[War & PVP]Gentlemen's Warfare

[RogueMind]

[align=center]Introduction[/align]
Many of us who came to this server had high hopes for PVP and organized conflict(or atleast I did) and unfortunately this aspect of the server failed to live up to that dream. It is not because it is impossible to achieve this but rather because players have become complacent in the idea that this ideal form of PVP is achievable. I am told that it is impossible to have fair and fun conflict yet I haven't even seen a discussion on how to fix this issue; which is why I am here. In the very least I would like to open up a dialogue on the expansion of organized PVP.

[align=center]Alignment and League Of Nations[/align]
The greatest problem with organized warfare in Herocraft is the total lack of true organization. Towns may be affiliated with players but players aren't affiliated with towns. What I mean is this; players do whatever they want despite any town alignment. Players don't feel like their actions outside of town will effect their town so players from good or neutral towns often engage in acts of villainy without a second thought. Sure this might be a PVP/Hardcore server, but this sort of behavior should cause a shift in alignment. There needs to be social implications for every action. Right now no one cares. One might argue that a citizen doesn't represent the entire town, but shouldn't a mayor keep his citizens under control? Besides if a town mostly stays to itself except when their citizens commit random impulsive acts of murder or theft, then isn't it's moral output largely bad? What towns do for themselves don't have a moral standing of any kind. Just because they look like a 'good' town doesn't mean that's where their alignment should lie. Since no town will willing to shift its alignment based on the perceptions others have of them we need to form some sort of League of Nations.

The idea is quite simple really. Perhaps twice a month leaders will meet in one location and discuss world events. Anyone will be allowed to come and state a grievance against any official township and the township will be allowed time to defend itself. Afterwards a vote will be held on if the township is found in the wrong their alignment will shift(we should have some sort of point system so that alignments don't go from neutral to evil for one raid). At this meeting Townships will also apply for good alignments shifts by telling what good it has down for the global community. Votes for good alignment shifts will only occur if some one questions the quality of the 'good' action. Below is a short list of actions and how I think they should affect alignment;

Good Actions: Any action benefitting the global community
-Consistent and extremely good deals in the global market(for the others involved)
-Defending Good, Neutral, Or Pretownships from raids
-Improving Foot based travel
-Improving intercity mine cart travel
-Improving Boat travel
-Donating to the needy
-Demolishing structures and restoring the land to its natural state(only after being marked as inactive for 2 weeks with no changes)

Neutral Actions Any action that benefits oneself without harming others(has no effect on alignment)
-Self Defense
-Construction in the City
-Fair trade(they do not disadvantaged themselves or others in trade)
-Demolishing structures and using the land for something new(only after two weeks of being marked inactive with no change)

Evil Actions An Action that is detrimental to others
-Raids
-Consistent Petty Theft
-Griefing(While a individual member may be banned, it should be noted which city culture he was a part of)
-Harassment
-Horrible deals in trade
-Stripping the land of its renewable resources without replanting
-Buying goods known to be stolen

In this way mayors will be encouraged to make a tighter community in order to maintain their alignment and we'll see a stronger sense of community emerge from it. We should also consider actual bonuses to each alignment. For example Good might get 15 extra blocks for each ring, while evil might get 1c extra at DHX for gold. Or perhaps classes can get bonuses if their city is of a certain alignment.

[align=center]Warfare[/align]

The most important thing for PVP is organized PVP. Since I joined the server there has been no significant occurrences of organized PVP, which is a shame. The best way to correct this in my eyes is to create implement a few small changes, and perhaps create a guide to what is appropriate to do during war. War needs to be an actual mechanic in the game. I don't mean two towns deciding they don't like each other. I mean one should meet some requirements to declare war(which in the end will be worth it.). At the moment I can only think I two, an Aggressor's fee for the one who initiates it(a one time cost of maybe 2k), and proof that they are capable of fighting a war(stores of weapons/armor, signatures of players who agree to fight). The defending town will not need to agree or meet these standards.

When War is initiated it cannot end until both towns agree to it. The 'war' function in the game will set both towns to PVP on weekends(or another agreeable 48 hour period) during which the defenses of the town will be tested to their limits. They should also be encouraged to attack wilderness structures owned by either town.

This is all for now. I would love to bounce ideas off of others/hear what staff think.

 

[applelove]

A "league of towns" would never work out. All towns are biased. There are many evil towns disguised as neutral towns, and a good town attacking said neutral towns would just be called out and put under an inappropriate alignment. It also screws with the way mayors intend to run their towns. The server even says that mayors have 99% control over their townships and citizens. A good aligned town is bound to get a citizen here or there who is too dumb to understand "GOOD" means you're not supposed to go hunting newbies. Having OTHER mayors come in and change that alignment will mess up the vision that a town's mayor has planned.

One thing that bugs me in alignments, is neutrality. The only way to be neutral is for all citizens to just keep to themselves and not be involved in outside situations. As it is, 70+% of neutral towns are actually evil, based on the actions of their citizens.

As for war, it's basically a formality. If nothing else, it's only a propaganda tool. Having a "cost" to declare or maintain war is pointless. People would just continue to harass the other town's citizens without declaring war.

 

[jorict]

There is some organization, just on a smaller scale. For example last night me, Greentooth12, Engelbritzon (sorry if misspelled), and Chaz*RandomNumers* were ambushed by Hannebal, GreekCrackShot, and one other of whom I forgot the name of. The ambush was successful in the fact it completely confused us and caused some friendly fire, but it failed in the fact we killed them. I have to give credit though because that was major fun. Also, Hannebal came out alone and went Guerrilla warfare on us by jumping through trees and what not getting kills with his bow, then dropping down on others and killing with the sword. The point I'm trying to get at is that if you get with the right people, it can be "organized". Not in the manner of Open field charge on 3, but in the sense of one group planned an ambush on another group unwary of the attack. It's not as big as town vs. town, but it's big enough for fun.

 

[Doreagarde]

I'm glad you're interested in getting some organization for towns and warfare, Rogue. I read your post, and I'd be glad to have structure like that, especially in war.

Sadly, like Apple says, we don't have the software framework yet to make organized war viable. Of course these are things we're striving to improve. That having been said, taking some aspects of "war" to an arena and duking it out in a structured environment, with some kind of stakes as the prize, has seemed like a good idea to me.

 

[jorict]

Too much betrayal. No one can be friends with each other.

 

[Kainzo]

We purposely stay out of player driven townships and PVP.

If you want to organize something like this - by all means.

 

[A Daring Enchilada]

There's a few reasons why organized war won't work

1. The people of the town have little or no reason to fight a long and costly battle.
2. Large assemblies of people often discourage the smaller army to actually fight.
3. Minecraft lacks a good system for PvP, right now it's simply spamming arrows and sword strikes. If your rate of attack could be slowed down to a more realistic level, than maybe it would work.
4. There is practically no reward for fighting. When you loot a dead player, their armor is always damaged, some times near death, and they usually don't carry valuables.
5. The attacking faction can't build small structures near the city for a prolonged engagement, it breaks the building outside 100 blocks of a town.
6. Organizing a group of 10+ people to fight and then timing it so that 10+ people are on in the target town is near impossible.
7. Towns will also lock themselves up when they feel like they are done fighting, with no siege engines, there is no way to continue the fight.
8. Server lag combined with player lag make fighting hard and unbalanced.

Thats why we can't have a war yet, not until those issues and some more are addressed.

 

[weynard]

Alright. Imma give my 2 cents here.

We've had like 2 big wars in the past, NATO vs. Umadlum and everyone vs. Blasphemy, not counting the recent, very retarded and ugly ORE blockade. Both of those were fun.
NATO brought people together and everyone was dying, that's perhaps the main reason why we keep on rambling on how awesome it was (Or maybe Maikky was just such a prick, IDK tbh).

Just before you bring it up, I'm not talking about FFA here, it's awesome, but the main shard is where towns and assets are, FFA/WAR in comparison is small scale PVP.
That said, wars are rather pointless ATM because everyone and their dog can just hide inside their town.
Maybe the main reason why NATO was so exceedingly awesome was that people had to walk to their towns without using herogates.
Nowadays, you don't see anyone outside save for Afro and Carmeops.

IMO, nobody cares about wars and PVP anymore. The "hardcore" element applies only to those few houses in the wilderness and the occasional gank right outside city limits.
To reintroduce the HARDCORE nature of the server we won't necessarily need any software but rather rule changes:
-The Herogates of warring towns are disabled.
-Mayors of warring towns cannot turn PVP off inside their towns.
-The 100-block-rule does not apply to warring towns.

This means EVIL towns actually have something else to do than wait impatiently outside FFA spawn for someone to come and fight them or scavenge the wilderness for that one unlocked chest.
GOD and NEUTRAL towns on the other hand would either have to fight and defend their town, maybe even attack the aggressor's town, or maybe pay a ransom. Towns that want to stay out of PVP completely would either have to remain completely neutral, pay for their peace, employ diplomacy, make agreements that COUNT and not some flimsy friendship.

My statement:
With these rules, war would have the impact you'd expect it to have.
Dicuss.

EDIT: I mean, why the fuck did NOVA build huge walls around their town? Why does Neverast build lava floors and kingdom walls, why does a town need all that security? To keep Carme out? That's pretty much impossible. For them to look nice? Seriously guys, why do we build all that useful stuff if we don't use it accordingly?

 

[RogueMind]

IMO, nobody cares about wars and PVP anymore. The "hardcore" element applies only to those few houses in the wilderness and the occasional gank right outside city limits.
To reintroduce the HARDCORE nature of the server we won't necessarily need any software but rather rule changes:
-The Herogates of warring towns are disabled.
-Mayors of warring towns cannot turn PVP off inside their towns.
-The 100-block-rule does not apply to warring towns.

I like your ideas very much. Players can certainly set up world organizations, but we can't do much about the laws of the land set in stone.

Also Kain I apologize if you thought I was dissing the server; thats not what I intended. I merely meant that by PVP could use some improvements. This is by far the best server I've played on.

 

[applelove]

Good ideas in part wey, but the problem is balance. If you only provide for one member base, you kill all the others. There are towns who don't want to be involved -at all- with other towns. Allowing evil and neutral towns to declare war to harass other towns (which would happen), would pretty much spoil the whole herocraft experience for the towns who abhor having to deal with pests.

 

[Capn_Danger]

Good ideas in part wey, but the problem is balance. If you only provide for one member base, you kill all the others. There are towns who don't want to be involved -at all- with other towns. Allowing evil and neutral towns to declare war to harass other towns (which would happen), would pretty much spoil the whole herocraft experience for the towns who abhor having to deal with pests.

Weynard's ideas are excellent, its easy to modify them to suit everyone.

I've said this before, what should be done is to create a monetary reward for being successful in war. When both towns declare war their Herogate closes, PVP turns off, the 100-block radius is revoked, and the monetary bonuses kick in.

It should cost coin to declare war, perhaps based on the number of citizens in the town. This coin goes into a pool, winner take all; and perhaps the sever would add an additional percentage to the winner's take to increase the attractiveness of war. A town can choose to Surrender at any time to get out of War footing, or BOTH towns can choose a Peace Treaty, in which case the war is called a draw and everyone gets their investment back.

Also, it should be set up so that PVP kills during war result in a coin reward, and perhaps an additional penalty for death. I think this should be a part of normal PVP, actually.

Capture-the-flag would also be fun, and could provide a reason to attack a town. If you can get in, get the enemy's "flag" (say, a tracked sponge block that the server provides) and keep it in your base for a period of time, you get a coin reward. Kill-the-Mayor/SIC could also be a fun mechanic.

Now, about FFA in particular. I love the FFA map for the resource nodes and the danger of collecting out there. If you really wanted FFA to be a WAR-shard, we would split people onto two teams, let each of them build a fort on the map edge, and have some capture-the-flag or kill-the-king gameplay. You'd use a plugin to join the wargame, then the plugin would randomly assign teams, you'd have a short period to base build before the mayhem started.

I don't think it would be super hard to write a plugin that would accomplish either of these things, now that we have the list API. As it stands now PVP is just a crazy-ass melee running rampant in the FFA base (I also think we should increase the no-PVP area to the full inner area of the base). It is extremely difficult for players to organize a decent war or large battle without any plugin to help administrate it. I can't code, but I would love to help in design and testing of any war-related plugin that Kain would like to add.

 

[DanVonTrap]

In regards to town status and it being changed depending on how players act ect, it would be good if something could be developed like the xp bar being developed for the "professions" plugin, What i mean by this is a bar that would have "good" at one end "Bad" at the other and "neutral" somewhere in the middle. Now with everyone having this say you was neutral and you kill a player whose bar is more in the evil that neutral bar moves towards good.

Now a flaw i see straight away is killing somebody evil and your bar going up in the good still doesn't mean you are good and you could be somebody that stills from towns ect. So why not (probably impossible) do something were your status is affected if you steal something from say a good town your bar will drop towards evil, so depending on what you have stolen depends how much of your status bar drops. If not what you have stolen how much you have stolen instead.

Now all town members status bars will be linked to the town they are with and depending what there status is obviously will effect the town and maybe the mayor can have a new command were he can view everyone in his/her town status and decide who he needs to talk to, get rid of ect.

Its a rough idea but if anyone would like to give there 2 cents on this by all means go for it.

 

[weynard]

Apart from the fact that Neverast is pretty much a neutral town for widely known reasons (mostly because you guys never do GOOD deeds and keep killing people that don't necessarily want to cause you any harm), cities that wouldn't want to participate in wars would have to act accordingly- make friends with potential enemies, forge alliances that are too powerful to win against, or pay evil towns in advance to be left in peace.
This is supposed to be a hardcore server, making it possible to evade a major feature just because you "don't want to be involved -at all-" is bullshit IMO.

Capn's idea is nice, how about increasing lost coins during Wars and explicitly adding the lost total to the balance of the killer?

 

[Luke Strife]

I don't see why a League of Nations would not work.

A "league of towns" would never work out. All towns are biased. There are many evil towns disguised as neutral towns, and a good town attacking said neutral towns would just be called out and put under an inappropriate alignment. It also screws with the way mayors intend to run their towns. The server even says that mayors have 99% control over their townships and citizens. A good aligned town is bound to get a citizen here or there who is too dumb to understand "GOOD" means you're not supposed to go hunting newbies. Having OTHER mayors come in and change that alignment will mess up the vision that a town's mayor has planned.

In which case, if they are neutral and act evil, then they should be changed to evil. If a Mayor does not want to be evil, then he should evict the players who consistently ignore his wishes. This is technically how they should be running now, right? If there's someone going against town wishes then I think Mayors have every right to get rid of the problem player.

As for bias, that's politics for you.

But seriously, why not have someone (possibly an admin or mod) act as an unbiased judicator who settles disputes in the meeting and pass votes, or vetoes votes that he/she thinks are unjust.

As for war, it's basically a formality. If nothing else, it's only a propaganda tool. Having a "cost" to declare or maintain war is pointless. People would just continue to harass the other town's citizens without declaring war.

Simple fix again. If people are harassing constantly then they should be forced to declare war. If they have -that- big of a beef with someone that they think would involve and benefit all members of their township, then I am sure that counts as automatically declaring war and should then follow all the war's rules. It would be kinda easy to spot masses of players harassing one town over a period of time (as in, not just a one-off) with others defending it.

 

[Capn_Danger]

Simple fix again. If people are harassing constantly then they should be forced to declare war. If they have -that- big of a beef with someone that they think would involve and benefit all members of their township, then I am sure that counts as automatically declaring war and should then follow all the war's rules. It would be kinda easy to spot masses of players harassing one town over a period of time (as in, not just a one-off) with others defending it.

If you want people to declare war, dangle a carrot in front of their nose. If people get rewarded for declaring and waging war, they will declare war. QED, problem solved, just like magic. It wouldn't even require staff supervision if a plugin was written.

To chime in on the other topic, I don't think its super important if people follow Good vs Evil RP'ing too closely. The point of that system is to encourage some variety on the server and stimulate PVP action, not pigeon-hole people into a black or white alignment system. As long as it gets people up and about and makes things more interesting, its doing its job. This is a hardcore server, not a RP server, after all.

 

[RogueMind]

Simple fix again. If people are harassing constantly then they should be forced to declare war. If they have -that- big of a beef with someone that they think would involve and benefit all members of their township, then I am sure that counts as automatically declaring war and should then follow all the war's rules. It would be kinda easy to spot masses of players harassing one town over a period of time (as in, not just a one-off) with others defending it.

If you want people to declare war, dangle a carrot in front of their nose. If people get rewarded for declaring and waging war, they will declare war. QED, problem solved, just like magic. It wouldn't even require staff supervision if a plugin was written.

To chime in on the other topic, I don't think its super important if people follow Good vs Evil RP'ing too closely. The point of that system is to encourage some variety on the server and stimulate PVP action, not pigeon-hole people into a black or white alignment system. As long as it gets people up and about and makes things more interesting, its doing its job. This is a hardcore server, not a RP server, after all.

While I love role play I don't feel we should force a high level of role play on people. However I feel a small level should evolve naturally on its on. I don't want people to take on the roles of 'characters' but I do expect player to have social repercussions from their actions. Social repercussions which would be supported and encouraged by the rules of the server. For example one time a player was suggesting the creation of a black market, and then Carmeops came in and told him that with the current state of the server that such a thing is pointless because people don't care where the items they buy come from. There is no social repercussion for being bad that is anything more then strictly short term. We all think that things like that would be awesome but when it comes to actually implementing such a thing our prejudices prevent us from taking the steps necessary to do so.

Or at least that's my opinion on the subject.

I would like to thank all of you for taking this so seriously. I know I'm new to the server

 

[A Daring Enchilada]

IMO, The good, the bad, and the neutral system is really hard to use to identify towns. I myself am neutral. I do a lot of evil things (i.e. steal, pillage, and kill) but only in self-interest. I don't do it out of malice or pure evil, I do it for an economic benefit. Despite this, I could/am labeled as evil simply because of my actions. Even though it's the motive behind the actions that identifies the player.

Secondly, I agree with the enabling of PvP and revoking the 100-blocks rule during war. As long as those are enabled, the only thing the offensive group can do is harass the citizens enough to lure them out to fight. In addition, the idea of a monetary or commodity reward for the winning faction would really stimulate the desire to start and fight a war.

I have an idea that I think would help for the raiding side: Every town would have to have some sort of a treasury in the center or capital whether it be in a building or under ground that is open to city counsel members of that town and for the attacking citizens so that those treasuries could be looted, but only by the attacking faction, and not by members of the town that holds them.

Summarized: The defensive town has a protected room of chests that only select members of that town are allowed to open, most towns have these and only the mayor, SIC, and others can use them. In times of war, those chests are available for plundering by the attacking city, so as to stimulate the desire to infiltrate the town and steal valuables.

Maybe at the end of this thread we can make a check list of factors that should be implemented or removed to make War and War related PvP more enjoyable.

 

[GreekCrackShot]

About what you said with the town walls (neverast, nova, etc.) i completely agree. What's the point if you have off in your town and besides Carm (and me occasionally) who goes on successful raids? At least organized ones. If i see someone who i recognize as an enemy/killer like weynard (lol no offense) i run to my chest of lava buckets and run that bitch out then kill them once they run out of the rings. And i was have a ton of town members, its easy to run ppl out.

I like the idea of organnized pvp, but dont take it too seriously, we dont another group of Buttliners appearing. As mayor of a neutral town, pvp is quite common, even i go out of my way to kill some people sometimes, doesnt mean we are evil. Pvp is probably one of the most entertaining things in the game, i wouldnt waste my time being good and missing out on it. But then again i dont want to be evil. Tbh i havent read this entire post because im on my phone so if i said something That was already mentioned/incorrect my bad.

 

[GreekCrackShot]

There is some organization, just on a smaller scale. For example last night me, Greentooth12, Engelbritzon (sorry if misspelled), and Chaz*RandomNumers* were ambushed by Hannebal, GreekCrackShot, and one other of whom I forgot the name of. The ambush was successful in the fact it completely confused us and caused some friendly fire, but it failed in the fact we killed them. I have to give credit though because that was major fun. Also, Hannebal came out alone and went Guerrilla warfare on us by jumping through trees and what not getting kills with his bow, then dropping down on others and killing with the sword. The point I'm trying to get at is that if you get with the right people, it can be "organized". Not in the manner of Open field charge on 3, but in the sense of one group planned an ambush on another group unwary of the attack. It's not as big as town vs. town, but it's big enough for fun.

Did you like my lag? You didnt hit me once when i came back for you with nothing on me xD

 

[Kainzo]

The entire concept of Good vs Evil - is that Evil fights dirty and Good fights with brute force, defends the innocent, etc.