IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Gkr --

From (IRL) 2009 to 2012 I (Bittty) was first a member and then GL of a small Tryker/Karavan guild on Arispotle and participated in numerous OP battles.  Almost every time I was on the losing side.  I fought to defend Tryker and Karavan holdings and I fought against the Marauders when they were first being introduced.  I have participated in PvP. I didn't like it much then but the few times the teams I was on prevailed there was a momentary rush. However, my position on who to defend and attack was clear. I supported my nation, my religion, my friends.

About halfway through that period the guild split. The leaders changed from Karavan to Kami and I was left holding the original guild as GL and managing the Psykopla Knoll OP. I spent a deal of time offering the goods from it to anyone who needed them (The cats were pretty worthless, but newbies could use them, and the q50 armilo was actually worth something back then.).

There really was a glut of OP mats and cats in Arispotle at that time, but I was the only person in my time slot who offered them up to homins who could use them.  (I was informed that there was one other guild (in a different time slot) who regularly offered cats, but that was it.) 

That aside, I did trade for other cats from time to time and I did have friends who paid me for my services in OP battles with q250 cats and the occasional bit of greslin or other OP mats (the big weapons OP mats, of course, I never saw even at that time).

There was a Kami alliance on Arispotle, too. What finally broke it on Arispotle was not economics, but personality. If the leaders of the current Kami alliance work well together and use both real rewards and roleplay equitably, nothing will break it.

To bring this up to the present day, I regard myself as a midlevel RP person. When the Second Great Swarming occurred, I decided that Bittty would be disenchanted by what he saw during the Exodus and during the years of waiting and would work to avoid PvP and to become friends with all Nations and cults. (The actual introduction of the Ranger pseudo-faction was just gravy.)

But, Gkr, the current implementation doesn't "work for me", and I am most certainly not being "very, very selfish." I get nothing except what my social GL can obtain and share (which is very little). My statement above says exactly what it says. I don't understand what Mjollren meant by "powerplayers", but if he just meant "active PvP players", then I don't want to make PvP any more important in the game than it is now, and I certainly don't want to create an elite class of "powerplayers" who work to crush their foes in that theatre of operations.

My position is not just one of personal interest. There are a lot of players out there who are not "well connected" and who have even less chance than I do. Of course I work for my own self interest, but I also think I am looking out for others. The whole thesis of this proposed change is that people will do that very thing. I think that thesis is flawed, and have tried to point out why it is flawed because it is based on the assumption that there is a surplus of OP mats when that doesn't exist.

What I am saying is that there is not a glut of OP mats and that if the OP battles need sprucing up, reducing the number of mats even further is NOT going to help the game as a whole. What might be interesting is to enforce the guild vs. guild aspect with a guild change block to either side of the battle. That might, and I do say might, encourage mobility and faction breaking. (I have seen this in another game and it seems to work, but in that game the membership rolls of all guilds are open knowledge so you have a chance to see the enemy building himself up.)

I have accepted the thesis that the status quo is unsatisfactory in terms of both availability of OP mats and in terms of the chance for PvP players who are not of the "currently winning faction" to have a chance at a fun, evenly matched, battle. What I am criticising is the proposed method to solve the problem.

--Bittty
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P.S. Thank you, Gkr, for generally maintaining a respectful tone. I hope that you understand my tone to be the same; strong disagreement, but no personal malice.

Powerplayer is a specific term in the mmorpg genre, best explained by its opposition to the roleplayer definition.

A roleplayer will define a role for his character and create a persona that best fits the story of that character; their decisions are made in order to fulfill an image rather than to be efficient. A powerplayer will seek to make the choices that are best in order to "win" a game via its mechanics, disregarding lore if needed; a mercenary of sorts. A powerplayer seeks power first, and will ally with whoever else can help in that regard.

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Regarding the "plenitude" debate: I am not comparing the current situation to the past, because I haven't seen the past. But I do know the present, and whether or not you regard it as scarcity, it's apparently still good enough to keep together some 10+ guilds across 3 languages.

Hence the proposal to make sharing impossible unless you disregard your own guild and give others stuff first. Either way it's going to create frustration with players, encouraging them to be more individualistic and more pragmatic in their approach.

Mj, I see your point. Yet please take in account that you are looking at one of at least 4, if not 5 "factions":

- 1. The Kami alliance holding the majority of OPs
- 2. The Karavan alliance holding much fewer OPs - you know about them from hearsay
- 3. The marauders holding practically no OPs - same as above
- 4. Neutrals holding no OPs either though sometimes allying to the one or the other side
- 5. Neutrals not participating in PvP

So how do you define abundance of OP mat? which of the above groups enjoys?

Scarcity of mats will, imho, result in

1. getting less
2. getting few
3., 4., 5. getting nothing

Given the existing balance of powers, where should that make a difference?

"1. getting less" is an overstatement, would be "every member of 1. gets little to nothing". At which point simply changing faction and defeating your old allies is the more efficient way to get OP mats (less people to share with).

Yes, on the short run the less populous faction is disadvantaged. On the long run however, it starts growing in members; right now, on the long run it's bleeding players (they either quit or go kami).

It's self-limiting: the more an alliance grows, the longer you have to wait for your share. Consider a simulation with 8 available rubbarns per month and 72 masters spread 32-24-16 over 3 factions. You can replace master with guild if you wish.

If Ginti is held by the largest faction, that's a waiting list of 4 months (32/8) to get a new piece assuming owners give to everyone without holding anything. Instead, should the players redistribute 24-24-24, the wait time goes down to 3 months. Should everyone decide to join one faction, you're looking at a waiting list of 9 months, at which point the materials are not worth the waiting time.

Moreover, if a faction is able to win despite a numeric disadvantage (certain players brag they can), then they might actually satisfy their members in a very reasonable time. Any player looking for a faction has to think very hard before joining a group that's already large: (s)he'll get very little in return for the effort.

Of course your bet that people are rather risk-averse is a valid one, but I think given the right reward, they will actually do something to get it sooner than later. My bet is human nature .. greedy and wanting to have shiny stuff ASAP.

Oh and I'm obviously not counting neutrals who don't PvP. If bosses are locked in PvP regions (LoU), OP mats can be locked too. A neutral who wants to help a side is always welcome to negotiate compensation in return.

Mjollren, let us consider your simulation.

You omit one small(?) factor. If your plan works to encourage OP battles and hence switchovers, then no one will hold an OP for four months, three months or perhaps even two months! As a result, in your evenly matched scenario (assuming totally scheduled distribution by the holding guilds as you do) the distribution time is not going to be reduced, but increased since those masters will not get any mats while their faction/alliance/etc. does not hold the OP.

If they stick to the large alliance as they are currently set (by your example) the alliance will almost certainly continue to hold the OP, so they will get their rubbarn in 4 months (a time period which already feels "too long; don't bother").

If they split up and the evened out groups share the OP on a inter-battle time of 2 weeks and a switchover every other battle (i.e. every month) (and assuming that each of the three groups holds it an average of 1/3 of the time), they will get their rubbarn in 9 months (plus or minus a bunch due to random factors). (I could do a full-fledged simulation with a random number generator, but that value should be the right order of magnitude; it is certainly going to be longer than if they stayed put.) Further, the more OP battles there are, the worse the situation becomes due to the startup delay in drill generation of mats.

If the idea is to have OP mats as a reward for holding the OP, cutting down on the supply doesn't work.

And I think that you still have not shown that there is a surplus of OP mats.

Burn the Ops, burn em all!

+

Sorry to hijack the thread:

I just have a weird idea on how to increase op wars. What I observed from the current setup is that a reward is lacking.

Supposed we change the mechanics and add something like:
1st phase
- every round an attacker wins, will get 1 mat the OP produce
- the max mats the attacker can get is the current threshold of the OP

2nd phase
- attacker can not get anymore mats as max mats was obtained on the 1st phase

Again, I'm sorry if I hijack the thread, but I think this will make more sense, it is more realistic since the attacker won a round then there is a possibility that the attacker looted something. Hehehehe. I think this will increase OP wars.

While I think that 1 mat per round is too much (far above the production potential, and inviting abuse by handovers), the idea might be not so bad.

But I leave that to the experts to comment.

With admiration for Adriel, I have taken his idea, and developed it further, posted to a separate thread to allow this thread to continue un-hijacked.
--B

As Gkr said before but I will back up; people don't trade things on the forum usually.
One could argue the devs made 3 factions in order to balance OP wars. Its a shame people get hung-up on RP and refuse to make alliances. As Gorran said "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

I'm getting pretty tired of people whining and whinging about numbers when they refuse to use all the resources open to them (by resources I mean the other factions).
The point in a faction.. This can be many things to many different people. However different factions making temporary alliences with each other is only natural as we have seen throughout the course of history with many countries. Hide behind your RP all you want, but please stop complaining about numbers if you refuse to use all the options open to you.
I think you must not remember the times when kami weren't on top. During my time on atys (ari) there has always been one thing that is constant: The fluctuation of OPs between kami and kara. Kami dominate for a while then kara strike back and take over. I personally believe kami are just on top for the moment. I can assure you that I have had my fair share of downtimes. I remember loosing zo-kian to karavan and I was not happy about that.
Keep insulting us, call us greedy or whatever. The fact is we worked hard to own the OPs we have. We trained hard and we prepared hard. I have seen no such dedication from the other factions to replicate this, apart from a few individuals leveling hard. What I have seen as a response from the other factions is a constant stream of complaints about numbers and how unfair life is. Stop wasting your time whining, get out there, train hard, sort your game out and come take our OPs.
Yep keep insulting away. All you do is sound completely pathetic. The kami alliance was built long before we owned good OPs, and it will continue long after that. We have had our ups and downs, especially getting to grips with french, german and english styles of RP but we persevere. If you think our alliance is built and maintained because we want OP mats you are sadly wrong.
Asylum first attacked for 2 reasons. We wanted the OP mats, and we wanted to hold the best OPs so we could defend against counter-attacks. We took a simple game mechanic and used it to our advantage, which people have been doing since OP wars were first introduced just in case you didn't know.

In reply to Virg:

I appologize for jumping off the ship without knowing you better.. thanks for the feedback and hopefully we can find a way to make it better for everybody..

Cheers