A controversial suggestion

[Artorias]

Get rid of restrained fights.

Going to have to hard disagree with this one, it took me well over 300 spars before I started winning anything. The average new player wouldn't be able to develop, or even get the experiences needed to actually participate against veteran players that already know all the trees intimately. Having them all do aggros isn't really a good alternative, not unless the injuries are ramped down considerably.

As much as I think some people are addicted to sparring, I don't really think this improves anything.

Though if you made it so people actually had to RP their sparring, I think that would be a good compromise. It would stop people chain sparring for hours, and actively help them build comradery and a story together. (I am guilty of chain sparring, though if I'm being honest any joy I have for it is gone now as well.)

Tldr; Old players would remain too experienced and skilled, new players wouldn't be able to get skilled enough to compete; would likely be a negative for playerbase growth and only be positive to the oldguard remaining competent and on top.

[bonafidenubbin]

I 100% agree and I've been feeling that for a while on Meranthe.
That for a lot of people, RPing and making an interactive and narratively interesting story has taken a backseat and instead the only thing that matters is PVP. Fighting as many restraineds as possible, etc. Also note: Matthew is not the only person who has hundreds of restrained fights under his belt, either.

And it's boring.

So instead of touching on your idea about rebirths etc -

Get rid of restrained fights.

Furthermore, whenever we do have tournaments - and I understand this is the nature of the beast - inevitably, the strongest crop of whoever signs up becomes even stronger due to the prizes. Perhaps work out a way to award others, somehow.

i had to downvote this not because i dislike you but because this would 100% make everything WAY WORSE, because those of us who suck would have no ability to ever catch up.

[Titania]

I have little to contribute here other than to echo the statements of others that violence solves everything in Eternia, and thusly, you are obligated to be good at violence if you want to have an effect. Therein lies the root of many things-- Competitiveness, cliques, toxicity, the playing-to-win mentality that tends to flow around...

...Much of it stems from the fact that if you don't have the sauce, you aren't going to be achieving much, and vice versa. If you have the skills and the equipment and the signatures, you can walk over people.

Don't actually like that very much! But I don't have any alternative suggestions, so me saying I don't like it is about as impactful as shouting at a TV screen for a character to get out of the way of the oncoming bus.

[Malek]

Things like rebirth potions, previews, and spars only actually allow inexperienced players to have a chance to compete in PVP without getting knowledge checked by the people that win over and over.

It's been said and repeated multiple times even in E3 since before these were features (except sparring) that this is a PVP game. Mostly jokes, but they all come from a real place.

Rebirths, previews, and spars don't cause people to want to PVP more. They rebirth, preview, and spar, because they have to PVP to be relevant and compete with the people that generally just win verbs from the get go. I think the people that are secure in their ability to verb are out of touch with what a player that doesn't feel comfortable engaging w it feels.

The only reason the game feels more PVP focused now is because the wilderness is dominated by encounters. People shit on downtime but it makes it so that PVP isn't where the meat of the story is for a little bit, and allows newer characters to integrate. I know plenty of players that are either sitting the Atrellya arc out in settlements, or have quit/taken a break completely because of it.

I don't want to make this an Atrellya thread, my opinions are clear. The issue is that I think this is going to extend to ANY faction that the majority of the player-base could only reasonably want to wipe out.

Imo, there are two out-comes for these kinds of factions/races/classes/whatever.

-They don't invest heavily into PVP, but due to lore implications/past sins/zealotry of other factions, the faction either dies because they're just always being fought and losing- and things aren't getting better for them. Characters die, players quit.

-They do end up pretty PVP dominant, an arc is created around taking them out. You can't just leave them be, because the state of thing means that you have most of the playerbase AND the faction feeling like it's very out of character to spot each other out in the field and not make an encounter of it.

The first alternative is obviously bad. You don't want to have factions spring up then practically get bullied out before they can do anything interesting.

The second however leads to where we're at, and it hasn't happened with just Atrellya and has probably been a mainstay of the game because honestly, everything is cyclical but I like voicing opinions anyways.

Now, the reason I bring this up is to explain the playerbase's reasons for the PVP focus- and why people are either maxing verb ability or staying in settlements/quitting. If you go out, the atrellya encounters are possible, and if they happen these are the only ways I personally see a loss going for MOST characters. There are rare instances when this could not be the case, say- some really cool mental perm that lets you go in another direction, but you can get that with any enemy. Anyways, here's my list of possibilities:

1- Your character vows to get revenge for the defeat, and decides to get stronger. This necessitates the PVP focus, or the player can just keep throwing themselves at Atrellya and losing which isn't very narratively satisfying.

2- Your character doesn't acknowledge the incident much, they move on. This is a net 0 or net negative. It's not always bad when this happens, but if it keeps happening it'll obviously get on your nerves.

3- Your character is captured/comes with them willingly, and enters a corruption arc. This is the one instance where I think it could generate really good RP for you, but being in Atrellya probably means you might need to verb at some point (though not necessarily), and it's also just... not something a lot of characters necessarily want. If you're lucky enough to have the type of character you think would be great in a corruption arc, good luck.

4- Your character is captured and is killed. Self explanatory.

Imo, the PVP focus is a direct symptom of the current state of the game and nothing else. Before this, I think things were fine. Also, just generally- as mentioned before in this thread, FOTM are allowed to exist for too long. People need to rebirth, or spar, or what have you to keep up. Imo, it's just a matter of nerfing the builds that spike in popularity and wins faster to keep the playerbase thinking that there's not gonna be one dominant strategy for the whole month- and from that point on, PVP becomes more of a wild card of people trying fun things and being cool with it. If they're less worried they're gonna run into the same strong builds over and over for a month, then they're more willing to take a risk themselves.

Also, I'm always right. Any disagreements are null and void.

[ForkAndKnife]

To add onto the previous post, this has made me realize that things like Magical Beasts, Night Creatures, etc are a big contributor to the PVP mindset. They're able to spring up, grow to insane power within a week, and be a problem off the bat. This incentivizes further the meta-building, because they need wins to be able to do that without dying in the process.

At least with a RB potion on a normal player character, you have (or should have) some semblance of IC to try and keep afloat, otherwise you get the side-eye from people that see what you're doing. It's a lot less impactful because you're fixing what's already there, instead of just throwing a new 'character' to the wall because you're capable of getting them to comparable power in a fraction of the time.

Not to mention, those same characters (less so Night Creatures because of the capture rule differences, but still) can permanently end a character who DIDN'T get to PVP spam their way to 210, and instead had to grow them organically. I started on the last day of January, and I'm at 224 on a normal human. I've been playing daily. If I lost that to a character that sprung up a week prior, I'd probably quit the game, I cannot lie.

[Tigers101]

Many replies in this thread have echoed my thoughts regarding combat and conflict resolution in the game, converging on one point:

Currently in Meranthe, combat is the only objective method of gauging success between player conflict.

There is a point that is repeated over and over and over again among the community. Everyone is playing through their own story, from beginning to middle to end. All of us want to win, at least in certain parts, to reach a desired conclusion to our story. This is not a bad thing. It's natural.

But in a conflict between two players, there can only be one victor. How is that victor determined? It's not like combat HAS to be the only method of 'fighting' between people. Take LOTR, for instance, where magically gifted people engage each other in battles not with their swords and spells, but rather songs and poetry, imbued with their magical prowess and intent, and with similarly lethal consequences.

This is all fine and good in a story, where the author already has the winner and loser in mind. But between two people, who could we trust to objectively compare (similarly well put together) 2 poems laden with their own intent and declare one to be better than the other?

Would the losing side ever be able to accept such a thing?

With combat, using spells and taking CDs and status effects into account, the players themselves decide who has won or lost when they fight. It is the simplest and most objective way of deciding things between 2 similarly levelled people, absent of sigs and unique weapons and level gaps. I add this caveat because this is not the case many times b/t fighters, and that's OK, because Meranthe, like life, is not a fair world.

However, as mentioned before, the suggestions given in this thread, like removing restrained combat and limiting/removing rebirths, does not aid newer players who are not used to combat in this game, and are not familiar with the current 'optimal' builds. Who do not have a general sense of timing BYOND's ticks to CDs, or may forget to apply gems to their weapons, or use the applied gems. That they should dev for a change in their build makes sense, and is totally fine. But they are then limited to being stuck inside their settlement of choice, or run the risk of being forced to fight with the build they don't want if they wander, running the chance of dying and wasting all that time spent to 'dev out' of the build. (I will admit, I am biased against this, as I hate the idea of apping for anything.) These potions, even with their lvl 210 restriction, give them a chance to circumvent all of that and get on with the rest that the game has to offer.

I'm not bothered by the fact people take rebirths, or mana amnesias, or spar a ton of times. It doesn't impact my story. It's their shtick, and whatever they feel like they need to do to get comfortable with how conflict resolution works is their business. ICly, it gives me a chance to mock them if I am their enemy, or give them advice if I am their friend and take notice of it.

NOW LET ME THROW IN MY OWN DOGSHIT SUGGESTIONS! After all, it is still very much an issue that button mashing combat is the only way conflict is really resolved!

Field Battles:

I'm tired of settlement raids being the only types of raids that are actually done. It makes wars painfully short, with a single battle over a single day deciding pretty much everything! This is not war! These are skirmishes that the defenders always look woefully stupid for for letting the enemy get to their walls practically unopposed in the first place! Also, if certain people can't make it on a specific time, it throws everyone's timetables off. If something unexpected comes up, then a player who would logically be there on the day, is simply not, and they have to deal with having 0 war participation. This sucks!

I propose that when a 'war' is declared, before the day of the actual raid, either in the period of time where the settlement raid is yet to be determined or in the week prior to the settlement raid, one to two mini 'battle' events are set up, in fields somewhere between the two sides at war, where players can similarly sign up to duke it out between each other. These are optional events with little impacts on the settlement raid, but it gives a more warlike feeling, for one, and also offers opportunities for early victories to lower morale or even get a cap in. It also lets opps feel out each others' builds before the big day. It overall gives better OOC and IC preparations for the big day. All of this is IF-- we use the traditional method of combat.

I propose 3 types of field battles.

1: Traditional. Players get together, they get matched up based on RPL and magic types and whatnot, they throw down. You get the gist.

2: Strategic. Players in this type of field battle do NOT take the role of traditional combatants. They instead take the roles of commanders, directing companies of lower level/ nonmagi in battle against each other. How is this portrayed? Very simple, actually. Players will either be matched up or match up on their own, and play games of chess using a predetermined chess website, probably even streamed in the discord voice chat! Upon victory/defeat/DRAW, both the victor and the loser should send the results to the admin with a description of who they played against, and the results of this are also posted in war announcements. If we want to, an overall strategic field battle victory could give the victors a small stat boost in the actual settlement raid. +pow or something, to represent greater numbers from successful battles.

This is another objective way to determine victory/defeat in a battle, but it is not as simple as mashing buttons. This will likely provide for longer battle events, but also for different avenues of roleplay, where noncombatant characters get to be more relevant in conflicts without actually fighting, by using their BRAINS. (P.S. If the suggestion goes through and strategic battles are a thing, I will brain you with an ice pick if you run your game through a chess bot. If you join the battle, engage with it honestly, goddamnit!)

3: Morale/War of Songs. This type of field battle is for the type of players who are near and dear to my heart: the YAPPERS. The SHITTALKERS. Those whose tongues are as sharp as steel, with the quickest of wits, diss each other the best you can, like it's a rap battle! Alternatively, create poems to recite at each other (FREE voice casting dev, in my opinion). This represents attempts to demoralize the enemy before actual battles, and could give a reduction to the standard war cap rolls to the victors, representing less effort to meaningfully put down the opponent. In this method, we would set a maximum number of 'stanzas' to lay down at each other. Attempts to seize the verbal battlefield, so to speak.

This third one is much more subjective than the other two. Ideally, the two opponents can decide on their own who won this bout, and send a message to the admins giving such a result. However, if they both think theirs were better, or perhaps both try to give the dub to the other, we open up the decision to the community, in another channel, where the disses are posted, and voted on! This one is the least secure of my ideas, since it has a real chance of being boiled down to a popularity contest. However, I propose it nonetheless, in the hopes that it could be put into practice in good faith by the community.

This is all I can think of right now. Perhaps someone with a different approach to this could add new suggestions for types, or propose different contests altogether outside of the context of war. 

These are just my two cents on how this could be approached. I feel like we have to think a little bit out of the box to resolve this kind of issue, and I feel that the main way to solve it is to redefine how 'combat' is viewed in the game, so as to give players much more creative freedom to play out their stories in the way that they want to.

Maybe certain rituals can be performed to enlist the aid of spirits for a battle. Maybe the fortifications of a settlement can have minor devved out improvements, for a temporary boost since they aren't Wonders. Something that isn't just waiting.

Embrace the strategists!
Embrace the inventors!
Embrace the shittalkers!

We all play a part in weaving this story together.

[Nullia]

Hey, premier talk-no-jutsu PC Falke here.

This problem "might makes right, you can't do anything unless you're strong" is actually what I came in here specifically to subvert. I wanted to make a character that evaded these issues, and I think I proved a few times that you can, in fact, talk a fight away. I talked Volt and Zico out of a danger-initiation RP, I got a submission cap without even opening an rpb in a war, I took a shot at Na'Ria and begged her not to kill Eivor and he ended up living (not entirely due to me), and so on. It was fun! I enjoyed subverting the norm like that, and I think I gathered that other people liked seeing it.

Uh. That's all grinded to a halt for multiple years. No pressing political drama because everyone's Avengers'd on the ontologically evil faction, I can't talk people out of squabbling with the ontologically evil faction, they objectively deserve it. But that's not the point I'm trying to make.

In line with this thread, the most pressing issue I can face down relative to current gamestate is the fact that I, as an off-meta IC build, rely entirely on a hypothetical rp partner to listen to me and not danger me. That was alright before, I made it work with Volt and Fichiyare, but ever since this dramatic shift in builds to ether (seriously what happened though) and especially Night Creatures, I'm now relying on them not seeing me as a danger/danger exp for demons, and also them not using the knowledge that they can obliterate me with their meta build in a verb (for a danger/danger exp), before I can even attempt to make the conversation (which I can and have fucked up before).

TLDR; meta being how it is especially in current gamestate (but applying to it at large) makes it just that little bit harder to do what's already—as evidenced by most people here think it's impossible—an extremely difficult thing to do.


I also agree that peace =/= stagnation. The peace times were some of my best rp (stopping the Beast hunt). A lack of combat means that each individual fight is more impactful, which is my personal interest.

[Save]

The problem is that the single most rewarding thing in this game is combat.


You become relevant by winning.

You survive by winning.

You kill people and steal their shit by winning.

Your faction stays alive by winning fights.



The reason the game is competitive is NOT because of the rebirths.


Its because at core what matters the most is verbing because at the end of the day no matter how good your social skills or your diplomacy, if someone decide to war and destroy you they can.



My suggestion would be to find alternative ways to reward people that are NOT DM led because the problem is that DM led events are scarce and not reliable.



Anyway, thats my personal take on this. Verbing is just too center to a character's success. Its competitive focused because thats the one way where you can have all what you worked for just deleted.


In my opinion limiting rebirth won't change that at all other than make people saliter about nerfs and make new players who don't know what they are doing be stuck with really bad builds or something.


I think its a deeper issue than that.

Not true!
I became "relevant" by losing.
I obtained a signature by losing, and obtaining a deadly perm.
I've survived, even when losing.

Its all linked to how good you can craft a story, and how good your RNG is.

[Malek]

Oh: just because it's funny. The big brain move is to just remove the limit on rebirth potions, because then players will unabashedly move to problem build like in early e4 where we had whole wars fought with both sides spamming wind all of a sudden.

Then all you gotta do is drop a nerf immediately on the most rebirthed-to tree.

This is a joke, but imo it does also highlight that the symptoms we're considering the problem only really highlight the actual problem underneath. 

When you get rid of the improved communication around combat and the meta, the rebirths, the spars, the previews- you get E3, where everyone was complaining about the same stuff we're highlighting now but they'd just get downvoted because it wasn't as apparent since it was harder to test things out and see how true the claims are.

[Kayla]

Not true!
I became "relevant" by losing.
I obtained a signature by losing, and obtaining a deadly perm.
I've survived, even when losing.

Its all linked to how good you can craft a story, and how good your RNG is.

My very first character was a pacifist, named Cherry.

I would literally /forfeit or whatever the command is at any verbs anyone would throw at me. (I always forget if its /concede /forfeit /abandon or whatever)

I still managed to talk down a lot of violence and arguably stop an entire war.

I'm sure many people who RP'd with her would +1 that my roleplay was very solid and I've changed the mind of necromancers, witches and a ton of psychopaths into being better people back when that really wasn't a popular stance (very start of E4)

Though how did my story end? People went to me, refused to listen to what I had to say no matter how hard I tried, they captured me and I was infinitely stuck in Aphros as a prisoner until I got bored after a month + of captivity and just retired.


Do you know when I've seen that not happen? When the character was strong enough to fight their way out, or when they had friends strong enough to bail them out.


I'm not saying you can't do ANYTHING if you're not strong, I'm saying its an incredible boon and in the cases of FACTIONS it is a requirement.

A faction/settlement absolutely requires a strong subset of people, at least a good core of them, in order to survive destruction raids. That leads to clique behavior, to meta chasing etc etc. Its because sometimes there are people that no matter what you tell them they simply decided the outcome already.


The reality is that playing a social character that is not focused on combat is possible only in two scenarios:

A: You have a cast of strong characters surrounding you/who are in your faction

B: you are a loner who doesn't care about the state of settlements.


Settlements in the way they are currently setup and in the way they are destroyed (Via raid which is entirely decided by win%) forces any character with any attachment to those settlement to be forced to value strong verbers.


That is simply how it is.



(Yes, I did not mention alliances. Because its the same issue: You rely on strong verbers of other factions to defend you. In the end it all circles back to might is right.)


Edit:

TL;DR : A good writer MAY become relevant. A strong verber ALWAYS is. People can say "no" to your words. They can close up and ignore them. They can't ignore the result of a verbing.