Combatant Opt-In

Tyrantor wrote: »

How dare you belittle the power of cake. It may be pie season but cake will have it's day again.

CROW3 wrote: »

Hahahahahahahahaha! I'm sending that to everyone I know!

Tyrantor

lol nice

Caeryl

CROW3 wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

The obvious logical conclusion after it’s established that players who flag purple will fight back, is that players who do not flag purple probably will not want to fight back.

That's not a logical conclusion. You're making an specious inference based on the false assumption that a purple flag that fights back is mutually exclusive to a green flag that won't fight back.

There isn't a logical relationship between player 1 who chooses to flag purple and player 2 who chooses to flag green. One possible outcome is that purple will fight back and green will not, but those are not the only outcomes, and therefore can't be a conclusion.

Percimes wrote: »

I heard someone mentioning a pie... or possibly a cake?

There's always plenty of pie to go around. The cake people are over there somewhere doing something forgettable.

Did you not read the word “probably” in my post? The entire premise of a toggle, as stated in the original post, is so players seeking PvP can flag up 24/7 to indicate to others they will fight back and invite attackers.

If you don’t agree that would be the purpose of a toggle, then you’ve just divorced flags from player behavior for literally no reason.

Tyrantor wrote: »

What would a combatant toggle have to do with this if you're specifically seeking out a "solo" player around a resource? How would 10 combatants in that zone impact your decision to do this?

As I have said several times - if I am looking for a target, the first thing I look for is their flag state. If they are combatants, I move on. This means that while there may be 100 players, there are only 90 valid targets left if 10 of them are flagged.

This means that all of the remaining players, that 90 that are left, are all more likely to be attacked simply due to not flagging.

I'm not sure how clearer I can be on this point, it is basic middle school level statistics.

How does the percentage adjust based on your example it's the same 4 players you're attacking (solo players at resources you want).

Because I am not just talking about me, I am talking about a lot of people that will act in the same way.

While I may want a specific resource, others that are of the same general mindset may want a different resource. This means that all players near a resource (essentially all players) are equally valid targets to someone that is hunting players. The only peopel that are not are those that are flagged as combatants.

Again, this is middle school statistics.

Lets assume this and adjust your targets. Instead of the 4 players all being non-combatant now 1 out of the 4 solo players area combatants (20/100 approximation). If you had no risk of corruption do you attack the combatant or just the 3 non combatants? Now even if you attack all 4 of these players now only 3 of them are non-combatant so the percentage of non combatants you attack in a zone of 100 actually decreases.

I don't follow.

There are not just 4 solo players, I am just stopping after 4 attacks, as that is how many kills I am statistially likely to have before I attain the level of corruption I am happy with accepting.

In a non-dungeon area, there are likely to be a majority of players running around solo or in a duo. Of those 100 players, it is likely that 50+ of them are solo - whereas if I go in to a dungeon that has 100 players, it is likely that 98+ of them are in groups.

It seems that you are missing the very first aspect in the target acquisition process here - which is excluding all combatants. If I enter an area that has 4 solo players, and only three of then are non-combatants, then there are three targets - if my aim is PvP for profit.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what it is you are saying in this last part. If so, feel free to reword it to be clearer and I'll have another look at answering it for you.

Caeryl wrote: »

Did you not read the word “probably” in my post? The entire premise of a toggle, as stated in the original post, is so players seeking PvP can flag up 24/7 to indicate to others they will fight back and invite attackers.

If you don’t agree that would be the purpose of a toggle, then you’ve just divorced flags from player behavior for literally no reason.

I did. I also read "obvious logical conclusion," which it wasn't and isn't. It's possible that green won't fight back, but there is no logical relationship between purple fighting back and green fighting back. I'm still in favor of a combatant flag.

CROW3 wrote: »

there is no logical relationship between purple fighting back and green fighting back.

There is a relationship, even if indirect.

Someone flagged as combatant is someone that probably just won a PvP encounter. This means there is a guarantee that this player is open to PvP, and is at least not the worst on the server as they just beat someone else that thought themselves good enough to flag up to try and take them on - or that flagged up to reduce death penalties - in which case this player is someone that is confident enough in their PvP abilities to attack others for profit.

Now, while any one given geen player may also fit this role, it is also true that all players that are not overly keen or competent at PvP will also be green.

Thus, statistically, the ratio of people that fight back between combatants and non-combatants - with a large enough sample size - will be markedly different. This is true desipite the individual player, as statistics don't much care about the individual.

You can be as convicted as you want in your conjecture, but you’ll never create a logical relationship between two independent players.

At best you can make some good guesses. Which is fine, but they are still guesses.

CROW3 wrote: »

You can be as convicted as you want in your conjecture, but you’ll never create a logical relationship between two independent players.

Noaani wrote: »

statistics don't much care about the individual.

Caeryl

CROW3 wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

Did you not read the word “probably” in my post? The entire premise of a toggle, as stated in the original post, is so players seeking PvP can flag up 24/7 to indicate to others they will fight back and invite attackers.

If you don’t agree that would be the purpose of a toggle, then you’ve just divorced flags from player behavior for literally no reason.

I did. I also read "obvious logical conclusion," which it wasn't and isn't. It's possible that green won't fight back, but there is no logical relationship between purple fighting back and green fighting back. I'm still in favor of a combatant flag.

It is the logical conclusion when the OP specifically states that the intent behind a toggle is to indicate themselves willing to PvP by flagging purple. If there was no inherent implications behind a purple flag vs green, there wouldn’t even be a desire for a toggle (except as penalty avoidance). The inherent implications is that purple is willing to PvP, and a green is less or not willing to PvP.

Please lay out some valid reasons why flag state should be severed from player behavior. What benefit does that bring?

At the end of the day, you can infer whatever you want as to why a player is flagged green or purple. At best it's a statistical hypothesis - a SWAG - but not a logical conclusion. Here are the logical conclusions you can draw based on a player's flag:

If a player is flagged purple, you will receive 50% of the standard penalty loot for beating them. You will not receive corruption for killing them. This applies to the other player as well.
If a player is flagged green, you will receive 100% of the standard penalty loot for beating them. You may gain corruption depending on the level differential, how many times you've killed them, etc.

Honestly, it's just not interesting parsing your arguments. @Tyrantor has much more energy for that than I do.

CROW3 wrote: »

At the end of the day, you can infer whatever you want as to why a player is flagged green or purple.

As I have been saying, and you have been unwilling to accept, you do not need to understand any one players reasoning for flagging.

All you need to understand is what the bulk of players are likely to do, and this is something that can easily be arrived at as a logical conclusion.

The cake is over there @Noaani.

I am unsure as to what cake has to do with this discussion.

Tyrantor

Noaani wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

At the end of the day, you can infer whatever you want as to why a player is flagged green or purple.

As I have been saying, and you have been unwilling to accept, you do not need to understand any one players reasoning for flagging.

All you need to understand is what the bulk of players are likely to do, and this is something that can easily be arrived at as a logical conclusion.

@Noaani you spent 1.5 years+ playing a MMO as a solo player, in a faction by yourself (in a 3 fraction system) I'm unclear where you garner any credibility in determining what the bulk of any MMO player base will do. Where do you draw this knowledge from? You're usually on the minority side of every conversation on these forums to date that I've seen. Yet you claim to understand your fellow gamers so well. It's quite an interesting self aware perspective you have.

Tyrantor wrote: »

Noaani you spent 1.5 years+ playing a MMO as a solo playe

I don't think that means as much as you think it means.

First of all, that equates to 7.5% of my total MMO play time. As you know, the bulk of the rest was either in or running top end raid guilds - you can't run a top end raid guild without knowing what those in your guild want. Not successfully, at least.

Second, just because I was in a faction by myself for half of the time I spent in one of the games I have played, that doesn't mean I wasn't paying attention to what people were doing. If anything, I was paying more attention. I knew who had land around me, what faction they were in, what time they were online, what crops they were growing, what the cycle for those crops were for that zone, and thus when they were likely to be at their farm. I was paying very close attention to what everyone around me was doing, far more than I would have if I had a guild or a faction to back me up.

It is an interesting perspective you have there that a player that is literally all by themselves, surrounded by absolutely nothing but potentially hostile players with nothing at all to lose from attacking me would for some reason just ignore those around them.

A really interesting perspective.

If I had have done that, I don't think I would have lasted more than a month as a pirate, to be honest. Knowing what those around me wanted out of the game - and specifically out of the time they spent in the area around my land - is what allowed me to farm heavily contested resources.

In all discussions you and I have had, you have assumed the bulk of players would act exactly like you.

In those same discussions, you don't even know how I would act, because I have not explained how I would act. I have explained how the bulk of players are likely to act, which is usually not at all the same as how I would.

Noaani wrote: »

I am unsure as to what cake has to do with this discussion.

It's cos he's keeping the pie for himself.

Noaani wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

there is no logical relationship between purple fighting back and green fighting back.

There is a relationship, even if indirect.

Someone flagged as combatant is someone that probably just won a PvP encounter.

They were probably a green that got attacked, fought back, and their attacker then broke off the fight to find an easier victim.

See? I can present pure guesses as almost certain facts, too!

daveywavey wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

CROW3 wrote: »

there is no logical relationship between purple fighting back and green fighting back.

There is a relationship, even if indirect.

Someone flagged as combatant is someone that probably just won a PvP encounter.

They were probably a green that got attacked, fought back, and their attacker then broke off the fight to find an easier victim.

See? I can present pure guesses as almost certain facts, too!

You're not wrong in that this is absolutely a possibility. Thing is, you are also not right in attempting to disprove my point.

See, this is winning PvP. A win in open PvP doesn't specifically need a kill, all it needs is for the end result to be as you want. If you are farming mobs or resources and someone attacks you, a win is any situation in which you can carry on farming.

Since someone else has already attempted and failed to attack and kill this player, it is a safe assumption that there is an easier target to be found (such as the player that attacked them), and so the flagging system where it is based on your actions is working as intended.