Pre-Faction AI Launch Guide |
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Thirion
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Joined: 10 Apr 2018 Status: Offline Points: 248 |
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Topic: Pre-Faction AI Launch GuidePosted: 11 Apr 2022 at 09:43 |
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All the information is available for public access. Illy is a deep and complex game. While other people might get you by - it is usually a good idea to read up on the topic by yourself. All the information is out there - you just have to bother looking for and reading it. For Faction play that is quite easy - as there is a forum where most posts (regarding rules) are from Faction play: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/politics-diplomacy_forum13.html In addition there is a forum with the Faction play events/tournaments: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/events_forum49.html There was a Faction Play Event some time ago that was supposed to test all the ranking algorithms: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/faction-play-event-5-books-of-the-arch-magi_topic10855.html Jejune posted hints there on where to look - that is in my opinion a good overview of most of the available content (that is probably relevant for Faction AI)
As an alternative you can find the links in the forums mentioned above or on Jejune's profile. All the information is easily available - you just have to bother with it. For the event i wrote a summary for my alliance and came up with a (simple) strategy for the event. In case people are interested in that i am glad to post my alliance mail. I can also make a post summarizing Faction Play from my view/experience if people would like that.
He answered your questions and he is active in GC (and reads your comments/feedback there) - what do you expect more?
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BrianN
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Joined: 30 Jul 2019 Location: Wisconsin, USA Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Posted: 11 Apr 2022 at 02:20 |
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Tens: My point was that Jejune had no cache built up, after I did that post Thirion had a conversation with me, which i appreciated, and I got more context. "I also think a lot of your misconceptions could have been avoided by reading up on Faction Play and trying to getting to know it and/or understand it." I did try to get to know and understand it before that post, but noone ever bothered till you and Jejune had your convos with me. I am however a little disappointed in the lack of a response from Jejune, but I got enough info from everyone to get by.
Edited by BrianN - 11 Apr 2022 at 02:22 |
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eowan the short
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Joined: 03 Jan 2016 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 937 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 16:36 |
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Briann... you say you can't use slack, yet you've got an account in TCol's slack server. Should they be worried about spies?
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This is the thread that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. Some person started it, not knowing what it was, and we'll continue posting on it forever just because...
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Thirion
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Joined: 10 Apr 2018 Status: Offline Points: 248 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 10:33 |
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Jejune is a long time member of this community. He implemented a complex player-run system on top of Illyriad that a lot of the players enjoy. He organized and run multiple Faction Play tournaments. You can read most of the details about that here in the forums. So no, Jejune has a track record. And in my opinion it is really impressive - Faction Play is the biggest content addition to Illyriad in a long time. And he did that with the huge limitations player-run content has. For me Jejune is the player that had the biggest impact on Illyriad since i started playing it (and all of it was positive).
Faction AI is based on Faction Play. The Faction Play rules and systems were created by Jejune but reviewed, used/tested and improved by a lot of players and alliances. I (and other players) gave a lot of feedback to Jejune regarding Faction Play. And i am already giving feedback/ideas regarding Faction AI to Jejune (as are you). So no - Faction AI is not a system that is created by one person or even "just" the development-team now. It is an improved and extended version of Faction Play that quite a few Illyriad players have been discussing, using and improving for over a year now. Sorry if the post is slightly aggressive. I think your input is important and valuable. I also think a lot of your misconceptions could have been avoided by reading up on Faction Play and trying to getting to know it and/or understand it. |
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Tensmoor
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Joined: 07 Apr 2015 Location: Scotland Status: Offline Points: 1579 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 05:35 |
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That post was meant to be a tongue in cheek way of saying that it will take some time and a lot of effort to work out exactly what is affecting your rankings with each of the factions and by how much. When I was playing one of my cities had a great many attacks by The Tower. While I don't have the exact figures any more I would estimate that I probably lost around 100 units total spread over more than 20 attacks. Not something that worried me in any way and certainly nothing more than a very slight inconvenience. I lost many more troops and harvesters to attacks by the 'standard' NPCs. I'm a bit confused by your point about the devs not having a track record of sucess and bad community engagement reviews and I'm responding to it only because it is in the same paragraph as the quote from me. How long has this game been going? In my opinion that is a big sucess and early reviews were just that - early reviws. My personal experience of support has been pretty outstanding apart from a couple of my very early tickets being ignored ("I'm trying to do something and it didn't work" style ones with no details of what I was trying to do and what did/did not happen). I'm not talking about since I developed DurcTools but way before that. As I said many times in GC - the more detailed info you can give in a ticket (I appreciate not everyone has the same abilities as I do to grab detailed info) the more likely you are to get a quick response. Tens
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BrianN
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Joined: 30 Jul 2019 Location: Wisconsin, USA Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 01:36 |
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Who are these testers and developers? I mean, I don't need a full list or anything, but...I would like more than just your sayso that its being taken care of...otherwise I appreciate all the answers.
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GM Jejune
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GM Joined: 24 Feb 2022 Location: Illyriad Status: Offline Points: 56 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 01:19 |
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Many thanks for your questions, Brian! I appreciate your passion for the game and your candor. I'll address them below in turn:
First off, I will say that players don't risk "having a great deal of their work wiped out" by Faction AI. The various PvE features in the game have to this point never posed any kind of existential threat to players, and Faction AI will be no exception to that rule. There will be possible negative actions that NPC factions may take against players, but the threshold for these actions will be very low on the negative side of the action scale, meaning that players will need to behave negatively with an NPC faction in a pro-active, consistent manner to provoke such actions. The vast majority of players will sit within a range of the ranking system and action scale that won't provoke active aggressive action against them. In other words, it isn't as if the Faction AI switch will be turned on and everyone will be getting strafed by a half-dozen factions at once, all the time. Second, the system is going to be rigorously tested by a team of testers who are not part of the design or coding team and who are intimately familiar with the game. Illyriad has a strong track record of launching game expansions since 2010 that have been incredibly stable and widely embraced by the gaming community here. Faction AI will not be released until or unless our team is 100% confident that the system is ready for prime time. And to be clear: Faction AI is not a feature that I'm solely developing. I'm just one member of a larger team of designers, coders, and testers who are working on the project to bring it to fruition. Those who are coding and building the features are true professionals in their field who have had measurable success in developing similarly sophisticated gaming systems in the past.
All of the above, and more. Actions that involve specific factions and their hubs will have incremental effects on a player's ranking with them. This is why I've characterized Faction AI as touching "every aspect of the game." It won't just involve combat; traders, crafters, harvesters, and city builders will be able to use their gaming skills to affect the rankings in a number of ways.
No, I can say with confidence that there won't be "massive roaming bands of NPCs that will destroy other alliances." The "substantial changes" will occur as we roll out future expansions to Faction AI. To recap: the initial launch will be a "Player 1.0" version that will only govern players' rankings and actions with NPC factions. Later on, we'll release the alliance ranking and action system, which will have additional ranking factors and actions. After that, there will be "2.0" versions of both player and alliance ranking and action systems that will introduce even more ranking factors and behaviors.
Since the alliance portion of Faction AI will come later, it's hard to quantify that right now. I don't envision NPC factions posing any more of an existential threat to alliances than I do players, but I will say that if alliances begin thinking about how they can optimize relationships with NPC factions sooner rather than later, I think it would benefit them to some degree.
No, people with "already set loyalties to and against certain people/alliances" will not be determining these radii. They are based on several factors, including the faction's racial characteristics, the number of factions that belong to a particular race, the number of hubs that exist within those groupings, and profile characteristics as suggested by the lore. A great deal of effort has been made to use the lore and other faction content that is already in the game to color the behaviors and characteristics of the NPC factions.
I think there will be a desire among many in the player base to move cities because they want to get within certain action radii and interact with specific factions. As noted previously, the NPC factions won't be an existential threat to cities, and I wouldn't call any in-game feature that engages players to be "arbitrary."
The NPC behaviors in Calumnex are not representative of the vast majority of NPC factions throughout Illyria. If you study the faction profile pages, you'll see that most of the factions have thriving cultures and a desire to interact with other communities. Most of the Default Racial Standings (DRS) of non-monstrous factions fall within a range of +30 and -30 -- ranges that are well out of any "danger zone" for being attacked. Yes, monstrous factions are aggressive -- they tend to have DRS of -80 or lower for all races. There are only 6 of those factions worldwide, or ~6% of all factions. Furthermore, monstrous factions or otherwise do not "decimate" cities. For sure, they can decimate troops. But these are dangers that already exist in the game and players are accustomed to confronting.
The dev team is listening intently to the player community on Faction AI and will continue to engage in a dialogue as the features are rolled out. I've already heard from countless players who have offered a wide range of truly insightful ideas and concerns -- including you. I cannot tell you how valuable and appreciated that feedback is, as I know firsthand how passionate and creative this community is. Game developers are never able to keep up with the crowdscourced ingenuity of a gaming community, and Illyriad is no exception. I'm looking forward to keeping this dialogue open and evolving Faction AI into a truly immersive gaming feature for Illyriad. We can only do that with the creative input and participation of players like you who add so much to the experience.
Sorry, Brian! I didn't note questions in your previous post, which is why I didn't respond. I did, however, read your post very carefully and took your concerns seriously.
I promise you that we are taking testing very seriously. There is no way that SC will allow anything untested or sub-par to go live on the server until we know that it is going to function according to plan.
I don't take it personally at all, Brian, and I understand that the community here only knows about the team members who have in-game GM accounts. I can only stress that there are more people involved in the development of this feature than myself, and who are proven professionals in game design and development. I promise you that I am not the only person working on this -- not by a long shot. I hope this respponse answered some of your questions, as well as some other folks' questions as well. I'll do my level best to respond when I can in the forums and elsewhere on all things faction. Thanks!
Edited by GM Jejune - 18 Mar 2022 at 13:17 |
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BrianN
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Joined: 30 Jul 2019 Location: Wisconsin, USA Status: Offline Points: 54 |
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Posted: 18 Mar 2022 at 00:09 |
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I think I have to do the same disclaimer I did in the other thread: My communication is blunt, what I say is what I say and people often presume I say things that I do not. Im not saying that Jejune sucks or that this is a bad idea or that we shouldn't do these things. Im not saying anything but what I am saying. Please take them at face value and what they are for, not for what you think they are for. I think that this could be a great thing for Illy, a game ive spent hundreds of hours on. People often (so since its often, yes, I do deserve some of the blame for not making it clearer) assume that I am being combative, but I just think in different ways and am attuned to Unintended Consequences. It was my job for many years to see these things, its my mental makeup, and is often responsible for my blunt nature So, since my other concerns have not been addressed for 3 weeks, Ive been assured that if I use short concise questions they will be addressed.So here you go...ill take them in order brought up. "If you’ve never taken time to read up on the Factions, now is the time to do your homework." and "It is worth reviewing all of the Factions nearest you to see if your base standing with them has changed." This is also addressed by Tensmoor "Just as well I've stopped playing - trying to figure this all out would probably fry that last braincell "...what do you say to those who have spent a lot of time setting up their empires who are now at risk of having a great deal of their work wiped out by a change that will not be beta tested by a range of the playerbase? This project does not have the luxury of having a track record of the people developing it being successful in anything (and the early reviews on community engagement are bad). "The IFS indicates the rankings that Factions have with one another. Understanding the relationships between Factions is going to be critically important, since actions with or against one Faction will have reciprocal ranking effects with other Factions. " What do you mean by actions? Does this include having goods stored in their hub? Or moving goods into/out of their hub? Or simply defending yourself against the factions' attacks? "These are the actions that Factions may take on your behalf or against you based on your ranking. Look for these actions to substantially change and increase with the launch, offering all kinds of new benefits (and threats) to players and alliances. " To what extent? Will there now be massive roaming bands of NPCs that will destroy other alliances that don't properly suck up to the NPCs? Will alliance X's jumpstart on faction play cause them to have a tactical advantage (the answer to this is already yes, but by how much)? "Each Faction will have custom-sized radii around their hubs, based on their Faction characteristics. " Who will be determining these radii? People with already set loyalties to and against certain people/alliances? "Some players are already wondering if they will need to move cities because of the launch of Faction AI. The answer to that will vary from player to player." You do not see a problem where people can be forced to move cities for arbitrary reasons? "If a player is within reach of a Faction that is hostile to them, they can either exodus out of the Faction’s action radius, or work toward improving relations with the Faction just enough so that they won’t be a target of any hostilities. " And the people who are away from the game long enough that their cities are decimated before they come back? What is your response to them? So do you think that if the things that happen with NPCs in Calumnex would happen everywhere, would more people play the game or more get frustrated and quit? "Overall, NPC Factions are going to be highly active and will factor into virtually every aspect of gameplay. " So shouldn't people from virtually every aspect of gameplay be able to advise on its impacts? "Having an account on the Illy Slack Server for Faction Play is not a requirement to play with and enjoy Faction AI." However, so far, my issues that I have brought up in the game and these forums have been ignored, and im not able to use Slack so what is my option? Doing a petition ingame is obviously useless as I have multiple ones open for over a year and nothing done about them. "Rather than spending eons to design, code and test everything we have planned, we thought it best to release Faction AI in stages and get the entire gaming community into the fun and action as soon as possible." This makes SOME sense, but there should be SOME testing done before some small oversight causes irrereperable harm. Ammi said:"Don't get me wrong, maybe that is a wonderful effort in the interest of a majority of players, but up to know I just see it as an interference to PvP play. Also I think it is making the game more difficult for players whose account is more widely spread. They will have to adjust to more factions, which maybe even opposed to each other." As someone who has one PVP account and one hunting account greatly spread out, this is where a lot of these issues I see come from. Differing viewpoints are important Gilsus also brought up some points that I am interested in, and I see that neither of their concerns have been addressed. Overall, I have problems with not knowing what is going into this when there is no track record for the person implementing them. That there isn't a sufficient number/mindset to think of all the problems that one new programmer couldn't see or think of (again, im not disparaging Jejune...no one person can see all the ramifications).
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GM Jejune
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GM Joined: 24 Feb 2022 Location: Illyriad Status: Offline Points: 56 |
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Posted: 11 Mar 2022 at 00:09 |
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Players will interact with factions just as they do with other players, cities, encampments, hubs, NC units, etc. All of the actions we take in-game on a regular basis will have an impact on a player's ranking with a particular faction where they are directed at that faction. There shouldn't be any new or additional functionality needed.
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demdigs
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Joined: 12 Aug 2011 Status: Online Points: 570 |
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Posted: 10 Mar 2022 at 22:13 |
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how will we work with the factions? will it be something like a drop down menu or a page with a list of options?
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