Rogue Judges

[Dante Silverfire]

And yes, banning an entire realm doesn't accomplish much but pissing off the players. They will just rejoin the realm and kick the judge out. It just resets everyone's number of days in the realm category.

Except if the judge's power play works in a legitimate manner. If he bans say 1/3rd the realm and keeps his friends, then it wasn't even abuse.

There is one problem with the whole intra-realm conflict idea. You can do it to a certain extent but BM is trying to promote the idea of a realm as a team which has somewhat dwindled over the years.

And the problem with that is its not as fun.

[Tom]

Here's the thing about sandbox and using the game mechanics to its max:

BattleMaster is a game designed to be played among friends. It's even in the social contract.

To me, one of the things that means is not being a rules lawyer. If you find a loophole in Monopoly that allows you some arcane maneuver that the game designers didn't think about and a creative interpretation of the rules allows you to, say, remove everyone's hotels, then in a competitive game, you will have a big argument about which interpretation is right and someone will win and then someone will call up the game designers so they can clarify the rules, etc. etc. etc. - but in a game with friends, everyone will look at each other for a brief moment, everyone will laugh at your creativity and then everyone will silently agree that that's crazy and not in the spirit of the game and go on playing with their hotels intact.


The thing about a sandbox is that it requires the game designers to think about EVERYTHING IN ADVANCE. And design absolutely everything in the game to perfection.

If BM would provide me with an income comparable to my profession, we could talk about that. As it doesn't, it is a hobby shared amongst friends and not a sandbox in this particular sense.

[Scarlett]

The thing is, there wasn't very much actual damage done.

Every region lord lost his appointment. Every knight lost his estate. Our army attacked itself. Every noble will have to rejoin Cathay (not hard), travel to wherever their estate was and re-claim it (time-consuming) and get assigned to the army again, and they'll also have their 'time in realm' reset with respect to voting in elections (annoying).

Some of our newer players are confused and don't understand how this is possible. Probably because it makes no sense.

I didn't open a case with the Titans and I don't think Seperoth 'cheated' in the sense of 'the game clearly doesn't allow this and you found a way to do it.' I think he did something I would never in a hundred years think of to do if I were in his place. Game mechanics support game play. Game play for me is playing a medieval king. That's a pretty big system and it's full of avenues for plotting and doing damage to other people. What has happened does not make sense in the context of that system.

It's like spitting and refusing to shake hands at the end of a sports match. The dude already 'won' - he got away with his scheme. This move doesn't enhance the scheme at all - it just makes the whole thing sour.

I didn't report it to the Titans because I can imagine this very thing years ago when I was a Titan and the level of headache-y conversation it would require. What outcome would I be asking for, exactly? If all the bans could've been lifted before they went into effect, that would've been good, but it's already too late for that and Titans don't usually do stuff like that. Tom already made a change to prevent this from happening again and I'm grateful for the speed with which this was addressed. I think it's worth considering to let a brand new judge lift a ban right away - the comments of 'oh you can protest a judge out of office' are true but the new judge cannot possibly take office fast enough to undo the damage:

Turn 1: Judge bans everybody
Turn 2: Everybody protests
Turn 3: Judge is protested out of office and new judge appointed (unless you have elections - fuggedaboutit)

New judge can't lift bans until turn 5 - too late.

I guess I know which of you I'd play monopoly with now.

[Tom]

I think it's worth considering to let a brand new judge lift a ban right away -

The problem is that the delay is there for a reason, there are other abuses possible without one. It could be an idea to stay bans if the judge is removed from office to give his successor time to check on them. That would not be too difficult, simply adding 1 day grace period to all bannings that have not yet gone into effect.

Would that solve the issue?

[Scarlett]

It would definitely alleviate the issue considerably. It sounds like a balancing act, and given that, a one day delay for a Judge that has been removed would help quite a lot.

[egamma]

This is a PvP game.

Wrong. This is an RvR game--Realm versus Realm. Let's review the homepage:

BattleMaster is a team-oriented browsergame merging strategy and roleplaying.
...
you are a member of a team from the start, and don't have to start out on your own.

There's plenty of other quotes I can provide, but Battlemaster is not intended to be PvP.

[Velax]

I think you're confusing "wrecking everyone's experience" and "used the power at his character's disposal to achieve what his character wanted". As long as it was IC, there is nothing wrong with using game mechanics to achieve your goal, even if there are other people who find themselves at the wrong end of the stick.

Erm, no. If the developer of the game calls it an abuse and an exploit, and has to actually change the mechanics of the game to prevent this happening again, I'd say there most certainly is something wrong.

The Thulsoma clanners abusing family gold to rack up thousands (tens of thousands?) of gold used existing game mechanics, too. Are you claiming there was nothing wrong with that either, because they "used game mechanics to achieve their goal"?

As Tom has already said, no game developer can foresee every possible way someone will use the mechanics of the game. To an extent he has to rely on the good nature of the players to not take advantage of a mechanic and use it in a way that was obviously not intended. Unfortunately there will always be those players who willfully ignore what the tiniest modicum of decency, common sense and a sense of fair play would tell them is wrong and abuse mechanics to gain an advantage over everyone else.

[Bedwyr]

The problem is that the delay is there for a reason, there are other abuses possible without one. It could be an idea to stay bans if the judge is removed from office to give his successor time to check on them. That would not be too difficult, simply adding 1 day grace period to all bannings that have not yet gone into effect.

Would that solve the issue?

Yes, that would seem to make a great deal of sense, and still allows all the political intrigue you want assuming you can keep yourself in power.

[Tom]

Yes, that would seem to make a great deal of sense, and still allows all the political intrigue you want assuming you can keep yourself in power.

Then someone needs to write a feature request for the bugtracker, or else it will be forgotten.

[Dante Silverfire]

Wrong. This is an RvR game--Realm versus Realm. Let's review the homepage:

Actually you're also wrong though.

This is a team oriented game but no where is it defined that this team means the "realm."

In fact, under the most current estate rules of the game, I would interpret team to mean "your liege and your vassals" as your team. This means that knights should obviously be on the team of their lord and whatever team their lord decides to place them on. All lords should be on the team of their duke, and whatever team their duke decides to place them on. All dukes should be on the team of their ruler, which effectively ties them to the realm. However, this system allows political intrigue to occur. No where does it say that each duke is on the team of the other dukes in the realm. The dukes can all compete against each other to be ruler, and thus enlarge their team while also not wanting to harm their realm as that is the team they'll inherit.

The same applies to knights. Each knight should primarily seek to impress their lord as they'd be competing against their fellow knights for the lord's support for a lordship of their own. This leads them to obviously want to support their lord but not necessarily anyone else in their realm.

The application applied to lords is the most interesting in that the lords bring all their knights to the team of their duke and while they want to show loyalty to their duke in order to curry favor, they should compete against the other lords for the chance at Dukedoms or higher lordships. But, they can also change dukes and thus change teams if they feel it improves their chances of "winning" in either gaining power or positioning themselves or their knights to greater influence. However, they risk creating a bad view of themselves if they abandon oaths easily.

The ruler is the only one whose team is their realm. They should thus seek to maintain their team by enlarging the realm and growing the power and strength of their team overall as it builds their own strength and maintains the good will of their people.

[mikm]

Why not allow  the ruler to remove bans and fines the judge may have issued without his consent?

[Dante Silverfire]

Why not allow  the ruler to remove bans and fines the judge may have issued without his consent?

Why even have a judge?

[Draco Tanos]

Why even have a judge?

For the same reason as historical monarchs:  To alleviate the responsibilities of the Crown.  It is delegation at its finest.

[Dante Silverfire]

For the same reason as historical monarchs:  To alleviate the responsibilities of the Crown.  It is delegation at its finest.

I mean in the game. We're purposely not realistic.

[Perth]

Wrong. This is an RvR game--Realm versus Realm. Let's review the homepage:

There's plenty of other quotes I can provide, but Battlemaster is not intended to be PvP.

That's a very silly distinction. Regardless of whether you play "on a team" or not the game is still Player v. Player because you are playing and competing against other human beings. The "PvP' label is meant to distinguish games in which you play against other people from games in which you play against a computer AI.

Hence many mainstream/commercial MMO games have "PvP" areas where players can fight/kill each other, but the core of the game is doing premade quests, etc. in which you fight AI enemies and such. Thus, the areas where you play against other human beings have to be labeled "PvP". Battlemaster is always a PvP game pretty much unless you're off clearing off some monsters or undead or something.