Military: Trial By Combat?

When I first heard about the “military: trial by combat” election mode I was very excited thinking that it would be a pure 1v1 “gladiator” style system allowing players to fight on a “fair” basis for control of the node. A “strongest warleader” mindset, if you will.

The more that was explained about the system in the live stream the more discouraged I became. Maybe I am misunderstanding, but it sounds like the player with the most support will have the most help when competing in the “trial by combat” objectives and therefore will take control of the node simply by having the most help. While there’s nothing wrong with this type of system it is discouraging that this system will essentially remove any hope of a skill based system to determine mayoral status thus leaving skill as a determining factor only in the PvE mode that will be base upon individual prowess.

I sure hope I am understanding this wrong because a 1v1 gladiator style system to determine the mayor would be absolutely epic! Anything short of this is a giant fail in my opinion and I can’t overstate how much of a squandered opportunity for many, many players like myself.

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CROW3

It’s a military node, not a gladiator node. Makes sense that the individual who can muster and lead the most effective army to defeat a contender’s army would be best fit to lead a military node.

Noaani

A 1v1 competition for a metropolis level node would be prohibitively time and/or resource consuming.

When it was first mentioned as a possibility years ago, the discussion that happened on the forum (potentially the old forum, it was a while ago) basically resulted in a realization that 1v1 wouldn't happen.

We haven't talked on these forums about mayors for a while, but it has long been the understanding that all four node types will require many friends in order to become mayor.

This isn't a bad thing - if you are a good leader, you should already have people backing you up. If you don't have those people around you, you probably shouldn't be attempting to run as mayor.

Rebutko

Interesting take. I see the other 3 options as options that allow your prestige in game to allow you an advantage of taking control of a node & was hoping the military style would be a “skill” based gladiator style system embracing “the strongest leads” mindset - at the expense of leadership ability, economic prowess, or PvE ability. (These are covered in the other modes)

It’s extremely discouraging that this system will have nothing at all to do with PvP skill I must say and I think squanders a hugely epic opportunity. I know there are many players like myself that would salivate at the chance to compete in epic content like this.

It’s funny because when I first heard about this system I *instinctively* knew it would be an epic gladiator style competition to determine leadership and I got very, very excited. Needless to say I am now very bummed!

Noaani

Rebutko wrote: »

Interesting take. I see the other 3 options as options that allow your prestige in game to allow you an advantage of taking control of a node & was hoping the military style would be a “skill” based gladiator style system embracing “the strongest leads” mindset - at the expense of leadership ability, economic prowess, or PvE ability. (These are covered in the other modes)

It’s extremely discouraging that this system will have nothing at all to do with PvP skill I must say and I think squanders a hugely epic opportunity. I know there are many players like myself that would salivate at the chance to compete in epic content like this.

It’s funny because when I first heard about this system I *instinctively* knew it would be an epic gladiator style competition to determine leadership and I got very, very excited. Needless to say I am now very bummed!

It will still have a lot to do with PvP.

That said, I can see exactly why you would come to the conclusion about the system that you did. It is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to, especially if you didn't get in to discussions on it with others.

I'll attempt to give you a very high level overview of how we arrived at the point we are now at, perhaps that will fill in some gaps as to ymwhy that perfectly reasonable conclusion you came to can't happen.

Intrepid; military node mayors are going to be decided by 1v1 combat!

The forum; so, only players running what ever happens to be the current meta build have a shot at being mayor?

Intrepid; now, we have champions instead of player classes to decide who is going to be mayor of military nodes!

The forum; so, mayors of military nodes will be the ones that spend the most amount of time getting good at fighting with these champions that serve no purpose outside of this competition, rather than it being a display of something that players may want from their mayor?

Intrepid;...

The forum;...

Intrepid;...

The forum;...

Intrepid; the mayor of military nodes will now be based on holding PvP objectives!

The questions I still have left about what is proposed all relate to timing of this hour long window. Will it coinside with castle sieges? If so, that makes it harder for people needing to defend a castle to become mayor of a military node, as they are likely to not be available on the Saturday of the week in question. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Second, am I still able to declare a siege on the node during this week, specifically over this hour long window?

Realistically, as a display of valid leadership skills, this is by far the best idea Intrepid have come uo with for military node leaders - it is actually asking them to demonstrate that they are the best at something they will likely have to do as said leader.

Rebutko

Thank you for the detailed explanation!

I think the fallacy lies in the first question that seemed to be skipped over because of a concern with what is currently “meta” having an advantage.

Considering each mode will have an “unfair” advantage I’m not sure what the problem is with “meta” characters having an advantage. That simply means that players who have invested in their character to be the most effective in PvP as possible will have an advantage, just like a rich player will have an advantage in the blind bidding mode.

I honestly don’t see an issue with meta builds having an advantage whatsoever especially considering the multitude of class options and rock/paper/scissor style of balance. I think someone that wins a battle royal in this type of environment would have to face various counter matchups and be an overall very skilled player.

There’s absolutely no question in my mind that a gladiator 1v1 style that determines leadership would be far more entertaining, engaging and just straight up epic than a Zerg of acolytes helping a streamer like asmongold achieve mayorship.

Please tell me you understand where I’m coming from!

Depraved

the issue with the 1v1 mode is that people can feed you points. so it doesnt matter that you might be more skilled than me, when i have hundreds of players losing against me on purpose.

with the team based system, i suppose there will be a limit on how many people can support one person running for major, so you wont have something like 100 vs 10.

there will also probably be penalties for those who afk or throw the game, hopefully. but you will most likely have a fair chance to win if you bring your people to help you.

there could still be an imbalance if a team loses on purpose vs another team to make that person a mayor, but people who compete fairly and are good still have a chance if they keep winning. also, the team being fed still has a chance to lose vs other teams who fight. and in the end, you would just be winning 1 point in a 10v10 for example, instead of having 19 people feeding 1 and giving him 19 points.

Raven016

Rebutko wrote: »

There’s absolutely no question in my mind that a gladiator 1v1 style that determines leadership would be far more entertaining, engaging and just straight up epic than a Zerg of acolytes helping a streamer like asmongold achieve mayorship.

Please tell me you understand where I’m coming from!

How would people be able to prevent in 1x1 somebody to become mayor?

Solvryn

Rebutko wrote: »

When I first heard about the “military: trial by combat” election mode I was very excited thinking that it would be a pure 1v1 “gladiator” style system allowing players to fight on a “fair” basis for control of the node. A “strongest warleader” mindset, if you will.

The more that was explained about the system in the live stream the more discouraged I became. Maybe I am misunderstanding, but it sounds like the player with the most support will have the most help when competing in the “trial by combat” objectives and therefore will take control of the node simply by having the most help. While there’s nothing wrong with this type of system it is discouraging that this system will essentially remove any hope of a skill based system to determine mayoral status thus leaving skill as a determining factor only in the PvE mode that will be base upon individual prowess.

I sure hope I am understanding this wrong because a 1v1 gladiator style system to determine the mayor would be absolutely epic! Anything short of this is a giant fail in my opinion and I can’t overstate how much of a squandered opportunity for many, many players like myself.

Are you at the level of a tactician or strategist?

In the real militaries, Generals were once Lieutenants where they learned tactics first. Then they progressed onto strategy.

Shabooey

I hope there is a limit to the number of people that can support you in the trial, I'd prefer it to be no more than 15ish. If it's just large groups then it will be a mini zerg fest which won't be much fun imo. I think having smaller capped group sizes will make for much more interesting fights and also allow the smaller PvP focused guilds to actually have a shot at becoming a Mayor and having a big influence on the server instead of just another mega guild.

Also think it would generate some really interesting conflicts that you take your best 15 fighters and go at it against rivial guilds and their best.

Like people have already mentioned, there are possibilities of players gaming the systems, not sure how you'd stop a mega guild putting forward lots of candidates and essentially taking groups in to protect/feed their chosen Mayor. But we'd have to test it and see how specifically the election system will work.

Ludullu

Yeah, I had hoped for a 1v1 champion duels system, rather than this stuff. We already have all the other nodes which will be dominated by guilds. Having at least a single type of nodes that could be controlled by a tyrant who sacrificed their gametime to master their champion instead of their own character seems way more interesting to me than "yeah, you have your friends so go use them to win".

daveywavey

Yeah, I was a little disappointed with the recent change, but I guess we'll have to try it in Alpha-2 and see what it's like.

daveywavey

Shabooey wrote: »

I hope there is a limit to the number of people that can support you in the trial, I'd prefer it to be no more than 15ish. If it's just large groups then it will be a mini zerg fest which won't be much fun imo. I think having smaller capped group sizes will make for much more interesting fights and also allow the smaller PvP focused guilds to actually have a shot at becoming a Mayor and having a big influence on the server instead of just another mega guild.

Yeah, it could easily just become another Scientific Node-style popularity contest without some sort of limit. And we already have the popularity contest in the Scientific Node.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Yeah, I had hoped for a 1v1 champion duels system, rather than this stuff. We already have all the other nodes which will be dominated by guilds. Having at least a single type of nodes that could be controlled by a tyrant who sacrificed their gametime to master their champion instead of their own character seems way more interesting to me than "yeah, you have your friends so go use them to win".

Keep in mind, as we have discussed in the past, the design of this game is based on the assumption that guilds consist of a leader, and anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand sycophants.

Noaani

Rebutko wrote: »

Please tell me you understand where I’m coming from!

I do get it.

At first, I was very much a fan of the notion that it didn't matter if only meta classes could become mayors. However, after thinking about it, I can see how it could be bad.

If the game had 1v1 for mayor where only those with meta classes having a shot, everyone wanting to be mayor would have those classes. Then, when Intrepid rebalance the games combat (as will need to be done, multiple times), that meta changes.

All of a sudden, you have a situation where the pool of people capable of beign effective military node mayors are no longer capable of getting that position.

This really is a bad situation to be in - player confidence in military nodes being lost due to a combat balance is not a situation the game needs.

I'm not saying that the currently proposed system is the best possible, but it is better than either of the other two at the intended purpose of the system.

I fully agree a 1v1 competition may well be more "epic" or what ever, but if you are entering the competition for the sake of the competition, you shouldn't be the mayor of that node. Rather, the point of the competition is to find the mayor for the next month - as such being fairly mundane is actually to the benefit of everyone in that node.

The best thing about that is that it means a 1v1 arena competition can still be added to the game, should Intrepid want to add it. It just won't result in the winner being mayor.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Keep in mind, as we have discussed in the past, the design of this game is based on the assumption that guilds consist of a leader, and anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand sycophants.

This is exactly why having champion duels as a method of election would be more interesting than simply "GLs always win". Obviously there'd always be the possibility of "everyone registers to just lose against their selected member", but same would apply in the current changed system, so I'd rather go for simply a more interesting system than what we got.

Rebutko

I just don’t agree with the “meta” argument. I think it’s a cop out. That reason could be used against any of the other systems as well.

Meta gold farmer has an advantage to gain mayorship over economic.

Meta PvE class has an advantage on the PvE competition mode. There will most certainly be meta PvE classes that will become mayor simply because they are better at completing quests.

Has the “meta” reason been used as a reason to change these systems? Of course not! It’s the nature of an mmo!

Rebutko

It honestly sounds like the current system is trying to combine the voting node structure with the military node when imo it should be completely separate to keep the identities unique. We already have a node that is determined by popularity. Why does military have to follow in the same footsteps?

Throw us PvPers a bone here!!!

Veeshan

should be a group hunger game kinda thing

Games not designed around 1v1 combat so doesnt make sense to do 1v1 combat for it would make more sense being group combat where leader of winning group gets mayor.

Throw all the groups in random instance battle field together and see who last group standing :P

Spif

I think that the smallest support group for military mayor should be a full group. And if that's the smallest group allowed, it should also be the largest group allowed to support one person. Simply put, if it's not 1v1 (and I don't think it should be) it should be a set-group vs other set-groups. This aligns with having a balance system that is designed to be balanced around groups, not individuals.

But how to stop collusion between groups? It's almost impossible. FFA battle royale? There would be teaming until the end. Objective based open world PvP? Team B will take stuff from Team C, but not defend it against Team A.

Head-to-head instanced Arena (or objective-based battleground, but just one team vs another team) in a single elimination bracket tournament would probably be the fairest indicator of combat skill

Weapon_Master

I agree, people are to caught up in the meta talk. No one class and build should be able to defeat literally every other build. Not only is it unlikely but it would just be epic fail design. I don't believe there will be a god class.

People would come from around the world to watch these events. It would be epic absolutely epic. I support a tournament for the leadership of military nodes. It's thematic, it's not gimmicky like the champions. The stories that would be told from such would be grand and epic. I am absolutely with the OP on this. I must say some of the feedback he's received i've taken into account to, and was very well written, sensical and respectful. What a great community to be apart of.

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