[Neus]

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.

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.

I don't disagree, because rules do matter. There should be a hard ruleset and a way to score the conflict would go a long way to ensuring it runs smoothly - and if anything, previous conflicts have made it clear that we need to have a more firm stance on how they are handled. But making it more expansive and trying to figure in a lot of variables is not exactly a simple task.

And for me personally, after having to manage Fairview vs Meiaquar on an OOC level, which had a fairly straightforward and simple ruleset, yet still managed to implode due to OOC - I haven't felt particularly inspired on how to handle rules for something even grander in scale, nor very motivated because it was an extremely draining and frustrating affair to try and moderate.

I am working on things adjacent to it, in terms of making a nation's actual circumstances into a more tangible and influencable thing. But it will be some time before that's fully in place.

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.

That is a part of it as well. Wars are a crisis and therefore demands attention, so if you have your own stuff that you want to do, but your nation is involved in the war, getting it sidelined for something you don't really care for can be frustrating. Especially if your IC obligates you to take part.