Fifth Invasion

[Anaris]

When there's something like mortality, there is a dev server, no?  Besides, the invader units were overpowered.  That is something that should have been tested out before mortality was activated as well.

Testing massive battles in realistic situations on the dev server is vastly easier said than done.

I mean, sure, we could gather together all the troops of 2 or 3 realms in a single region and dump thousands and thousands of Daimons in the region with them, and watch what happens.

But that will not tell us anything about how overpowered they are, because that depends extremely strongly on just how good the humans are at banding together and getting their forces in the same place at the same time.

[Geronus]

But that will not tell us anything about how overpowered they are, because that depends extremely strongly on just how good the humans are at banding together and getting their forces in the same place at the same time.

Huh? How so?

The daimon and monster invader units of the last invasion were *immensely* overpowered. It would not have taken much in the way of testing to determine this. I have always assumed that they were this way because they were meant to be overpowering. If you're trying to argue that they were *not* overpowered then, well, I'm sorry but I do not agree. The above scenario suggests that you were trying to balance them with the expectation that a certain (smaller) number of invaders should be able to go toe to toe with a certain (larger) number of humans. This was a poor approach to balancing the invaders of the Fourth Invasion however because of their number.

Not only were they overpowered, they were numberless, which in the end was the real problem. With the monsters you could sometimes beat an army of them. Same with the undead. Not so much with the daimons from what I understand). However it didn't really do any good; in fact it was usually pointless. The commanders would simply recruit thousands and thousands more of them overnight. I've heard it said that the invaders had limited resources, but you'll pardon me if I scoff at this notion. All evidence suggests that they were not even remotely constrained by these 'limits', so they weren't very well adjusted, were they? When the daimons could raise literally hundreds of thousands of CS (more than all the realms of BT put together) by themselves, let alone in conjunction with the other invaders, there might as well have been no limits at all.

[Anaris]

The daimon and monster invader units of the last invasion were *immensely* overpowered. It would not have taken much in the way of testing to determine this. I have always assumed that they were this way because they were meant to be overpowering.

Here's another important point:

The devs, as a body, were not directly involved in the preparations for the invasion.  Some of the devs were among the GMs, but not all were, and some (like me) didn't become GMs until much later in the invasion.  Also, not all the GMs were devs.

Not only did I, personally, not have the chance to test Tom's code for the monsters, undead, and Daimons before the invasion began, I certainly had no idea what his intentions were for them.

If you're trying to argue that they were *not* overpowered then, well, I'm sorry but I do not agree.

No, not at all.  I'm simply trying to explain that attempting to manage fine balance issues (as opposed to gross balance issues ) with the dev server can be maddeningly difficult.

The above scenario suggests that you were trying to balance them with the expectation that a certain (smaller) number of invaders should be able to go toe to toe with a certain (larger) number of humans. This was a poor approach to balancing the invaders of the Fourth Invasion however because of their number.

Nope. I have no idea what tests Tom might have run with the invaders on the dev server, but he didn't tell me about them.

[Chenier]

Isn't it impossible to emigrate to Beluaterra during the Invasion?

The list you give probably also includes a lot of deaths before things were patched up, mortality rates were turned down afterwards. If mortality rates are adjusted, it could provide excitement. Do we need to see 2-5 Nobles die every battle? No, with the amount of battles, that will simply go very quick. But a Noble dying here and there because he was faced by gigantic Daimons or decided to do a suicide run could really add to the Invasion feel.

About people quitting the game, was that really a substantial amount? Who all quitted especially because Beluaterra had mortality? There are plenty of Islands without Mortality, and there was plenty of warning that Mortality was coming to Beluaterra. It wasn't really a big surprise.

The death rate before the tweak was insanely high in Enweil. After the tweak, it still remained pretty high.

A week's notice, besides, it completely worthless. It's an ultimatum: stay and risk losing everything, or emigrate and be sure to lose everything. In a game that focuses around interactions, deaths mean a pretty big deal because it cuts for good all ties between two chracters. And when it's a lightweight game like this, it can mean years to reestablish these conntections.

Since these deaths, I've found myself working with mostly the same people all the time... and against the same, too. It brought great staleness.

As for "how many left?", checking through the player list is way too long and grueling, but of the 27 families that lost a character to the monsters I know of, only 8 are still on BT. 70.35% of the families who lost a noble no longer play on BT. And I suspect that most of them are gone from the game completely.

Also, though this in not quantifiable, I know that at least a few players left the game without having lost any nobles on BT, because having all the characters they played with die like that killed the game for them.

Death is lots of "fun" when it happens to others, is what I'd say. It's "exciting" when in happens in far-away lands. It's just "atmosphere", after all.

If people wanted to die, then we'd have a lot more heroes running around. But we don't. What we have is a bunch of people who like *others* to die, hoping they can enhirit of the spoils without consideration to how little to enherit might be left in the end.

[Indirik]

of the 27 families that lost a character to the monsters I know of, only 8 are still on BT. 70.35% of the families who lost a noble no longer play on BT. And I suspect that most of them are gone from the game completely.

You are half correct.

First, two of the characters you have listed are actually the same character: "Adair Acies" and "Dux Ducis". The character's full name was "Adair Acies Dux Ducis". (http://battlemaster.org/UserDetails.php?ID=1567) So let's call it 26 characters dead.

Of the families you listed 8 of them do indeed still have active characters on BT. Which was part of the point of the invasion: To reduce the population on BT and move it over to other islands. Also, people do tend to move around, and the death of a character is a logical time to select a different island. Not everyone is dedicated to playing on a specific island.

However, "most of them are gone" is incorrect. 18 of them still have active characters. So ~70% of them still play.

Three more of the accounts still exist, but have paused the last of their characters in the past couple months. So I would actually call it 21 of the 26 families survived the invasion, and kept playing. Bringing us up to ~80%.

In reality, since we don't know *when* the rest of them quit, claiming that they quit because they had a non-hero character that died during the invasion just cannot be supported. They may have, but we don't know. It may not even have had anything to do with that character, their realm, or even BT.

But even if we assume that all 5 of them did quit specifically because they had a non-hero character die during the invasion, then that's 5 out of 26. Or less than 20%.

[Chenier]

You are half correct.

First, two of the characters you have listed are actually the same character: "Adair Acies" and "Dux Ducis". The character's full name was "Adair Acies Dux Ducis". (http://battlemaster.org/UserDetails.php?ID=1567) So let's call it 26 characters dead.

Of the families you listed 8 of them do indeed still have active characters on BT. Which was part of the point of the invasion: To reduce the population on BT and move it over to other islands. Also, people do tend to move around, and the death of a character is a logical time to select a different island. Not everyone is dedicated to playing on a specific island.

However, "most of them are gone" is incorrect. 18 of them still have active characters. So ~70% of them still play.

Three more of the accounts still exist, but have paused the last of their characters in the past couple months. So I would actually call it 21 of the 26 families survived the invasion, and kept playing. Bringing us up to ~80%.

In reality, since we don't know *when* the rest of them quit, claiming that they quit because they had a non-hero character that died during the invasion just cannot be supported. They may have, but we don't know. It may not even have had anything to do with that character, their realm, or even BT.

But even if we assume that all 5 of them did quit specifically because they had a non-hero character die during the invasion, then that's 5 out of 26. Or less than 20%.

27 dead. 26 families, if you want: one family in the list lost two characters. Damn that long name, though, I'll fix my list.

"Most are gone" from BT. I did not say most had quit the game, though I've had anectdotal evidence of people leaving because of they lost characters or (mostly) because everyone else around them died (because, mostly, I never heard of those who died again).

As for the rest of your numbers, I don't understand them. Please tell me where you got them from and what they represent.

Indeed, though, we can't statistically say how many people quit because of mortality. But there is more than just quitting completely, too, there's non-renewment of characters. I can imagine some players, once their BT char is lost, would not create a new one, and would just wait for their time to end with the other characters, thereby gradually playing less and less characters until they leave completely. I don't have access to all of their family pages (if you can link them easily, please do), but I seem to remember having noticed that with some of these families. After all, if BT dies during this invasion, I myself might keep playing Machiavel for a while, but if something was ever to happen there, I'd probably finish it up then.

It's also impossible to determine why these people did not return to BT. Perhaps they were just waiting for an opportunity to leave. Perhaps they had sworn to themselves "never again".

As for the goal of the invasion, why would you want to move population away from BT? It already had among the lowests (if not THE lowest, if you disregard unclaimed regions) noble density of all continents. If anything, we should have moved some AT and EC people to BT, and not the other way around.

[Indirik]

"Most are gone" from BT. I did not say most had quit the game,

"70.35% of the families who lost a noble no longer play on BT. And I suspect that most of them are gone from the game completely."

(My emphasis.)

...I don't know how else to interpret that.

though I've had anectdotal evidence of people leaving because of they lost characters or (mostly) because everyone else around them died (because, mostly, I never heard of those who died again).

Quite possible. It's also possible that many people who had characters in Mesh/Heen/DoA/Hetland/etc. also quit the game because their entire realm got destroyed. I don't ht ink that means that we need to ensure that all realms survive the invasion.

As for the rest of your numbers, I don't understand them. Please tell me where you got them from and what they represent.

You listed 27 characters. Two were the same one. So that's really 26 families. 18 of those families still play BattleMaster actively. i.e. still have active, unpaused characters.

Of the remaining 8 missing families, 3 of those accounts still exist, but all their characters paused within the past few months. Therefore, I consider these accounts to have "survived the invasion". i.e. the loss of their character to the invasion did not cause them to quit the game.

That leaves only 5 of the 26 accounts you listed as being gone from the game. So, at most, you can claim that 5 of the 26 accounts you listed quit due to losing characters in the invasion. The data does not support that conclusion for the remaining 21 families. The 3 paused-but-still-existing accounts may have just stopped playing due to lack of interest in the game due to a dead BT character, but there is no data to support that conclusion.

I'm not sure what else needs explaining. If something is still not clear, can you quote the specific number you don't understand, so I can try to explain it?

I can imagine ...

I can imagine a lot of things, too. Like their computer died and they couldn't remember their password. Or they all restarted under new family names, so as to get a clean break, or the player just plain died. We can both theorize anything we want. But since neither of us have any data at all to support our conclusions...

It's also impossible to determine why these people did not return to BT. Perhaps they were just waiting for an opportunity to leave. Perhaps they had sworn to themselves "never again".

Sure. You could also say the same thing about any number of players who refuse to play on AT. Or EC. Or the Colonies... etc.

As for the goal of the invasion, why would you want to move population away from BT?

The dev team is aware of the game trends. The shrinking player base meant that the remaining players simply cannot inhabit the entirety of the game lands available. This brings the idea to shrink the available lands to increase the character density of the remaining lands. Hence: The blight. Beluaterra is the only place this can really happen. It is the invasion island. None of the other islands have the background to be able to support an invasion. As much as any player may like or dislike any individual island, we have to stick with the expectations that are the basis for each individual island. BT is the invasion island. AT/EC is not. So BT gets invaded, and AT/EC do not.


Edit ... too many distractions leads to screwed up formatting...

[Silverhawk]

All those names are linked to Enweil in some way or another. Another explenation could be that it's the realm .

Nah, now serius, BT always had a higher number of people quiting then other continents to my experience. (My opinion, no facts available to me to back it up). The reason, I think, is that people get emitionaly attached not only to a char but more to a realm. Beluaterra is the place where most realms die.

Also, many of these people that quit could have already been on the edge of contineuing or quiting. The death of their char could have pushed them over but so could any other in game reason.

[Meneldur]

I do think Chenier has a point about the downsides of character mortality. Unless you have multiple characters on the continent or have spent years establishing your family as a integral part of your realm, losing a character and having to emigrate a new one essentially means having to start completely from scratch. While older Beluaterra players may not mind this, to those of us like myself who have just established a character here on what seems to be a pretty awesome and interesting continent the prospect is significantly less enchanting.

Sure losing a character in an epic battle to the death against daimonic hordes may be a fun way to experience your first Beluaterra invasion, but unless said character is a very longstanding and well known realm member they're death is likely to go relatively unnoticed so there is little incentive to go back and claw your way up the social ladder again knowing your past experience of the continent counts for naught in the long term.

[Geronus]

I do think Chenier has a point about the downsides of character mortality. Unless you have multiple characters on the continent or have spent years establishing your family as a integral part of your realm, losing a character and having to emigrate a new one essentially means having to start completely from scratch. While older Beluaterra players may not mind this, to those of us like myself who have just established a character here on what seems to be a pretty awesome and interesting continent the prospect is significantly less enchanting.

Sure losing a character in an epic battle to the death against daimonic hordes may be a fun way to experience your first Beluaterra invasion, but unless said character is a very longstanding and well known realm member they're death is likely to go relatively unnoticed so there is little incentive to go back and claw your way up the social ladder again knowing your past experience of the continent counts for naught in the long term.

And in any case if you *want* your character to have an epic death in battle, that's what the bloody hero class is for. It's not like players can't choose to be mortal if they want to be. In my opinion they should continue to be allowed to make the choice for themselves rather than have it forced on them.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

But it's also a fact that players do not get the right to choose where they play. So if we are speaking only about the strict sense of the rules, then if mortality means a bunch of people are turned off, that's not a problem with the game but the players, as it has always been clear that you do not have the right to play on any continent of your choosing, or any realm of your choosing. Often this isn't an issue, but when it is, that, to my knowledge, is the minimum rule.

Since we are all humans, we can argue back and forth blah blah and all that good sparkly nonsense.

[Tom]

How about we wait for the result of the poll and bicker afterwards?

I kind of miss people following every little hint in-game, or the music videos posted (I've posted more) and trying to divine meaning out of it. It has meaning, and I found it very entertaining to follow the clue-hunt. Much more fun than discussing mortality.

[Geronus]

Losing a character is a pretty big deal in a game where you might play the same character for years at a time. I just think there's a certain amount of wisdom in respecting the players' right to decide either a) when they are finished with them, or b) that they are willing to give up some control over the character's fate by choosing the hero class.

Sure BT is a testing island complete with Invasions, but, you know, have some respect for your players and the immense amount of time and effort that they put into the characters they play. I am glad that Tom is leaving it to a referendum. That should be a reasonably fair way to decide the issue, but if you ask me it should be an opt-in.

[Zakilevo]

Are you serious Tom. I don't understand German.... That is one hard ass clue lol. Well from the background picture of the music, it seems like it is something to do with undead? or Maybe the names of the daimon TLs have something to do with it?

P.S never mind. There is a translated version of the lyrics.

[Telrunya]

Werent those posted on Facebook? Someone copy it to here?