Wars

[luminier]

So I was reading through the Fair Play rules today. And I came across this under 'help fair play'. It's Rule Eight.

8 ) If you started trouble, e.g. a war, then participate actively in it. If
you can't play an hour or two every now and then, do not pull other
players into conflicts, for THEY will suffer for what you did, while you
are not online.

Now, In this past week I have played probably close to all day and varying times during the day. It seems unfair that people not log on during a war that they are their guildmates are actively involved in. IMO if you don't want to fight a war or can't fight a war, they shouldn't be happening. Thoughts?

[arxthas]

It seems unfair that people not log on during a war that they are their guildmates are actively involved in.

???

IMO if you don't want to fight a war or can't fight a war, they shouldn't be happening. Thoughts?

+1

[lanyara]

Wars would be shorter if permadeath would be introduced.

[arxthas]

Wars would be shorter if permadeath would be introduced.

You can't argue with that.

[luminier]

Wars would be shorter if permadeath would be introduced.

You can't argue with that.

Thats also not really the point. Permadeath is never going to be introduced so there is literally no point in speculating on it.

Im trying to get thoughts on issues that we currently have in the game and honestly... comments like these don't help. I want to find a solution to the situation of having a war and never ever backing down and have it be over.

[arxthas]

I think you have to look at why wars are started. Players will always have the power to start wars with astronomical conditions for stopping attacks. If wars were a bit more sane with conditions that could actually be met, they would have a chance working. If people started/entered wars with an open-mind and where it's a serious option for them to actually surrender the war, we would get a more mature/fair environment. You should not enter a war without being player enough to make a fair judgement to if the other side won.

I think also it belongs to the point is that its the very most extreme antagonisms that are taken far too lightly. Death is a hard thing - if you die even once I think you should seriously consider surrendering. If say the majority of active players on your side died and surely if your leader died. I think that topic of taking death seriously has been revisited at least 15 times. But death is one of these antagonisms that are not taken seriously enough. Other types of irreversible decisions are also taken too lightly. Threatening someone with death is taken too lightly.. in fact, it's not taken at all I'd say. Even if you think there's a small chance that the guy threatening you is correct, even if just 10%, it should creep you out. Who wants to risk their life even to 10%? But stuff that the game tells people is simply ignored. Wars are started for stupid reasons that are not fun. Reasons that often nobody have control over anymore. Keep that control so that we can take ourselves out of the war gracefully.

[isengoo]

Hows about this - don't play all day and don't make it a total pain in the dick to stop wars.

Problem solved.

[luminier]

Hows about this - don't play all day and don't make it a total pain in the dick to stop wars.

Problem solved.

Or instead of having 90% of your posts be useless insults, you could add something to the conversation.... lol....

[isengoo]

Brosef, it's a game you can't win. It seems like you are trying really hard to win.

[fernao]

So I was reading through the Fair Play rules today. And I came across this under 'help fair play'. It's Rule Eight.

8 ) If you started trouble, e.g. a war, then participate actively in it. If
you can't play an hour or two every now and then, do not pull other
players into conflicts, for THEY will suffer for what you did, while you
are not online.

Now, In this past week I have played probably close to all day and varying times during the day. It seems unfair that people not log on during a war that they are their guildmates are actively involved in. IMO if you don't want to fight a war or can't fight a war, they shouldn't be happening. Thoughts?

*chuckle*

Having had quite some (negative) experiences in the current war, the problem is rather that after a time the side with the most casualties just stops playing, in whole or in part. You can't force people to play, especially not if they are pawns in the game and have little to no influence at all to change the outcome.

Don't take me wrong, but the question of yours somehow sounds a little like spoiled brat that loves to turn over ant-hills to get some commotion and then wonders, that after an initial reaction the ants just vanish, leaving you alone and frustrated and blaming the ants for not "playing fair".

You can't expect people to join or stay in a war they neither initiated nor ever wanted!

To get back to your point, start wars only if there is a way to end them, that does NOT force players to leave a guild. IMHO it is decent enough RP, for a crusader, to just stipulate that after the "infidels" have died n times, your gods would be satisfied with your actions, at least for the time being/the near future aka a couple of RL weeks or months, and you can call an end to the war.
If someone special was the reason the war, kill that person n times, all others that get cought in the backwash just died until your primary goal is achieved or they withdraw from the war. That allows for wars to actually be fun for both sides, they have a definitive end and don't force your will upon people.

Also, like Arxthas wrote, leave people more than one way to end the war. Forcing people under your will by leaving them no choice at all just galls your co-players perception of the whole thing. Then people will react stubbornly and they start losing their ability to make sound choices.

[lanyara]

You can't argue with that.

Permadeath is never going to be introduced so there is literally no point in speculating on it.

Why not? ... Permadeath wouldn't be so bad.

It could happen only for those who decide to ignore vitality. (The current vitality concept doesn't work anyway.)

Less and less vitality ... ressing and ressing and the god(s) find it harder and harder to give you a new body, because apparently it is a waste of their powers to give someone a body who dies the next moment again.

A plausible concept in my opinion - don't abuse the gods!

I want to find a solution to the situation of having a war and never ever backing down and have it be over.

Permadeath would solve that, at least partially. (If the characters during war are gone, they are gone.)



I say partially because it won't solve the activity question, but there are no clear rules how active someone has to be. Is it one hour / 24 hours reallife? Two hours? Can that time be distributed during the 24 hours? Do there have to be x amounts of PvP fights in that time or not? And what if characters on that other side are sufficiently active that way, will wars continue?

And so on and so forth.

The fair rules guideline states:

there are some guidelines which are neither binding nor enforced

If there would instead be clear and well defined rules then this would be simple to decide.

I don't want to refer to IC events on the forum (this all influences the game world and has an impact on the flow of events. And it can also influence other players who read the forum, which is really not good.)

However, there is one elementary truth - different players will always disagree with each other.

Even if you think there's a small chance that the guy threatening you is correct, even if just 10%, it should creep you out.

If permadeath would be involved, YES. It would work a lot easier because the loss here would be much higher. (Doesn't even have to be real permadeath, just another system than the one right now.)

With vitality loss, I am not sure, because you just ress and that's it more or less. And you recover from that slowly.

Death with vitality loss alone hmmm ...

The vitality loss is not really much other than a downtime where you perform in a weaker state. Whether you are at 90% or 60% or 50% or whatever.

It may also encourage powergaming because if you don't want to fall victim to other strong characters, you do have to become stronger yourself. Which means that strong (and active) characters dominate in wars whereas the others can't really play any role at all in it and hence will become less active than before.

Which isn't really healthy for any MUD.

The shiver system was not that bad because people felt ANNOYED about it. They didn't like it at all.

Perhaps it had a too big, negative impact on newbies, but it wasn't only bad, really.

Wars are started for stupid reasons that are not fun.

The problem is that wars aren't much more than heavy PvP without clear, achievable goals.

Players on one side can say this or that, players on any other side can refuse said argument - players simply *will* disagree.

That's the OOC part. Heavy PvP makes players unhappy.

But just with the example of a change to a more permadeath-like situation away from vitality loss alone - I really think anything that has permadeath close by works as a deterrent against non-stop wars.

About the IC, well, I think I can say something in general here. The gameworld is heavily polarized with code that basically screams at you "kill kill kill" because there are enemies that have to die.

I don't agree with this amount of polarization at all, neither from the code nor can I agree with players who like this. But if _players_ disagree with something, how do you want to convince them?

Then people will react stubbornly and they start losing their ability to make sound choices.

Very true.

[fernao]

Permadeath? Hmm... yeah.... sure....

Fernao, at age 8 days or something, got killed by Luminier, at 200+ days??, in 3 strikes. Yeah. If permadeath would come, I'd be definately gone permantly as well.

As it is, its ok. Fernao got involved and paid the price.

[ferranifer]

Another self-reassurance thread?

I think Fernao put it quite well. Stop treating your fellow players as if they were pawns in your own little version of the game and you'll see them stay to enjoy the game together. I can imagine it's not particularly fun to log in whenever you feel like they should so you can bash on them.

If you're looking for a justification for what you're doing then well, sorry, but no. I think that was clear from the other threads.

You want the war to stop or to go on?

How about declaring yourself victor? That will either end the war (since you won), or get people that don't wanna let you win (or care enough) to log in and fight back to stop you from claiming victory. Either way, you win. It kinda fits with the one-sided insane view of the world of a Crusader fanatic. Since noone is fighting back anymore you can easily assume that those heretics fell under your unfaltering virtue and dispersed or whatever. And hey, it might even make you happy in a somewhat fitting placebo-y way. Give it a shot.

[lanyara]

Permadeath? Hmm... yeah.... sure....

Fernao, at age 8 days or something, got killed by Luminier, at 200+ days??, in 3 strikes. Yeah. If permadeath would come, I'd be definately gone permantly as well.

It could work the other way too - there are always bigger fish in the pond, so to speak ...

A problem for the game is when the main choice becomes PK in general.

[anglachel]

The best would before a war statred both side shoud make a ooc-agrement of the win condition .
A simple win condition could be: raiding the opponent guild while three player are online.
There can be other win conndition, too.
There an be diffrent conditions for both side.
The side you succeed to reslove their win condition first wins the war and war ended.
Their can be a kind of trophy, too. I remember some war between Arborea and Elvandard guild. The result of the war was to move the borderstone a bit south or north.
It is possible to support such war declaration a bit by code. So if a offical war is declared the reputation is not dropped by attacks in tje comabt area.
Clerics guild can a slight power boost for a ooc-week, then they win a war.
Much things are possible.

[dragan]

That the current war is won by the Crusade is pretty obvious and not a big surprise.

The surrender condition (that a certain char get's removed from from the Asrals) may simply just be unacceptable and so the war will continue endless and meaningless, until the targeted player gives in and decides to remove the char and let everyone else have fun and peace again.

[arxthas]

How about declaring yourself victor?

Only the Asrals can do that by surrendering:

The surrender condition (that a certain char get's removed from from the Asrals) may simply just be unacceptable and so the war will continue endless and meaningless, until the targeted player gives in and decides to remove the char and let everyone else have fun and peace again.

Exactly. And forcing a player out of a guild sucks, most for the player, but as an instance of history event too - but that is how for it has gone. I would personally prefer to review the "hard limits" that the code has set, such as perma-enemies and darkelf conversions. People seem unable to handle the consequences of their decisions. What about a time-limit for perma-enemies? A reverse-to-elf ritual? Such things? Make the game a bit softer and give people some more options.. even if I think such policies shouldn't be needed.

The best would before a war statred both side shoud make a ooc-agrement of the win condition. A simple win condition could be: raiding the opponent guild while three player are online.

And this is how the wars should be in the perfect world.

But historically its rather been a race to see which side that runs out of code support first. It was never (as far I know) agreed on beforehand. Stuff like this will pop up.. it must be possible to handle along the way too, even when we did not set conditions from the beginning. I think this scenario is more likely to happen, and then we want to be able to handle it. We can't rely on that conditions were set initially and otherwise we're screwed. With that said, also get as many wars as possible with conditions set from the start.

[luminier]

I was attempting to be as unspecific as possible as to speak generally. I think Per suggested we do that in another thread.

To Isengoo - Naw Im not trying to win the MUD Im trying to win this war by how you normally win wars, beating down the other side until they can't fight back (apparently not working). The last Asral war ended with the temple having to get burned down. Doesn't that say something about the Asral RP?

To Fernao - I wasn't implying I was upset that you or other Asrals weren't playing, but Moaglesh and Mona who feel the need to post a million notes goading the war on but are sparsely ever seen otherwise. To me -that- is what is unfair. They sit and do nothing but write and everyone who doesn't care about the war is forced to suffer. If you want to look at the war that way, I suppose thats fine. It seems more to me like you are describing a bully just screwing over ants but im assuming thats the picture you were going for. It would be nice to have someone available to remove Mona as an enemy so I wouldn't have to find a reason to roleplay out of ignoring the gods who I follow in every other way i can.

To Lanyara - Do you really think Permadeath is the right answer? I don't want people to stop playing because their character died or because they are afraid of dying. But if you are dying over and over and just getting more or less beaten down everytime you are around even 'help fair play' asks that you try to RP 'some' fear of the person who is killing you. And another thing I don't understand, if something is making everyone unhappy why is everyone sitting back and doing nothing about it? If people disagree, why doesn't everyone sit down and have a sit down so we can talk about it lol.

To Ferranifer - It isn't a self-reassurance thread, it's a find a way to get people to not leave the game but still follow roleplay but still keep everyone happy thread. I don't know what your OOC beef with the Crusaders or me is but really I would love to know. I am not saying they should log on whenever I feel like they should but they(Mona Moaglesh) should make an effort to log on and fight the war they are goading on. I've treated no one like pawns. If anyone I think most might agree that Mona might be abusing the loyalty of her guildmates in protecting her and the guild against the Crusaders. And again I don't know why you think I am looking for "justification" it's pretty clear I want this to end just like everyone else. I don't need to justify myself for roleplaying properly. I find it amusing how malicious you think I am in real life even going as far to liken my need for a victory to a drug. I've even had the characters IG go as far as telling me "It's impossible to win, we know this, but we'll keep fighting". What is the aim there?

To Anglachel - The win condition you described was actually already done. It's reasonable enough to have a win condition but most wars either start so suddenly or will never be agreed upon which would lead to a war simply over the conditions themselves!

To Dragan - If the surrender condition is -that- far fetched and unacceptable I suppose it will have to be changed. It is interesting though that the winner of a war is forced to cater to the needs of the loser. IMO that seems odd.

[isengoo]

Seriously though, my opinion is that wars shouldn't start so suddenly and there should always be an OOC agreement with conditions regarding who wins the war. Sure, people will always get their feelings hurt and make notes which annoy other people, but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to continue warring.

[luminier]

lol personally I like Mona and Moaglesh's notes, they're cute and they make me smile. It's just not enough for me to justify keeping the war going, hence why I started this topic.