[Druby]

Following up to throw in my own two cents. Probably could start another thread on the topic, but at this point, all the previous posts are here, and I feel like the whole conversation would lose its momentum.

To, not so simply, throw my opinion out there, I have mixed opinions on what Dev's commented about the bad feeling people have about wars due to it being OOC toxicity. I say that in the sense that, I agree, the wars had a lot of that which soured them heavily, but I also disagree on the level that this sort of thing is unavoidable in the context of competition.

Breaking it down, any sort of competition is a zero sum game. There is going to be a winner and a loser. As a general rule (I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I don't think I'm making some sort of controversial statement here) people like to win, and don't want to lose. Competitive games are all over the space, and I'm sure everyone here has played one in some form or another, be it Call of Duty, League of Legends, BlazBlue, anything where you're put in direct competition with another. And I'm similarly certain that everyone who's played these games more than a handful of times is going to have had a point where they just got upset over something that happened. Maybe a weapon choice or a character is just overpowered, maybe you feel like someone on the enemy team is cheating, or maybe the person you end up matched against is just plain better than you and nothing you do matters. This all happens very regularly in any competitive space.

War, as a PvP sort of event is inherently competitive. And you're not going to be able to avoid toxicity. I'm not saying that people can't just be nice to each other, and that things wouldn't be great if we could manage to tone it all back. But we cannot avoid it, or pretend like it's something an entire online community of random people is going to be able to stop completely. Toxicity in competitive contexts cannot be stopped, so it has to be managed.

This is why rules matter. If people want to have wars, there needs to be a definitive way for things to be run, and how things are managed. Something people can easily point to, or direct others to in order to keep people from going out of bounds of what is proper. Basic rules like only having one character involved/not alting, or having to pick a side, or how the war is going to be scored in order to determine a winner are all critical to managing this issue, which I feel was very much lacking in previous conflicts. Another critical feature would just be systems supporting nations/conflict, something like tangible resources or supply lines or anything so that conflicts aren't just a "we have more/better built people", though that will still be what they end up coming down to primarily. I am not surprised that people got upset or heated over competition, but I am surprised things were allowed to get as bad as they did.

These sorts of things are especially important when you consider that, the toxicity in some games of League happen over basically nothing. Nothing really happens if you lose an unranked game, and people still get upset there. When you look at it in an RP perspective, and suddenly have character IC, or narratives that one or more people may be heavily invested in... It's very easy for tempers to flare.

Stuff like this is why that, as a personal opinion, I feel like player-led politics are generally a bad decision, and one that should be heavily mediated by a governing team if done, which was not the case early on in Korvara's life. Going back to to the League comparison, I'm sure people are familiar with the concept that sometimes people just throw a game if they get upset. And, anyone who's been online knows that getting someone upset over the stupidest things is extremely easy in most online communities. You can very easily have teams or factions fracture apart, and while you can say stuff about how it can make for good narratives, it doesn't feel as good if it's just because two people disagreed on something ridiculous, doubly so when your average player probably has no part in that specific narrative as just a regular person with no ties to leadership.

A final comment on it all, I will do through one last comparison. I don't like some games. There's a very real thrill in extraction games like Escape from Tarkov or Dark and Darker, where you suffer permanent consequences for losing or dying. I will admit, I can see the appeal in having something genuinely on the line, and then coming ahead due to skill or tactics. That's an amazing feeling to have. But, quite frankly, I'm shit at those kinds of games, and I would not have enough fun to balance out the annoyance if I play those sorts of games, so I just don't. I stick with games I do enjoy.

I think a very major part of people's annoyance with consequence driven conflict, at least on this large a scale where it affects nations... Is just that there's no "opt out" button. If someone just wants to be a bar keep in Meiaquar or something, and has done so with the intent on never touching serious conflict or wanting to be involved, and suddenly finds out that their nation is at war, and now everything is practically revolving around it for the next few months at least, with possible serious RP changing consequences that they kind of have no way of impacting themselves? I can get being upset, yea.

If conflict and war are going to be an integral part of Korvara, one that is allowed and even expected to happen... That needs to be properly advertised, and people need to know what they're getting into.