BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => BM General Discussion => Topic started by: Tom on August 07, 2013, 03:10:10 AM
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Enable interducal wars and have duchies function as tiny kingdoms within the larger realm.
Everyone on the dev team loves that idea, and has done so for years. Sadly, it would mean massive amounts of code changes to many different parts of the game. It won't happen, sorry. But Might & Fealty is designed from the ground up to allow for warfare on every level, exactly because we all would've loved to have it in BM.
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Island renewal of some kind.
Never, ever going to happen. Wrong game. The whole purpose of this game is to create one persistent history.
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Never, ever going to happen. Wrong game. The whole purpose of this game is to create one persistent history.
I encourage you to rethink this position, and to not consider it at all for Might and Fealty (disclaimer: I do not know much of what is being planned for Might and Fealty). It has worked for a long time, but I think we're approaching a point where some sort of renewal is necessary to inject some life back into the game.
Edit: Worth noting, "renewal" does not mean "reset," or it doesn't have to anyway. The Invasions kept Beluaterra fresh for a long time. Anything that kicks over the anthill periodically would be a good thing for the game, IMO.
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Never, ever going to happen. Wrong game. The whole purpose of this game is to create one persistent history.
*Facepalm*
You are so adamant on your position your ignoring positions that have vague similarities to the one you reject.
No need for a reset. There are other ways. Invasions, for example. Or just systematic changes in rogue coding. Dwilight, for example: a cycle could be made so that one of the mini-continents was always peaking with rogues, the other declining, to drive some constant ebb and flow between them.
Or my idea of rotating continent freezes pushing people into new playing experiences, forced down-time, and long-term scheduled play.
Don't knock ideas because they have the same first letter as "reset." If you really think our ONLY problem is player density then I want what you're smoking. The political structures created by players on many continents ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
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Edit: Worth noting, "renewal" does not mean "reset," or it doesn't have to anyway. The Invasions kept Beluaterra fresh for a long time. Anything that kicks over the anthill periodically would be a good thing for the game, IMO.
The map of real-life Europe has been redrawn many, many times over the centuries. Borders have changed constantly, nations came into being and ceased to exist. None of that happened because a god reached down from the heavens with a big pen. It happened because the "player" actions made it happen.
BM is very much like that. You CAN completely redraw the map of every island. Wait, there's a mistake there. The stress is on the wrong word. It should be YOU can completely redraw the map. You, the players can do this. If things are stagnant then they are so because people who enjoy stagnation have ascended to the dominant positions. Why do you keep electing and supporting them?
There's a massive disconnect between what people complain about and what happens in-game, does anyone notice?
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The political structures created by players on many continents ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Exactly.
If the GMs rip them apart, the players will re-create them. The issue is with how and why these structures exist and are maintained. Figure that out, and you've solved the problem. No amount of coding will do it.
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Exactly.
If the GMs rip them apart, the players will re-create them. The issue is with how and why these structures exist and are maintained. Figure that out, and you've solved the problem. No amount of coding will do it.
...Which is exactly why something needs to periodically upset them and throw things into chaos again. Just because these things inevitably happen does not mean that they're good for the game. As I said before, the Invasions did this perfectly well. There are less demanding alternatives that could suffice to do the same without completely resetting an island, like cranking up the rogue spawns to ridiculous levels for a time until the island is in chaos and realms start falling apart.
There's a massive disconnect between what people complain about and what happens in-game, does anyone notice?
That's because of what Anaris observed in the other thread: A lot of players are sheeple who will simply follow their leaders without question. There is an, observable, well-documented phenomenon in humans wherein a group of humans will generally obey an authority figure even if he is asking them to do things that they would normally never do on their own, even terrible, immoral things. How do you think the Holocaust came to happen?
Look, people have built stable power structures on many islands that are extremely resistant to change. If you think it's so easy to upset the status quo and make things happen, I invite you to make a character on Atamara and try splitting up the Tara-Cagilan Empire federation. In fact, I dare you to. You'll most likely fail miserably, just like everyone else who's been trying for the last few years.
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If you think it's so easy to upset the status quo and make things happen, I invite you to make a character on Atamara and try splitting up the Tara-Cagilan Empire federation. In fact, I dare you to. You'll most likely fail miserably, just like everyone else who's been trying for the last few years.
If you go individually against a power block, it's not a surprise. But if there truly are so many people who dislike the status quo, it should be easy to oppose the alliance with an alliance. I'm not saying everyone is stupid to not have thought of that. I'm saying that you might be underestimating the amount of people who are actually in favour of the current status. That you demean them as sheeple is a good indicator that you don't take that opinion seriously.
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If you go individually against a power block, it's not a surprise. But if there truly are so many people who dislike the status quo, it should be easy to oppose the alliance with an alliance.
We did that, very recently in fact: We assembled an alliance of every non-League of the Eagle realm on the entire island to fight them. And guess what? We still lost. If that doesn't illustrate the futility of trying to change things on Atamara, I don't know what can.
I'm not saying everyone is stupid to not have thought of that. I'm saying that you might be underestimating the amount of people who are actually in favour of the current status. That you demean them as sheeple is a good indicator that you don't take that opinion seriously.
You may be right. That doesn't change the fact that it's not good for the game to let power dynamics on an island stabilize and start to calcify the way they have. What works for a plurality of established players large enough to maintain the status quo is not necessarily good for others, including and especially new players. You end up with a system that favors a few and excludes many, and that is a recipe for long-term decline. And that's exactly why we're in the situation we're in now.
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Please--ONE reply per person. No arguing; just post your own idea.
Edit: so I just finished reporting pretty much all of Tom's posts along with Geronus', Anaris' underneath me and I'm pretty sure I picked one up from Vellos. Jaune has one too and I'm sure I'm missing a name in the list of shame. Oh, to be sure, I'll report my own post too - don't worry.
I just want to say that egamma clearly said no arguing and only one reply per person yet it seems like the jetset of this forum chose to entirely ignore this rule. This makes me angry. Yes, the previous two lines were first typed in caps to simulate my angriness over the internet. Enter a line of all swear words I know in English right.... about.... here.
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Everyone on the dev team loves that idea, and has done so for years.
Please speak for yourself.
At the very least, Rob and I have disliked this idea for some time now. If realms with 100+ nobles were the norm, it might be something to consider. Without that, though, all it does is destroy the realm structure without adding anything that most people in the game really want. Duchies are just too small to be a viable "us" unit, in the "us vs them" of the world.
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The map of real-life Europe has been redrawn many, many times over the centuries. Borders have changed constantly, nations came into being and ceased to exist. None of that happened because a god reached down from the heavens with a big pen. It happened because the "player" actions made it happen.
Not a God, no, but what about raging barbarian hordes? How many times have invaders from outside redrawn the map of Europe?
Furthermore, one of the other major drivers of shifts in the balance of power in the real world is technological advancement. BattleMaster is never going to develop firearms.
Another is succession squabbles. Not only can characters never die in BattleMaster unless they make specific choices that lead to dying, "succession" is handled by a single election, and the worst that happens is that someone who thought they were a better choice (not "knew they were a/the rightful heir") doesn't get picked.
(Actually, I think this last is one of the biggest reasons Atamara is the way it is. With universal mortality and a family structure divorced from the players—so that the son of a character is played by a completely different player, and not one that was hand-picked by the player of the father—succession would ensure regular change in the leadership of every realm in the game.)
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Edit: so I just finished reporting pretty much all of Tom's posts along with Geronus', Anaris' underneath me and I'm pretty sure I picked one up from Vellos. Jaune has one too and I'm sure I'm missing a name in the list of shame. Oh, to be sure, I'll report my own post too - don't worry.
I just want to say that egamma clearly said no arguing and only one reply per person yet it seems like the jetset of this forum chose to entirely ignore this rule. This makes me angry. Yes, the previous two lines were first typed in caps to simulate my angriness over the internet. Enter a line of all swear words I know in English right.... about.... here.
It's an important topic, and not one you get to discuss directly with Tom every day. Important enough in my mind to justify breaking the rule on the thread. Anaris did the right thing by splitting this discussion off.
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It's an important topic, and not one you get to discuss directly with Tom every day. Important enough in my mind to justify breaking the rule on the thread. Anaris did the right thing by splitting this discussion off.
But nobody previously decided it was worth doing so and you wonder why some people think this forum is a festering pool of nothing good? Each of you should have known better. Each of you come here everyday. Don't toss excuses now, Geronus. Just admit guilt. Have some respect for the rules of a topic.
It was a clear example of how a handful of people get to monopolize a thread and then derail it so no regular can follow it. Worst part is, it's all people who you would assume would have known better. Starting with Tom himself, even if this is his own damn forum.
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We did that, very recently in fact: We assembled an alliance of every non-League of the Eagle realm on the entire island to fight them. And guess what? We still lost. If that doesn't illustrate the futility of trying to change things on Atamara, I don't know what can.
Meta concerns over the strength of the Cagilan Empire have been around as long as I can remember. But what you might want to see achieved as a player is not equivalent to what realms work towards in character. Whilst a bloc was gathered to fight a war against the Cagilan Empire and her allies, that isn't what everyone was fighting for. For example, Carelia just wanted a couple of cities. Caergoth and Suville only involved themselves to try and push Carelia out of the southern peninsula. What did they care about far off Cagil? After a while Suville quite understandably decided that an easier path to her ambition would be just to fight Carelia directly rather.
There has never been a homogenous anti-CE block in Atamara and there has never needed to be. There have always been localised wars going on and the strength of the Cagilan bloc has always ebbed and flowed. When I started playing in late 2004, Cagil had just created Carelia after destroying the realm of Lasanar based around Strombran. Tara had forged herself into a massive empire. The Cagilan bloc looked intimidating. Yet over the next couple of years Tara collapsed, Carelia started flip-flopping, Abington became a serious rival. This idea that Cagil has always had it her own way is false. They haven't. Fair enough, they are now the strongest they have been in some years, but there's nothing to say it will stay that way.
I really think everyone is being far, far too harsh on Atamara. Atamara has always been capable of drastic changes and it is not as calcified as everyone is making it out to be. After probably a good five or six years of Darka being a nailed on part of Cagil's every coalition, Darka changed sides. We talk about all the puppet states that Cagil sets up, but Coria turned against her master and was recently replaced by another realm that seems unlikely to toe the Cagilan line. Carelia is a former puppet state of Cagil who also did not toe the line. Suville has the potential to become as strong as her forebear of Abington once was.
I really think that actually, Atamara has the potential to be exciting in the near future. You have a whole host of small realms battling it out in the north. The realms around the southern peninsula will start flexing their muscles again eventually. Everything Silnaria was doing is still up in the air. Meanwhile, Tara and Cagil are probably at the limits of their natural expansion and it seems unlikely that they will fritter away nobles on founding more new realms. There simply isn't the need. We might be in a bit of an ebb after the last great conflict but a conflagration will break out again soon enough. I don't doubt it.
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If you go individually against a power block, it's not a surprise. But if there truly are so many people who dislike the status quo, it should be easy to oppose the alliance with an alliance. I'm not saying everyone is stupid to not have thought of that. I'm saying that you might be underestimating the amount of people who are actually in favour of the current status. That you demean them as sheeple is a good indicator that you don't take that opinion seriously.
I'm sorry Tom, but that is simply not what is happening. As Geronus said it was already tried to oppose an alliance with an allaince of every other realm. That battle was lost.
As to the "sheeple" point. I think it is fair to call people that. Is it demeaning? Sure. Does that make it any less true? Absolutely not.
The fact is that a lot of people enjoy simply making a character and being a yes-man. They hate playing with people that upset the status quo because it forces them to be more active. This creates a cycle in which anyone trying to change things away from the status quo fight an immeasureably more difficult uphill battle. Is it reasonable for them to have to put in effort? Sure. But it shouldn't be impossible. Right now it is 100% impossible to change things on Atamara.
I've spent more time than I care to think on that goal and failed. I was getting close, but frankly having to spend 5 hours a day on BM to simply not get gangbanged into eternity because people have what amounts to essentially an OOC shafting of me for trying to change things, is not how I want to play a game. If you want change on Atamara, you either need to sink the island, or lightning bolt every single ruler. Because nothing except extreme action will change things. And its action by GM's because the players are creating a toxic atmosphere, simply because it benefits them.
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Game wide mortality/perma-death for everyone
I wrote something about mortality on the wiki (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Journal) about three years ago when it got trialled on Beluaterra. It seems back then I was in favour of it because, as has been mentioned in this thread, it can shake things up. But the effects of mortality on Beluaterra turned out to be something no-one was particularly happy with. It was too arbitrary. And although there is an idea that mortality will remove older characters past their prime who are just sitting on positions, it cannot be targeted like that. Mainly mortality removed a lot of characters that were still young and in their prime and overall it had a negative effect. I recall Chenier talking about how it basically gutted Enweil of its most active characters and surely this is the opposite of what most want mortality to do?
I think we have to be careful as well because you do form an attachment with your characters. I've had a character going since December 2004. Albeit, he has been a hero since 2005 and by rights should have perished a long, long time ago. Perhaps atypically, he doesn't hold any positions of power these days. Any realms he was once prominent in are all gone. Still, that's a heck of a commitment to lose suddenly and arbitrarily because some people feel older characters, perhaps older players even, are clogging up positions and keeping realms in inertia. I might not be as vocal or interactive with Malice I once was, but I faithfully roleplay him as an older man now, past his best and longing for the past. Just because a character is old does not necessarily preclude them from having meaningful interactions with the game.
Rather than try and start killing characters off, perhaps we should just return to an old system. There was a time when any wounding or imprisonment would remove characters from their positions. You could see a single battle go bad and between woundings and imprisonments have to replace your entire council come the morning. It certainly made life interesting and assassinations were much more worth the risk. I'd wager just reintroducing loss of positions in that fashion would do a lot to see positions change hands more often and cause a lot more instability around BattleMaster.
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stuff
I have been playing for 5 years, and the dominance of the Cagilan bloc has been status quo for that entire time. When the island was younger, I'm sure it was much more fluid. That seems to be how it goes in Battlemaster. Dwilight, as the youngest island, is the most dynamic five years after its opening, but even Dwilight is beginning to show signs of calcification. The outcome of the current war could upset that (which would probably be a good thing, really), but it could just as easily go the other way and serve to further entrench the status quo in the north.
If Atamara gets shaken up in the future I'll gladly admit I was wrong, but I think what you're channeling here is a dynamism that once was (and precedes my time in the game), but no longer exists. (Example: If you think Suville is going to become a serious rival to Tara or the Empire any time soon, I want some of what you're smoking).
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I agree Revan 100%. Atamara is not dead! There is still few wars going, not very hectic ones, but still.
And i agree with Tom, there is a lot realms which are getting advantage of the situation, they dont directly support CE & boys, but they leech other realms sucky situation... ML, Rielston to name few.
They dont want to see CE destroyed, atleast not yet.
Oh, and Fleugs, sorry... got carried away...
-Jaune
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But nobody previously decided it was worth doing so and you wonder why some people think this forum is a festering pool of nothing good? Each of you should have known better. Each of you come here everyday. Don't toss excuses now, Geronus. Just admit guilt. Have some respect for the rules of a topic.
It was a clear example of how a handful of people get to monopolize a thread and then derail it so no regular can follow it. Worst part is, it's all people who you would assume would have known better. Starting with Tom himself, even if this is his own damn forum.
I don't have the ability to split threads, or I would have done it on my very first reply to Tom. I knew what I was doing. I just thought it was too important of a subject to let Tom get away with saying "Never going to happen" without push-back. It bears on the entire future of the game, which in case you haven't noticed, appears to be dying.
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At the very least, Rob and I have disliked this idea for some time now. If realms with 100+ nobles were the norm, it might be something to consider. Without that, though, all it does is destroy the realm structure without adding anything that most people in the game really want. Duchies are just too small to be a viable "us" unit, in the "us vs them" of the world.
Yep. I completely agree with Anaris here. Duchy-v-Duchy warfare internal to a realm would be a horrible addition to the game. There are several reasons why, and the number of nobles in the typical duchy these days simply won't support it. Even 5 years ago, many duchies were just too small to support it. There are other reasons as well, such as the loss of the team identity.
In order to really make it work, you'd have to have realm-sized duchies. And then the massively complex options of adding realm-to-duchy relations to handle external interference in the war, etc. Just imagine how incomprehensible setting up the sides on a battle would be.
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It happened because the "player" actions made it happen.
Europe has, historically, also not been populated by a race of immortals with dynasties that are controlled by a single immortal being with a solid agenda that can span generations i.e the player. As Anaris said, there were barbarian invasions. There were also plagues that formed within or came from beyond, other foreign invaders, natural disasters, and plenty of other complicated reasons that resulted in drastic power fluctuations that cannot be replicated in BM. BM, or Atamara in this case, is not Europe and is not subject to the same conditions real life Europe is subject too.
I'm not arguing for or against any change at this point, but while I agree that players can force some change, if you are going to claim BM history is like real history, then you can't ignore that there was plenty of outside change that influenced how Europe's map was drawn over the centuries.
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I have been playing for 5 years, and the dominance of the Cagilan bloc has been status quo for that entire time. When the island was younger, I'm sure it was much more fluid. That seems to be how it goes in Battlemaster. Dwilight, as the youngest island, is the most dynamic five years after its opening, but even Dwilight is beginning to show signs of calcification. The outcome of the current war could upset that (which would probably be a good thing, really), but it could just as easily go the other way and serve to further entrench the status quo in the north.
If Atamara gets shaken up in the future I'll gladly admit I was wrong, but I think what you're channeling here is a dynamism that once was (and precedes my time in the game), but no longer exists. (Example: If you think Suville is going to become a serious rival to Tara or the Empire any time soon, I want some of what you're smoking).
That isn't exceptional to Atamara though. Sirion and Perdan have always been big powers in EC. Enweil in Beluterra. Lukon in Colonies. It can make politics harder on a continent but it does not halt war. It does not completely calcify a continent. The Cagilan bloc has always been strong in Atamara, but it has had missteps and its strength has ebbed and flowed. That most recent big war isn't a good thing for them long term. Never before have they stirred up such an unprecedented hornets nest of opposition. Likewise with the change of sides of Darka it has lost one of the realms that everyone used to say would always, always be on Cagil's side in the same way as Talerium or Tara.
There might not always be a dramatic standard-bearing loss of territory that will mark out any difficulties the Sirions, Lukons or Cagils of BattleMaster may be having at any particular moment. But it doesn't mean that continents are static and unchanging. And who's to say that Tara or Talerium won't one day 'pull a Darka'? Or that Cagil won't just pick a fight with one of their allies? This is BattleMaster after all and Atamara's big realms won't hang on to all those many nobles of theirs if they let peace settle in.
Even if the pace and state of things isn't to everyone's taste, I really do think there's still plenty of life in Atamara yet. (And Suville might be low on nobles, but I reckon she has riches enough to do anything she likes. They're deffo going to be a dark horse in the future.)
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And who's to say that Tara or Talerium won't one day 'pull a Darka'? Or that Cagil won't just pick a fight with one of their allies? This is BattleMaster after all and Atamara's big realms won't hang on to all those many nobles of theirs if they let peace settle in.
A year or more ago I heard the same argument from Silverfire, to whom I made a promise to eat my hat if anything like this ever happens. You can see how his opinion has changed in that time.
Again, I'll be the first to admit I was wrong if it happens, but count me a skeptic.
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Tara and Talerium will NEVER change sides so long as they are led by the same player. Period.
They have been ruler of their realms for a combined 10+ years. Do the math on how much time they've maintained the same stance and tell me how likely it is that they simply throw that away.
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Tara and Talerium will NEVER change sides so long as they are led by the same player. Period.
They have been ruler of their realms for a combined 10+ years. Do the math on how much time they've maintained the same stance and tell me how likely it is that they simply throw that away.
Change in BattleMaster is an organic thing. It's not going to happen according to a timetable or because we're all certain things would be so much better if 'X' suddenly happened. Sordnaz was a man pushing near 10 unbroken years in charge of a single Atamaran realm all by himself. But the sun set on his reign in the end. Things can change in an instant, no matter what the past might tell us. And heck, what does it matter even if the Cagilan bloc doesn't break up? Things are still happening and will continue to happen on Atamara with or without them just as it always has.
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Tara and Talerium will NEVER change sides so long as they are led by the same player. Period.
They have been ruler of their realms for a combined 10+ years. Do the math on how much time they've maintained the same stance and tell me how likely it is that they simply throw that away.
Few years ago, you could have added Darka on that list as well. I was best buddies with Ottar... but now i think Ottar hates me almost as much he hate Merlin :)
-Jaune
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A year or more ago I heard the same argument from Silverfire, to whom I made a promise to eat my hat if anything like this ever happens. You can see how his opinion has changed in that time.
Again, I'll be the first to admit I was wrong if it happens, but count me a skeptic.
We need a club. "The Disillusioned Ex-Rulers of Atamara."
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If you go individually against a power block, it's not a surprise. But if there truly are so many people who dislike the status quo, it should be easy to oppose the alliance with an alliance. I'm not saying everyone is stupid to not have thought of that. I'm saying that you might be underestimating the amount of people who are actually in favour of the current status. That you demean them as sheeple is a good indicator that you don't take that opinion seriously.
People who don't like the status quo leave the game. Players started leaving en masse around the time the status quos set in. That is why there is a problem with player retention that we are discussing right now.
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My "one thing" is actually two things that others have mentioned:
1) Forced mortality once your character has reached a certain age. Keep things the way they currently are, until yor character hits, say, 60. Then they become mortal like a hero. And as they get older and older, the chance to die from wounds gets higher. Eventually, *everyone* should die of old age. Start at 80 or so, and have a small, but growing, chance of dying from old age once every RL month. No more immortal characters who will never, ever have any chance of dying.
2) Start the one-noble-per-island rule on every continent. Don't force-deport anyone, just make it so that if you already have an active noble on an island, you can't start or unpause another. Events over time (deportation, death, retirement, pausing, etc.) will, over time, thin the herd. (Yes, this will mean that if you pause both of your characters, you will only be able to unpause one of them.) Combine this with #1 above, and you will sooner than later get to a situation where everyone has one noble per island.
Suggestion 1 100% agree.
Suggestion 2 I disagree simply because having two character adds a certain dynamic to some continents. I do agree some people horde titles to their family, seen it and well I personally blame the realm for allowing such, though I know full well some people earn those titles and strive for them and some (2% of bm) actually can separate their character and actively play them as two separate entities, even fewer when in same realm.
I do hate though when people place two char in the same realm to ensure if one drops dead or gets to old the other can replace them as if nothing happened... Character development is everything though to me, so of course I get angry at such.
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Suggestion 1 100% agree.
Suggestion 2 I disagree simply because having two character adds a certain dynamic to some continents. I do agree some people horde titles to their family, seen it and well I personally blame the realm for allowing such, though I know full well some people earn those titles and strive for them and some (2% of bm) actually can separate their character and actively play them as two separate entities, even fewer when in same realm.
I do hate though when people place two char in the same realm to ensure if one drops dead or gets to old the other can replace them as if nothing happened... Character development is everything though to me, so of course I get angry at such.
I don't think it's title hoarding so much as one character is usually the "main" character and the other is a drone.
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Actually, neither of those concern me at all. If you want two characters in one realm so you can hold all the titles, then more power to you. And if the other characters in the realm allow it, then they only have themselves to blame if they can't get the titles they want. Also, drone characters don't bother me. I've run my share of drones over the years.
My main concern is when you have two influential characters in allied realms. They usually serve as information conduits between the realms. "My cousin in Keplerstan says their army is moving to attack Eviltown at sunset, we should follow!" They also act as the glue that holds certain alliances together, with no chance of breaking them apart. It's an OOC connection between the two realms that simply can't exist if the doubled-up characters weren't there. You only have to look at the political landscape of Dwilight to see how things can evolve when everyone is limited to one noble on the island.
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I just want to say that egamma clearly said no arguing and only one reply per person yet it seems like the jetset of this forum chose to entirely ignore this rule.
Guilty as charged, and not apologizing.
If someone makes up an arbitrary rule in an open communication, other parties are under no obligation to honour it. It takes consent and consensus for that to happen. Obviously, there was no such consensus.
Please post your reply without using the letter "e".
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Not a God, no, but what about raging barbarian hordes? How many times have invaders from outside redrawn the map of Europe?
Depends on the time period. During the middle ages - uh... actually... I think never. The mongols and the turks were the only invaders from outside that are worth mentioning, I think, and after they left the borders were largely unchanged. I know what you're getting at, but here is why rogues and monsters don't solve our issues: They turn the game into a PvE game, making players even LESS inclined to fight each other. We would make the exact thing we want to strengthen even less appealing.
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Rather than try and start killing characters off, perhaps we should just return to an old system. There was a time when any wounding or imprisonment would remove characters from their positions.
We changed that for a reason. 90% of the times, the wounded/imprisoned character would have a placeholder keep the seat warm and get it back as soon as he was healed/released. It really didn't give us as much change as you think. There was a LOT of complaining about this placeholder thing, but everyone and their dog still practiced it.
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Please post your reply without using the letter "e".
I'm... a good... forum... guy...
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Depends on the time period. During the middle ages - uh... actually... I think never. The mongols and the turks were the only invaders from outside that are worth mentioning, I think, and after they left the borders were largely unchanged. I know what you're getting at, but here is why rogues and monsters don't solve our issues: They turn the game into a PvE game, making players even LESS inclined to fight each other. We would make the exact thing we want to strengthen even less appealing.
The problem, as I see it, is that without a certain element of randomness an island will eventually develop a stable power structure, and these structures are bad for the game by limiting possibility, discouraging turnover in positions of power, and becoming ultimately exclusionary over the long-term. Without some sort of something to occasionally upset existing power structures and keep things from getting too settled they, well, get too settled.
When there are no (or few) established power structures and anything seems possible (post-Invasion, at the opening of Dwilight, etc.), the game is fresh and fun and engaging and everyone is inspired and excited. When opportunities appear limited and many realms are dominated by cliques of old-guard players who aren't interested in fresh perspectives from young upstarts, the game gets stale and boring and often feels exclusionary to players who aren't in the old guard.
I understand your hesitation to introduce PvE elements. Maybe there's another way to keep things from getting too settled? Or maybe we can experiment with whether your fear will be born out. Beluaterra would be a great place to test the rogue-spawn theory. If we do it, and Beluaterra experiences a surge of interest and an uptick in interaction, you'll have your answer.
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The map of real-life Europe has been redrawn many, many times over the centuries. Borders have changed constantly, nations came into being and ceased to exist. None of that happened because a god reached down from the heavens with a big pen. It happened because the "player" actions made it happen.
BM is very much like that. You CAN completely redraw the map of every island. Wait, there's a mistake there. The stress is on the wrong word. It should be YOU can completely redraw the map. You, the players can do this. If things are stagnant then they are so because people who enjoy stagnation have ascended to the dominant positions. Why do you keep electing and supporting them?
There's a massive disconnect between what people complain about and what happens in-game, does anyone notice?
I'm sorry Tom, do European armies today put on armies and ride bigass horses into battles?
Tell me about the growing season: is it the same as it was in 1400?
Are the same crops grown?
What's the population size?
Do you communicate the same way they did in the medieval period?
No, God didn't reach down from heaven and redraw the borders of Europe. But the God from the Machine did exactly that. Changing technologies and demographics, altered ways of living, these were all huge. Now BM can't have tech growth, that'd mess up the game atmosphere. And I'm sure that fully dynamic demography would be an enormous pain to code. So we're not asking those things. But an occasional exogenous factor entering into our closed system is not an outrageous request.
Also: maybe you don't realize it Tom but... you don't elect lordships regularly. They're for life. Lords run realms, not rulers. Rulers are the puppets into whose arse the dukes stick their hand.
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Beluaterra would be a great place to test the rogue-spawn theory. If we do it, and Beluaterra experiences a surge of interest and an uptick in interaction, you'll have your answer.
Go ahead. There are quite a few summoning spells in player hands.
I agree with change. I disagree with that it is the job of the GMs to provide it.
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Depends on the time period. During the middle ages - uh... actually... I think never. The mongols and the turks were the only invaders from outside that are worth mentioning, I think, and after they left the borders were largely unchanged. I know what you're getting at, but here is why rogues and monsters don't solve our issues: They turn the game into a PvE game, making players even LESS inclined to fight each other. We would make the exact thing we want to strengthen even less appealing.
Um, uh, no. Bulgars and Magyars. They're kind of a big deal. And the Mongols. Also kind of a big deal. Saying borders were unchanged is just ignorance speaking. Just because Kievan Rus isn't important to you doesn't mean it's not important.
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You don't need undead/monsters to change thing, you just need to find the right people, have the right funds and skill set to accomplish a task. Also having allies early can make things easier short term even if you have to give up some ideals you were going for. Granted you can't expect to join a large realm and just bully your way into things. You have to play smart and build. Revan and I did a heck of a job in Giblot then the Highland Empire, Sara was evil haha.
Secondly I brought up the idea of retirement as an option, you can have a lot of fun with that mechanic by allowing a festival celebrating the successes of that character, you can set up how long the festival lasts by how long they were a member of the realm and the age they retired. Someone that makes it to 90 years or more and was in a realm for 3 years should have a heck of a good bye bash compared to someone that tried to retire at 40 with only 200 days played in realm. This could allow people who don't want to see there character die or pause have an option that says GOODBYE. Granted at some point your character should die so you give them a choice, keep pushing forward or retire and know that your character will live in peace and be able to use them in general roleplays within your families roleplay.
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1) Random influential factors
e.g) Natural disasters
Great Famine, Disease, etc
Something to destabilize stable hierarchy or realm of BM
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Depends on the time period. During the middle ages - uh... actually... I think never. The mongols and the turks were the only invaders from outside that are worth mentioning, I think, and after they left the borders were largely unchanged. I know what you're getting at, but here is why rogues and monsters don't solve our issues: They turn the game into a PvE game, making players even LESS inclined to fight each other. We would make the exact thing we want to strengthen even less appealing.
I'd consider the Umayyid invasion of what is now Spain/France rather significant.
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The map of real-life Europe has been redrawn many, many times over the centuries. Borders have changed constantly, nations came into being and ceased to exist. None of that happened because a god reached down from the heavens with a big pen.
No one suggested you should manually redraw the maps, but in the past you have injected environmental pressures to break stagnation. It would be nice to have cataclysms of one type or another that make it increasingly difficult to maintain control of your regions. Plagues, famines, monster and undead swarms.
If things are stagnant then they are so because people who enjoy stagnation have ascended to the dominant positions. Why do you keep electing and supporting them?
Howard Zinn has a book about the elements of a successful revolution. One of them is "severe state crisis" which can include wars and natural disasters.
I don't really understand your opposition considering you've done this in the past and it's the basis of an entire game world. Why's it different if people suggest things like this should be able to happen randomly?
I know what you're getting at, but here is why rogues and monsters don't solve our issues: They turn the game into a PvE game, making players even LESS inclined to fight each other. We would make the exact thing we want to strengthen even less appealing.
The key to avoiding that is keeping the environmental factors low enough that they're unlikely to destroy whole realms on their own but strong enough that they put a strain on a realm's resources making them more vulnerable to internal or external attack. A lot of wars started that way with one power either trying to seize resources to make up its deficit or exploiting the weakness of their neighbor after a disaster. In fact more often then not this was the primary motivation for war with nationalistic hatred of the enemy nations being more a matter of PR.
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I'm still thinking that realms should be limited with 1 city. Basicly every duke would be king. There would be a lot more people participating "world politics". Every duchy had its own military structure, RC's, economy etc.
There would be a lot federations, but federation isnt as tight as one realm. Become ultimate Emperor of federation would be hard task to achieve and even harder to keep up. Battles would be smaller and it would be hard to control huge armies roaming around...
-jaune
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There is the way of shaking things up with a natural disaster that wreaks havoc. But the problem here, as I believe has been mentioned many times before, is that such disasters tend to cause PvP conflicts to grind to halt. Starvation makes everything to be about food and cease fighting. Huge monster spawn make everything to be about monsters and cause fighting to cease. Disease would do something similar.
Now instead of a random punishment, you could throw in a random handout. There are many ways to do this and this is just one idea to underline the concept:
- Make one random region special in some spectacular way.
- This blessing is announced continent wide as it happens.
- The blessing stays in its place for quite some time, making it a semi-permanent feature on the map, until one day it simply vanishes
The boost, whatever it would be, should be such as to tip whatever scales there are. You would absolutely want to have it, and you would envy and fear your neighbor for having it. Players would generally react better to unearned bonus than to undeserved limitation, especially if the bonus would be something that you could conquer for yourself.
You could even have several of these regions active at the same time. The more you had them, the more effective holding on to them would be. So a giant empire would naturally want to grab as many of them as it could, while the small realms around would do whatever it takes to prevent that.
It could take many forms, but it could be something as simple as bonus in regional production (say multiplied by five or ten or something silly like that). Or it could be special rare treasures that are consumed in your region that in turn boost production (and are traded by the traders). The more of the different kind you had the more the effect would be amplified. Or whatever. I think a war over rare resources could spice things up quite a bit.
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Now instead of a random punishment, you could throw in a random handout. There are many ways to do this and this is just one idea to underline the concept:
This is an important comment. We've noted many times how penalties don't seem to get what we want.
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Realms are already down from 130+ nobles to about 25 or so. Why would people want to break them up even more? 25 isn't even the critical mass necessary to generate and maintain interesting intra-realm gameplay...
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At the very least, Rob and I have disliked this idea for some time now.
You forgot to add Joe.