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The Tragically Obligatory "What We'd Like To Change/See Next Time" Thread

Discussion in 'OOC' started by Del S, Jul 25, 2018.

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So... Where do you think we're fighting next year?

  1. Paradiso

    4 vote(s)
    4.9%
  2. Aconticemento

    6 vote(s)
    7.4%
  3. NeoTerra

    1 vote(s)
    1.2%
  4. Svalarheima/Huangdi

    24 vote(s)
    29.6%
  5. A Brand New Planet No One Has Any Vested Interest In

    6 vote(s)
    7.4%
  6. Concillium

    1 vote(s)
    1.2%
  7. Dawn Again

    2 vote(s)
    2.5%
  8. Space Again

    4 vote(s)
    4.9%
  9. Human Edge

    7 vote(s)
    8.6%
  10. Bourak

    1 vote(s)
    1.2%
  11. YuTang

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  12. ShenTang

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  13. Both YuJing Planets

    1 vote(s)
    1.2%
  14. Wales (It's Probably Not Wales)

    20 vote(s)
    24.7%
  15. Varuna

    4 vote(s)
    4.9%
  1. Red Harvest

    Red Harvest Day in, Day out. Day in, Day out. Day in, DAY OUT

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    Are you sure they are tarts, saucy tarts to be specific? They could be slovenly trulls or even brazen strumpets. Identifying harlots can be difficult in poorly lit situations. They cannot be cheap trollops. Those are only found in London. Mainly in Westminster. Now, if you are seeking a typical streetwalker or even an expensive doxy, then Paris is the place. Come to Washington D.C. for both wanton wenches (we call them Democrats) and haughty courtesans ( We call these Republicans).

    Don't worry if this confuses you folks. Either you get the reference or you don't.

    This sounds reasonable. Have missions and objectives that befit black ops. It might make it easier for me to persuade my group to actually participate. They are currently reluctant to play at all. :disappointed:
     
  2. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    I think one of the bigger problems with this campaign style is that people play games over areas only one of them is really interested in.

    If you want to protect LaFayette, you call in your local Haqislam player, tell him that you want to play annihilation, and off you go. If you win, bazong, three much needed points for Ariadna, if you lose, then Haqislam is unlikely to conquer Lafayette just because of that.

    It feels weird that I don't need to fight against PanO or their puppets to take the HAS area. In the narrative it is told like this, but this is not how the campaign works. I understand the limits of global campaigns. Everybody needs to be able to play against everyone at ease. This is an issue that is very hard to be fixed.

    So there are three easy ways for players to score critcial points for their faction:

    -Play against yourself, that is officially cheating.
    -Play against a bunny knowing that you will win.
    -Play against someone who does not participate in the campaign and pick the zone you want to play for
    -Play against someone who plays an allied faction and negotiate beforehand who should best score points where.

    Maybe there should be an at least code of honour rule that says how you should play in which situation.
    It could go something like this:

    If you play against an enemy faction. you have to agree on a zone that is relevant to both of your factions.
    if you play against an ally or your own faction, you have to play in a zone that is neutral to all of them.
    Once you have successfully trashed a bunny three times you are not allowed to post games against that bunny anymore.

    Of course, there is no way to police this. Of course CB cannot tell anyone that they are a bunny, that would be very rude. Also, relatively frequent updates would need to be made that players had to stay aware of.

    Maybe rules like this could be made as a suggestion, an honour rule, or even a strict ruleset could be worked out.
     
  3. hortanium

    hortanium Major Thomas Williams, USAriadna Marine Corps

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    A possible partial solution for not playing against a relevant faction in a theater could be making the battle score less.
    For example: Ariadna fights Nomads in Lafayette. Good for Ariadna, meaningless for Nomads. If Ariadna wins, they get two points instead of three. If Ariadna had played Tohaa, a win would net the full three points.
    However, the flaw with this is that battles against the "correct" opponents may still not matter. If Ariadna played and lost to PanO it wouldn't have mattered this campaign. Whereas an Ariadna win would get full points in this possible system.
     
  4. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    I think another solution to that could simply be to reduce the amount of held ground, that wins in an area count to an objective, not holding it. If an area is "held" by a faction from the start, lock it to ensure one participant is playing the defending faction.

    Downside, of course, is the paradox of rules. Too many restrictions and people start trying to sidestep them more. If only Faction X can be your opponent at Location Y, then lying becomes tempting.

    There's also the fact that some people simply don't have a big meta, and for smaller factions it may be impossible to find an opponent from the right faction. The largest armies are the ones from starter sets, followed probably by NA2 because most of them tie to starter sets as it is (or in the JSA's case are an offshoot of YuJing, one of the oldest factions in the game) followed by Ariadna then maybe CA and ALEPH. Tohaa are small, and will remain so for some time thanks to simply not drawing attention. Good luck finding one to play against if they have a base you need to take....
     
    Ben Kenobi likes this.
  5. cazboab

    cazboab Definitely not Cazboaz.

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    It would still have mattered, in that it would have been points that Ariadna didn't get, and time a player had spent doing it.
     
  6. hortanium

    hortanium Major Thomas Williams, USAriadna Marine Corps

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    I was thinking from the perspective of PanO. For PanO, the battle would be largely meaningless. A better example would have been Haqq, as they didn't have skin in that particular fight. Yes, it would have mattered for Ariadna. That still leaves the question of trying to find a way to make a battle relevant for both players.

    This is where the idea of neutral/strategic areas is appealing. It would allow any faction to hinder or help any other faction without having to target a base directly. Granted, helping would only work if alliances were formalized and recognized by CB and BoW.

    An example could be a supply route. It starts under control of one faction. If it is lost, the faction loses 0.5 or 1 swc. Another example could be a mine. Controlled by no faction to start. Capturing it could grant 0.5 or 1 swc or 15 points. These are just some possibilities. Obviously balance and complexity could be a hindrance. But, it could make things interesting.
     
  7. Imladrik

    Imladrik Member

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    This is just simply useless and basically killing the campaign as it is : What about players who don't have a lot of opponent (i for exemple played against a Yu Jing player only, because in my area, that is basically it [not exactly, but given the players hours of work and it is vacation time, there wasn't a lot of possibilities] ? So we can only play in areas that don't matter for our factions ? Or against each other ? We probably wouldn't have taken the time to play in that case as it would have been useless, or we would have cheated and created two accounts each. And who decide what is a neutral area or an area relevant to both factions ? CB ? Then it kills the point of the campaign outside randomizing the results. The players ? Well in this campaign i could give you a simple explanation why everywhere is an area of Ariadnan interest : #dawnisours. And i'm pretty sure that there is enough ba faith in infinity players to find excuses for anything :D
     
  8. zapp

    zapp Well-Known Member

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    - Points based on ITS OP (might be a problem with non ITS/Kurage missions)
    - Points for battle reports on losses
     
  9. warzan

    warzan Well-Known Member

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    Just to remind folk of the reason the points are as they are currently (and we have no issue changing them by the way - its part of the options in the platform)

    But a 0 for a loss was originally chosen to limit the effects of larger factions. Basically, a faction that can play a lot of games against a varied amount of other factions can start to gain significant positive effects even from the loses.

    I have no doubt there are other ways we can do it and happy to look at any and all options, but just wanted to give a little insight into why it's currently there :)
     
  10. Yasashii Fuyu

    Yasashii Fuyu Well-Known Member

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    I still think that one of the most important factors would be to set a weekly report limit, and it should be a rather low one at 3-4 reports per participant.

    Why? Because I always feel (sadly I don't have the hard numbers to proof it) that a hand full of individuals in some factions make up 1/5th or even more of the whole factions points, and in some prior instances, almost single handedly turned the tides in some area.

    This might not seem like a big deal in Week 1-2 of the campaign, but especially in the later weeks of the campaigns when player numbers drop, it seems like those factions that have "Monsters" in them (aka people who play 1-2 games per DAY not week..) overpower all other factions in their way.(with points modifiers obviously modifying these as well)

    I personally think by limiting things like this, and maybe putting an even heavier modifier on GOOD reports, people could be motivated to overall produce cooler reports, while not spamming reports so much....and it might even discourage cheaters a bit more as they'd have to put in WAY more work to get a good report and make a difference, as opposed to just spamming 10+ fake reports a week and calling it a day (not that I think that anything as extreme as 10 a day has been done yet..)


    Obviously this is prone to cheating as well, people could just make multiple accounts and keep posting there, or upvote their stuff with fake accounts or what have you, but at least that'd require more work to do, and only the shrewdest of cheaters would put in so much work I'd reckon...



    Other than that showing the impact of the modifiers in real time might be a cool idea as well to motivate better reports. It SUCKS to have areas taken away from you by a filter in the end, and by having these updates "live" based on ratings or whatever else are important factors might change these things for the better, AND also promote better reports being written.


    I do however sadly have to agree, the whole campaign system as it is now feels a bit "wrong"......attacking someone seems to get punished way more often than simply hunkering down until you have a unbreakable defense and then making a last minute push on someone who was foolish enough to attack and thus leave themselves a little more open, which results in a brutally boring setting, and the whole "Invasion" and open conflict theme just doesn't really fit the Infinity Setting......

    Maybe making the whole campaign way heavier focused on some sort of missions would be interesting...

    Would love to post a bit more but gotta go for now...
     
  11. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    Then bigger factions don't gain the points unless they're smaller than anticipated? Like having a certain percentage of active players means it's disabled.

    Or award it only on linked reports, or maybe even have larger factions award that point to a smaller enemy when reporting any win?
     
  12. theGricks

    theGricks Well-Known Member

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    I agree completly with @Yasashii Fuyu here. Attacking feels wrong in this campaign. I really feel like multiple small neutral locations would go a LONG way to fixing this though instead of having a few "HQ" locations and that's it. For example form Haqqislam:

    We never attacked because it just felt wrong. We would gain nothing from hitting the Firebase, no reason to attack nomads because hey, we use arachne too, we also use Maya and Aleph so hitting that location seemed wrong as well. If however we had multiple small areas around us for use with Prospecting (hey thats our facility!) we would have been all out trying to gobble up those "resource nodes" because it corresponds DIRECTLY with our cause and mission on the island. If Yu Jing territory had some supplies lines, or archaeological camps outlying its regions? Well there are more areas we in Haqqislam would have interest in and would probably attack to take control of. There is more reasons for attacking.

    We just need more neutral places to fight over to actually make things more exciting and provide more narrative to the factions!

    Thinking on this it would also benefit Combined and Tohaa who could choose a single location if they dont start with an HQ and just beachhead that location, dump points into a single location, make it defensible and then spread from there which would virtually be the same as an invasion, especially if they get bonus points for being a small faction or honestly just being the alien menace gain bonus points. These things are not hard, and are easily capable in the current engine obviously. Just setting up the normal HQ locations, then setting up about 10-15 neutral locations that don't require more than a couple sentences detailing.
     
    #52 theGricks, Jul 31, 2018
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2018
  13. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    Heavier report limits can hinder tournament players and also further discourage reporting losses, imo. It also means factions like Tohaa with only a handful of players active (less than 60 afaik) get another hurdle to overcome.

    Finally, on the cynical side of things, it will possibly encourage more cheating via secondary accounts in the same faction, though they wouldn't be difficult to catch out in that case - it's more the bad blood such cheating would cause that is a problem. OTOH on the idealistic side, it would allow more time for people to play secondary factions. I know if I had only 4 Nomad reports possible I'd happily try play a couple JSA games for some variation.

    One alternative to a hard limit could be something like 4 reports a week plus a finite reserve of extras, a tournament/event buffer of an extra 4 or so you can spend per phase. In real terms that's 6 per week in a 2 week phase, but it should mitigate the damage a little. Could maybe also work more with ITS events too, but no idea how viable that would be.

    Another way worrying more about low reports of losses and draws could be 4 wins a week, with losses limited too if they start to give a points/XP boost.

    Got another crazy idea too about shifting away from the territorial nature of the campaigns but probably gonna need to run numbers to explain better.
     
    theGricks likes this.
  14. theGricks

    theGricks Well-Known Member

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    I agree report limits are a double edged sword as it might also prevent people from reporting losses, as a loss report does nothing for you besides eat up that limit.
     
  15. Ben Kenobi

    Ben Kenobi Well-Known Member

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    Don't get me wrong, you did a great job over the last years and your thoughts are totally valid.
    Take this as positive criticism.

    Mathematically the problem can simply be solved:
    Each pointfalue (vicotry, draw, loss) is weightend with the inverse value of the aktive player in faktion.
    point * (1/active players)
    And yes, I see the problems, who come with this method (int <-> float, fakeaccounts to lower the ammount of points of the other factions. etc.)
     
  16. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    I'm not sure how much I favour the limit on games per week, but @Del S @theGricks an easy solution to that particular aspect is not to cap reports but to cap wins.

    Submit your 3-4 wins this week, good on you. But now you can't submit more, and if you want to tell your narratives/accumulate ratings/earn commendations then you've got to start writing up your losses to do so.
     
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  17. cazboab

    cazboab Definitely not Cazboaz.

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    The size of a faction is difficult to quantify accurately, if you throw in a smaller limit which will cause duplicate accounts within the same faction(it's already happened, definitely last year and possibly this year) once someone gets upset at loosing, anything based on faction size becomes entirely subjective.

    Lowering the reports limit is imo primarily motivated by not being able to play as many games as the 'monsters' as @Yasashii Fuyu put it. Should we really be saying to people that they play too much in a campaign designed to get people playing?

    @Shiwen that's not a great plan either, there's already been a (probably unintended) suggestion that people should throw games to give allies an advantage, let's say for instance a Haqqislam player gets their win limit then starts recording loses against nomads in a YuJing area, what would the reaction to that be?
     
    theGricks likes this.
  18. Sergej Faehrlich

    Sergej Faehrlich Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    Whatever you guys propose for dealing with the points...there will always be a reaction by players who want to "drive" this campaign. Neither caps, nor limits, nor rations will help the above mentioned problems. They are inherent to a point based mechanic. I wrote about this at several other therads, but it will never be methematically fair and even...it's propably better to go down the assymetrical path..

    What could make things more interesting? I like the current system, but here are some of my thoughts
    1. Give us more locations to fight over. Maybe even neutral ones. Just to reduce these hundreds of points that mass up on the locations and make coordinated efforts easier.
    2. Let factions gain various/more points for various locations, to give them an incentive to attack somewhere specific, or give them specific orders, what they should do to earn points. Things that can be done quickly, maybe within a week.
    3. Close locations down once a specific and unknown number of points or battles have been put there. Calculate the winner then. Force players to act swiftly and reduce the ability to plan long term. Introduce the chaos of war aspect.
    4. Break up the phases. Open up new, and close old locations step by step on a railroaded schedule to open up new feilds of action. Introduce the fluididy of war aspect.
    As I said...just some thoughts
     
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  19. Cabaray

    Cabaray Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    I like the idea of neutral zones and more zones to fight over. But I think it will not solve the stagnant situation that can arise when a faction decides to stay neutral, defensive or have many friends/allies.

    I brought my LARP experience along to the High Command of Ariadna. I have played a General, and now a High ranking politician on Drachenfest, a PvP driven event in Germany. And I can tell you with complete certainty: if you want to have an exciting time, you got to make opponents. Especially the ones that are a bit of a challenge. We choose Pano from the get go, expecting them to be the biggest challenge to find.

    And Ariadna had, with a three front battle in phase 1 and two fronts phase 2, a blast! All fought on a knives edge where every battle counted. However the end result may be: it was far from boring. And we created the situation by choice. Risky? Absolutely! But it got people playing battles.

    I think it is an HQ job to find interresting stuff to do with a faction. My tip would be to take more risks. Even for peace loving factions you can find justification to take action.

    And for someone who played 40+ battles this campaign. It takes a lot of time to play and report. I did not do much else that month. I think my effort is allowed to pay off in the end. And if your faction takes more risk. Every battle starts to count.



    Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G930F met Tapatalk
     
  20. TheDiceAbide

    TheDiceAbide Thank you for your compliance.
    Warcor

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    I think it's more that there is a very small number of players who can play 40+ games in a few weeks. By putting a cap on it, you end up making it so that the majority of players have impact, rather than just a few.
     
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