Until you make it so that factions lose points for losing you haven't really solved the problem, just created a point offset equal to the amount you *would* have given for a loss. It does create a different effect than giving, say, 1 point for a loss 4 points for a win, since the losing faction's score does not change relative to other factions. But as of right now the expected value for your faction for a game with a 50/50 chance of winning is points scored for winning/2, so it still benefits the more populous factions (or, to be more precise, the factions that play the most games). In terms of overall campaign flow, neutral locations or objectives to be achieved - rather than simply "not losing" and holding ground - would create a more interesting narrative/metagame flow, in my opinion. That said, it would be interesting to put some factions on the defensive once in a while even under that paradigm. I see what you're doing here, but this basically rewards the faction with the most played games to players signed up ratio. A better metric, in my opinion, would be to reward the faction with the best performance per games played as a general idea. You could sub "games played in faction" for "active player" in what you're doing up there, or you could make the amount of points a faction gains for a win equal to the amount it loses for a loss. Yes. The people who play 5 games a week were already going to play. You want to suck in the people who play 0-1 games a week, make them feel like *they* matter.
Maybe a solution to the "spamming reports" problem could also be to make them count less the more they are spammed? First 3-4 Reports a Week = Normal Points Next 2 = -1 Point of Normal Value Next 2 = -2 Points of Normal Value Everything above = Minimum points Heck there could even be a Bonus Point for the first Report each week to keep players active and give those who only get to play every now and then a little boost so they feel like they still matter. That way those players that REALLY want to spam like crazy, or have tournaments, or whatever, could still contribute, get personal EXP as normal, write awesome stories and whatnot, but wouldn't ruin the system as much as they currently sometimes do, especially near the end of the campaign. Obviously this still has many of the same flaws that putting an overall limit on reports per week would, but I still think it could be an elegant improvement compared to how it is now. Sadly I think adding more neutral locations might not make things any different, the only thing it would REALLY change is the "shame" factor as nobody would be FORCED to defend a certain location or else suffer brutal fluff consequences. Other than that factions would still instantly bunker down on their chosen spots until they have reached big enough buffers (with the bigger factions trying to grab more areas of course) and the same thing would repeat... I briefly mentioned it before, but maybe some sort of hidden agendas or missions could be somewhat interesting for this campaign. Stuff like "Play 20x "The Armoury" Missions against Ariadna in Location X because your faction spontaneously needs a bit of extra Teseum to repair that damaged spaceship from Phase 1..." if the faction manages to achieve that = +1 Campaign Point, with every faction getting multiple such missions "live" according to how many they have already completed and whatnot, with the amount of battles required to achieve them being modified by the numbers of players in the faction, so bigger factions would obviously need more "The Armoury" Missions to succeed than smaller factions would, why? Cause bigger Bribes to pay, bigger ships to repair, you know it... This could completely replace the "Grab territory" Mechanic as of now, and points could either be shown in regular intervals, or at the end of phases, giving rise to more "shadow war" feeling. Obviously some overall incentive to fight battles that don't fit your missions would have to be added as well, but those could be as simply as "Fight 100x Battles against any faction that are NOT for your mission" = +1 Campaign Point, meaning those missions would have way higher battle numbers required, making them much less desirable, but would still give people a reason to play others even when it's not their main mission. There could even be an emphasis on "PLAYING" the missions, not necessarily "WINNING" the missions, meaning that as long as you do the required mission, a loss could still give you a small bonus for the goal, while a victory would give you a bigger bonus.....say if the goal was to play 100 points worth of missions of "The Armoury" against Ariadna", a Victory could be 3 points, a Draw 2 points, and even a Loss could be 1 point", that way people could be encouraged to post even their losses. I saw it mentioned before that the decision not to count loses was to keep big factions from spiraling out of control, but managing the point values based on faction sizes (this would need to be monitored "live" meaning that should factions drop in active player numbers, the next mission should require less points) should regulate that as well I reckon? Now obviously a system like this would require a big moderation team that really cares for the campaign and puts in those hours , and communication with the faction leaders would be key as they could be the ones providing ideas for potential new missions as well. This system could also lead to some interesting fluff developments as factions could actively piece together something relevant for them, like Ariadna slowly but steadily stealing parts or blue prints of important space technology, or JSA secretly recovering some "lost" Ten no Bushi Tech, or whatever.....which could then be represented in the fluff (if Gutier wants a stricter set of possible outcomes, he could limit the potential missions accordingly, to avoid Ariadna from getting the plans to a Nomad Mothership for example, and instead limiting it to a more advanced inter system travel engine plan...) Well.....just some of my ideas....naturally this system would have its own flaws, but at least it'd feel more "infinity like" I feel....Heck if the campaign wasn't about grabbing territory, the map could even be the whole Human Sphere, showing where the covert action is really going on on a planetary level :-P
They already do, it's just not immediately visible. The people with more reports tend to put less effort into each report, and they'll have less weight in the system as a consequence. There's just no fair way to make someone who maybe plays 1 game a week have the same impact as someone who constantly plays 10 or more games that doesn't immediately open itself to abuse. The 3 games per day because of the shorter time frame this year was almost certainly too much for most people, but the upper limit isn't for most people...
I assume you really don't want to have this seem like a problem for others, since you and Ariadna is one of the factions that benefits from this not getting solved a lot (I don't mean this as an attack, it's just a fact looking at this campaigns numbers, naturally other factions do as well) , but please at least try to acknowledge that the method I mentioned above would still leave a HUGE difference between someone that spams 10+ reports a week, and someone who only posts one, in terms of impact on the campaign. The only thing it would change is the amount of impact spammed reports would have. Does it potentially leave less incentive for those with the time to play 10+ reports a week to do so? Sure, but seeing people spam reports like that also greatly diminishes the fun others have in this campaign as they feel like their contributions matter jack s**t in comparison as well, and I'd say that the enjoyment of the many far outweighs the enjoyment of the few in cases like this, and as stated above, my idea would still give a good incentive for those spamming reports, just not as much as before. Quality of battle reports would obviously still influence the worth of the reports as well, so if you manage to spam 10+ reports a week of excellent quality, they'd still count for more than 10+ reports spammed from someone who put in no effort at all... And frankly....the BoW Filter at the end of the campaign is basically useless in regards to the overall campaign feeling if we're all honest here. 99.x% of the decisions during the campaign are based on the visible numbers shown on the map during the Phases, and even if the filter at the end shows that "Hahaaa you didn't take over my area after all!", it doesn't change the fact that you might have had to abort an attack you had going because the big numbers seemed to threaten your area before the filter hit at the end... Which is part of why I think its important that the impact of Report Spamming is mitigated right when you press the Publish button, and an implementation like the one I mentioned above should be rather easy to do as well. Addition: Please note that this all is based on my personal opinion and statements I have heard from other participants of the campaign. Maybe I am wrong and nobody but myself and the people I talked to actually gives a damn about this, and the whole thing is not necessary at all. I simply don't have the data to know any of that for sure.
The current cap was pretty effective in my experience. with a 24h restriction on reporting three battles, meant in practice I could send in 9 points a day, max. 2 Tohaa wins would beat that with 10 points. But I could never keep that up. I brought in 46 while the system can allow you 90 games (3 per day over 30 days). So while being the top reporter, was only halve way what the system would allow. I brought 119 points of the 1555 points earned by Ariadna as a whole. So even without me, Ariadna would have the top ranking spot. And those 119 points were spread over six zones in two phases. Never felt I was single handily whooping factions of the map. So in my mind it is still a team effort to get Ariadna where it was. the scores were always close. The race neck a neck. I still do not see it as a problem, as I take my experience as an example. In my case, the battles were played, the effort put in. I played in 4 cities to get to this point (at one point 2 cities in one day). Had a table at the ready at home and organized and joined meet ups. I had a lot of time on my hands for my efforts the last two campaigns (appendix removal with complications during Wotan and a conflict at work during Kurage). The notion that it is spamming and therefor a problem is only in the eye of the beholder, I think. One factions hero, is another factions villain, I guess. For one thing Ariadna it had a motivating effect. To see where the attacks and defense of HQ was planned and put their own battles in. on the notion: If he can put one in, so can I. I was seen as a lead from the front commander, but if others would not follow in, attacks would grind to a halt. So I made sure I motivated everybody. No matter if you play 1 or 10 battles per week. In my experience the morale of an army to report had more to do with interesting battle locations, the strategy of HQ, the activity in the Briefing Room and if the army was willing to recommend and comment on others efforts. If you put in a report, and 10 people respond pretty quickly to your effort, you can bet it motivates to do more. Ariadnan Commanders were very supportive to each other, hence the huge amount of activity it could create. We also had a home team advantage. Fighting for your own planet is a strong motivator. And last but not least: stay positive against adversity. So your opponents score 4 or 5 points per win, no matter, we play #kurageonhardmode. Or change objectives so that people still see something doable to strive for. So I think what CB has in place is fine for that.
@Yasashii Fuyu, I really wish it wasn't a problem for other factions, but not everyone has a @Luisjoey or a @Cabaray this year. If you look at flamestrike nearly every faction had 1 or 2 40+ report player, I think we should figure out why they're not doing the same thing again and encourage more people to play more rather than hobble the players that can... Motivation is a really big part of the effectiveness of a faction, and those that have had good motivation have been successful, whilst unmotivated factions have coasted along...
I don't really see the problem with 40+ players...as I don't with people just willing/able to contribute 1 game a week. A campaign should encourage people to play. If someone is willing to invest that amount of time...where exactly is the issue? As long as these are legit games everything is fine. Fake reports are a problem, but that has pretty much nothing to do with overall numbers...and that can be checked for without cutting peoples overall performance. Instead of capping highly motivated people, we should look for ways to encourage everybody else...and we should not do that by limiting anyone. This for me just seems so conterproductive...unintuitive...please excuse me, but it might even reek of jealousy towards their personal schedule. If people have the time for 40+ games, well good for them. I would propably do that too if I could. Things might be even more simple than we think! What I did this year: in the first week of phase 2 I went through the commanders, sorting them by played games and made a list of every Yu Jing player with more than 3 games (that was the amount of games of only about 17% of all players at that time) and I posted that on "The Wall of Glory", thanking them for their efforts on behalf of our command committe. About 30 minutes of time for me. From what I can see, that had a real impact on motivation as people realized that they mattered and that they were appreciated. Some players went in and pushed for one or two games more and that is exactly what it should be all about...they were motivated and they participated. In a second list at the end of phase 2 I also included their ranks they had earned...so their efforts had become visible again. We had polls for our strategy and let poeple discuss it...every voice was welcome and we created a consensus wherever possible. The atmosphere at the end of the campaign was really good and people were happy with what WE had done. I guess that all "successful" factions this year did the same things right: they created their own campaign...they set goals for themselves...they took risks...they played as a faction...they had charismatic leaders (mostly these 40+ players shunned by a lot of people outside their faction). These are, in my opinion, the factors that make a campaign engaging...much more engaging than what appying some metric that would totally even out differences in players numbers, games reported or ratios of wins-losses could achieve. Instead of trying to somehow tweak the system (to a result that might have unforseeable consequences taht will probably not solve anything) a lot can be done by player's incentives. It's not the system...it's you/us.
I love that people here think it's a matter of "motivating everyone else" as if playing 40+ reports in 4 weeks was a normal thing that everyone could strife to do...one obviously needs a crapton of freetime to do so, as well as a very active local infinity scene willing to fight you every day (and more than every day..)....You can motivate 99% of our playerbase all day long and it still wouldn't be possible for them to achieve this. The example with Tohaa only shows the points modifiers influence, not the influence of report spammers. I dread to imagine how powerful Tohaa would have been if they had several people spamming 40+ reports with their higher point modifier..... I know feeling like a hero because you can influence the tides of war on your own might feel cool for you, and obviously it boosts your factions morale, no doubt about it, but this is a global campaign with a lot of players, and I don't see "being able to single handedly influence a whole faction by spamming reports" as a good thing in this setting... I don't doubt that people spamming reports like that have to put in a LOT of work to do so (if they are all legit), but this is not a competition of "Who can have the most Infinity time" but a global campaign which as many people as possible should be able to enjoy as much as possible, and I simply think that report spammers diminish this, and a simple dampener on their ability to do so (a simple scaling point modifier as I mentioned before) could achieve a nicer balance here. But anyways, enough of this topic from me, I said what I wanted to, my main wish for improvement lies with the other topic I wrote about anyways, as long as this remains a "conquering ground" style of campaign, it won't evolve much anyways as the same problems seem to pop up no matter how you tweak the mechanics...
So where do you draw the line what "a normal thing is"? Are you the one to judge that? What if someone says 20 games per campaign is spamming? This is just a subjective take on what is normal and I wouldn't want to impose my personal feelings on others. There is a pretty reasonable maximum of 3 reports a day...if someone wants to take his yera's vacation to invest into this campaign, that's absolutely his own decision. Actually I object to the term "spamming" if they are legit reports. It's not spam, it's reporting their "work". It's not about motivating them to strife for 40+ battles, but for putting in battles at all. The thing is: by seeing it your way YOU (not you personally, but the voices arguing for the same point) are making it a competition...because you are saying that the average player will not reach the numbers...and so they are "losing" in comparison. And they probably will not...and that's okay...because in any scenario there will be people more invested into a campaign than others. What I was aiming at was: not seeing it as a competition! People play a campaign in camps...together...be proud of these players and enjoy that their efforts make you win...or lose. Competition should be between camps, not players. It's most definitely a mindset thing. It's just unreasonable to think that in a global campaign each player's games will matter significantly. As it is that all players or factions will have the same impact. They will just be numbers in huge summed up results. Just as a single commander will not win a war on his own. Some individuals will perform better and more often. And even then...their numbers are still just a percentile In this case 7,6%...Cabaray's percieved importance is by far greater (especially in non Adriadna factions) than the actual significance in point value. I agree that quality of the reports should be taken into consideration to make up for quantity...but that quality should be evaluated not by the playerbase. I have seen a couple of rather mediocre reports of 8-9 stars, that should rather recieve 4. That's probably hard to put into practice. And I also agree that mere "putting points on locations for 14 days" might benefit from being broken up somehow. I just think that any approach to insert additional metrics make things more complicated, intransparent and probably demotivating (even if some people think otherwise)..."one man's trash is another man's treasure"...or so.
There have been some things that definitely diminished the enjoyment of some people, but if someone playing more than you does that, then I think you need to make an effort to plan more, or if you're already playing as much as you can, accept that other people have more hobby time than you. I used to play airsoft but since I started I've aged ten years mashed both knees, fell off a roof or two and jammed the sling loop of an l85 between the bones of my shoulder. If I go out next Sunday should I expect everyone else to stay at walking pace and shoot left handed?
A lot of interesting ideas here, and a great discussion. I'll just add some of my own personal thoughts to it. 1. I think that putting too low of a cap on number of games allowed could potentially have some seriously unintended consequences. Lets take it to the extreme (the extreme that I know nobody has advocated for) and say that you can only report one game a week. This certainly "evens" the playing field for the casual players vs. the hardcore players, and in theory, makes every game count. It also then greatly increases the impact of fake accounts/fake games. A cheater would be able to simply create more accounts and thus, report more games thereby greatly pulling ahead of the legitimate players who could have legitimately reported more games. Further, I think Cabaray's contributions this year show that even with one person putting in a lot of reports, every player still mattered. Just look at PanOc Ops. That was a theater where if we assume that no reports are thrown out (and yes, I agree there are issues with the "hidden" modifiers/filters) then quite literally, every single report counted. That Ariadna player who only got one game in at the theater could quite honestly say "Holy cow, my game was the difference!" 2. Limiting the number of games you can play against a single person likewise has the same issues, and worse, caters to those players in a robust community with lots of readily available opponents. Again though, as its currently set up, your opponent need not even be registered in order to for you to submit a report, so again, if a person wanted to cheat they could again simply say "Oh, well this third game instead of being against John D, was against Joe D." Now the game becomes "legit". Meanwhile the players who are honest, are being hurt. Unfortunately, while I think that there may well be a case to be made for requiring your opponent to at least be registered (and even cross referencing that with an ITS number) this also creates a problem. If I go to a tournament and get my butt handed to me, I can simply choose not to register, now my opponent who has won fair and square is left high and dry because I'm a sore loser. 3. I'm not actually adverse to requiring/encouraging players to play at multiple locations and limiting the amount of they can "spam" a certain location. I think perhaps a decent way of doing this, if they want, would be to say you could only report X games in a row at the same location before having to go to a new location. You could even say once you have hit Y games at a location, you can't play more there until you've played at least one in each location or played in Z locations, etc. This takes away randomness (about the only other way to reliably ensure you get spread around -- i.e. a random roll to determine theater) which allows for planning and coordination by the factions, but also helps to ensure that all the scenarios are being played and is perhaps a middle ground for those wanting a low cap on number of games per day/week/campaign. 4. I too would like to see something changed up from the defend or conquer approach. As pointed out repeatedly already, the last week+ of the campaign felt pretty stale as there were really only two locations that were up for grabs at that point. I like the idea of more locations to fight over. I also like the idea of potentially locking a location once a faction reaches a certain benchmark. Build up a big enough lead at PanOc and it can't be overrun now, but the supply lines to it could be disrupted. Likewise, if a faction secures one of those neutral locations along a supply line early enough they can build up enough of a defense/barricade/structure/whatever, that it too is pretty much decided (though I would argue that in the case of a supply line it would need to be a greater margin of victory than one of the starting bases. This would enable factions to try to load up on the defense early in the phase while still keeping things fresh later in the phase. 5. The above of course assumes they still go with the capture/defend gameplay style. I too actually like the idea of not necessarily making it about actually conquering a location, but perhaps allowing for "partial" victories by the "invading" faction. So if Ariadna captures and holds the location that is a CA battleship (or whatever you want to call it) then hey, great, Ariadna stole a ship from the CA! But if Ariadna is only able to secure it for X days but then loses it in the end, they weren't able to steal the ship, but they did have time to download the schematics for it. Or if its just neck and neck the whole time but Ariadna never quite gets on top, maybe they were able to download a schematic for a particular piece of tech, albeit not the entire ship. All of these options could have set percentages required, etc. I don't know, just some food for thought.
Just a quick response as I think you are actually arguing a bit for my point of view here... The "normal" can obviously easily be determined by checking the data of previous campaigns (and could obviously be adapted should people somehow get more active over the years) . If the bell curve (or whatever you'd call it with only that few entries possible) indicates that most players tend to play around 2-3 games per week, that's the "normal", and any additional battle report above that per week could receive the mentioned negative points modifier to not completely negate the effort, but make it have less impact. Now as for the rest of the Quote, you mentioned it yourself, You say its unreasonable for a single player to influence the global campaign significantly, yet Cabaray got 7,6% of the whole of Ariadna's points, ON HIS OWN, you might say that's not significant, but thinking about how many players participate in this campaign, that's actually quite crazy I'd say, especially in the most active faction of the campaign....put Cabaray in Tohaa and he'd single handedly have ~20% of their points!! (maybe more as his win rate is better than their average I think, though it depends on whether you add his games to the Tohaa points, or simply assume his games are part of it..) Make it 3 players like him and they'd have half of the factions points among themselves or more....calling that "not significant" seems odd to me... And its numbers like this that actively MAKE it a player vs player feeling I think, especially near the end of the campaign where less people are active. If your faction only has a handful of active players left, and any attempts to take over an area is thwarted because "that guy" has posted "yet another 2 victories", you tend to see the guy more than the faction, and at that point is where the frustration takes on even worse proportion as the frustration then gets targeted at individuals as opposed to the setting/faction. Obviously it would be nice if these things didn't happen, but they happened in every campaign so far, and usually I see them happen in many factions at once as I can easily go to my mates who play other factions and they'd greet me like "Hey have you seen? "That guy" is at it again..." when we're talking about the Campaign.
I don't want to drag you into a long discussion, so don't feel obliged ;). This bell curve-modifier approach has some problems for me as they tend to punish or benefit specific players more...and there will always be "that game" from whereon the mods will apply...this is simply not the way to go for me. Let's turn this around an take Carabay's numbers. Let's say 7,6% IS a significant numer for a faction and that a reasonably "committed" player puts in about 10-11 games...that would be about 2%. I'll just use this number for the sake of the argument. If we want to lessen his impact on the overall score, probably down to 5% of the factions points...which seems more reasonable compared to the average player, we would have to downgrade Carabay's numers by 33%...I can just image how someone would react having this kind of handicap applied. Where do I want to go with this: to reduce the overall significance of the 40+ players, we would have to punish them quite hard individually while the effect of that might not even have that much of impact on the points. Again: motivating the rest of the player's to play one game more has a far more dramatic effect than punishing single players. I guess that if a faction can't take over a location, this has probably to do with numbers...if that one player posts another report, that's just making him the scapegoat for the numerous other players having built up the scores. But it's not "that guy"...it's the factions points overall. Concerning the "that guy effect"...there will always be charcters in any situation of life, that will stand out...fo whatever reason. There is that guy who can lift more weight, eat more slices pizza, has more time for this or that...and I guess that's how things go. One can object to that but in any field of life there are the "faces"...and usually it's other people who make them the faces... Let's talk about Carabay a little more :D Edit: On thing that drives the "that guy effect" are those pesky achievements like "prevented a faction from toppeling...". It incentivizes people to hold their reports and wait for someone to get the other faction into the lead...and then report theirs to prevent that. That might be the crux of the percieved problem as at some point these are the only XPs left to get for players with a high output. Maybe getting rid of that would do more that capping people.
Two points of order: we don't know what the final percentage of Ariadna's points @Cabaray contributed is, but even if was the originally quoted 20% he didn't do that 'on his own' . Regardless of capitalisation, he played against a dozen other people. Second, Ariadna had several other players that broke 20, as did YuJing and pano, so this isn't a unique skill. Instead of complaining about 'that guy' after the fact use it to motivate you own faction, or better yet, step up and be 'that guy'.
What i was discussing with my gaming group it´s that the big change to prevent forged games and recover trust in the system it´s that it´s linked with your ITS ID or corvus ID, so it prevent by several controls the fraud. Also tough moderation. I was acussed of forging games and i put pictures of every opponent i had, giving the hand and pictures of them actually playing also videos. Many eyes over my actions but few on others. nuff said. Be Blessed and #DEUSVULT
Honestly, the only thing I distrust in the system is that there wasn't the most expedient of communications. Yeah, light years better than Flamia and Wotan, but fact was we were not being made aware of rules changes for long times (preplaying was fine until 10 days in for instance) and the JSA lockout confusion lasted quite a while until a clear answer emerged. To a lesser degree we're being asked to trust that any instances of genuine cheating and fraud are being addressed in private to prevent witch hunts or arguments out in the open, and yeah, fair enough - best way to do it. At the same time I'd feel a lot better knowing that any cheating was being punished for sure. But really, I think next year there should be a clear warning ahead of time about what the situation is RE things like pre-playing (I understand more than one group only did so as they'd been caught out by campaign rescheduling) and some solution to any rules flubs/confusion a bit speedier. One way to do it could be if the campaign actually starts on a friday, but is announced formally on a monday - on that monday, the site is open and there's a five-day "prelude" or beta, with theatres locked and any reports submitted being "prelude" battles . That gives factions time to look over the missions, get some practice friendly games that won't really count to the actual campaign, maybe has a role as a tiebreaker or a bonus prize, whatever. This beta phase can also be used to collect better data for the asymmetric points thing, meaning the adjustment at the start is a little more accurate - not a whole lot but it could at least avert the accidental bonus to the NA2, who were actually one of the largest factions for much of the campaign. Another thing next time could have made clear - that moderation for cheating etc will be public and clear. You're caught out being a rotter, you're named and shamed, you are punished. You get a strike, your faction loses the points you gained from the cheating, you're barred for the rest of the campaign if it was a significant breach of rules: mass cheating, threats or harassment, (thankfully something that didn't ever pop up but we have to futureproof a bit), etc. Zero tolerance of shenanigans, make it clear the mods are the Imperial Agents and we are the Japanese of Kuramori.... (too soon?) I'd also kinda like some actual detail results of the dang thing beyond a couple slides at Gencon, but hey
At least one person who definitely has an ITS account admitted publicly to forging reports, so apparently that won't be an end to the problem @Luisjoey. :( It's also interesting that none of the people who complained about people playing too many games noticed that, or the other accounts posting reports forged in an almost identical way...
Yes @cazboab but it´s a begining, since Corvus ID has several way of verification; for example registering on the campaing could be done without authentication by email... What i want for future campaings it´s a more clear system free of cheat so the people could play more and complain less; I was called cheater even i put LOTS of pictures and video with my opponent... by people that didnt ever play the campaing.... if next campaing (if ever since the bad result) i´ts needed that i play live; i would play live games with not issue. #DEUSVULT
