Constructive Discussion
|
*sam* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 6:55 am |
This is a special, fairytale thread where no-one feels inclined to argue or bitch about past grievances. A big, unshaven man with a baseball bat and a boxer's nose stands to one side and watches; his role unexplained.
I'm happy to re-open this idea. I do think it's a bit different to simply giving a CR boost. Maybe even give the defender some influence over moving the randomly chosen position of it (to simulate some form of defensive emplacement).
Yes, and I think everyone agrees with that.
Which idea is it that you like, the one where there's a CR limit on the battle, with proportional reduction of both teams?
I do think there's some merit in this, it's been an idea kicking around in my head. Properly balanced and not OP, obviously. But it would benefit the game by leading to closely balanced battles happening more often.
I honestly struggle to see where this has come from or what changes have been made to favor goat's ideas. The latest idea (to do with giving both camps more control over schedling) simply seemed like a no-brainer to me (I didn't necessarily agree with the exact implementation that goat suggested - it's mostly the idea of giving camps the ability to specify their best and their worst times, rather than just their best, which I like). But sorry for the wrong impression having been given here. I do my best to be unbiased; in fact, I probably shouldn't take part in any more camp battles myself. You are right that we need another meeting.. things progress in a much more civilized manner there. I will organise this.
What happens (too frequently) is that I see suggestions, agree with them, make a note to work on them.. and then get swamped with 101 other things from my day-job, family life, other DW issues, and work on my other games. Ignoring good ideas is never intentional.
This is a good point, of course. The system chosen time should absolutely be taken from the defender's opening hours if at all possible. Maybe the solution is to allow the attacker to pick a time from the defender's open hours (as sort-of suggested by Longo) and to have this automatically be accepted as a re-negotiated time? (but maybe also increase the minimum open hours to 10?) |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 8, 2020, 7:52 am |
just out of curiosity what does the defence rating mean on tiles some are alot higher, maybe that rating could give some sort of cr boost to
the defender say x2 or higher? owe and i recently signed up for discord, but nobody on it yet, do these meetings happen there? |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 8:38 am |
if you get an excel spreadsheet out and work through every possible scenario you will see that this would NEVER happen under my suggestion. All that happens is that each camp gets to choose some time that they simply cant do (like the middle of the night). The times then favour the open times of defending camp. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 10:26 am |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Rev. V* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 11:38 am |
Oh great, a dog's nose...mutie | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 8, 2020, 11:38 am |
tho i dont think you should stop playing in camp wars, found this lmao.
https://youtu.be/HgwcI0FOpvY maybe you could be available to play the player who no shows cars? |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 11:56 am |
I think that is a point tbh.
ITs a good way for you to see how it works close up. I know harrys doing it, but you may as well be too. Im sure we all understand that you are unbiased in this. You could play both sides and show the options for mercs in this. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Longo* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 12:13 pm |
Sam -
First don’t think for a minute that we do not appreciate your efforts and know that you don’t eat, ####, and sleep Darkwind, like the rest of us!  We know you have other things in your life and appreciate all you do to please the masses of Evan. Maybe if you need someone to talk to, could I recommend one of the Mutie monks In Gateway who can show you the ways of Longoism? 
I think we all want camp wars to succeed. It seems like they have been dragging on though, and although the “hex game” is fun, as goat said, the battles have been few. And trying to learn the rules and then trying to keep up with what seems Like constant changes is frustrating for some of us. Scheduling hasn’t been the best, and making it so you don’t fight right away after deployment week is a definite bonus. The last scheduling suggestion just seems like too much... my point was that I have 8 hours up there, you want to attack me, you can literally open your attacking camp for one of my hours and guarantee when the battle would be. It might not be optimal, but you could make it happen, especially if you can be co dial and negotiate a change with the either player. But then you get one player that makes a suggestion and you roll with it without any input from others, and this added to the frustration. Was the auto lose with 4 to 1 odds already Implemented? I think we already lost due to this? I am pretty involved in the camp combats and I don’t know this myself. Lastly, I don’t think putting a maximum on what can be deployed is fair for the higher CRed gangs. If we have it, we should be able to use it. But there should be a button where you can agree to reduce at 50%, or 75%, if need be, as long as both agree on it. Making it just 4K, means some big camps might have 6k to deploy, and will just have to have that extra 2k sit idle because they have it and can’t use it. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 12:19 pm |
It wasn't implemented. I asked Sam about it after the event closed and he said the logs show Joel forgot to put crew in his car. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 8, 2020, 12:22 pm |
am i the only one looking forward to the mutie smacking someone with the baseball bat? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 12:43 pm |
Sits waiting with a bowl of pumpkin seeds | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*sam* Posted Jun 8, 2020, 2:03 pm |
Thanks :-)
Yes, I think this approach is good. It could be made more usable by having the attacker pick the time (from the defender's open hours) straight from the hexmap.. no need to mess around with their own camp schedules which would have knock-on effects (e.g. what if you're also being attacked by a 3rd camp?)
I get it. Sorry! Like I said, it seemed like an obvious improvement so didn't occur to me that some people wouldn't see it that way.
No, I wouldn't add something like that without agreement. Joel forgot to add his character to his car, in that instance (from what I can make out in the server log).
Absolutely, I agree. Having a maximum deployable amount was never on the table in my opinion, for this exact reason. The way the proposed cap would work is that if you deployed 6k, you'd effectively be deploying it in the knowledge that it would appear in play as 4k, but that you'd also be downsizing your opponent by the same amount (33%). We can certainly start it off on a consent basis, as you suggest (and this is what I already offered you and XMan to do in the upcoming 'rumble of the badlands'). Sometimes it's necessary to system enforce things, though. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FireFly Posted Jun 8, 2020, 9:54 pm |
Let me preface this by saying I'm not trying to put anyone or their efforts down, I am in fact very appreciative to see development on this front and the game in general... It's what brought me back after all. However, I feel like there should have been more of a test run before putting this system on the live server, it is one thing to call it a work in progress, but doing a test run with peoples active gangers and camps is going to create hard feelings. Especially when rules are changed on the fly. I am going to state some of my issues in the form of obnoxious and patronizing seeming questions, as we all know I'm bad at this writing thing and it's mostly not intentional so please try to bear with me. I'd rather have Sam's responses to these first than have others try to explain what was and wasn't intended, as some of you seem to have rather widely differing ideas about what was agreed upon when planning this metagame. There will be plenty of time to explain how wrong I am after that, don't worry. 1. Was it intended for the PvP system to be mostly a map painting game rather than something built to encourage fights in the game? From my point of view as a rather experienced wargamer* the system actively encourages avoiding client battles and taking as much territory with as little fighting as possible. This is compounded by the lack of any real defenders advantage and how much better attacking is**, as pointed out before. This might be a smart way to play a wargame, but if the stated goal was to get people engaged in PvP fighting, this ain't it chief. *. Late 20's might be young by most of your standards, but a lot of that life has been spent staring at messy maps in a turn based fashion. **. The sheer amount of CR required to defend when players have no advance warning about where the enemy will attack makes it a pure guessing game, a fools guessing game with terrible odds. Trying to out-trade tiles with the enemy is almost always a better option than holding, barring a few chokepoint situations. This also further encourages attacking as many tiles as possible in a given round. 4 fights in a week is nothing compared to what the alley/spanky/bill situation will generate. 2A. Even if above is the case or not, was it intended for camp wars to basically be won or lost based on who can buy sponsorships? To put it another way, to have the entire camp map metagame mostly decided by who has the fatter wallet and ability to game the economy? I was hoping to raise it at the next meeting, but here we are at the new year and it is now blindingly obvious. This applies to multiple sides right now so if I see someone calling this a biased point, I'm going to punch a wall. Even if they have the same base CR from map tiles, there is no way on this earth that the embassy can fight longovilles sponsorship CR number, nor can the alley fight spankys combat sponsorship. They might somehow pull wins out to circumstances or brilliance but with any remotely similar skillbase a 2-1 or even higher advantage in deployable CR is insurmountable. 2B. Was it meant for the same group of people to several different active war camps in close proximity to effectively double team single camps? This point is entirely dependent on what you envisioned camp PvP to be, but if it was to encourage people to fight tactical battles then this is a cancer that will destroy it. No, I'm not going to call anyone an exploiter or a cheater unlike some on several sides here. But these are the basic facts. The Vault and Bill's camp share the vast majority a significant portion of PvP active players and they are long time friends. These two camps combined give the same players two sources of CR to deploy on surrounding opponents. The idea that these camps would actually fight is pretty laughable, as they share the players. But it gets better, Bill could have had a fairly even fight with the vault alley (CR wise). Instead the active pvp members of the vault/bill camps joined spanky and vice versa. This is presumably to make sure they beat The Alley by default, as mentioned above.* Nah, this is neither exploit nor cheating. But encouraging people actually fight battles this is not. *I am perfectly aware my new southern camp and the alley could have done the same to bill, hence why I made efforts to not get into that sort of situation, as evidently I think it's both unbalanced as all getout and bad design. Multiple people can attest to me stating things like that unless they thought I was flat out lying. In conclusion So, we already have a situation where one camp is about to get attacked by the same group of players operating from two different camps. This would already have put it at at a near insurmountable 2-1 CR disadvantage. Is is then further combined with the ability to buy CR with darkwind bucks and has turned it into more like a 4-1CR ratio. Oh, I'm also very grateful to spanky bragging about the plan in the last public thread to help make my points blindingly obvious. Not that I can really blame spanky for caving in to whatever demand/suggestion the vault/bill made, since he doesn't have enough players in his camp to actually take a fight. As it stands he need their manpower to field cars and as soon as they leave, he either has to make other friends or be screwed since camps with low player counts are not allowed to effectively participate under current rules*. *Something that would be fine if there were more than 10-15 people in the whole game that wants to pvp. I appreciate it was planned in the hope of bringing in more players, but it also has to function with the playerbase the game already has. Anyway, if the response this is mostly going be "Teamwork" and "Working as designed" feel free to dismiss this post and have fun, but in that case I probably won't be engaging much more on this topic. If any of you got trough this post... Thanks for reading? I guess. [PS: I was not sure if to bother posting after most of you seemingly agreed that the attackers convenience is nearly as important as the defenders on time slots. Yeah, I'm salty Nine. 
No really, the attacker can at least plan and roughly guess how many battles on an uncomfortable time he might have to take due to being the initiator. The attacker can also decline to attack if they think they won't have time to fight on uncomfortable hours for a certain week. The defender has no luxury and must take fights or lose by default. Expecting a camp to be able to take multiple fights over an 8 hour range in a single week is very, very close to unworkable for people with jobs... increasing it to a maximum possibility of 16 is asking a lot. I could do that, but I don't have much work right now. I doubt most people have that much free time.] Again, I'm really not trying to call out the intentions or character of people here, this is simply how the system and map looks to me right now and how people are playing it. If I can't say this much without people having hard feelings about it, then I'm out. Good night for now. Edit, Fixed a few words, old ones are strucktrough to keep the text intact. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 12:16 am |
- I would contend that we had no significant cr advantage until we started winning
- we don’t have significantly more active pvp players than the opposition, and those we do have have very limited ganger resource. It’s simply not true to claim that we are anything but the underdogs. - Deliberately placing a camp right next to the vault was not a very wise tactical move - the lack of ‘fair’ battles has been a factor of poor camp placement and our strategic tile decisions, not opportunity - our allied camps were widely spaced, It was camp placement by camp David that made it easy (and necessary) to get 2 camps into contact. I think part of the war game was absolutely to get alliances to function. If we had wanted to pile onto someone then we would have located both camps an equal distance from the alley. In fact we put both in neutral space and then found that the alley dumped a proxy a few tiles from our camp. Your characterisation of this bears no resemblance to what actually happened. - we have never asked darth to do anything. Again that is simply a misrepresentation. Darth is his own force of nature and the only negotiation we have had with him has been around not creating antagonistic borders. - the chronic misunderstanding of a proposal that significantly gave a time slot advantage to the defender (4 out of 6 possible scenarios giving the defender their open hours, the remaining 2 giving them the closest available slots to their open hours and none making them play in their not available period) is just odd. I don’t think anyone actually read it - and nobody has come up with the slightest response to the inherent time bias that accrues to the US. Frankly... given the incredible, mildly offensive, pile of conjecture and misrepresentation in that post I would venture to suggest that the best response would be to set the baseball bat mutie on you. Implying a whole raft of, obviously untrue, motivations and actions to people doesn’t magically become ok if you write that you weren’t implying the things you were at the end in bold text. There are some decent points in there about how the map fails to function entirely as intended... but when you wrap them up in so much factually inaccuracy and misguided conjecture it detracts from the point. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 12:21 am |
This | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:16 am |
i dont really care about sponsorships, main reason i bought them was so certain players didnt have access to the cr boost and or try to use my economic might by making them pay more, its very hard to consistantly do it i could maybe do it for 2 or 3 more game years if prices on sponsorships stayed the same then id be close to broke, i agree that it seemed rushed to impliment, my concern now is that rules will be changed making all the money i spent of sponsorships be for nothing, i would have most likly only went for 1 sponsorship if it didnt affect a camp war cr boost, i have nothing personally against anyone, but for me its a way to try to fix the bs i see, same players always winning the top prizes, they dont seem to care about having alot of competition, well we have it now with this war. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FireFly Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:47 am |
That's nice goat. I never denied you guys have been playing the system well, nor did I ever defend anything about the decisions Camp David made. In fact I've criticized it. Joel and Krak's positions are not all the same as mine, even if you can't see that.
I'm a bit sad you'd that entire post as a personal attack. However surely you must see how it looks when the prominent vault members join spankys camp and vice verca after spanky jokes about dropping his newly bought CR on the alley in combination with bill... How else to take it? Nevertheless, I don't care about intentions, I care about the system that allows this. My comments were fairly focused on the obvious upcoming situation and how misguided I think the CR system currently is. Especially in regards to the same players joining multiple camps and fame mostly being based on paying dw $'s. I also pointed out how the same situation applies to longoville/the embassy, albeit in a less extreme fashion. Finally for the love of tank guns goat, stop telling people who sam is/isn't going to punish. If he thinks it is worth the hammer then so be it, but don't you realize you speaking for him to this degree is why several people don't trust his objectivity as a game master? Whilst I still do, I don't think putting him in that position is fair. Gonna try that sleep thing again and probably fail. If you want a more specific response to your points we can do that after Sam makes things clear. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:55 am |
at the risk of getting smacked by baseball bat mutie boy, if i didnt buy sponsorships up and apply it to cr boost in a war, someone else would have imo, gives the baseball bat boy a dirty look
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FireFly Posted Jun 9, 2020, 2:02 am |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 3:51 am |
Firefly is Jordan peterson.. who knew
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 9, 2020, 5:16 am |
No, I wouldn't add something like that without agreement. Joel forgot to add his character to his car, in that instance (from what I can make out in the server log). i didnt see it so i dont really know, but if a player for another players camp can forget to add gangers or worse do it on purpose (and im not saying thats the case here at all) but in the future it could pop up again, why was the fight cancelled or was it a auto loss or whatever happened, this just makes me wonder about anyone i dont know well ever putting cars in my camp war squad if it means they make a mistake and my camp suffers for it, very very unfair imo if tile was won because of this. perhaps warning popups should be given so this doesnt ever happen again. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 7:01 am |
If you think me reminding Joel about the things He discussed, in person, as possible consequences for things he was doing is me telling him what Sam ‘will’ do you really are not following this at all. If you are referring to me gently reminding you about the baseball bat mutant when you have just posted a long veiled ad hominem attack, riddled with inaccuracies, masquerading as comment in a thread that is supposed to be about constructive comment then I just despair. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 9, 2020, 7:52 am |
eagarly starts eating popcorn while watching the baseball bat mutie boy | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*sam* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 9:06 am |
Thanks for the post, Firefly. It's always good to get opinion from extra people, especially those not directly involved (yet).
The man with the bat shifts his feet almost imperceptibly and looks content. He grunts gently and softly smacks his bat against his open hand, however. We're not sure why.
This is a fair point. We never would have got a proper test without having it running properly, though. Our numbers are low. Also, note that very little has been lost so far other than hexes. The amount of hardware and characters lost is minimal.
No, this isn't the intention. However it's early days and there is still plenty of free space to grab, so it's not exactly unexpected. Around SS, where space has run out quick, however, it does look like everyone has made non aggression pacts. Not the intention, but ok IMO. More resources have still to be placed, which will increase the attractiveness of war. Also, a bunch of well armed neighbours with tenuous truces is fine with me. Hopefully a spark will land in that powder keg at some stage... And in the meantime, I think it may be a good thing if there isn't all-out war raging all across the map. That wouldn't be sustainable. I'd much rather it became a political game with occasional wars breaking out.
Fair points - these are things that need to be discussed.
I'm not sure it's as clear cut as you say. In any case, (a) yes, wars are won on wallets, and (b) the resources on the tiles can and will be tweaked. It could actually be argued the reverse way -- isn't it good that something not directly coming from the hexes can be a big influence? - this is a factor which mitigates against big camps from dominating in an untouchable way - which is very much part of what we're trying to achieve.
Yes, this was intentional. We want to create a political meta-game which is even more meta than the hex tactics. That's war. However, yes - your points are good about weaker camps (or groups of camps) being in impossible to win situations. Foregone conclusions aren't good in games.
As above, that's just fine. Camps with very strong alliances seems entirely reasonable to me. In addition, there's literally no way to design a game to be different to that. You can't force friends to fight or force them not to play a politically clever game. At least, not without my mutie friend relieving them of a vast amount of brain cells with his bat. But I'd need to get legal advice before trying that.
Fair point (well, it's the same point you made above, but it's still a fair one).
Your points on balance do make sense (a lot more sense than using miniscule font sizes). Giving extra tactical control to the defender may be a help. Tweaking the CR attenuation (so it drops off faster over distance) will also help a retreating camp from being squashed so easily. The numbers have always been there to tweak -- the decision at the last meetings though was that we needed to wait and see how things are playing out before doing that.
Fair point (I refer to you final, invisibly small text, which is the most important bit.. please come and take a look at this page when you're in your 40s and see what you think of tiny text). Again my answer is that it doesn't mean the underlying system is unworkable -- numbers are tweakable -- CR allowable per player in a battle versus overall CR size of battle is critical here, and very easy for me to change.
This is mostly why I think it's reasonable to automatically give the win to a side with a large CR advantage. In conclusion.. we're basically 3 turns or so into a brand-new boardgame, so it's entirely to be expected that it's not perfectly balanced. The underlying systems are hopefully solid enough that number tweaking will sort things out. I believe this to be the case, since there are a lot of numbers in the camp wars and interlocking game systems. Getting agreement on those changes though... might need assistance of my mutant buddy here (j/k) |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ShotGun Jolly Posted Jun 9, 2020, 12:39 pm |
Sam,
I say this from the outside looking in. And please take this with a grain of salt. But this camp wars is so far out of wack, that I have ZERO interest in playing in it (in its current state). I have spoke to several camp owners, and they have all agreed not to fight each other and just take resources from the hexs around them to allow their camps to grow. That wont change anytime soon either. So, you can forget that. And with the amount of arguing and toxicity which I have read here, and what I see in the client. I have even LESS desire to engage in out of game dealings and  olitical: back room conversations with making pacts or agreements with other players. In fact it makes me want me to play solo even MORE.
Another point is real estate. I have read, and its been told to me several times that there are maybe a few spots left to really build a camp.. No other spots are really left. So, what happens if this really takes off and more people want to get involved? As a developer, how do you envision new players actually getting involved in Camp Wars? I have read many of the peoples points, I have read many of the peoples responses. And I think that Firefire's observations are very valid. So far, these wars, the main people who are active, are the same people who have been around for years, and got the resources ready to use. Or people who have been gifted camps from others, to allow them to get involved. So we all know, that the gifted camps are going to be allied to the actual owner. Which leads to the hoarding of resources and the lack of PvP. My opinion, I think that if you want to be in a camp war, you should have to build you war camp from scratch, which is separate from leagues, sponsorship's, etc.(After all this is a WAR CAMP bent on destruction, not take the towns people out of picnics and walks in the parks) I think a war camp could maybe be run something like a Scav gang (separate gang log in). Where its kinda separate from everyone else, and you can only interact with other war camp players. So, maybe warcamp players can have discounted prices on war camps construction costs? Or a camp war player gets a very basic, small tiny camp randomly placed to start which they can grow. And if its like a scav gang, well then they can THEN try to get sponsorship's that way.. bidding wars at the very beginning will be much lower in costs, as camp war players do not have the millions on millions of dollars sitting idle in their accounts. Maybe If you build a war camp near in a region with a city, you need to be on somewhat good terms with that city or be under a consistent attack from their forces. Anyhow, I have said my two cents worth to day. I will sit back and wait for the flamethrowers to burn me. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:29 pm |
As has been mentioned, this is an idea in early stages. As everything that has ever happened in this game it is only properly tested once it is in the community, as only then can you really get the full grasp of what might play out.
At present there is no need to take part in any of this, and normal game play can continue as before (from what I understand reading all the forums here anyway, Im not in communication with sam myself). As I understand it there are still plenty of places to still build a camp, plots for camps are still being sold. I wouldn't pay too much attention to any bickering or arguing. Its the same people that always do. And they are the same people that test the waters and end up nutting a lot of this stuff out. There has always been an element of politics involved with the game and from my pov, you can always take and leave any part of it as you please. Organising a race league win can be one of the most politicised events here. As sam states above, there is no way of preventing these things from happening. Players will make their choices. PvP should not be something to be afraid of. Theres danger for your characters and gear in any aspect of this game, including racing stock cars around the most simple of tracks, death can come in an instant. The reason we have Darkwind is because the developer stuck to his guns and designed the game he wanted to make, the way he wanted to make it. This is a just another new idea to add to this great game, that we all love to play. Its because its such a small and involved community where we all feel that we have such connection to the developer in some way that the bickering occurs. We all want our attentions met. We all want our ideas focused on before others because we feel we might be listened to and can inact change. "Didn't want this POS crap! I wanted this. TOLD you it wouldn't WORK! YOU wasted your time and shoulda done the thing I said! IVE spent the last 1000 hours of MY game time making sure I proved that to you" Says the 3 guys with more time playing this game than anyone else, who have dominated it for years through their politics. Meanwhile I ignore them and just have my own fun. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ShawnFireDragon coldmolasses@live.ca Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:37 pm |
 Hands Bastille his boot flask as he steps down from his soapbox.
"Well spoken brother" grinning "DarkWind is a great game and we roll with the punches as it develops." |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*sam* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 1:58 pm |
Of course, no worries.. (nearly) all opinions are valid.
That's ok, I think. Like I said above, all-out carnage isn't sustainable anyway. Sooner or later one of them will decide to go on a crusade against another.
I get that. Toxicity isn't pleasant to get involved in. I've met most of the 'main' players IRL or in video chat, and they're all good guys. A big-stakes meta-game is bound to cause trouble, and would do even if it were perfectly designed and balanced.
There are lots of good spots left. I envision them getting involved initially as hired guns.. helping out camp(s) and receiving juicy benefits. I envision them getting involved in logistics and supply, if that is what floats their boat. Join a camp as a contributor. Then finally, perhaps buy their own camp and get involved, around the edges at first. What I *don't* envision is them realistically expecting to wade straight in as a big player in Evan.. I think this is the point that some people are missing. We're trying to create not just a late-game meta for the most powerful, but a whole set of related activities and indeed a career path for newer players in the system; giving them something of the meta to work towards and get gradually more involved in. Something more meaningful than just beating up pirates. If some newish player really wanted a pvp camp, I'd recommend they find a bigger camp to ally with, and locate fairly close to it. It isn't rocket science. They just shouldn't expect to be able to compete immediately with the big players. Not possible and not even what we want. Harry explained this point well a couple of times: no, the camp wars meta-game isn't balanced, and we don't want it to be. This isn't a boardgame, it's an MMO. People need to realise that being the top dog isn't the only victory condition. Being a small player who, against the odds, affects Evan-wide events, is a victory condition too. You set your own victory conditions - it's what makes long-running online games fun. A totally balanced playing field would be (a) boring and homegenous, (b) unrealistic, and (c) totally unworkable since we can't throw away the rights of the big players - which they have earned - the rights to be the strongest. Want to be a strong player too? Fine, go and earn it.
Yes, many of them are. Like I told him, I think pretty much all of them are fixable with number tweaking.
Maybe so; we'll see. Certainly the camp wars haven't *reduced* Pvp. ;-)
I don't agree with that. Everything is interlinked, and should be. What's important is to have a nuanced game where players can play in different styles and do the things they find fun within a bigger world context.
Again, I don't agree with that. The camp wars adds meaning to other things.. it makes all those $ which players have gathered useful, it gives them a reason to want more Firetrucks. Separating it out into a different, unconnected game isn't the right thing to do IMO.
Thanks. No flamethrowers from me. I cannot speak for this enigmatic chap with the baseball bat though. I didn't invite him in here BTW, he followed me in. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Ninesticks* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 6:11 pm |
+1 Bastille and Sam. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 10:26 pm |
I have just had a nice chat with Firefly (who is nothing like Jordan Petersen and is really quite a decent chap). We agreed that keeping this discussion constructive means:
1) generalising where possible rather than using he did / she did type arguments 2) where you need to illustrate with a specific example stick to mechanics - if you attribute motive or speculate on things you could not possibly know then that is likely to devolve into mud slinging. I am as guilty of not doing the above as other people.. and for that i apologise. now stand down the mutant and lets talk about mechanics. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 9, 2020, 10:37 pm |
So....
I think we need to agree principles that make it possible to say whether the game mechanic is working properly. I'm not sure we all have a shared understanding of what we are trying to achieve. I'm going to suggest some - without saying whether i think they happen now or suggesting what i think would work - and people can agree or dispute them. 1 and 2 are about the the game mechanics, the rest are about playability. 1. it should get harder to control territory the further from your own camp you are. 2. the closer to your camp you get the easier defending a tile should be. 3. Cooperative play should be encouraged by the game mechanic 4. camp wars events should not make the game overly time consuming. 5. Scheduling should be done in a way that finds the best compromise for both parties - favouring the defender where there is no clear match. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Valiance Posted Jun 9, 2020, 10:41 pm |
Who are you and what have you done with goat? :-)
But yes, discussing mechanics is way better :-) And weirdly, I found myself doing my first courier delivery for a player this week. Maybe Sam is onto something after all. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FireFly Posted Jun 9, 2020, 11:24 pm |
The sweet sweet taste of... reconciliation?! I can agree with the goat on most of these points. I'm sure the bickering about details will come, so lets keep it chilli. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*sam* Posted Jun 10, 2020, 6:10 am |
That's a fine post, thanks for that! I think you've captured a lot of the high level points well. Of particular importance IMO is rewarding long term play and established power bases while avoiding utterly unassailable positions.. a determined newer player should be able to (slowly) rise to prominence. I guess it's neither game mechanic nor playability but rather a broad philosophy, and perhaps not even within the remit you were capturing here. Very important to keep in mind, though. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*goat starer* Posted Jun 10, 2020, 7:52 am |
Yep... I think the points about it being much easier to defend close to.camp.than far away need to make that happen. There is a tricky balance between making it reasonably easy to nibble the edges of an empire and hard to strike its heart. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
darthspanky Posted Jun 10, 2020, 10:46 am |
McSpankys Bank Director pipes in
"hes off to a good start on making it hard to get tho spent 23 mil to get 3 sponsorships, that wasnt easy to get. and still didnt get a cut of raising the other bids from ss bank, cheap bastages". behind the director, 2 burly long toothed klingon looking mutants trying to hold back a double chained rabid mutant midget that give a dirty look to bat boy. 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
*Bastille* Posted Jun 10, 2020, 1:44 pm |
Lots of mutants in here, my kinda place...
I have to apologies to Firefly here to be fair. This was not meant to be a personal insult. I like chilli |