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Comments
I loved the Nish format- first side totally eliminated loses. That was a fun way to fight.
Could stop the repop on blackrock / jaru and the opposing side has to lay siege and murder all the villagers, allied side needs to secure the villagers / fight them off.
It'd be neat if the admin could seal an area, no earrings/portals/exiting/wings/etc. out of it for the duration of a battle.
I also think that it's pretty cool that the Shield also get to be duel proctors and I think that kind of thing might be a martial niche that they could fit into while still being a neutral party, if they could get other organizations to buy into it. Maybe see if you can get other cities to agree to use formal duels as a way of settling bounties with fair fights, that kind of thing. I feel like you might be able to get Mhaldor and Targossas to agree on that just because both sides get frustrated with bounty hunting. Set up something where only a lowbie can call out another lowbie, etc.
Build a formal dueling ground, come up with some sort of code duello, get Cyrene to allow formal death duels under the code and with a member of the Shield standing as judge. I feel like that last bit should be workable since the entire point of it would be that Cyrene and the Shield were standing as a neutral third party and adjudicator of grievances.
It would also legitimately give the Shield a place as a 1v1 slash arena hero combat house, on the grounds that the duel's master-of-arms should hopefully be able to kill either party should they break the duel's rules.
edit: Although, thinking about it, a big part of why it was fun might be because it wasn't war-related, so there wasn't much at stake except textp.
That said, I've gotten to watch some neat fights, and it's definitely been a fun role to play. I'd love to see it happen again, hopefully in a war that involves a little more dueling!
As fun as the Nish battle was I know a lot of people were nervous beforehand about it, even if they aren't normally for fights.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Was fun!
Since Cyrene is so adamantly against organizational conflict, your only hope for combatants is to draw in ones who are heavily focused on 1v1 combat. And for that, your best bet is turning the Shield away from 'defenders of Cyrene' and focusing more on a 1v1 specialist path, because you can do 1v1 fights without needing organizational backing.
Obviously the current system has issues too, but I'd probably just scrap duels entirely for a future war.
(Though if we want to have a city v city tournament somehow at another time, we certainly could!)
I don't want to discourage dueling. It's one of the things that make Achaea very unique, and it's a nice contribution to a character's story- X put up the most points towards earning Y city the lead through their dueling effort is a compelling line of advancement, and it rewards 1v1/2v2 in a game where 1v1/2v2 is becoming increasingly rare.
If it's just most wins takes all, then once one side takes a majority of the duels the rest of them are meaningless. If it's straight up one point per duel then every duel has value.
I think Cooper's method makes the most sense though if dueling was going to be included.
I think the idea behind it, specifically trying to give war an actual format, is good, but I think we could improve on the immersion of the conflict itself.
Duels serve no purpose in any format so I'd say to scrap them entirely, same with an in-game 'point' system.
The pre-scheduled battles don't make any sense from an in-game perspective, but you could keep the same format without the necessity of making it blatantly obvious that it's a pre-scheduled fight so people can log in by having some unimportant OOC objective relayed by an NPC or something. Maybe we have to fight on Nish at this time and date because there's some angel in distress, or a demon is planning to do this and that (specific to Mhaldor v Targossas). This adds depth to the conflict itself (it's not just player versus player, but alignment versus alignment) and applies an in-game reason to battle the enemy at any pre-set time aside from 'most arbitrary amount of points win, and this is worth 5 arbitrary points'.
What we could also do is take the ideas from this war, specifically the objective-based game modes, and apply them in a real sense. So instead of '1/3/5/7 points per detonation', make it so something is charged/weakened with each friendly/enemy detonation or disarm. Basically take each of the modes, remove the points values in-game (though you could still track them OOC based on the 'progression' of the unstated item) and remove anything that doesn't make sense in an actual war. You could make room for limited duels in here, but they'd be swing-points rather than having the ability to be the main focus of the entire war, based on point value, if we really, really wanted duels.
Also you'd need to adjust the value of each thing in a way that makes sense. If you're going to limit tanks to 1/day then the value should be higher. Unlimited, make it lower. The war could 'end' when the above item reaches a certain point and some lasting effect takes place in the losing/winning city, and obviously the duration of the war could be controlled by simply making the necessary level slightly above the max-achievable in a given period of time based almost entirely on the 1 tank/day and pre-scheduled confrontations.
Overall, my opinions of the war (coming from someone on an EU timezone, so outside looking in for most) is that it's been a wonderful transition from the previous incarnations but there's still a lot of work to do to improve. Not to say all the efforts of those involved in its creation aren't worthwhile, have to start somewhere, but I think there are some immersion areas that need some work as the entire thing has felt mildly...detached, is a good word I suppose.
As far as people complaining, they're going to complain no matter what you do. Any time there's a winner and a loser it's just a given. I think most people have done a good job though, and kept the sanctity of the intentions in the forefront of their mind. Shout outs to everyone who's trying to just have a little fun, and shout outs to everyone who helped make this war a little more fun.
There would be five "stations", being Isle of Mhaldor - Enverren Castle - Siroccians - Jaru - Eastern Reaches. The first battle starts in the Siroccians, and whoever wins that pushes the battle to the next; to Enverren, if Targossas wins, and to Jaru, if Mhaldor wins. If, for example, the next scheduled battle got pushed to Jaru, and then Targossas won that, the battle after that gets pushed back to the Siroccians.
The battles at the Isle and the Reaches would be decisive. If, for example, the battle got pushed to the Isle and Mhaldor lost that, then they lose the war. If they win, it gets pushed back to Enverren.
Battles could be scheduled every weekend, again. The "winning condition", though, I'm not sure how to determine. Maybe shrine sovereignty? This can potentially drag out the war, yes, but it would all be scheduled battles rather than duels and tank raids, which should be less stressful. Maybe.
ETA: @Micaelis thought to put a points threshold (whatever you want to call it, doesn't have to be points, can be some more immersive way to keep track) that the first team to get to, wins, is good. Ostensibly, that makes it more urgent, is likely to discourage turtling until the big events come around, and might make wars shorter and more intense, which seems to be what people prefer over drawn out and lukewarm most of the time, with bursts here and there of tons of people logging in.
I have mostly skimmed this thread, but I think Nazihk's really got a handle on it. Wars should be large, fun, unusual events, not a game-able scoreboard of things we already do on a daily basis. We can raid any day, we can duel any day, we can defile any day, so use a declared war to do large, interesting, planned events. Pitched battles over strategic towns or resources, multi-ship naval battles over ports, coordinated shrine warfare to determine sovereignty of an area (gives the bashers a way to help). These things can be scheduled by the players, are hectic and fun for a few hours or a few days, and then some downtime until the next big event to let everyone recharge and make adjustments.
At the very least, it sounds like this current war should drop the disarm points so that defending against a raid is never a disadvantage. And if a single tank of any level counts as the same amount of points, then it's smarter to keep trying to disarm it regardless of the cost, which might just lead to the first level 3.
The only reason defending is discouraged by the system is because if you don't defend at all, there won't be a sanction and thus there's no reason to defend a fight you don't think you'll win (since sanction + losing defense means tank det points).
If you think you'll win the defense, defense is encouraged by disarm points. Though, even then, you're better off letting them get sanction and place a tank before you oust them. If they don't get a tank down, you don't get anything for defending.
As long as higher-level tanks aren't worth more points, should be fine, since the threat of higher level tanks is generally what discourages defense. Though I would still advocate for contests other than raiding to settle a formal war, since raiding can be done any day without justification.