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War system
Discussions of the War system
2
Comments
What we are currently missing in our war system:
1. A way to define a win condition when declaring a war. (Note: I feel like if we start adding defined win conditions, though, we'd also need a new way to declare a formal war other than someone in power with twitchy fingers not really understanding the implications of setting relations to hostile.)
2. A way to actively progress conflict outside of player-versus-player engagements.
Frankly, I don't think we need to scrap the war system and redo it. Tanks are awesome and raiding here feels really, really good as a whole. However, just like in RL, there are people who can carry a war without ever setting foot on the battlefield, but we don't have anything analogous to that in the game outside of diplomacy (read: newsboards for boasting).
Add in things like starving out a city by not letting entry/exit or otherwise cutting off supplies, some sort of means of gaining influence with the enemy's populace so that they actively oppose the war effort, or maybe some way of convincing denizen villages to help you launch a full-scale assault (this one would be questing-related; you perform war-quests for villages, etc etc).
While obviously any amount of additional coding or tweaking is going to take quite a bit of effort, we really don't need a sweeping mechanical change to the current system; just some minor tweaks and additions to the mechanics we already have.
I think some very simple additions that would really help players handle wars better have been suggested in other threads:
1. During war time, you should be able to just SANCTION RAID on the city you're at war with (maybe only once per 24 hours or something). If you want to sanction avoid, you shouldn't be at war. I think sanction mechanics work great for casual fighting, but in a war, it should be less avoidance based.
2. There should be a WAR STATUS command that tracks certain statistics during the war, as suggested by someone before. It could be number of tanks detonated and disarmed by each side since the war started, number of enemy soldiers slain by each side, number of guards slain by each side, whatever else might be relevant to war. It doesn't declare a victor, but people being able to look at the objective statistics would make OOC cooperation in determining a victor and RPing it out as more than "we won" "no we won" a lot easier, I think.
With those two things, I think the current system would work a lot better already.
Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
Allies - Friendly - Neutral - Hostile - WAR!
This way it doesn't show in the relations screen that say.. Targossas is neutral to Mhaldor, because we don't want to be immediately in war (because War is just ganksquad galore).
This, alongside the aforementioned suggestions from Farrah would be lovely, and make for a much better RP environment, so that people (generally city leaders) cannot simply go "I set them to hostile bcz we are hostile to most cities!"
Honestly, we've had the whole exterm-griefing for long enough, and it has been a pain point for as long as it has existed.
Right now, it's a good mechanic for either side to say: "Hey, you want to play?" rather than the "I'm going to force you to play." that it used to be.
Please, just let it be. There are other ways to do meaningful change.
You try having fun with a game where there is a one-sided griefing mechanism, that you are on the receiving end of.
Exterm as a mechanism, means you have to be ready to defend any one of the forest rooms, in any forest area, anywhere in the game. Be that mainland or island, it doesn't matter.
The sheer number of rooms makes the task impossible! Until the advent of vivify, there wasn't even a way to properly retaliate. So as much as characters were supposed to respond to exterminations IG, the players simply got fed up with it and started ignoring it. To the point where you would get blatant messages on CT stating something to the effect of: "Ignore them, they're just griefing again."
i.e. Yet another in game mechanic, that caused OOC considerations to result in players abandoning proper in-character responses.
Then sure, my idea is bad.
These things happen naturally. They don't need to be hardcoded.
I've participated in a few wars, and the win condition is to unambiguously defeat the other side. These will differ wildly based on who you're at war against, so a hardcoded win condition system will never improve the war system, since it will only impose unnecessary mechanical restrictions on one of the few purely player-driven and decided parts of the game.
Likewise, the populace of the city will already make it known to the leaders if they're unhappy with the way the war is going. There are always huge political ramifications to going to war - especially if you lose. People get overthrown, regimes change, maybe even whole outlooks change. You don't need to code in denizen unrest to try and simulate something that already happens.
Unless it's changed since I was last active, which it doesn't seem like it has, the current pretty simple system of war - especially backed by the existing raid mechanics with tanks and guard changes - is probably the best we're going to get.
ETA: Cities definitely should be able to sanction a raid during war time as Farrah said - if you've chosen to go to war with another city, you should never be "safe" from attacks from that city until it's over.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
I feel that having some kind of a tangible score based war system is probably best due to the necessity for some sense of finality. Most people want to know who won or lost a war (case in point the most recent war with Eleusis and Hashan.)
Time limited - I think having a time limit on war (while it's not the best from an RP standpoint and removes some of the elements of diplomacy that go into wartime), it would set up cleaner definitions for when victory or loss conditions are achieved. For example, 2-3 years.
Mutuality - I would perhaps suggest a mechanic that replaces mutual declaration of hostilities (diplomatically under the current system) with one that has to do with how often and successful raids are against that city. For example... City 1 attacks city 2 regularly and gains 6 tank detonations within a period of a year. This would trigger an automatic war status for the next 2-3 years between the two of them. This would incentivise more active defense, and deincentivise avoidance of city defenses by army or non-army members and perhaps encourage more non-army members to defend.
One of the biggest gripes I feel like that has already been addressed is timing (peak vs. off peak). While there is some sense of strategy that goes into when a team attacks another, i feel that disparate odds make it so that these engagements feel unfair at times which lends to resentment and a lot of backbiting about who did what and when. I would be all for being able to immediately start a sanction every so often (thus negating avoidance) as long as there are an even number (or close to even number) of army members about. This would require some further tweaking about how often someone can join or leave an army to avoid tampering with the enemy's ability to sanction.
Out of city conflict - without clearly defined out of city objectives, the current system is set up to encourage group ganking. I'd like to suggest a set of out of city combat related objectives which could contribute to a team's overall war score. I would also suggest the creation of a 'supply' mechanic tied to denizen villages, offering viable alternatives to world ganking. Each city has a supply score which determines their ability to effectively keep their parent city afloat. If the city does not adequately defend their supporting village they enter crisis mode, having adverse effects on the city during incursions. Poor food rations means lower health or resistance to damage, loss of a village that supplies weapons means you do less damage to enemy players during battle, loss of a village that provides intelligence would make it more difficult to sense and track enemies in the land, and so forth. If the city's allied villages are destroyed or captured, the city's supply score drops over time. If this supply score reaches critical levels, this would be a (choke out) defeat condition.
I'd also suggest that there be some additional neutral objectives out in the world which could be held in order to provide passive supply or combat bonuses. For example, offering support to certain non-allied villages could offer combat bonuses, intelligence, city guards or help defend your world assets. Could even have the goblins or mhuns do some crazy sabotage to destroy rooms on their own.
I would like to suggest that real world objectives have options for multiple team objectives, encouraging multiple smaller groups of 2-3 as opposed to large group incursions. This would be friendlier to newer players and folks with screen readers. Assault a checkpoint by killing enemy guards on their checkpoint while also defending one of your own. For example, there are quests that can be completed to undermine the denizen village support, including supply lines, sabotaging weapons, intelligence reports. there would have to be rules about not killing citizens who are aiding their allied villages, but could be PK if trying to do quests to harm the enemy. This would further encourage participation in war-time objectives by less combat inclined members and help them to feel useful and included in the process.
Victory Conditions - these could be a couple of things.
Capturing and holding an enemy's allied villages (thus starving them of supplies)
X number of tanks within the pre-defined time period (less attractive option if done on its own)
Reaching the desired war score before the end of the pre-defined time period
Scores could be based on a number of factors, including, but not essentially limited to. Successful tank detonations or repelling of invaders during a sanction, supply score, morale, soveriegnty, total kills in the world of enemy soldiers, held enemy or neutral objectives.
Rewards - while cityfavours are often a means of rewarding folks. I would also suggest a new currency be created, or that there be commendations which could be tied into the current adventure system rewards. Small amounts of these points could be offered for success in the above objectives to encourage longer term progression benefits of engaging in the war system.
Consequences - I would also be interested in some discussion about creative consequences that could be the cost for losing a war. This could be something as simple as fewer tanks being able to be maintained by the other party, hindering of certain city improvements, or other things that I'm sure you guys could think of. This could be where some of the more RP driven consequences could occur. But these should be fair and equitable and may require some Garden oversight to ensure fairness is maintained.
Sorry for the TLDR, that's about all I had for now.
On the other hand, what if you CAN'T declare war unless relations are sufficiently hostile? As in, relations default to neutral, and climb up every time you raid that city, similar to how feelings villages works. It would be silly if you never raid a certain city, and then suddenly you want to declare war on them. But perhaps that mechanic would be too limiting.
2. The villages idea is intriguing, not sure how well it would work out, but it would be cool if supporting your own village / undermining the enemy's was done by questing, to provide a way for non-combatants to help. And doing the quests would not make them free pk. The counter to the village quests would be doing quests back - but there would be a limit to the number of quests you could do in a day, so that it didn't become endless and exhausting.
3. I like cityfavours just fine. And we already have so many alternative currencies. But what would be cool would be to be able to see in the points score, how many points individual citizens contributed. You could for example do WAR POINTS ANDRASTE, and it would give the breakdown of how many points Andraste scored in each category (tanks blown: 2 points, guards killed: 5 points, quests completed: 3 points, etc). Then you could give cityfavours based on points scored, and people would not get overlooked. Also, WAR POINTS ELEUSIS could also list the names of people who scored so you'd know who to check.
Keep in mind, this is a game that provides many different things for many different people. Also, the number of players that enjoy regular PvP, has always been far less than those who do not. What we really need, is a way to motivate those who would rather go bashing/chatting/whatever, to feel as if they get at least the same level of reward for taking part, in raids/defence.
This has always been difficult, and it will always be difficult, exactly because rewarding the player vs rewarding the character is complicated. You can reward a character with items, credits, gold etc. Rewarding the player is a completely different problem.
For example: How does one motivate the person that logs on to go bashing because they had a tough day at work, and really just wants a quiet solo bashing session for an hour or two. To abandon that and take part in a raid/defence?
Firstly, as long as there is a tangible loss attached to dying against a player in combat, I am going to be heavily disinclined to engaging. It's not even a matter of risk/reward, it's a matter of I am going to die, I am going to lose experience, and I am going to have to spend more time bashing to make that up. That's not fun, that's a chore.
Now, if you drop the experience loss on death mechanic between two warring states (and limit it to army only and make army open PK for the duration of the war so that non-coms aren't affected), you create an opt-in system that I feel would get far more people engaging in PvP.
Secondly, it's really hard to feel like you personally contributed to a fight as a player when after everything is said and done you don't feel like you have anything to show for it. Doesn't matter that you helped take down five of the big scary dragons, doesn't matter that you helped hinder the entire fight so that the bigger damage dealers could prep quicker, you didn't get a killing blow, so you get nothing. You lose inks, venoms, curatives, elixirs, arrows, bombs, sigils, and other expendables without really getting any sort of return back over the course of the entire engagement. Shifting that exp gain instead to share among those that helped contribute to a kill would help incentivize individuals to contribute, as well as push those players that just wanna log in to bash more toward helping raid/defend because, hey, they get exp just like if they were partied up and hunting.
Granted, I know messing with experience gain/loss around PvP is a big can of worms, but honestly it's the one thing that makes me really back away from duels and being on the aggressive side of raids. I mean, I still think experience loss overall is a pretty silly mechanic these days, but hell, if sanctioned raids didn't waive experience loss for defenders, I don't think I'd be defending nearly as much as I do.
There's an experience bonus for PvP kills when you're below your highest ever attained total experience to help make any losses back when you do get kills. However, if you're not getting kills that's not much help. I don't know if applying that to bashing too would be feasible to reduce the burden of regaining the lost experience.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Not impossible, but definitely a lot to consider.
Just as a hypothetical, suppose Armali, Calira, Shirszae, and I team up against Trusad'an in an exhibition match.
He targets me, so I start putting up reflections to stall him, while Calira focuses on healing me when he manages to hit faster than I can reflect. Shirszae tries to stick aeon, and Armali ends up just biting his head off.
Ideally, all four of us worked together to beat him and thus deserve shares of EXP, but in this case, I only got attacked, and Calira neither attacked nor defended directly, but might have been invaluable in beating him anyway.
Shared exp in Aetolia (iirc) works for everyone who hit the target.
Both are fine, for 'support' exp just use the former. Otherwise Aetolia's is also fine.
Alas, Makarios said he has zero plans whatsoever to ever add shared exp.
That described scenario is very rarely going to occur in actual fights when offensive attacks and hinder are monumentally more impactful then trying to defend an ally.
I think the biggest kink would be outside group combat, for example people watching a duel and attacking your targets at the last second to skim off xp. Would their be PK justification for retaliation from the party that killed? What about aoe attacks, if I hit all my allies with an arc will I skim xp off all their deaths should we lose?