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A War System Proposal
Traelor
Columbia, SC
This war between Eleusis and Mhaldor made me think of what Achaean war means. I would love to see some sort of system that offers real, tangible rewards to players.
I'd like to propose an idea of an official War System for Achaea.
This War System could be used by any organization versus any other organization. Clans, cities, Orders, Houses, etc.
WAR IS AN OPEN PK EVENT
In order to enter into a war versus another organization:
1. Your organization must be an IC org. No OOC clans.
2. Your organization must declare a person to be their War Secretary.
3. The War Secretaries of all participating organizations must agree to begin the war and what the terms of the war will be.
Terms
1. Organizations must declare winning conditions before War begins.
2. Conditions can be: number of player deaths, a time period, organizational gold loss (for repair rooms, etc.), or surrender.
3. Once the conditions are met, the War ends. If one War Secretary surrenders, the other War Secretary/Secretaries can accept immediately. If they don't, the War will end after one Achaean month has elapsed.
4. An organization must wait 3 Achaean years before entering into a new War after the previous one has ended.
5. Up to 4 Organizations can participate in a War.
6. Organizations can declare themselves allies to another Organization for the duration of the war. For example, two cities could be united against one other city.
Rewards
1. Winning a War means loot and plunder! To begin a War, and organization must put up a number of credits or gold. The losing side forfeits this amount to the winners. The spoils of War are passed out, evenly, to all participants on the winning side.
2. During a War, all kills a participant gets versus the opposing side will be worth double XP. Dying to an opposing player during War would mean no loss of XP.
3. The winning participants all receive a base amount of EXP (scales with level) when they win.
4. The winners of the War will receive a commendation that is view able by checking WAR HONOURS <person>.
5. The War's name will either default to Organization-Organization(-Organization) War of <year> or can be named by a joint agreement by the War Secretaries before War begins.
Participants
1. You must declare yourself as a participant in a War before it begins or within one Achaean month after it begins.
2. You will be considered Open PK for the entire duration of the War.
3. You must be logged in for X number of Achaean days during the War to qualify for spoils (set by the War Secretaries before War is declared).
4. You must be a member of the organization for the entire War.
5. The organization's War Secretary can remove you as a participant at any time.
I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on my ideas.
Comments
I'll be honest, I struggled with that part of it myself. I settled on that because it encourages people to participate and allows the losing side to still get some benefits along the way. Remember, in this system, if you lose and your organization puts up 100k gold, you're not getting anything on the other side. Erasing XP loss and giving everyone double XP for the duration helps make up for the fact that everyone on the other side is about to pocket gold/credits and XP.
I have to say if everyone was worth double XP and I lost none while at war, I would be begging to be at war with everyone and find gank parties to run around in.
That's the idea
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Plus, when you died to said gank party, you would see something like, "You were killed as participant of the Ashtan-Mhaldor War of 645. Your side has 30 kills left until they lose. Your opponents have 30 kills left until they lose." which would encourage you to grab some friends and do some ganking of your own.
The trouble with making war an event is that it makes a lot of things superficial. While honours lines are all good, it always feels like "I won a war on achaea and all i got was this lousy T-shirt" and if I was still playing for the combat, I wouldn't be happy with those rewards or conditions.
The people who "grief" aren't roflstomping because they want to roflstomp, they are doing it because they login to achaea specifically to fight. War is just the new black for a different issue which people keep pointing towards as mechanics but in fact are just a circle of reasons of why people actually people play this game.
Without the war system, Eleusis is still at war with Mhaldor, Mhaldor is at war with Targossas, Targossas is at war with Ashtan, Ashtan is at war with Targossas etc. War is the reality. There is defiling, city skirmishing, gank squads all the time.
People are just more zero'd in on it because the change of a variable in city relations making everyone look at it specifically, and extra collateral was pushed into the equation in the form of city soldiers who joined for "RP" reasons but didn't realise they were going to get a form of roleplay they were uncomfortable with as a player.
When the variable is changed back to neutral, Mhaldor isn't going to suddenly go cold war with Eleusis, or even become friends. There is still going to be shrine defiling, exterms, gank squads, city destruction. It's not going to magically stop.
Your proposal makes war really anti-climatic in the sense that people won't be living in fear, like you should be in -war-. The mentality of everyone seems to be "lol let our champions sort it out while we sit here and picnic." If they do not want to fight, there are ways of opting out of the current system, even in it's flawed state of no goals and no endgame.
People don't really fight for xp and gold. It's about getting yourself on the right side of deathsight doing something cool and crazy and then doing your heroic pose so everyone likes you. It's your way of having fun after a long day at work. It's a way of doing something challenging with friends.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
Mishgul pretty much hit the nail on the head- at the moment, war is neither important nor meaningful, which means that people can participate or skip out on it as they'd like. Your suggestion is basically modified PK rules, which is fine, but without a modification of everything that war affects, it's just that, modified rules.
To be honest, what should distinguish war from the constant state of skirmishing the Cities all enjoy, I think, is a way to make war count. Whether you want to propose battles, where Cities field armies based on a pre-appointed time (i.e. Overseer gets a letter one day from his spymaster, saying, "Targossas is marching with an army on Petra, we estimate they'll arrive in X months/days"), which have a more meaningful effect than City raiding (perhaps taking gold from the loser if you win, or imposing a weakening of the losing City's guard numbers, or somesuch, such that war isn't infinitely sustainable without consequence). It gets complicated when you try and get into that kind of thing, though; while I think it'd be neat to tie nearby areas to Cities for certain advantages/detriments, such that attacking targets that aren't the City is fruitful, I certainly know how much trouble that'd cause.
In the end, a war system defeats the point of Achaea because, as Mishgul said, since it's a game that never pauses, and a game that people come to enjoy, not to work at; any system more involved or complicated than the current one very much treads on a lot of toes- the people who do not like pvp, those who are unaffiliated with conflict but affected by it, the losing side, etc. It's a tough reality, but I enjoyed the game more when I learned to accept it.
So...whoever could gank the most wins?
Isn't that what war is all about? Killing more of their side than your side?
No, that's a uniquely Achaean way of looking at war, and exactly why war is pointless and meaningless in Achaea to begin with. War ought to be a way of achieving a goal that you can't achieve through bribery, diplomacy, or intimidation.
Hitler didn't start WWII to kill the most people in the world, if he did than he probably won that war. Although I am very sure some other notable historical figures could have killed more than him, like maybe Ghengis Khan.
Hitler started the war because he convinced the Germans that Europe was theirs by birthright. Until we're given a system that allows organizations to take over other organizations they dominate militarily, then war won't be about the things it is in real life.
The goal with this system is to provide meaningful PvP with tangible rewards to those who are interested in participating. It doesn't need to mirror real-world war to be meaningful, it just needs to provide players with reasons to log in and fight each other.
Edit!
I mean if you think about it, you can just decide one day. I want to kill a bunch of Cyrenians so the city can get a huge morale boost and a bunch of rewards for killing a bunch of bashers or , not as combat oriented, citizens who just happen to be in the military. Alternatively, they could all just quit the military and then your whole war goal is smashed to pieces.
Winning the war is a very IC goal, as is the loss of whatever the opposing organizations have to give up as part of the War terms. Gold is a completely IC thing so I'm not sure how you see it otherwise. I'm confused as to how killing other players is an OOC goal instead of an IC goal, though.
In this system War has to be agreed upon by both organizations and only those who agree to fight for their organization get rewards at the end.
A wargoal like kill the most people is not IC, that's clearly an OOC PvP mechanic to force combat. At least in my view it is.
Ooo, if it was a Holy War where an order sacrificed the bodies to a shrine, that could make the kill count declaration of war thing neat. I'm sure people can come up with good IC reasons for war, not like RL wars ever make that much sense when you look back at them. Sometimes they are just started over stupid crap!
i'm a little late on the reply here, but the thing is, gank parties only serve to grief people in the end. It'll drop the pbase even more. If that's how it goes, they'd have to put in rules against more than 2 people in a group against the opposing forces and that's basically stop all conflict.
I would love to see people screaming out things to taunt the city when they start to raid. "Blah blah blah of Mhaldor demands you bow to Lord Sartan!" Kind of stuff and then they start attacking guards/citizens/NPC's in the city.
Trust me, after the second or third time, there's nothing novel or clever about it, whether you're on the giving or receiving side.
We can either
1) Trivialize war by making it some sort of XP farming event without anything at stake, or
2) Create some additional outlet for city vs. city conflict that allows for both RP and Combat that isn't straight-up 24/7 raiding party extermination war. The other kind of war will still exist as an option, but there should be some kind of intermediate conflict driver.
You know what my favourite part of the Neraeos-Vastar war was? The two Gods set rules ahead of time, terms of victory, and even a prize to be won. Fighters got to duel each other and non-coms had debates, for example, with points going to the winner's side. While I honestly had to go dormant before the end of that war, which turned into something else, the whole set up allowed for people to choose to do what they felt was fun.
Now, I'm not saying that this has to be the same for a war system, but having some sort of tangible victory conditions or some sort of control on skirmishes so it doesn't become "grief the other side into losing" is definitely heading in the right direction, which is what I can appreciate about Traelor's proposal.
Incidentally, I see nothing wrong with someone having a problem with being ganked all day long despite having joined the army. Some people like to enjoy various aspects of the game and sometimes too much is too much. Saying that they shouldn't join the army if they don't want to be involved in combat the WHOLE time they're online for multiple days on end is just dumb, frankly, even in war situations.
"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that [everlasting] life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."
And I get that joining the army shouldn't necessarily exclude you from having some "free time" to fatten your wallet and refill your vials. That's why I think there needs to be an intermediate alternative to war that is shorter and less likely to culminate in a city simply not logging in.
For a city, sure. But Orders/Clans would need to designate someone as a spokesperson.