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"Y" Faction but playing "X" army

Discussion in 'OOC [Out of character]' started by Hoffbauer, Sep 19, 2019.

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  1. hortanium

    hortanium Major Thomas Williams, USAriadna Marine Corps

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    I truly hope that's the case but the statement would appear to state otherwise. Hopefully that unknown can be clarified.
     
  2. Hoffbauer

    Hoffbauer Amicable Dissenter

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    Fair dice, the word came down and I'll follow it, I appreciate the update!

    Right? now I gotta go to the hex and ask for my desk job back D:

    While an RP setback, the campaign's still fun for me, it's just more....definite in being like previous campaigns. Not being able to field alt armies is maybe a bit more plain, but on such a large platform I can see why they gotta be strict.

    I expect so :(
     
  3. Sergej Faehrlich

    Sergej Faehrlich Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    Sorry to say that... but this just kills it for me. We just can't seem to have nice things.
     
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  4. Bobman

    Bobman MERC

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    These campaigns have always been wonky. Just let people have some fun with it.
     
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  5. Errhile

    Errhile A traveller on the Silk Road

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    Yup, I've seen even "blue on blue" (i.e. same faction on both sides of a fight / fratricidal) being reported as a valid game. This of course can do nothing but bring victory to the sole faction playing the battle.

    Personally I believe that shouldn't count for control over a location...
     
  6. hortanium

    hortanium Major Thomas Williams, USAriadna Marine Corps

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    Based on last year, the blue on blue doesn't count. It is auto filtered by the AI historian. Usually those games are played as no other opponent was around but people still wanted to play and write a batrep. I did one of those last campaign.
     
    #86 hortanium, Sep 28, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2019
  7. Cabaray

    Cabaray Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    From the Ariadna and O-12 perspective on the whole Deputy issue, let me bring in what we were hoping to do:

    So before my report I asked the Mods and gave them a few options on how deputizing would look like. Like given our current points on the Ammo Module to the O-12, for example. The easiest way was every deputy making a second account. I send messages to the Moderation Post on the O-12 and Ariadna Forum, that I had two accounts and we were planning in bringing some assistance to O-12. We are actually happy the Mods told us they would make it count in the story for what we did narrative. So it gave us a ruling clarity and the story thing we were looking for. Still want to give my 2 cents what would have happened if the Mods would have allowed it.

    For people fearing 200 Ariadnans would register as O-12 and start ruling the world:
    Only a handful of Ariadnan players would be deputized and all would bring in one game. Just to show support to the O-12 and how close we want to work with them for fluff reason. Gamewise they would get 25 ish points and we discussed with the O-12 HQ that they would be the ones actually responsible for beating Tohaa, we would be there to be the leg up. Story was our main goal.

    so my report was a test, to show how it would look like. And if the mods agreed, The Deputies would all play their game an we would go back and see if we could chase off the Haq Islamites (hopefully).

    We made sure the story would unfold for anyone to see. No secret stuff, all in the open (check the IC forum for what transpired there and the main reason to use Deputy in the name). Cause it could all be done with players just quietly registration with O-12 accounts, playing O-12 games and none would have been the wiser. Actually: that is perfectly legal to do. People could stop play for Ariadna, get their O-12 army roling and go play for a different faction. But that was not our goal, we wanted to show Ariadnan support to the O-12. So I was a bit disappointed by the backlash. And especially people not believing what we were doing. I can understand people being concerned that all of a sudden Ariadnan players are scoring 5 points. I hoped they would see that were actually shooting ourselves in the foot with this action because we were given away a zone to another faction and spending less time fighting Haq Islam on the Battery Field. Because of this we wanted to keep it limited in the first place. But some people saying the story was a cheap excuse. Well I think that is missing the point.

    My opinion: We are playing a campaign to create a story and the game mechanics are their to support making that story, not the other way around. I see many people finding that CA is not powerful enough. We at Ariadna thought we could show this way that O-12 was strong.

    That is actually why we gave up the zone to O-12 so fast. We did not want to look like the ones fighting O-12. It did not fit the story as written (AEC and O-12 share the base and it is the reason the Ariadnans are here), but the game mechanics show reports going into a zone as competing. So we put out a relieve order as soon as the O-12 surpassed us. Game mechanically wise we have a far easier time fighting O-12 and Tohaa for the Ammo Module...but that was not the story we wanted to tell. But still people thought that scoring 5 points for O-12 was cheating.

    I do not agree people were cheated by my report, or any of our future reports if the mods would have allowed it. Whatever a faction you play for, it still takes you to organize and play a game, make the pictures and the videos, edit, write and publish the thing. 3,4,5 points don't matter it is still a chore to come with a descent report. I got people saying it was unfair because their efforts were ruïned...by my efforts. Like we are doing the same thing, playing games and making reports. And still perfectly legal if I had used an O-12 army, which I own.

    When the report was under O-12 it could barely hold 5 stars because of the 1 stars coming in. Now that I reposted it as an Ariadna report (cause the mods ruled the O-12 one invalid) it has 9 stars and recommendations. I could have understood the backlash if it were a mass of wonky reports dumped on the Ammo module, but this was a story thing, with decent reports and a restricted number would have been posted. And I think people unnecessarily pooped on it, because they were afraid of would it could have been, but not looked at what it actually was.

    Story wise: Ariadnans will still be deputized by O-12 and the alliance is there, with the Mods doing something after it all concluded. So my guys are back at fighting under the Ariadna banner. So we take what we can get I guess and keep on trucking.
     
  8. Sabin76

    Sabin76 Well-Known Member

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    I, for one, was actually intrigued by the move and thought it was an interesting way to bring the mechanics in place to where the story was going. I think it's unfortunate that it was frowned upon, but I guess they thought the potential for abuse was a greater detriment than the benefits. Perhaps the other reason is that CB actually uses this data in balance decision making. If they do, that would be a good reason to make sure factions stay separated.

    Here's hoping that in future campaigns there are more robust and thought out alliance mechanics in place, like those stated elsewhere (I particularly liked the one where you can declare your battles in an area for a certain faction, but if the alliance breaks, those points revert to your original faction. I'm pouring one out for the idea of using a rogue force in support of CA, though.
     
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  9. Lion Tremere

    Lion Tremere Herald of the Trident

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    I think we all can agree that if someone is playing consistently as an X faction, but with the Y faction models and support it with a nice and interesting backstory for such a choice, it'll be interesting and no one will complain. It was done some times in the previous campaigns. And an option to create a second account, If you don't like playing for the current faction is nice too. It's a nice instruments for a player's creativity and freedom of choice.

    But I believe these instruments could be abused if used not by a single player, but by a coordinated group of players. I'm not accusing Ariadna and O-12 guys, I think they designed deputies as a small force in mind. A force to unite human players from all factions, not to abuse campaign mechanics. And it's a cool idea, and RP wise I think that it's amazing! But I don't like the gameplay changes that this mechanism could bring if it would be used by some factions, not for RP purposes, but to take advantage of campaign mechanics.

    For example, what if the deputy program was more wide-spread? Like four guys from Ariadna, one guy from Yu Jing, one from Haqqislam, one Nomad, one from Aleph and two from PanO. And each of them will play and write a single batrep a week, that would be a 50 points swing right of the bat. And if they'll write two batreps, it's a 100 points for the deputies only. Isn't it too much campaign wise?
    And it could be even worse, for example, what if some player played four games over the course of a weekend. Then he reports two of them for his home faction. But then he understands, that two more reports won't change anything at that location. What can he do? He can write two batreps as a 'deputy' or a 'jaeger' or a 'volunteer' or whatever for his allied faction, using photos of the game he played with his home factions models and register this game as a "custom mission" at his allied faction's location. What if it was not a single players decision, but his commander orders? The whole campaign could turn in a mess pretty quickly.

    tl;dr "Y" Faction but playing "X" army is cool when it's done by a single person for his own story, but when it's done in an organized manner I think it's bad for the campaign system. And it kinda gets harder for CB to analyze the campaign results for their own purposes.

    I think it would be cool if at the start of the next campaign each human faction could participate in a deputy program by choosing a single person who would be a deputy for O-12 from this faction.
    Alliance system could see an improvement too. There are a lot of things that can be done to make the whole campaign more interesting. But if alliance points are summed, then alliance should never exceed two factions per phase as not to create a situation where the whole campaign is split into two Megafactions, which are just aggregators for their underlined factions. Combined Army should get a boost too, like 5 points per win and some fun bonuses, like some free seed-embryo on some locations, etc.
     
    #89 Lion Tremere, Oct 4, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
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  10. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    There are, but CB and/or BoW/OTT hasn't done them. I didn't play Flamestrike, but the most recent three have been all the same: obfuscated campaign mechanics that should have been appraised as imbalanced at first glance, poor communication, a reliance on shitty emergent social hierarchy within each faction, and a railroaded story. Why would you ever expect that to change?
     
    Errhile likes this.
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