems for each faction, and why they do not like (or in possible cases, like too much) PK."

That's easy. Some faction-based classes are merely better at PK, and were designed for people interested in PvP. Ashtan has a history of being combat-based, home to high-raid utility class like Occultists, or a combat-focused House like the Ashura. Eleusis, on the other hand, is home to the three forestal classes, which are (arguably) geared towards huddling together in a turtle shell until the opportunity for a melee rush presents itself.

So really, it boils down to certain factions + classes being designed to appeal to certain sects of players.

"claiming that PK is the -only- way to win tells everyone who is not interested in it that they're worthless. War is the only method of being successful."

Not worthless, but maybe something akin to cheerleaders. When cheerleaders get to the position of being team coach, the athletes find somewhere else to play ball. It's like when Mike Tyson's trainer died, and he had zero respect for his new coaches because he knew he already knew a lot more than them, so his performance in the ring suffered.

"I don't think forestals hate PK because they don't want to fight"

Dude count how many combatants versus non-combatants Eleusis has. There's like a 10/1 ratio of Druidesses who just wanna harvest and snuggle for every Rangor.

@Jurixe

"However, if a leader or leaders are focusing on one element over the other, assuredly that is an imbalance and it's natural that the 'neglected' side might feel discontented."

Unfortunately, this has been my only experience in Achaea. On Aktillum alone, I went from Imyrr's version of Ashtan (high RP, weak city defense, constantly raided) to Eleusis (high RP, weak city defense, constantly raided) to Shallam (lack of direction, ritualist vs soldier mentality, constantly raided). So as a PvP enthusiast, I can't help but notice that a city is at its weakest when the focus is on role-play over combat. People were happy when Shallam was deleted and Targossas was introduced as a military-focused city.

I do heartily agree that the ideal is a mixture of RP and combat, to serve everyone's interest, and that leaders have an extraordinarily hard time satisfying everyone.

Hasar

You guys put a lot of effort into writing these walls of text. I hope something comes of it, that you two like. I haven't really read any of it, but you two have spent A LOT of time writing this stuff, haha.

Kyrra

He touched my text totems

Eurulis

Aktillum said:

"I don't think forestals hate PK because they don't want to fight"

Dude count how many combatants versus non-combatants Eleusis has. There's like a 10/1 ratio of Druidesses who just wanna harvest and snuggle for every Rangor.

Despite knowing better, I feel I should elaborate further. When forest defenses were toned down, the first big PK thing we got was Shala-Khulia. Do keep in mind that this happened relatively soon after they were toned down. Combine that with a Mhaldor that -really- did not like the forestals for their oppression, with perhaps an illogical undertone of "So it's okay for them to gank me in the forest 20-on-1 while I'm exterminating, yet they get to whine when Mhaldor teams them back the same way?", and the rest of the problems with extermination, you set a pretty big precedent for the future. Removing extermination, I think, will help with this. Beyond that? It's a mix of the other circumstances, such a forestal classes being a bit weaker in combat strength (Most raids I've experienced have been heavily defined by ranged assualt while turtling up in a room somewhere. It's improved somewhat due to more emphasis on LOS attacks, but still feels heavily ranged based), and you get the point.

Aktillum

Hasar said:

You guys put a lot of effort into writing these walls of text. I hope something comes of it, that you two like. I haven't really read any of it, but you two have spent A LOT of time writing this stuff, haha.

It's 1:10pm, raining I'm on mobile broadband that doesn't support any type of online gaming besides Achaea, and I'm still suffering gleam withdrawals. Also Eurulis and I were both Vastarians, so we could probably debate for hours about the flavors of Skittles, or something equally mundane.

Lilley

Sarapis said:

Aktillum said:

 But the in-game combat is not a direct result of roleplay. Combat would exist in Achaea with or without roleplay. Achaea was a combat-focused game long before roleplay was taken seriously. Achaea used to be so incredibly OOC, yet people still enjoyed bashing eachother's faces in.

For the record, I largely (if not entirely) agree with your post, though you could have stated some of it a lot more diplomatically.  

 A comment in response to the above though: Achaea was fairly OOC (not even close to as OOC as a MUD like Aardwolf or Batmud though, where you might go from bashing the Little Mermaid to bashing Metallica fans in a parking lot), and people enjoyed bashing each other's faces in, but that was also a long time ago when the options for free online games were a lot more limited than they are now. There are a -lot- of free online places to kill other people now. They might not have the complexity of Achaea's combat, but there are still a lot of options. I don't believe Achaea would survive as an on-going commercial concern without RP today (it definitely wouldn't survive without PK). Even back in the earlier days of Achaea, the RP portion of the game is what made combatants actually care about combat much of the time. People would not have fought much (or even stuck around) if we just gave them IM screennames and gave them a bunch of empty, descriptionless connected boxes to move around in and bash each other's faces in. If we removed all RP from the skills, would you even find them interesting? I we could just remove all the flavor messages from combat and give you messages like "Health -3", "+Paralysis" etc. I'm pretty sure even the most hardcore combatants would not have gotten hooked in that situation. 

I think your point about the different avenues of conflict available is a good one though: Eventually, all avenues of conflict are going to be around PK, because ultimately, the decision to employ force is the most fundamental decision you can make in a conflict. It is a unilateral decision and nothing trumps it (heh, well, except maybe issues!).

@Aktillum

Note again what Sarapis said. He said he agreed with you, yet he corrected you.

And I never said that I specifically do not enjoy PvP. I do enjoy it, even if I am not that good at it. The more I do it, the better I get.

And I didn't say that one was more important than the other. I said that conflict is a direct consequence of roleplay. It's the truth, heh. This doesn't mean anything other than 2-2=0.

I really hope you let my previous post soak in, because it was a direct reply to your frustrations. And I can't change how you choose read it. But the point still stands.

Eurulis

Aktillum said:

Hasar said:

You guys put a lot of effort into writing these walls of text. I hope something comes of it, that you two like. I haven't really read any of it, but you two have spent A LOT of time writing this stuff, haha.

It's 1:10pm, raining I'm on mobile broadband that doesn't support any type of online gaming besides Achaea, and I'm still suffering gleam withdrawals. Also Eurulis and I were both Vastarians, so we could probably debate for hours about the flavors of Skittles, or something equally mundane.

Yeah, and I'm an overly wordy pretentious douchebag anyway, and insomnia doesn't help matters. At this point, I'm pretty much reading Jungian psycology on the side. Might help more if I read something boring.

Either way, I was kinda there since the forest defenses got nerfed, so I've pretty much seen most of the serious forestal conflict to date. Granted, Delphinus and other forestals haven't posted, and they've proven that they are smarter than I am due to this. This is kinda something I had to deal with for a stupidly long time, before it combined with other factors just dissuaded me from going back to Eurulis. I'll go back some day, but not now.

Aktillum

Eurulis said:

 It's a mix of the other circumstances, such a forestal classes being a bit weaker in combat strength (Most raids I've experienced have been heavily defined by ranged assualt while turtling up in a room somewhere. It's improved somewhat due to more emphasis on LOS attacks, but still feels heavily ranged based), and you get the point.

I completely agree with the first sentence. Some classes were obviously designed for PvP gameplay, others were designed for utility. Classleads help somewhat, but classlead seasons are too far between.

If artefact imbalance issues are the root cause of people hating PvP, as a few have mentioned in this thread, it might do well to reward loyal city members with artefacts at the cities expense. A ranger's bow is only 350cr. If I was a city leader, especially in a place like Eleusis, I'd happily purchase someone a level 1 arte bow for 350cr if it meant they were more useful in a raid situation. Of course, I'm not a city leader, and this is probably a laughable concept anyways. "People might quit after they get the artefact!" and "Why do combatants get rewarded? I want need gloves of harvesting!", yada yada.

Of course, I doubt the problem is as simple as "they have artefacts, I don't", though I believe it's as simple as people who don't enjoy PvP not wanting to engage in any sort of PvP mechanic. Unfortunately for these people, as I've said over and over again, there currently exists no hard-coded mechanic for factional conflict that doesn't utilize PvP. Suggestions are welcome, but the general consensus so far is "meh, the admins are working on it!"

@Lilley

I don't understand what point you're making. Your original post was pretty much "everyone has feelings, everyone is good at something", and I elaborated my position several times since then, so you're late. Thank you for bolding something I already elaborated on several times in Sarapis' post. :-/

Eurulis

Aktillum said:

Eurulis said:

 It's a mix of the other circumstances, such a forestal classes being a bit weaker in combat strength (Most raids I've experienced have been heavily defined by ranged assualt while turtling up in a room somewhere. It's improved somewhat due to more emphasis on LOS attacks, but still feels heavily ranged based), and you get the point.

I completely agree with the first sentence. Some classes were obviously designed for PvP gameplay, others were designed for utility. Classleads help somewhat, but classlead seasons are too far between.

If artefact imbalance issues are the root cause of people hating PvP, as a few have mentioned in this thread, it might do well to reward loyal city members with artefacts at the cities expense. A ranger's bow is only 350cr. If I was a city leader, especially in a place like Eleusis, I'd happily purchase someone a level 1 arte bow for 350cr if it meant they were more useful in a raid situation. Of course, I'm not a city leader, and this is probably a laughable concept anyways. "People might quit after they get the artefact!" and yada yada.

Actually, with my excursion over to Lusternia, I quickly discovered that New Celest or whatever it was had some kind of deal going. It was like, pay half the price of SVO, and the city will pay the other half if you were a soldier or something. I don't recall the other details on the matter, but I thought that was actually rather neat. This is if memory serves, that is. I'll go double check in a little.

Edit: Not quite. They remove the credit limit for the sale for the express purpose of buying a reflex program, up to eighty credits. The Guild I was in subsidized the credits so that if you bought half of that, the Guild would cover the other half if you served as a soldier for five in game years, though. It was a pretty sweet deal.

Aktillum

@Eurulis See, that's a city taking initiative to bolster their forces and potentially getting non-combatants involved in PvP. What would be really sweet is if they designed a free SVO specific to guild members that uninstalled itself if you quit them. I'd really like to see what Achaea is doing with their HTML5 client reflexes for newbies, supposedly just some basic curing triggers nowhere near SVO but could at least get people through the combat door.

Back on topic..wait, do we have a topic? OP's post was basically attacking the red fog, which is a universally hated idea. Soo...alternatives, yeah. What if Eleusis could create forest rooms in Mhaldor, instead of destroying rooms?

Eurulis

I wonder if something similar could be arranged here, though it doesn't have to be limited to SVO. Hmm.

Edit: I think the idea was more on the line of getting more conflict started, and Geriant had offered his views. Unfortunately, his views were on extermination, discussions of which are notorious for taking a nosedive and landing harder than a ton of dark matter, and going through more tissues than an anime convention. Let's try to keep it on encouraging combat in creative ways rather than let it slip back to that. There's not really much more to say on that.

Aktillum

@Eurulis I re-read his post and he was mostly suggesting attacking the red fog and making it work similar to forest defenses. We'll steer clear of discusssing that.

Truthfully, it's hard to suggest creative ways to encourage combat for a faction that is fairly uninterested in combat. All I can think of are new avenues of combat with winners/losers based on pre-defined game-play objectives. We have a bunch of those, and if people wanted to participate in them, they would.

So really it boils down to people feeling like the existing combat-based objective-oriented mechanics are stale, and no new ones will fix that. And you can't simply role-play your way to military victory in a game with pre-defined objectives for "winning".

You could email your divine with some faction v faction event ideas where role-play could possibly determine the outcome, but.. good luck.

Mishgul

i am trying to eat damnit.

Sylvance

I think that in 9/10 cases, saying that "Ritualists don't like PvP" is a fist-clenchingly inaccurate conflation. Let me explain why in as simple terms as I can (not to be patronising, but because I think that the distinction I'm about to make is a little anal but a lot important):

PvP = Player versus Player

PK = Player Killing

PvP includes, but is not limited to, PK.

Now, I'm not sure if the argument is "People who emote a lot don't like conflict" or if it's "People who emote a lot don't like to use their in-game skills to harm other people, nor do they like it when other people use their in-game skills to harm them". Anyone who is arguing the former is, and I say this as respectfully as possible, making a completely foolish assertion. There are more ways to destroy somebody than by giving them a brief trip to the Halls. Many of them are more interesting and more exciting AND MORE PERMANENT than a quad-break-brokenstar setup.

Prime example of this is in an example already given. "Cities suck when the leaders don't like combat." Right...  so [socially] PvP the leader out of power. You can win a fight militarily, socially, economically, theologically. There are so many possibilities for conflict that don't include hitting F1. Sure, they usually lack an objective win, but that's part of the beautiful realism of Achaea. I can think of many real world conflicts where both sides come away claiming victory. So can you.

What I'm trying to say, is that of all of the OOC conflicts that this debate stirs up, I think that the "Those-who-like-conflict vs Those-who-don't" is virtually non-existant. Everyone wants conflict, else they wouldn't play an MMO text-game. But, naturally, everyone wants the conflict on their own terms.

ETA: Shameless plug: (I know that it's pissing a lot of people off OOCly, but) of all the political-RP I've ever seen in Achaea, what's going on in Hashan right now is about as rich as it's got. This type of 'PvP' is precisely what I'm talking about. There's plenty of conflict in Achaea for everyone.

Aktillum

Thank you for splitting hairs, since the discussion was clearly about PvP combat. To answer your question,  "People who emote a lot don't like to use their in-game skills to harm other people, nor do they like it when other people use their in-game skills to harm them" was the driving point of the last couple pages, for a specific reason. The reason, which you've missed, was that those people seem to hate the mechanics provided for cities to engage in PvP combat, but often never offer solutions, or scenarios where cities can complete clear objectives to be the "winner". 

I completely disagree that "socially PvPing" someone out of leadership provides the same thrilling experience as a quad-break brokenstar setup, since politics in Achaea boil down to Skype groups and how many alts you know. Though I'd love to see a political set-up for orgs that allowed you to PK the leadership out, ala tribal fights. At least in combat, if I win it was because I was the better fighter, if I lose I need to fix my system. 

In politics, if you win it's usually because you convinced a few people to come out of dormancy to vote for you, or had a friend register some alts. Although recently they've made some adjustments to voter eligibility to stop that sort of foul play, but that's how it was for a long, long time.

I also don't understand the point you're making about objective wins. I personally play Achaea from a gamer's perspective, so I enjoy it when I have objectives to complete, especially objectives that focus on teamwork and coordination such as group combat. Objectives that establish a clear victor. Achaea would get stagnant extraordinarily fast if conflicts allowed every one to be the winner, which is exactly the mentality I'm against. This isn't special education P.E class, it's an online game.

I have no idea what's going on in the Hashan conflict, except where I saw Sartan and Ourania shouting at eachother, followed by some Hashani deathsights to Mhaldorians.

Xli

Aktillum said:

At least in combat, if I win it was because I was the better fighter, if I lose I need to fix my system.

If you win, you're a better fighter or your opponent needs to fix their system, if you lose, your opponent is a better fighter or you need to fix your system. Can't claim that you only win because you're better than your opponent and only lose because your system has flaws. A bad workman always blames his tools?

Also, just because YOU don't get satisfaction from using politics to defeat your opponent, doesn't mean no-one else does. 

Aktillum

That's a terrible metaphor for the point I was making. 9 times out of 10 if you lose in combat, especially in this SVO world, it's because you need to tweak something in your system. Being a "better fighter" means having the knowledge to know what to tweak. Do you even lift, bro? You also completely missed my point about why I think politics are boring. They don't provide the same pure conflict as PK. Politics are shady and results are easily manipulated with meta-gaming.

Also, way to end your post with an incredibly childish argument. "Just because you don't like spaghetti doesn't mean other people don't eat it".

Alrena

I think I should correct one tiny misconception here... Eleusis doesn't hate PK as a whole. We do have our small core of combatants who absolutely enjoy it. But other than that, we have a LOT of people willing to step up to defend Nature for RP reasons! Those people do enjoy combat! They just hate getting curb-stomped repeatedly, or  having to clean up a huge mess after dying repeatedly. I don't know if it's always been this way, but Eleusis is really stepping up, and a lot of our young(ish) warriors are learning how to fight. 

The main complaint about Exterms is that it is MUCH easier to do than any other type of conflict. It's almost impossible to stop the very first one, unless you happen to walk in the room at the right time. While it takes a lot more effort and a lot more manpower to destroy Icons, or sanction a raid! Especially when exterms can be done offplane.

To make sure I'm not only talking about  Exterms, I think it would be nice if the new War system involved fighting in or over a specific area from time to time. A clear duration, clear victory conditions on (mostly) even ground. But I do really, really love having to fight somewhere other than Eleusis, Mhaldor (isle) or Eastern Ithmia. The change is really interesting.

Aepas

oh my god stoooop everyone. Stop it. Stop. This thread has gotten out of control, Aktillum has dragged it so far from the start it might as well be in the middle of the pacific.

Aktillum

@Aepas I tried getting it on track several times but people wanted to get their panties in a twist over my opinion that rituals are akin to circle-jerks.

@Alrena I have the tendency to use blanket-statements in the heat of a debate. I know Eleusis has a small core of dedicated combatants who are totally committed to learning.

"To make sure I'm not only talking about  Exterms, I think it would be nice if the new War system involved fighting in or over a specific area from time to time. A clear duration, clear victory conditions on (mostly) even ground. But I do really, really love having to fight somewhere other than Eleusis, Mhaldor (isle) or Eastern Ithmia. The change is really interesting."

Thank you Alrena, for being one of very few people in this thread to actually offer some constructive suggestions for alternative mechanics. I also think that territory based combat would be great. Lusternia has some kind of territory system where cities can attack and control villages that effect their trade, or something along those lines. I wish so much we had something similar in Achaea.

Sylvance

@Aktillum - I'm trying to get past your FUCK YOU tone to see if there's anything I can work with in your argument. I'm finding it quite difficult. In a minute I will start using my FUCK YOU tone, and then this thread will just start to head in the direction that everyone expects it to. Let's all talk nice to one another, eh?

Now, saying that Achaean politics are inferior to Achaean combat because it's determined by meta-gaming (Skype etc; to be sure, I'm not entirely sure that I agree with this assessment, but what the hell do I know?) seems a little odd to me given the well-known problems with timezone abuse. Equally, it's not uncommon for combatants to coincidentally awaken and start deffing when there is a raid. Are you honestly suggesting that nobody uses out of game mechanisms to help with PK conflicts? Are you suggesting that the combat rankings are always won by the 'best' fighters? That the most skilled combatants always win the war? As for a political set up where people could PK one another out of power... come on, man. That's crazy talk.

Aktillum said: "I also don't understand the point you're making about objective wins. I personally play Achaea from a gamer's perspective, so I enjoy it when I have objectives to complete, especially objectives that focus on teamwork and coordination such as group combat. Objectives that establish a clear victor. Achaea would get stagnant extraordinarily fast if conflicts allowed every one to be the winner, which is exactly the mentality I'm against. This isn't special education P.E class, it's an online game."

No... it wouldn't. One of my favourite all-time moments in Achaea was when Proficy jumped me during the Ashtan-Mhaldor war. I was chilling out somewhere mid-Tell-conversation with a house novice, when he came along and pulled back the ring on a serious can of whoop-ass. I limped away bleeding and thought I was home-free only when I reached NoT he was waiting, and again he proceeded to utterly unmake me. Waiting for the let-up in his offence, I managed to dash north, hands shaking with adrenaline, out of mana from the clotting, and SOMEHOW got into Ashtan's gates, which had never looked so sweet. Home. Safe. Then I bled to death.

What's the point in this little story? The point is Who won? Proficy killed me, but he'd caught me undef'd and totally unprepared to fight. What's more, he's a better fighter than I am. Stronger too. And probably artied. Who won? I won, because I got home. Who won the Mhaldor-Hashan war? Hashan won, because they had finally stood up and said "You know what, Sapience? Let's have it."

I don't want to this to come off as a personal attack, but it seems to me that your attitude towards Achaea as a game in which someone has to win and everyone else has lost is robbing you of a great deal of enjoyment.

Xli

Aktillum said:

That's a terrible metaphor for the point I was making. 9 times out of 10 if you lose in combat, especially in this SVO world, it's because you need to tweak something in your system. Being a "better fighter" means having the knowledge to know what to tweak. Do you even lift, bro? You also completely missed my point about why I think politics are boring. They don't provide the same pure conflict as PK. Politics are shady and results are easily manipulated with meta-gaming.

And tweaking a system is not meta-gaming?

I reiterate my point that just because you (or anyone else) finds something boring, doesn't mean it is boring for everyone. I don't like watching sports on TV, I find it tedious in the extreme. However, there are a large percentage of people who do enjoy it.

Still, at least there's some conflict in this thread now, ramped up enough?

Aktillum

@Sylvance "As for a political set up where people could PK one another out of power... come on, man. That's crazy talk." I don't see why. I think it'd work in a House that revolved around PK. Are you against the idea because someone who PKs the leader could end up sucking horribly at leadership? That's the "beauty of the realism".

"I can think of many real world conflicts where both sides come away claiming victory"

And I can think of many real world coup d'etats. So why is one "realism" favored over the other?

As for timezone abuse = meta-gaming, there's RP justification for it. I personally don't feel like such a thing as "timezone abuse". Real armies attack when the enemy is sleeping. Many real life armies have attacked when the opponent's pants are down. There's no RP justification for using alts to rig elections. Okay, maybe there is. Call it "role-played electoral fraud". And the role-played punishment is a perma-shrubbing.

Also, in your story, Proficy won. Because you died from bleeding, after reaching home. That's like saying "Who won the capture-the-flag?  Technically they won on points, but I touched our base 5 seconds after the clock ran out, so I feel pretty good about myself".

Sylvance

@Aktillum - No, that isn't why I'm against the idea... that would be equally crazy. It wouldn't work because in real life, if you want Bob's job, you put a cap in his ass, kill all of his generals, his sons and anyone who looks at you funny during the coup, and you take his job. In Achaea, Bob would come back from Thoth's Halls five minutes later and shout "Do over!", having Skype summoned all of his buddies. Or maybe 150ms of Euro-ping would make it physically impossible for Bob to ever get 'elected' in the first place. And that's assuming Bob has a brilliant system, because if he's playing on his phone or even the browser client, then Bob may be the greatest statesman/general in history, but he's just SoL. That said, he just wouldn't have joined said House in the first place, so maybe you're on to something. Maybe there is merit in the idea, my good man.

I'm not arguing realism, there, but practicality.

And yes, we might both laugh at the jackass that thinks he won the CTF although we know he didn't... but he thinks he did, and IN A GAME that makes him a winner. Let him win in his head, man. Don't take that away from him by copy-pasting the results as well as HELP CTF and emailing them to him. Are you that cold, Aktillum? Would you really steal his win from him? Everyone can be a winner if you'll just let them.

Aktillum

@Sylvance Don't tell me about Euro-ping, I'm currently in the Philippines on 3G mobile broadband. I have a permanent 0.506 latency connection to Achaea

"That said, he just wouldn't have joined said House in the first place, so maybe you're on to something. Maybe there is merit in the idea, my good man."

Thank you, I appreciate you seeing my line of thinking.

"Are you that cold, Aktillum? Would you really steal his win from him? Everyone can be a winner if you'll just let them."

But that's not how life works My little sister and I used to play video games when we were kids. She sucks at video games so I'd always beat her, and her response was always an extremely brattish "I WON" to which I'd respond no, I won, the screen says so, but she would be so adamant in insisting that she'd won the game, and stomp out of the room. So in my mind, I compare the "everyone's a winner" mentality to that of an 11 year old girl's. Could I have let her win to boost her ego? Sure. But why the hell would I do that? She could just get good at the game on her own time and legitimately beat me.

Aepas

Stop feeding aktillum. If nobody replies, he won't have much to say anymore. He's just saying the same stuff over and over anways.