[Poruku]

Hello! Here is a first draft of something I've been thinking of and working on for a bit.

It is an attempt at creating a system for nations to wage war in a way that feels fair.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z190...sp=sharing

Let me know any feedback or thoughts!

[Snake]

The general gist of the idea is fine, but that may need a lot of sanding. I honestly would think it'd be best if there were like... "multiple war types" the leaders could either handshake or go on a rock-paper-scissors to decide what to pick from if they're not agreeing. And from there, it'd influence the goals and the ways to achieve it.

It could be similar to war games. Go in there, capture the flag, go back.

It could be a cold war, where they try to earn the favors of other nations.

It could be a territory 'king of the hill' match over a prolonged timespan.

It doesn't need all to be done at once or in the same sitting like it is right now, but that's just me. And in terms of fairness, it can only be close to that, but never perfect. There'll always be a dissatisfied customer somewhere, so I'd not hammer down too much on that aspect.

[lordpidey]

So, when I played Esshar, I never participated in wars for a very specific reason:

I was so bad at combat, that me participating would make my side more likely to lose, even if safety to my character were 100% disregarded.

Me attempting to do my best to defend my nation, would make it more likely to fall.

To be clear, I'm okay with the following situation:

Weak character Jorge joins combat, and gets their ass handed to them.

Jorge gets kidnapped in combat.

Strong fighter Greggori moves away from the front line, to rescue Jorge.

Greggori's redeployment from the front line causes them to lose the war.

What I am NOT okay with is:

Weak character Jorge joins combat, and gets their ass handed to them, losing their country a point.

Jorge gets kidnapped in combat.

Jorge's nation decides "Yeah, we don't really have the resources to rescue Jorge."

Jorge's nation loses the war, because of the point they lost.

There should NEVER be a mechanical reason to prevent someone from participating.  There should never be a reason to regret letting a character participate in fights, OTHER than consequences to that character specifically.  (Saying you want someone else more is fine, but not "we'd rather have an empty spot than you.")



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Also, small suggestion: Replace "at 0 health" with "at 0 health and down", as aren't there some shenanigans that allow you to act at 0 health?  Also I'm pretty sure Shine Knights still work at 0 health.  Does having shine knights out count as being still up?

[Poruku]

Well, the idea is that weak characters can participate in other activities. The whole point is that pvp isn't the only determining factor. But I also think pvp should matter to some degree, it's a war between players after all.

How can we make weak characters matter in pvp without making pvp pointless?

[Lolzytripd]

I like the idea for this

Though for a "fair" war I'm not sure if we would want to limit the actions by per player or by character since nation popularity can be an issue, and if the limits should be the same for both sides. For this I think there should be 5 days prior to each week a sign up for those that want to act that week, then the gms hand out how many actions each person can take.

Example, I sign up to act on two of my meiaquar characters while polk only plays his single gela character, gela has a population advantage player wise, so he gets 3 actions and I get 4, but my 4 are split between my characters (numbers subject to change)

this could be accomplished by giving each nation 50-100 (whatever it needs to be ) action points each week and dividing them between those that sign up, if by the end of the week there are unspent points you can give them to someone else who can act in your stead to do a simple action.

Also to what degree outside actors can join in for an action should be discussed

[lordpidey]

How can we make weak characters matter in pvp without making pvp pointless?

This is subtly different from what I was asking for.

What I asked for is:

"Make it so that it is never mechanically preferable to have a blank spot on a team, when there's a weak character willing to fill the slot."


I'm fine with a hercule tier character fighting in PVP and not ultimately mattering, because they just die first round.

The problem arises when it would literally have been better for their nation to have the team Hercule was on have a blank slot instead.

[FaeLenx]

It's definitely one of those problems that comes out when you try to make some sort of fair war rules for a game like this. All of the simplest solutions present complicated problems like the old BYOND "Me participating somehow anomalously ruined my entire nation's war effort" or the "One guy can technically beat everyone in a 1v1 so he's quite literally unkillable." There are a few contradictions when it comes to 'fair.'

Participation should be rewarded but having more people shouldn't be overpowering.

Skill in combat should matter but being weak shouldn't hinder the overall war effort.

There should be a lot to do but one person shouldn't be 90% of a group's war effort by doing a lot of stuff.

The feedback I got from the wargames made it clear that the community felt exactly 2 ways about every issue and the simplest seeming problems don't have simple solutions that don't just cause another problem down the line. Right now, I'm just convinced that the only real solution is to do a best of 3-5-7 etc with pre-determined teams and some rules about limiting repeat participation to make sure as many people as possible get a chance to be in a fight that matters. You can have some area with little battling NPCs swinging swords like in the finale event for the Black Falcons with some encouragement for PCs to go there to find a healthy skirmish, but trying to scorekeep an entire war has a lot of problems.

[Poruku]

How can we make weak characters matter in pvp without making pvp pointless?

What I asked for is:

"Make it so that it is never mechanically preferable to have a blank spot on a team, when there's a weak character willing to fill the slot."

I get the idea, but I'm not sure what the proposed solution or alternative is. And it's always better to be more numerous than the enemy, it's a massive advantage in pvp

[FaeLenx]

Not necessarily. More numbers is bad depending on how the game is scored. Let's assume that it's going to be a simple matter of countings wins and losses.

Let's assume that there's two sides with exactly 2 really good PVPers each. They each fight in 1v1s and they tie each other with 1 win for each side.

Now let's assume there are two sides. One has 2 really good PVPers, and the other has 2 good PVPers and 18 really mediocre ones. The 2 good PVPers go to score 1-1 for their team again, but that winning one for the smaller team goes on to 1v1 the other 18 people and win because he's just that theoretically good. Suddenly, because that team has 18 opportunities to score points against them, more people is worse and the smaller team gets 19 points to the other's 1.

More people is often bad for your side unless they're a reasonably strong combatant who has a chance of beating their likely opponent. This was demonstrated in the war games that used the simplest rules to see how people would handle it where one person was around 80% of their team's defensive participation because they were just the better combatant. We don't have MMR in SL2 so there's no real way to make sure people are taking 'fair fights.' Trying to force 'fair fights' would be nearly impossible as well.

The alternative to numbers being a detriment is to allow them to be an overwhelming force where you can just 4v1 your enemy team all day every day. That would make some of the worst actual gameplay though so I assume you didn't hope that wars would be fought this way.

[Poruku]

Fair enough, but how would this be fixed?