Tournaments and War
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: The Caravanserai
Forum Description: A place to just chat about whatever takes your fancy, whether it's about Illyriad or not.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=6453
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 18:00
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Tournaments and War
Posted By: Ashmadia
Subject: Tournaments and War
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 05:10
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I wanted to share some of my views with you, in hopes to broaden yours and not to alter it. I blame some recent disputes I was part in, the Great War, the latest Land Claims and the Pico-war in conjunction with the lack of an Illy Tournament and the latest "WAR discussion" for motivating me to create this topic. I believe that Tournaments, although enjoyable might have caused more harm than good to the military aspect of the game and especially to wars. It has been a point of interest of both "warmongers" and "peaceful" players and because it includes the usage of troops it's some kind of a war to me. Still, it can only be a "friendly" competition, a sport. Very good rewards too, so where is my problem? See, it's the LACK of a tournament that becomes the issue. When it only takes a decent cavalry army ~3 months to build from scratch and a tournament takes longer to organize, it can get really boring for the bigger players. And when opportunity arises (friction of any sort) I can see how it might be hard to hold one's horsies and a great destruction might follow. This is how i want to broaden your view: do not depend on a tournament to enjoy another aspect of the game! Make your own Wars (tournament is but a fraction of war) and turn them into a "friendly" competition or a "spiteful" settling of old scores (as long as you steer clear of swearing and insulting). Note that the latter is only available this way and not through Tournaments ("friendly" by default) and can help ease off some hard feelings so that razing and complete annihilation won't feel natural. Draw distinctive lines to the amount of damage that is potentially done in such wars, name your price to take part in such wars on your profile, to be paid if you win after they accept instead of backing down (reparations they were called before), use opportunities like the friction the land claims create to practice such wars and generally do what the devs might not do for you like mature players would. All of the above are my views alone, they do not represent my alliance as a whole. Take them with a grain of salt, for as a player, whom i respect a lot, once told me, it does not seem nice for a member of a training alliance with no diplomatic authority to fiddle in illyriad's politics. I see that point, so I leave it to the beholder to value (or not) what they just read. |
Replies:
Posted By: Mr Damage
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 06:56
| There's been a few wars by agreement over the journey, it just takes a bit of imagination to agree terms. Tournaments have been fun in the past and will be again. Perhaps its time to have one whereby confeds can play a part so its no longer just a sport for the bigger alliances. |
Posted By: Jejune
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 08:45
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Thank you for starting this post, Ashmadia. I think it is an interesting and important topic. About once every quarter, SIN conducts a "war exercise" with HALO, and the exercises are usually quite vigorous. We've mounted real sieges, and also conducted various blockading challenges as well (obviously, we attenuate troops to make it fair). I know that at present B|B is having a War of Walls with another small alliance in the BL as well. These are usually smallish projects, though, and I would hesitate to call them wars. This is just a guess, but I think there is a sizable portion of the player population that reserves the term "War" for conflicts that involve the ever-referenced "meta-game." By engaging the intrigue of geo-politics and the unpredictability that comes with this dimension of war, I think the gaming experience for those involved is enhanced. War exercises and tournaments have the competition, but the stakes are usually not as high -- there is no "existential threat" involved. And because of that, I think some players don't get the same thrill. What I've always hoped for is a game where the wars are not a consequence of settling personal/ego issues, but rather over territorial wrangling and vying for power, control and conquest. To be sure, you still end up with hurt feelings and bruised egos in those war initiatives as well, but I also think you end up with a more dispassionate use of the war mechanic while still retaining the intrigue of the meta-game. ------------- https://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/394156" rel="nofollow">  |
Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 20:21
To this I generally agree. I think it's admirable that you recognize that sometimes wars are started and fought in response to "hurt feelings and bruised egos" as avatars have neither of those, but players do. One of the points I've been trying to make, and which is made much better in this thread, is that those who wish to be warriors should just go ahead and make war against each other. If it's fun, do it! However, seeing how no one is really taking me up on that point, I have to consider why. Here's what I think. The path to being a big player in Illy is a long one. To get there you have to spend a lot of time and effort, probably about 2 years of consistent play (or perhaps a lot of real money if you want to shorten the journey). The path to losing all that is generally much shorter...a few weeks or even a few days. Thus, while warfare might be fun, it's costly. Thus, the bigger you are the more you DON'T want to go to war and the more you want to preserve your position via confabs, negotiations and the calcification of "homelands" etc. In the end, it's my contention, that warriors do not wish to war against anybody their own size (and thus risk anything) and are afraid to actually go to war if they think they might lose anything of significance. To my way of thinking the suggestion that we have "arranged wars" is a good one and should be done by willing parties. However, I doubt anybody of any size has the courage to actually risk such a thing. I think the only way you are going to get that kind of action is if somebody gets "hurt feelings and bruised egos." Such is life, real and in game. AJ |
Jejune wrote:Posted By: Alcie
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 22:20
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I agree with much of what has been said in this thread. I definitely get the impression tension on the server increases and war gets more likely when we haven't had a tournament recently. Although I wasn't personally involved, the 'great war' came after a particularly long dry tournament spell and some people were going pretty stir-crazy. Personally I feel one of the best things about illy is that you can become big, and do pretty much everything, without being forced into war. But some people want to fight. If you include all shades of fighting including tournaments rather than just war, probably most people want to try some shade of player fighting at some point. As a community I would say we haven't been super great at making healthy avenues for fighting where both sides basically want to be involved and are having fun without trying to hurt feelings or make things less fun for the other players. Plenty of people and alliances have done such things—overall as a community, though, I think there is room for improvement. Some things we can do: Wars with friends: This takes some planning. In particular friends often are in your own alliance or in a NAP or confed alliance and not everyone in the alliances wants to be involved, so the planning aspect can often be very hard unfortunately. One nice thing about this setting though is that it can have a time limit. Even extremely war-hardened players often want a long long break after the month upon month upon month that large-scale wars can drag. Wars with non-friends with some reasonable rules set: If two alliances want 'real war' just for fun or are both war-like alliances and have a disagreement, go for it. Don't drag in every confed and their neighbor, don't fill forums with swearing. Perhaps set a time limit. Perhaps set rules for how many towns are burned,which players will be involved, etc. Maybe have a clear defined goal and pre-defined surrender terms-- 'if you do this you win and we stop... if we want to stop before that we concede and you guys can feel good about yourself and win the surrender terms. This is potentially hard because you have to trust people who are not your good illy friends/allies. But.. we are (mostly) a remarkably mature group of people in this game... I am sure this could be done. Think a war might be brewing but don't want to lose all your towns? Set rules and simply start the war on a more friendly setting rather than letting politics (and forum threads) degrade more and more until it is just a horrible mess and a war starts anyways. Alliance activities: npc tournaments or non-combat 'mini' tournaments with various goals. This also takes planning and cannot involve the same type of fighting as the above two, but is another activity the whole alliance can be involved in. The (sadly never finished) 'don't get eaten' mystery-related-tournament and the various 'wake up Audrey' plans are other good examples of this which expanded to involve quite a few alliances. Even if we go back to having biyearly tourneys it was pointed out that armies can grow back completely in 2 or 3 months. So several of the above activities could fit in a year, even with room for breathers. Things I think the DEVs could do to help us: 1. Tournaments: Go back to having 2 tournaments per year. There have been several in the past that are potentially repeatable. The occasional new idea is nice, but we really wouldn't mind repeats. Personally I think having them be at predicable times every year would be wonderful so it wouldn't interfere with other activities 2. Combat-training mode: Have a mode which the leader can set player-by-player to mark particular players to be able to be attacked by similarly-marked alliance or NAP or confed players. As well as being useful for capturing towns, this would make it soooo much easier to have friendly quickly-organized one or several alliance little fighting activities with much less planning. Players that didn't want to be involved could just not have that setting marked. Players that did want to be involved could ask their leader, get their mode changed, and have fun attacking their friends without worrying about accidently attacking people not involved or having to leave their alliance and alliance chat. |
Posted By: Angrim
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 23:22
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the relationship between war and tournament is complex. i am not convinced they are substitutes for one another. wounded pride that loses a tournament is further wounded; ego that wins one is further inflated. |
Posted By: Ashmadia
Date Posted: 16 Jun 2015 at 02:11
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gosh, how did Angrim manage to say so much in just two lines? |
Posted By: jcx
Date Posted: 16 Jun 2015 at 09:03
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Seeing WAR in Illyriad and BL is a normal phenomenon. You build cities to support troops for war. If you don't agree with players who wanted to enjoy Illy thru warmongering better stay away from them. I'm looking forward to see great battle reports in the near future. Also the capability of a High Pop Account against the small ones. Have fun you guys!
------------- Disclaimer: The above is jcx|orcboy's personal opinion and is not the opinion or policy of Harmless? [H?] or of the little green men that have been following him all day. jcx in H? | orcboy in H? |