Messages

46

Other Games / Re: Browser Based Gaming

« on: August 03, 2011, 03:20:08 PM »

Regardless of the race bonus, you can choose to make-lots-of-stuff and invest in production, or steal-lots-of-stuff and invest in troops.  Usually a mix is best.

There are a couple of things you can choose to 'research' to help players who are more offline, such as autobanking a percentage of what you make, and hiding a percentage from attackers, and rebuying some of your troops for you.  Other ladder-based games have very similar options as well, I believe.  You can certainly have a good time in the game only logging in two or three times a day.  To do well you'd probably need a little more than that.  But unless you're losing a one-sided war and you have chosen to give people the chance to destroy you, then you'd never need to be unduly worried about losing anything noticeable if you're away for around 10 hours at a time.  I'd want to be relatively sure I could log in once every 8 hours though, really.

You still playing it, squishy?

47

BM General Discussion / Re: Worldbuilding - BattleMaster at its best

« on: August 03, 2011, 02:35:51 PM »

You ask how we went away from it?  And that's where I point back to the simulationist parts of us taking over.  Instead of describing the journey from Ipsosez to Haul and perhaps even having conversations on the way with a traveling companion, eventually we had mechanics to show- without description or narrative- that we were indeed moving from Ipsosez to Haul. And if we weren't in the same region literally in mechanics-terms, interaction with a non-realm member was extremely difficult.  To the point of it ceasing altogether.  Once the mechanics were in full swing, the roleplaying on the mailing list quickly became (mostly) banter between the rulers that people wanted to make sure remained public.  And even that, after awhile, went away.  Aside from that, the rare posts were typically done when attempting to describe or initiate something intra-realm and it was the best and only way to make that happen.  Narrative was replaced by Simulation.

As the simulation began to shape the way we narrated the story, we also had a second (or third) influx of characters.  Ones that were more eager to get into the number-crunching side of things and to find out how they could best improve their standing/stats/titles/etc.  And, while there's nothing wrong with that- we all, to some degree, play games to win them.  But even more by this point, Narrative was being replaced by Game.  No longer was everyone attempting to describe what happened.  And they weren't even just letting the simulation describe the events for them.  Now we had those who were looking to specifically make the game mechanics do something for them that is anathema to the "Story First" crowd- win.

If I understand correctly, you're looking for somewhere to have a group of people write a joint story, about their characters in a Battlemaster-type world.  But you don't want to be constrained and/or diverted by the in-game actions.

If so, then is there anything to stop you just creating a new Island name, starting a thread for it in the Roleplay area of this forum, and just letting people add to it?  It sounds as if you don't need anything other than pen and paper to write this sort of story, and you have the electronic version of both on this forum.


Meanwhile, the beauty, for me, of Battlemaster is that it _does_ provide some in-game actions to constrain me.  I like to be constrained.  Coming back to your crayon analogy, if you give me a bunch of crayons and a blank piece of paper, I just sit and look at it with a blank expression, having no idea where to start and the overwhelming number of options of things I could draw make me struggle to choose any of them.  Whereas if you give me a piece of paper that already has a load of odd lines all over it, and you give me only three colours, then I have a challenge: to make something interesting and beautiful out of what I have.  That is a challenge I will enjoy rising to.

I don't want to have an island that has no defined landmarks, where I can decide to put my character wherever I choose, and do whatever he wants.  I want the game to help me by giving me region names and descriptions to elaborate on.  I want it to tell me what happened in battles so I can expand on that.  I want to know who is in my region and who isn't so I know who I can talk to and who I should write to, and to give me an idea where I might travel to next.


There's nothing in Battlemaster now that stops you from roleplaying your journey from Ipsosez to Haul and having conversations on the way - one of my characters did just that last week between two regions.  All it meant was that I had to try to time my roleplays to coincide with when I was actually in the region (which wasn't too hard to do, and even if I missed it by a bit, I could just start the RP with [yesterday afternoon...] to make it make sense.

Although there are a number of players who get so engrossed in the game mechanics that they just press the buttons and read the automatic outputs, there is nothing to stop people from narrating it.  You don't _have_ to post a scout report as a scout report link and nothing else.  You could, if you so chose, read the scout report, translate it into a narrative, and send that, and not show anyone the actual scout report at all.  Same with pretty much any report you might get.  Similarly, although when odd bugs happen, a lot of people just write OOC messages saying "lol, bug there", you can perfectly well roleplay them out.

Perhaps if more people roleplayed that sort of thing (especially realm-wide so that newer players copied a bit) then it might happen more.  Would obviously take a few people to do it, and would take time, same as it took time to get to where we are now compared to where we started.


It is within our power to bring more narrative to Battlemaster by writing more, and better, but if you actually want the completely blank starting point, then why not ignore the game, and use the forum?

48

Other Games / Re: Browser Based Gaming

« on: August 03, 2011, 12:03:04 PM »

War of Empires is much like other ladder games, but in my experience of trying a lot of them, it's the best one.  The lack of having to wait for anything to happen (you click to attack, and the attack happens instantly, you click to build, and you build instantly) makes it much more pleasing to play and easier to slot around what else you're doing.  There are a few different ways you can choose to play, the players are a good bunch and new players have a chance to do well.

That said, I really do disagree that you can play by logging in once a day.  Whereas ticks happen every 12hrs in Battlemaster, they are every 10mins in WoE.

- To play individually, and not be very involved in the game, you'd probably need to log in twice a day.
- To play in an empire, which you'd likely want to do, you'd probably need to log in three or four times a day to make sure your account wasn't harmed (ie first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and a couple of times during the day - every day)
- To rank high, you'd need to log in every few hours every day.
- The best and highest-ranking players log in every hour and even pop in to log in in the middle of the night.  There's certainly no need to do that, and you can get full enjoyment from the game, and be part of the winning empire, without doing so.

I'd say to get a reasonable game out of it, you should be able to log in for 30mins in the morning, 30mins before bed, 10mins at lunchtime, 10mins at tea time and preferebly a couple of extra hours here and there during the week.  Most of the top players will be players who can leave it open on their computer while doing other things (eg work!) and just prod it for a few seconds every hour.  It is certainly not as lightweight as Battlemaster which is one of the great things about Battlemaster.  Nor is it as heavyweight as something like Tribal Wars.


If you do want to check it out, Age 25 is drawing to a close over the next week, then there'll be a week or so of downtime before the next age starts, and the Age 26 will begin with everyone starting from scratch again for a level playing field.  Feel free to contact me at 'psymann' on the forum if you want to know more.

49

BM General Discussion / Re: funniest moments in battlemaster

« on: August 02, 2011, 02:31:40 AM »

Most of the funniest moments for me have been explaining away bugs or other strange goings-on with RP.  For example in Belegmon in 2008, where after a huge battle, a single evading troop-leader prevented the victors from looting the battlefield, and I ended up playing Crip's whole troop as being petrified of "The Pointy Swords" that meant they cowered from that single troop and couldn't loot anything for fear of being ambushed by the pointy swords.

I also rather enjoyed a time in Minas Ithil, where there was a player who had two characters: one named "Baron" and one named "Count" (yes, those were the first names).  Conveniently, I'd always roleplayed my character Dor as having troops as thick as they come, so I could entertain myself with roleplaying them as completely confused by whether there was a Baron Baron or a Count Count, or not.  And then, to my delight, Count because Baron of Elost not long after his brother Baron had been Baron.  So we actually had a Baron Baron and a Baron Count in the realm... the confusion that caused Dor's troops' overworked braincells ended up with the phrase:

Juthri: Count's Baron now so that doesn't count. It was Baron Baron but now it's Baron Count, not Count Baron. Baron Count is no-longer-Baron Baron's brother Count. So that [pointing at the flask] is going to remain barren; you can count on that.

50

Development / Re: The position of "Disband Unit" option

« on: August 01, 2011, 01:20:07 PM »

Hmm, after more investigation today, the issue comes and goes a bit depending on how many hours I have left.

With one hour left, the number of options I have is such that this issue is here.
When three hours left, the number of options is greater, and therefore the Abandon Unit link is lower down and not on top of the later Disband link.

That makes it a bit more tricky.  Perhaps indent the Disband link?

51

Development / The position of "Disband Unit" option

« on: August 01, 2011, 03:24:40 AM »

I've had reason to click on the "Abandon your unit..." link every turn for the last couple of days, and one thing is bugging me each time:

I don't know if it's just me, but when I click on the "Abandon you unit..." link, it takes me to the next page, and the "Disband the unit." link is in the exact same position on the screen as the "Abandon your unit..." link was.

Because of this, any accidental double-click (or anyone using a touchpad to move the cursor who accidentally prods it and does a click) will click both the "Abandon your unit..." link and then the "Disband the unit." in quick succession and before they know it they've just disbanded a nice unit they actually wanted to place as militia (or, for new players, they've just disbanded their unit, without quite knowing how it happened, and without the gold to buy a new one).

So - a simple request if possible please - please add a couple of blank lines on the Abandon.php page, so that the link to Disband is lower down the screen.  That way the double-click won't happen and I won't have a small panic every time I click on "Abandon your unit..." on a laptop with a slightly iffy touchpad.


For the record, I use Opera browser on a fairly normal-sized laptop screen, and I am a simple Warrior with no special abilities (ie I have the same number of order options as most newbies will have).  I've had the same problem on other computers, so I know it's not unique to my current setup.

52

Feature Requests / Re: augmenting the usefulness of shared scout report

« on: August 01, 2011, 03:13:59 AM »

Another thread somewhere suggested the use of expanding and collapsing buttons for battle reports (so you could expand the report to see a bit more detail, but it wouldn't start off by taking up the whole page).

If you were to implement such a feature, you could have that also for those standing orders.  Have it saying "8 shared scout reports (3 new)" as suggested above, but then put a little "+" next to that, which you could click to expand and see those that were new this turn.  That would make it quicker and easier to use.

Adding to that the suggestion above to share also with realm etc, and it would be a more useful system.  As it is, anyone making use of the system, rather than spamming their message output with scout reports, tends to find no-one notices them do it.  I've been known to provide scout reports every day for a week, and then been told off by my marshal who honestly thought I'd not been providing any

53

Feature Requests / Re: Every action and command should state in-game how many hours it requires.

« on: August 01, 2011, 03:05:39 AM »

This is not the same issue being discussed, but its fixing should be similar.

True, it's not the same issue, and since it's unexpectedly taken over a page of discussion on this thread, perhaps a mod could split those posts off into another thread? 

Anyway, back completely-on-topic, here's an updated list based on those posted earlier in the thread:

Person	Action	Time taken
Adventurer	Buy equipment	1 hour
Noble	Join guild	1 hour
Noble	Scout ahead	1 hour
Noble	Turn around	1 hour
Noble	Misdirect	1 hour

And here's the code for that so you can post this more easily into a future post to keep this list updated (eaving a blank line at the bottom makes it easier for others to copy-and-paste that blank line to make additional entries):

Code: [Select]

[table]
[tr][td][b]Person[/b][/td][td][b]Action[/b][/td][td][b]Time taken[/b][/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Adventurer[/td][td]Buy equipment[/td][td]1 hour[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Noble[/td][td]Join guild[/td][td]1 hour[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Noble[/td][td]Scout ahead[/td][td]1 hour[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Noble[/td][td]Turn around[/td][td]1 hour[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Noble[/td][td]Misdirect[/td][td]1 hour[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][/tr]
[/table]

54

Feature Requests / Re: Double Signatures from New Players

« on: August 01, 2011, 02:51:23 AM »

For new players, it would help if the Preview facility added the signature.

As it is, you write the message, and:
- the Live Preview at the bottom misses out the heading line ("Letter from Crip Grindle" or whatever)
- the Live Preview at the bottom misses out the sign-off line ("Crip Grindle, Knight of Elroth" or whatever)
- the Message Preview after you click the preview button contains the heading, but misses out the sign-off as well

Any diligent new player, who makes use of the Preview function to check they have done the right thing, will be shown that there is no signature and that they should add their own.  And then they add it, click Send, and the game adds another one without warning, making them look a bit silly.

So perhaps fixing that would help new players start off on the right foot 

55

Other Games / Re: Browser Based Gaming

« on: August 01, 2011, 02:41:11 AM »

I played v1 to v8, joining soon after it first started, was fairly successful there and a forum mod, but then left (and came to Battlemaster about that time).
Came back for one age in v12 with some other friends, but then didn't play again after.

Then came back last age (v24) as a request from Rage, mid-round, and am now playing v25 at the request of The Dagger, as part of SAF, trying my utmost, mainly with some fairly handy level 21 spies, to stop SALT from getting the empire victory.  Feel free to message me in-game if you like and are still playing also, where this age I'm "psyahbandah" in keeping with the Singaporean theme (syahbandar being a word for a harbour master).  And in the forum, I'm still psymann, same as here. 

56

Other Games / Re: Browser Based Gaming

« on: July 31, 2011, 06:18:05 PM »

The browser-based games I've played in recent times have been:


War of Empires *****: this remains, alongside Battlemaster, my favourite online game.  Like BM, it is a bit of a one-man creation since it started some years ago, and that one man (Tom in BM, Bhaal in WoE) is frequently around to discuss things and explain things.  It has a smaller playerbase than BM, so also has a everyone-knows-everyone community.

It has no roleplay at all, but the strategy and tactical options are fairly good, and one of the most impressive things is that you can do your battles and attacking when you're online - no "Your troops will arrive in 7 hours" stuff - which makes it immediate and more fun.

If you're the sort of player who likes the battles in battlemaster, but not the messages, and you find you have lots of extra time to play more games, you might like it.


Cantr II ****: played this for a fair while, and it's the most similar game to BM I've found.  It's a similarly slow pace to battlemaster, is centred around roleplaying (more so than BM, really), and involves roleplaying normal people rather than nobles in a similarly kind of mock-medieval era.  It's a bit slow to get going with, and the roleplay is all first-person stuff (ie you're talking to people in front of you, like a sort of roleplaying chatroom), so nothing like the third-person Roleplays we have in BM, or long narrative stuff, or even letters.


Tribal Wars **: Gah, that was a horrible game.  The sort of game you can only do well in if you play all day and also in your sleep, and if you are willing and able to drop everything to make sure you send your troops at between 0 and 400 milliseconds after 14:05:34 in the afternoon (I'm not even exaggerating).  Fabulous game if you live on your computer; horrible game if you are a human being.  It seems involved at first, and then you realise it gets exponentially worse the longer you play.


Runescape ***: I guess that counts as a browser-based game since it's in a browser, but it's more like World of Warcraft, with massive playerbase and fancy graphics, and nothing like the others above which are more text-based and played mainly by adults.  Runescape is dull as ditchwater most of the time, but has the one single benefit that you can pick it up and drop it again without any loss to your character.  Going away for two weeks doesn't need you to pause anything, miss out on anything, lose anything etc.  And in most cases you can drop it and log-out at a moment's notice with no bad consequences.  It's also dull enough and repetitive enough that you can play it with only 10% of your brain turned on which is handy if you only needed 50% of your brain on that particular phonecall and wanted something else easy to stop you falling asleep.

It's one of the few I've found where you can very much fit it around your life, rather than having to fit your life around it, yet on the occasions you do have six hours in a row to fill, it can keep you completely occupied for the duration.


All the above are free and friendly and run on donations and love, with the exception of Runescape which is free to get about 15% of the game, but costs about USD$5 a month for the full game and is run by a faceless profit-making organisation.

57

Helpline / The Old D-List and RP-List

« on: July 31, 2011, 05:56:26 PM »

Do the old D-List and RP-List still exist in some archived form?

I'm pleased to see Tom finally caved in on letting us have a forum - an inferior substitute in many ways, but a much more inclusive one with formatting abilities.  But I find that I can't see the old stuff anywhere - and the links on the wiki to either of these old lists no longer seem to work.

Did they get archived when moving to this new forum?  Or have they been lost to the mists of time?

58

BM General Discussion / Re: Making Stuff Happen - A Rant

« on: July 31, 2011, 05:51:16 PM »

really interesting event has very simple definition - event that influences power balance.

Not sure if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick here, but there are two sorts of 'making things happen':
1) Things happen that cause battles to be fought, regions to be won and lost, rulers to be overthrown, generally politically motivated
2) Things that give you something interesting to read and react to other than automated turn-change messages, that give interesting roleplay opportunity and some memorable moments

Trying to do (1) does fit your definition.  But trying to do (2) does not.  Having just returned to see Battlemaster after three years away, the things I most remember from my previous time here were the light-hearted, frivolous-but-not-silly roleplays we had in Falasan's Black Army, surrounding the impossible game of Skat, and the mysterious lure of Loronzo of the Mist.  Neither of these had anything to do with power, neither involved our council members or dukes with any regularity, but both were interesting (and entertaining).

I find that trying to get involved in political roleplay and communications is extremely hard, since so much of it happens behind closed doors that even if you do try to get involved, you are so ignorant of the political situation that all you can do is make your character appear similarly ignorant.  Whereas things irrelevant to politics and power are easier for everyone in the realm, newbies included, to be involved with.  And being light-hearted doesn't mean you have to be being silly like fighting off badgers let loose by elves.

---

As a new player (again) now, I'm back to finding that there are very few messages of any kind to read that aren't automated ones, and fewer still that offer any sort of interactive opportunities.  I don't think it's because everyone just logs in, does nothing but click a button, and then logs out again.  Because when I message one of the senior realm members personally, I often get a good reply.  I think it's because so many of our more active, better roleplayers are in senior positions, and they then only message and roleplay with other people in senior positions, so that all the more interesting messages are hidden from the view of a normal boring knight.

A few do provide something entertaining, and that's great.  Some are really read-only as a fair number involve senior people loving/hating/etc each other in private, and a very few are easier to interact with either then, or at a later date.  But others will go for weeks without ever messaging realm-wide which I think is a shame.

So - a plea to rulers/dukes/councils or even people who only ever message their elite army or their lord-comms-group - if you're sending off ten goodly messages in a week, make at least one of them realm-wide and preferably non-private and non-political, whether it's sparking off something new, or continuing some other realm-wide roleplay that's already happening.  Even if it's just inviting everyone to your fortress for a banquet or writing your duke into a mild predicament that another knight could come and join.

I try to do this myself, even if I'm the only one posting and even if I get no replies (so apologies if you're sick of 90% of realm-wide non-automated messages being from me!) as after a while I trust people will become more familiar with my character and more confident with their characters interacting.  Will see how it goes, but for now my optimistic hat is on and I'll keep on trying until the OOC messages turn up to tell me to shut it     It's either that, or go for the method of trying to powergame your way into a position of high power just in order to have something interesting to do/say, which I am trying very hard to avoid.