Eternia is a PVP game.

[TheHopscotch]

There's been this re-occurring meme within the community as of late that has been lingering in the back of my mind for sometime now. 

The jokingly made statement that Eternia is nothing more than a PVP game, where roleplays only matter when you have a proper build backing your character. When creating your character and designing a concept you would find yourself enjoying, assuring you have a build described as 'optimal' should be the last thought on your mind. It is a struggle of balance between encouraging rewards and the combat system, and there's been a failure to uphold the former lately.

While I am certain few would find issue with this, the core problem stems from the fact that people do treat this game like a PVP game nowadays. This meme hasn't really cropped up in previous iterations of Eternia, mostly stemming from how build-central the game has become. In Spires, there were countless crazy combinations of magic, far more obnoxious ones too, but good behavior, proactivity, and a commitment to playing an immersive character was actually rewarded.

Now, I'll say this as blunt as I can.


Eternia should not be a game which rewards optimizing builds over well-rounded IC.

You shouldn't need worry about having the most optimized combo or how you'll sustain the hardest to come out on top. While there should certainly be some nuance and skill behind it, players who put significantly more time behind their characters personality/depth need to be rewarded in a more nuanced manner.

People who would rather treat this game like a PVP game as opposed to an interactive roleplaying experience should be put at a disadvantage. I've seen annoying spam of LOOC during serious scenes, and worse, shitposting in IC, often, where another players life is placed on the line in obnoxious attempts at being funny when it's just eyerolly. Characters which come off less as 'real' and more just a means to spout ooc phrases/lingo, drawing you out of the overall roleplaying experience and actively hurting the atmosphere by normalizing it and encouraging others to do the same.

Many even going as far to be disparaging in scenes which otherwise could do without snide side-liner comments. In my opinion, actions like this should be heavily discouraged. Players should not need to worry about the jeering of their fellow players whenever a serious scene or otherwise is currently ongoing. If people want to play shallow self-inserts with a thin veil between IC and OOC, let them, but at least empower those who put in the bare minimum.

Now, how do we fix this?


I believe the issue is a bit more than simply rewarding well-rounded players / handing out denials to others. Systems like this create a feeling of unease and can feel like your own actions are being undermined, when you truly are putting your best foot forwards. Similar to how moment apps more or less created a rift within the community - Many players feeling like the consistency wasn't quite there.

Naturally - No system can be made perfect and human error is more likely to occur when handling something as delicate as this. Should you have a mechanical system where players 'vote' on who they believe is impacting the meta the heaviest, its undeniable that such a system would be ripe for abuse/turn into a popularity contest very quickly.

No.

Something should be done, though. Perhaps when the administration sees a player actively making the gamestate better / more appealing their rewarded with a 'buff' to something as basic as their stance, but whatever it is then it needs to be significant and actually influence the IC rather than a few measly stats, preferably on a tiered basis. The old ruby/sapphire/etc passives were pointless because they were micromanagement for no real change. I want to see drastic, significant boosts applied to good actors, actively maintained and adjusted depending on the story.

And while I'm not entirely certain on what would be the best approach to address this, one thing remains - Eternia is not nor should it ever be seen as a PVP comes first experience. You want to actively push against this mindset, before it truly creates a toxic environment with characters nothing more than a hollow shell piloting the next overpowered combination their OOC buddies thought up.

TL;DR
Empower players who;
1. Don't spam looc with annoying attempts at humor, or worse, IC,
2. Actually come across as a living, real character rather than an attempt to be a 'meme.'
3. Are immersive to be around
4. Strive to be proactive and world shakers
5. Losing often in their RPL bracket despite all of the above (and if not, are exceptional / stand out)

P.S: I've never personally had problems with being strong and influential, even prior to acquiring hiddens. I know how to make a solid build that's unique, and I'm decently experienced in the game. Not everyone has that luxury.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[Mouse]

agree

edit: Wait, fuck this isn't the salt mines.

I legitimately just agree to every single thing posted, entirely. There's not a single thing I disagree with, which is really rare.

..especially for a Hipster thread.

[Moloch]

i'm agreeing with a hipster thread, you got me fucked up.

preach.

[Cotillion]

I've noticed this at times, and I'm glad someone managed to capture a large portion of the sentiment I share so cohesively.

[Dreamspeaker]

There's truth to every joke - and there is truth to the joke that eternia is a pvp game

If you want to do a significant blow to your enemy and/ or get rid of them altogether - you have to pvp them (or someone else must, i.e your ally)
If you want to achieve combat excellence - you must pvp
If you want to win wars/ battles etc - you must pvp
The list goes on

There are, of course, what i'd call "secondary objectives" that are achievable - you can achieve diplomacy with someone and gain military ally that you won't have to pvp, or you can create a project that weakens your enemy (see: lighthouse in spires), but even then, there's a big thing that you have to consider whenever you shoot for these "secondary objectives" that are not pvp

Unless it falls into your hand, you will not achieve it

A diplomacy ally would not be achieved unless the other party is down for it already. The lighthouse would never be created if admin team isn't down for that idea, and so on. This can be opposed with "but dev-", though let's be honest - if the idea is generally not welcomed/ not liked etc, usually no amount of dev will overcome it. It's very rare that it is received after all in the future; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because bad ideas are not welcomed for a reason, but it means that your other option is PVP.



How to fix that?


Idk. To be honest I don't think that Eternia's pvp nature will ever be changed - but there's one big difference that I noticed between spires and esshar

Spires rewarded you based on how far you go, the sky was the limit.
Esshar rewards you based on how fair it would be to others.

You can argue against it by saying "but there are characters like Nidaz that have achieved so much that is well beyond fairness", yeah well news flash a person dedicating more than 1 OOC year to a character is a very rare exception, it should not be a standard (even then Nidaz is still beatable and there have been stronger characters from You Know Which Arc)


As of right now, the Very Brief And Down To Earth Formula On How to Make A Strong Character is:
1. have good build. the more meta it is, the better
2. have IC that isn't terrible and makes at least some sense
3. get your 2 hiddens by the time you're young adult or something
4. congrats, you're a strong character. you might as well go AFK because there's about 95% chance you will not get anything else - unless you wanted IC projects


Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I didn't word it correctly, but that's the perception I'm having on Eternia as of now. I've had 3 characters so far on this iteration and what it boils down to is that most characters are going to go about with 2 hiddens - I get the necessity of this, but...

If you virtually limit all characters to 2 hiddens, this only encourages more selective, careful choice of metabuild - because quite often 2 hiddens is simply not enough to overcome a meta build 

And this feeds back into the loop that Eternia is a PVP game.
>select build that is not meta
>get beat by everyone
>can't do that much unless things go very well for you in secondary objectives
>get 2 hiddens - still can't beat because your build isn't meta





TLDR:

Maybe not limiting characters to 2 hiddens and thus forcing them to select their build very carefully and returning to Spires formula of rewards based on merit and not what would be fair to everybody else is going to improve the situation. 

To Hipster's point, by rewarding characters based on merit and not "overall fairness", that exceptional character (with the merits outlined in his post) might as well overcome against the odds of meta build by sheer development and eventually becoming stronger than them; relying on the "secondary objectives" is faulty, it may or may not happen.

Because let's be real - Eternia will never achieve perfect balance where a thing such as "meta build" disappears entirely.

[CrystikRage]

I think that a biggest part of Eternia's problem is the fact that IC rewards are, to an extent, balanced around OOC balance. Like bog said, they consider what's fair to other players, which is good and bad. On one hand, it makes large characters not feel like an impossible climb to oppose and beat. I do think there really shouldn't be any one unbeatable PC by sheer statwall/ability strength, because that stagnates or forces 2v1s which are wonky at best and soulcrushing endings at worst.

But, rewarding characters around balance means that you will plateau. You'll peak, and you'll peak relatively early in a characters life. It can be hard to find motivation to keep going for 20 IC years when you've peaked in the first two. You might get another ability (maybe), you can app for custom items to throw them in a massive pool of the things that already exists, but fundamentally you don't have any further to go. And at any time, the meta might shift, some new guy rolls up and after a month destroys you with his build because he reached the peak.

I guess it's the problem of a game where your only real rewards are either A; item that make number go brr, B: ability that use number to go brr/aura that makes number go brr, or C: fluff/lore which doesn't stop someone else with bigger brring numbers from throwing you into an early grave. And because of balance, you can't infinitely gain rewards A or B, which cuts off your options.

[Sanguine415]

I'm of the opinion that hidden limits aren't quite necessary, as exceptional, world shaking characters should probably have the power to back it up. No one character should be undefeatably strong, but progression in the long term is something that will lead to a stronger story overall. If older characters have a reason to stick out their deep dev and push to new heights, all the better.

Ergo, my suggestion is to have more stuff like wayfinding, riftmancy, fleshcrafting, spiritmancy, that people can aspire for in tiers of development beyond base level; still feel as if they're progressing in their craft or specialty over time in a means that offers strength representing their commitment/separating them from novices. Higher levels of riftmancy and wayfinding could be a neat lead in to hiddens, combat potential as far as spirit summoning to add like, summon strong spirit as an option or blah blah.

Tl;dr, more prestige magic for people that have their typical stance and aura combo, stuff to shoot for in the long term that isn't looked at in the same standard as the hidden limit.

[europeanSavior]

I have not read a single word and just the title and I am not going to because it's a hipster thread and I will absolutely not waste my time reading whatever the fuck he's saying but he's, somehow, right

Make the game non-pvp. Somehow. I don't know. Find a way. Unironically. This is not even funny lmao why is being good at fighting rewarded in an rp game ???

[CrystikRage]

I have not read a single word and just the title and I am not going to because it's a hipster thread and I will absolutely not waste my time reading whatever the fuck he's saying but he's, somehow, right

Make the game non-pvp. Somehow. I don't know. Find a way. Unironically. This is not even funny lmao why is being good at fighting rewarded in an rp game ???

bruh

[Chance]

While I agree entirely that we can improve on the reward system and all that it entails, here are some thoughts:

1.) PvP is exciting and fun and so is theory crafting strong builds. This is a good thing, and not necessarily something we need to shame. Even if it's not our 'main focus' as a game, we've done a fairly decent job of having a diverse range of options and combinations. What's optimal and what isn't might surprise you since you can take any magic and make something with it.

2.) Contrary to the above, in a story/writing focused platform, this being all that influences outcomes is potentially unhealthy, and I don't think hidden spells fill that void in the sense that someone might squeeze out an extra 5-10% power. It's very minor, nor does 'more hiddens' change anything because we're talking 1-2 months deep into a character at that point.

3.) Joke posting in IC/LOOC is definitely more common, and this is more of a cultural/community thing that's unavoidable to some degree. If you're a boomer like I, you likely recall a time before Discord, when you were less familiar with who's who OOCly. It was purer and more writing focused because you simply felt less comfortable around other players (for better or worse), and probably less of a need to impress. Your interactions with them were kept to private one on one DMs, if you happened to be friends, or small chats rather than giant networking rooms that everyone has access to. It is what it is.

Here are some ideas for improvement going off of the suggestion:

• Tiered passives that can be requested via the journal, or awarded in-game. These should not always be permanent and increase/decrease depending on the various factors at play. There's no real reason for one of the strongest figures to have a passive if they don't need it, but moreso to spotlight and encourage up and coming characters. 
  
• Stances should have some optional elements to them depending on player preference. In the current meta, for example, having a shield or invulnerability is very helpful. An upgraded stance that could fill that gap would allow someone to be more flexible in their choices. More leeway here based on build and power, though not allowing or encouraging stuff like stacking shields or sicknasty combos, naturally.
  
• More diversity in the big stuff even if it's Thunder King But Fire, just having the options there to strive for is a motivator I think. We also need more interesting content along the lines of stuff like Wayfinding and Barrier Magic, rarer abilities that are their own spell trees.