Shattered Kingdoms

Another of the more in-depth responses warranting its own post:

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I am most appreciative for the time and effort put into the War.
Certainy this kind of conflict/event is different than what the Guardians endured with the Empire and its allies in times past. And, I could see, with honest effort by staff and players, how we can learn from this experience and come up with suggestions to be used to lay tracks down for the next major realms conflict.

How it was - the aftermath of events a year ago to near present day.
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Diplomacy status would change, generally as a response to some PK going on.
PK would continue. One side would gain an upper hand; the other side rarely submitted.
Arguably reason givens were along the lines of 'good never gives into evil,' or 'good shall not stop so long as evil exists.'
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How it is - the War/its results
PVP - Not my bailiwick, for certain. Firm conditions & scoring helped those adept make progress. Will let those who understand this aspect of the game better speak to it, though.

Economy - If we're going to have to farm for coin, having some additional reason than 'funds are low, guards aren't loading fully' motivated leaders to keep an eye on the treasury, especially near the time of scoring, and insure their group could pay for its endeavors. War costs money, and forcing characters to do something about it in the middle of the war I perceive as an improvement.

Diplomacy - Brilliant idea to include diplomacy as part of the scoring. Initial impact and RP generated to get to that point, was exciting. Some matters toward the end, I saw as interesting. But most of the event, as stated, was rather stagnant. Scoring was lopsided as a result.

Raiding - Inexperience of some key players with raiding/large group leadership and strained relations/diplomacy resulted (generally) in repeated outcomes. Was impressed with the final week and both sides making a showing, despite what was a 'foregone conclusion of who was 'winning.' In the end what killed the Guardians at Grahme was overlooking a basic tactic.

Conclusions - RP at Grahme a bit weird. The centaur chief was killed by the Empire, who was still hailing the Empire as its saviors; Felgaros didn't seem to react much to this either.
Not satisfied with the coordination of things as far as the limited interaction between warring factions after/between more 'staged' portions of the events. Not going to blame OOC communications for any disparity. People, at least on team Guardian, had a lot of OOC scheduling issues eating up time, and I really don't understand after the coordinated part of events at the end, why there wasn't more RP between us. Felt a bit empty, especially when the Empire side only logged briefly before scheduled thing, and most of them out, briefly after. In contrast, the Guardians were around most of the day and well afterwards. I know several of us commented there were words that could have (and should have) been exchanged at that time.


How it could be - Future considerations
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My thoughts, after chilling a couple days, and reading through the forum:
1) Clarity in coordination & confirmation of availability. Even leadership had issues participating and there was confusion, at least on the light side of when to show up to prepare. When there are new(er) players to the game in a position of leadership, perhaps there should be a guide to follow. It's good for veterans also, to for clarity sake of what is acceptable/not acceptable to be doing, and how to handle this aspect best, fairly, and evenly.

2) Diplomacy and its scoring - points for where alliances are is a good start point. But as it was stated, a lack of any change means the scoring becomes stagnant/lopsided. ... Believe it was stated if there was some measure of counting either of # of members of allied factions who show up for raid/pvps and/or # of allied factions simply that show up. Thus - diplomacy on paper (RP) is one thing, but diplomacy in action also can score.

3) Economical scoring - This seemed to be mostly about ensuring the accounts were at max at the time of score than anything that happened between score times.

4) The raiding - As much as people complained about that no-magic room, it wasn't used until the penultimate week, and in the final week, the Guardian side figured out how to use it to advantage. (Guardians lost, but for other reasons). There was a reason all cabal HQs were made the same, right? I think all strongholds should either be more similar in the future, or when such non cabal sights become known, players be mindful to scout them out and figure out the tactics ahead of time. Nothing wrong with some PvE flavor. It wasn't what cost the Guardians the war, and shouldn't be seen as THE factor.

5) Outcomes - As much as staff may have reasons for running events such as these, I think each group should also have its own specific things to add to the conflict that should be part of what's at stake at the front end - and it could be what feeds into the RP at the 'close' of an event. So it's not just some NPCs talking, but some negotiation closing between the factions as well. This was lacking, and I feel a let down.

Overall -
I hope next time there is a conflict such as this more is done to draw people into participation actively for more than the sequence of PvP scheduled conflicts. I hope to see more participation of allies and more RP between factions at the closing of events. I can't call the event a success or a fail, as a finished product. I call it a valiant effort at a work in progress, enjoyed it as such, and look forward to the next.

A third in-depth response offering some thoughtful ideas/suggestions also warranting its own post:

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Some sincere recommendations for a future event of this type and how I would implement these recommendations in a sample event include:

Do not use factions that already exist. Create new, temporary groups with new names that characters and factions can support or oppose according to their tastes and roleplay.
For example, a conflict between two independent NPC pretenders to the Imperial throne might appear: a dogmatic human mage-aspirant associated with Tlaxcala and an aberrant half-elf mercenary associated with the Imperial Navy based in Seawatch.

Taking a page from history, the event kicks off as Imperial nobles decide to challenge the Emperor: the resulting debate within the House of Lords winds up getting violent. Soldiers from nearby barracks arrive to put down the unrest, but significant damage is done to the House of Lords and adjoining courtroom and many of the Bright Star's brightest young stars lie dead. In a rare moment of deceptive mourning, the imperial elite cause the courthouse to be demolished -- they're really doing this to undermine the Emperor's power structure -- and create a "memorial" garden filled primarily with two plants: trillium and nightshade.

Suddenly, nobles and soldiers start popping up wearing one of these as a badge or token. The message is obvious: support for either pretender is expressed, War of the Roses style, with these little tokens. Players, too, can travel to the "memorial" garden and take their side by plucking the appropriate flower, to be worn ... dun dun dun ... as a symbol. Allegiance now becomes fluid, detectable by non-participants, and a layer of roleplay that allows everyone to make tangible choices. Cost: one room and two object vnums.

If I had all resources at my disposal, I would represent faction membership as quest bits, too. Code could be copy-pasted from the Valley of Ashes. That allows for "secret" membership, betrayal, and a host of other diverse options as a stable "genotype" and fluid "phenotype" of allegiance are made. Once you hear the story from an NPC, you can accept the quest to go grab your chosen symbol: harvesting it completes the quest and aligns your faction quest bit one way or another.

Whenever there are numbers involved, use odd numbers and use majority instead of addition. Establish a "lead" required to win and a time limit for defaulting to draws or "whoever has more" scoring.
To continue the example event, the Imperial nobility breaks into in-fighting over which pretender to support in a challenge against Emperor Max. In an attempt to gain more resources against the Tlaxcala faction, corrupt generals of the Imperial Navy squirrel away resources and build a forward operating base -- a beachead -- somewhere near the Chancel, where they intend to go on productive raids against unspecified targets. The Tlaxcala faction learns of these plans and sends a party to capture this base. The result is inconclusive.

At regular intervals, supporters attempt to rally and gain control of this little garrison. At first, the first event determines which faction's banner is hung outside the fort in the wilderness room. From there, it's attack or defense as the entrance is assaulted whenever the rival faction's NPCs collect sufficient resources to launch an attack. The event is kicked off by either a magical construct or band of pirates (a nerfed outer guardian clone) shows up to be killed and throw open the gates of the area when dead. Could be scripted copy-pasted CRS code or staff facilitated. This allows, also, for some diverse tactics: do you defend by sitting inside and preparing the area? Do you attack your enemy outside? Do you attack by swarming the guard? Do you attempt to soften your foes before entering with the various tactics available then sally forth and mop up the guard to claim your victory?

Whichever group wins based on pre-defined conditions (guard is dead if you are not of the guard's "faction", kill/route all non-faction members or have more faction members alive at the end of a time limit) sees their banner unfurled over the ramparts. The reward is pride and RP knowledge that holding this garrison builds resources for their faction. There's an upset factor: if whatever group wins doesn't have majority representation from either faction, the garrison, in fact, is held by no one for that time period.

Attacks are launched every week. Whoever is the first faction to lead the other by 2 victories wins. If at the end of five weeks, no one is leading by that much, whoever has more victories takes it. If they're tied, no one takes it.

In Tlaxcala, a magical portal exists for Trillium loyalists to get a transport to the garrison if the Trillium faction controls it. In Seawatch, a makeshift dock has ships that, with different flavor, transport Nightshade loyalists under similar conditions. This will allow defenders to get inside to defend the area. If we get quest bits, loyalist status is determined by an or statement: you are a loyalist if (you are wearing the right flower and are not in the rival faction) or (you are in the right faction and not wearing the wrong flower.) We wouldn't tell people how it worked: this allows for intrigue risk-taking with reward for certain scenarios.

Don't staff sanctify any character: let leadership in the event be earned and maintained by RP.
If this is intended to be an organic event, we wouldn't bestow SupComm status on any character. It would be up for characters to decide who they feel is best to follow.. this could allow for in-fighting within a faction in a safer and more wholesome way than if a faction leader bestowed with the fasces makes choices that other people don't agree with.

In the example scenario, the NPC leaders are the two pretenders to the throne of the Imperial Emperor. They, in their resourcefulness, would not rely on any one adventurer to handle their affairs. Players and their characters are left to decide what side they're on, find one another, and come up with their own leadership and organization. If necessary, staff might agree to perform menial tasks like collecting votes from players, but no authority figure, in-character, is established.

Some magnate might arise for either side, or there might even be unexpected quality displayed by other groups. The Midnight Council might decide to actively oppose both groups in an effort to remain loyal to Max: if they come up with a way to coordinate themselves, let them be coordinated. This also makes vaguely OOC coordination impossible: there's no one Vortex to look at in guarded privacy, no OOC forum to plan on. It's forced to work how SK is desired to work without imposing restrictions on what people do with that work.

Advertise objectively and publicly.
Summaries have the problem of perspective. Unless objective system logs and raw datasets can be posted, whatever's provided is subject to the interpretation of staff who -- in this model -- are safest and most productive as silent facilitators. Instead, in-game signs should be designed to convey all summary information, and public announcements and bonanza bonuses should advertise and draw in people to increase interactions and the chance that people ask questions about what's happening.

For example, for this event, it'd follow the standard bonanza model. The epoch RP events would be written up like the bonanza events are, and some bonus XP would be offered during select windows: I would, personally, divide up the theoretical five-week period like so for bonus XP:
During the first week, UTC 12:00AM - 8:00AM gets bonanza.
During the second week, UTC 8:00 AM - 4:00PM gets bonanza.
During the third week, UTC 4:00PM - 12:00AM gets bonanza.
During the fourth week, Saturday and Sunday get bonanza.
During the final week, bonanza is RANDOM (but we'd decide a pattern amounting to 8 hrs/day.)

This provides us with something extremely important: manipulation of the independent variable. We could analyze ONLINE_AT data and bonanza timings to determine whether or not bonanzas significantly impact player times, allowing the staff to use this tool more accurately and with better understanding of its uses in the future. A worthy, true experiment.

Do something that's never been done before.
Without risking too much, it'd be worth it to use this time and energy to "stir the pot," because I think we can all anecdotally agree that SK gets more interesting and sees more life when rumors get around that things are shook up a little.

If it were up to me only, I'd do that by posting a keyword on the unofficial log site and explain that it works once per account and provides you with 20 loyalty tokens that don't count towards hero. It really works once per IP and sends a message to the staff if multi-account silliness is detected: whether acted on or not would be up to them, but it provides an interesting social experiment nonetheless. If the staff doesn't want to openly use the site, it can be blamed on a leak and the spiders can be left to believe that.

That's the last of my initial posts to this thread. Thank you again to all those contributors who took the time to participate in this experiment in-game, and also to all those contributors who took the time to share the thoughtful and constructive critiques shared above.

This was a really fun event to administer and I hope to use the experience to improve any possible similar future gaming events. I enjoyed having the opportunity to try something new and am thankful for the great group who involved themselves.

The GRP wasn't representative of what was actually happening in the game or which faction(s) were actually winning. It's scope was too narrow, compounded by scoring rules that were meta-gamed to achieve a result that was contrary to the outcome of non-scripted, real time events.

The large scale PVP that occurred was fun. Nothing else was fun about that event, unfortunately. I really wanted it to be a fun event for everyone where the rules were even and we could see a true victor. In retrospect, it didn't work out and I'm not sure that such an event ever could work out. This is one of the first GRPs I've ever participated in because I usually don't find them very interesting or fun. I don't want to be a jerk about this, though, because I know Dabi did a lot of work to try and make this a good event. The effort is very much appreciated.

Another major problem with the event was the fact that Reizei and Allniska were/are too new to the game to really understand what they were getting themselves into. This is evidenced by the fact that they agreed to rules they didn't seem to fully understand, and failed completely to inform their faction about what was going on in the event. If such an event were ever to be repeated in the future, I would recommend that we make sure the leaders of the factions involved are solid veterans that are capable leaders.

I second that comment. I would have had a lot more fun if there hadn't been so much pressure to figure things out for other people when I didn't even know what was going on myself (or how to get to Grahme, which I at least figured out before the games began, haha).

I'm not sure who you played at that time, Fette. If it was a Guardian, you definitely should've expected the leaders of the Guardians at that time to help you out with those things.

I was agreeing with you because I play Allniska to rephrase: I would have rather had someone else I could have leaned on and learned from rather than being tossed in to be that person myself.

^^This.

This is why I didn't like the GRP. They supposedly "won" the Grahme war while getting their teeth kicked in by every faction but the Guardians.

The best player count data available suggested that the event is correlated with polarization of gameplay rather than any net increase, particularly when compared to events such as Syndal's siteban that display higher average increases in activity. Before the event started, I pointed out a few discrepancies in the announcement (such as ambiguous territory references) that were quietly fixed. The initial flexibility seemed to dissipate quickly, and by the penultimate week, the major outcome was fixed. The last week of the event had little to no tangible purpose.