Yea, the bandwagon faction, that will fix EVERYTHING.

[March]

What if the 3 Faction Alliances were game controlled rather than player controlled?

I could imagine such a system possibly working in DAoC:

1. Alb Dominant = Hib/Mid Allies
2. Alb Primary, Hib Secondary = Mid/Hib "Collaborators" (Mid could "betray" Hib only in Alb territory)
3. Parity = Free for All

Floaty names:
Enemies = Red
Allies = Green
Collaborators in non betrayal situation = Green
Collaborators that you could attack = Yellow
Collaborators that could betray you = Blue

To my untrained math mind, it would seem that 3 nobs could tune better balance than 2.

Sure, I die a little inside to give up player control, but when I really think back on it... what I actually liked about DAoC was that each night the situation was dictated by how the game was being played by other players, not how the game was playing me.

This model would prevent the curb-stomping of the under-dog, plus give the weakest faction a special tool that they could use as a faction as a group or as an individual in a very particular set of circumstances... it would approximate parity in that they could chose the time and nature of their battles... play spoilers, play allies, or play betrayers.

In a WoW type instanced scenario model, 3 factions allows for more dynamic team building  A+B vs. C ... the goal here is not some sort of metagame, but fast queues.

[Paelos]

What he said. The pre-expansion events are like one week every two years. I'd have done something even more crazy and let people suck it up.

Agreed. Seriously, who's trying to actively get a ton of shit done two weeks before expansion? The only thing that would have gotten me to log in prior to the release would have to have been something crazy. Not this mess with shitty loot that's meaningless.

[Fordel]

Scenario 1 is just 1v1 again, multiple sides did jack and shit to balance it.



Scenario 2, you've just created a system where no one has any incentive to attack anything BUT the weakest side.   .



Scenario 3 is the "design the entire game from the ground up to somehow ensure equal population and participation across all factions." Once someone figures out number three, I'm sure they'll make a crap ton of money on their awesome pvp MMO.



-edit- That doesn't even get into how you actually work out who and what is flagged for Scenario two. Does it work on a individual player basis, a group basis, raid? Proximity? Zone? Does one random stealther jacking a random mage suddenly mean the 'collaboration' is open season again? Will the shitty realm have to constantly try to police it's own members from now spoiling their 'alliance' with the other realm?

[pxib]

What if the 3 Faction Alliances were game controlled rather than player controlled?

PvP systems in multi-player game are always player controlled. They figure out how the game works, either consciously or unconsciously, and then alter the environment until it suits their needs. "Altering the environment" includes "I stop playing the game". The more complicated the system is, the less conscious their decisions are and the longer it takes for the realization that they're not having fun to sink into their skulls.

To judge the popularity of your "allies, collaborators, betrayers, enemies" system, imagine it with more than three factions. Imagine the situation with every single race in DAoC (or WoW) in their own faction. More realistically, imagine relations between guilds allowing them to regularly fight (or merely "betray") other guilds. Consider whether this would make the game more or less fun. As Darkfall regularly showed, most people just want to cooperate. Getting in fights all the time is stressful, and worrying that people will betray you is tedious.

If "Free for all" gameplay were genuinely available, it's likely some servers would wind up with exactly one big happy faction to which everyone was a member.

[Sheepherder]

Sheephereder, are you retarded or just obtuse? Zombies were in the other cities as well. What the fuck do nearby portals have to do with banking, or not being able to fuck up zombies in Shatt without letting them tag you first?

1. Take portal to non-sanctuary Capital.  Ride to bank/AH.
2. AoE.  Seed of Corruption or Holy Wrath if you've got it.
3. ...
4. Drink zombie tears, profit.

Occasionally someone would plaguebomb the AH and turn the auctioneers, then immediately have their shit ripped apart by a paladin.  Fucking boohoo, I have to wait 30 seconds to buy a void crystal.

[March]

Scenario 1 is just 1v1 again, multiple sides did jack and shit to balance it.
Scenario 2, you've just created a system where no one has any incentive to attack anything BUT the weakest side.   .
Scenario 3 is the "design the entire game from the ground up to somehow ensure equal population and participation across all factions." Once someone figures out number three, I'm sure they'll make a crap ton of money on their awesome pvp MMO.

-edit- That doesn't even get into how you actually work out who and what is flagged for Scenario two. Does it work on a individual player basis, a group basis, raid? Proximity? Zone? Does one random stealther jacking a random mage suddenly mean the 'collaboration' is open season again? Will the shitty realm have to constantly try to police it's own members from now spoiling their 'alliance' with the other realm?

1. Yes it did.
2. Depends what you mean by weaker, if by weaker you mean the strong side that has its shit together is being attacked by two lesser sides, then yes the game is encouraging them to attack the weaker side.
3. Parity is simply a state, not an end-point; at certain points in the game you may have parity in others not... that's the point.  Stop hoping the knife will balance on its point forever and design for the absence of parity.

Betrayal is a mitigating factor for #2 so that the sum of the two lesser sides can never be calculated at 100% against the strong faction.

I agree that betrayal as a gank mechanic would not be fun... perhaps I should simply have said that you could chose to flag yourself or your group or your Raid to be hostile in the Alb frontier only.  On the other hand, you could join a group or a raid of the collaborating faction, which would make you "Green" - with a cooldown (1, 5, 15, 30 min?) after you drop so you cannot flip willy-nilly.

[sinij]

There's no real space in lore for this

Lore should never take precedence over player's fun. Adjust lore. Wizard did it.

[Fordel]

1. Yes it did.
2. Depends what you mean by weaker, if by weaker you mean the strong side that has its shit together is being attacked by two lesser sides, then yes the game is encouraging them to attack the weaker side.
3. Parity is simply a state, not an end-point; at certain points in the game you may have parity in others not... that's the point.  Stop hoping the knife will balance on its point forever and design for the absence of parity.

Betrayal is a mitigating factor for #2 so that the sum of the two lesser sides can never be calculated at 100% against the strong faction.

I agree that betrayal as a gank mechanic would not be fun... perhaps I should simply have said that you could chose to flag yourself or your group or your Raid to be hostile in the Alb frontier only.  On the other hand, you could join a group or a raid of the collaborating faction, which would make you "Green" - with a cooldown (1, 5, 15, 30 min?) after you drop so you cannot flip willy-nilly.

What do you do when A > B+C in scenario one? It's the same problem as A vs. B without CDEFG at all. It hasn't fixed shit.


What prevents B from just going into C's realm and shitting all over them instead of trying to play the "maybe C will work with us against A, or maybe they'll just fuck us in the ass." game. Nothing protects C from that and nothing makes attacking A an appealing choice for B. A can continue rolling them both for shits and giggles with impunity as well.


Multiple sides doesn't change the fact the smallest fish is still the smallest fish, just adds more fish.

[Soulflame]

I played DAoC for years.  Two weaker sides almost never gang up on the stronger side.  It was by and large the weakest side being a playground for the two stronger sides.

[01101010]

It worked pretty well in Planetside in the beginning, however the theme of the game was different. There were alliances every once in awhile, but those usually broke down fairly quickly.

edit: Of course you have ship-jumpers and it's a bigger problem now. But at first, there was empire loyalty when it was about empire ownership and less about individual kill counts. Yes they had old scoreboards, but only a few people paid attention to them until the game shifted to more of a persistent Counterstike-type style more tuned to kill counts and k/d ratios than the intended purposes the game started out with. Planetside started out with huge fights but became smaller and more individualistic the longer it went.

[Simond]

Bollocks did it. Google "planetside fourth empire".

[March]

What do you do when A > B+C in scenario one? It's the same problem as A vs. B without CDEFG at all. It hasn't fixed shit.


What prevents B from just going into C's realm and shitting all over them instead of trying to play the "maybe C will work with us against A, or maybe they'll just fuck us in the ass." game. Nothing protects C from that and nothing makes attacking A an appealing choice for B. A can continue rolling them both for shits and giggles with impunity as well.


Multiple sides doesn't change the fact the smallest fish is still the smallest fish, just adds more fish.

If A is so great that B+C is meaningless, your game has other issues not related to _any_ faction balance mechanic - most likely broken class(es), Strong-get-Stronger RvR bonuses, or art.  Fix those.

In the rough sketch I outlined, B cannot attack C. Period.  That's the anti-curb-stomp device.  So when you say "nothing protects C from that" it tells me that you are not reading what you are arguing against.  It might indeed be a completely horrible and flawed concept, but not for the reasons you are throwing out.

I agree that multiple sides does not in and of itself create auto-balance, it just gives the rule-makers a better system to try to calibrate it or (more importantly) keep it playable when out of balance.

[Merusk]

If you're trying to balance for population, no hardcoded sides will ever make sense. If you're going to do PVP, you just open it up and let the players decide which "side" they're on.

[01101010]

If you're trying to balance for population, no hardcoded sides will ever make sense. If you're going to do PVP, you just open it up and let the players decide which "side" they're on.

This makes me wonder though, given the tendencies players in PvP games have these days. Once a strength is found without an equal counter to it you will have players shift to the more powerful one which inevitably leads to population imbalances - ah la the fourth (or X) empire. Obviously if you give both sides the same equipment thus equaling the playing field in terms of character composition within the game, but then you have to have a reason for choosing sides and a purpose for each side. Negating gear advantages leads to ability problems, when a few very good players are on one side and people migrate over to that side in order to be on the winning side. Granted, this all has to do with the players and not the game itself. It's a fatal flaw in any competitive game which unfortunately lies outside the box of the game.

[Chimpy]

You cannot balance PvP in level based DIKU.

That is the simple solution to this whole problem.

It is not about "skill" or "determination" it is about a ridiculous number of variables along with the psychology of people in general who want to be on the "winning side" and if they are on the bottom of a huge mis-match, they will just walk away or switch sides to be on the advantaged side.

[Fordel]

It worked pretty well in Planetside in the beginning, however the theme of the game was different. There were alliances every once in awhile, but those usually broke down fairly quickly.

edit: Of course you have ship-jumpers and it's a bigger problem now. But at first, there was empire loyalty when it was about empire ownership and less about individual kill counts. Yes they had old scoreboards, but only a few people paid attention to them until the game shifted to more of a persistent Counterstike-type style more tuned to kill counts and k/d ratios than the intended purposes the game started out with. Planetside started out with huge fights but became smaller and more individualistic the longer it went.

That pretty much described DaoC as well, where when the game was released, there was this collective "REALM PRIDE WOO" where you were on Team Alb/Hib/Mid and fuck those other two guys, we are going to totally take their giant magical hammer and horn! Then over time the game became less about that and more about personal point totals, the old gank group mentality.



March: If B cannot attack C anywhere, only retaliate after the fact, then B becomes the new 'C' and you still haven't fixed A.

As long as the population and participation across factions (any number, 2, 3, 52 doesn't matter), isn't equal, then someone is getting fucked over by everyone else.

Maybe a better way to put it is this, is it easier to split something in half, or into thirds? What happens when we end up with fifths? Where Albs and Hibs are both 2/5ths and Mids are only 1/5th? Which A + B / C * D^EFG equation is going to fix that?  

None of that actually addresses the issue of actually obtaining equality in a 3+ realm system, where A=B=C but A and B just decide to farm C anyways, because C is where Emain Macha is and that's just where the community goes to farm kills and keeps?

You also better damn well get your population and participation right on day 1, because servers NEVER get any better, only worse. People will bandwagon or just flat out leave and it only gets worse.


-edit- I feel like I am doing shitty algebra now. 

[Furiously]

The problem is you will have people that will want to play on the "winning" side no matter what and will reroll regardless of how many realms there are. You're going to have an extra realm of side switchers no matter what.

[March]

@ Fordel... I'll be the first to admit that this idea is not anything more than a throw-away... but since you are serially systematically misreading the proposal, I feel compelled to defend it 

1. Alb Dominant = Hib/Mid Allies
2. Alb Primary, Hib Secondary = Mid/Hib "Collaborators" (Mid could "betray" Hib only in Alb territory)
3. Parity = Free for All

Bolded the relevant part... C can only "betray" B in the Leading Faction's (A), territory... putting a voluntary subset of C at significant risk, but protecting both B and C from the Bandwagon effect.

In a nutshell, it (theoretically) shifts the fight to A (the strongest) with a small voluntary perq for C (the weakest) to play spoiler.  The "nice" thing about the spoiler perq is that as soon as people flock to it, they become a stronger faction and thereby lose the perq.

Regarding the question of the rules working for a 3-sided game... I'm not sure I follow why it is required that the same rules must _also_ work for an n-sided game?  I am not aware that this is a definition of failure in game theory?

[Rendakor]

@ Fordel

This isn't twitter.

[Fordel]

Bolded the relevant part... C can only "betray" B in the Leading Faction's (A), territory... putting a voluntary subset of C at significant risk, but protecting both B and C from the Bandwagon effect.

Why does B ever go to A's territory then? They can just go to C's and not worry about possible ass fuckings, only have to worry about guaranteed ones from A also going to C's territory.