Firstly, thank you for the input. I am not going to speak to
anything outside of the Alliance system within this thread, as this is what the
purpose is here. Any further comments on the thread outside of the Alliance
system are not going to be responded to. I acknowledge there are other issues at
play within the game, but that is not the purpose of this forums thread.
After reading through a lot of the stuff here, I took a bit
of a break to think about it and come up with other things. Below are what I
have thought about:
- Ally and Enemy lists – Instead of having them be
automatically assigned to enemy all non-alliance members and ally all alliance
members, would it be better if there was a config option? For example, CONFIG
ALLIANCELISTS ON would mark all non-alliance members as enemies and all alliance
members as allies. At least this way, you can toggle it on when going into
conflict, and toggle it off after and your personal ally/enemy lists would
remain the same.
- Power cost – This value was formulated based off
the power increase I saw during the 4 month period where I collected the data.
In the grand scheme of it, all orgs saw an increase of approximately 600k power
over the 4 month period. 155k/600k didn’t seem like a huge number. I understand
the organization gold is less easy to obtain, so I am happy to drop the gold
cost. There will, however, be a power cost regardless of the outcome. If I was
to propose that alliances would last until they are broken, then there would be
an up front cost and that is all. I am not putting a figure on this yet,
however I will do more research and calculations into the average DAILY power
gain per org and find something.
- Alliance powers – It seems the consensus is that
people don’t want to have any kind of mechanical benefit to alliances outside
of a few channels and alliance helps. If this is the general player opinion, I’m
happy to drop these things. These things can always be added in later if it is something that becomes desirable down the track.
My intention of this entire thread was to get the player opinion
on what I thought up for alliances, and to work with the player base to come up
with something for you. I have a completely different vision of what an alliance looks like to you. So I built the idea off of things that I would have wanted as a player (Such as cross org influencing in revolts) and it is entirely fine if my vision is not what the player base as a whole wants. Hence why we post about proposals and collect feedback before we put things out there.
We, as admin, talk a lot about remembering that the
player is in fact a person behind the screen. I understand and can sympathise
with the low morale and burnout that a lot of people are experiencing, however
that is a factor that is at play for us as the administration as well. There is
only so much we can reasonably achieve daily, and a large number of the code-side changes are not as easy to do on the fly.
With that said, again, thank you for the input. Please let me know if you have any
objections or feedback on the above things I have written in this post, and
please ensure that you are as specific as possible.
- Power cost – This value was formulated based off
the power increase I saw during the 4 month period where I collected the data.
In the grand scheme of it, all orgs saw an increase of approximately 600k power
over the 4 month period. 155k/600k didn’t seem like a huge number. I understand
the organization gold is less easy to obtain, so I am happy to drop the gold
cost. There will, however, be a power cost regardless of the outcome. If I was
to propose that alliances would last until they are broken, then there would be
an up front cost and that is all. I am not putting a figure on this yet,
however I will do more research and calculations into the average DAILY power
gain per org and find something.
I would be sort be interested in more long term numbers. What does power look like over a year, for example?
As you research, it is very important to take in account active and passive power generation. If an org generates 5k power, but all of it is from things like culture, then that org basically won't be able to afford much soon. There is a huge difference from making 5k from astral nodes and 5k from just existing (culture, powerquest being up, etc)
Let's assume there is just a basic system of just channels and log/helps. Why does it need a power cost? What is having a cost trying to solve here? It seems like it is just having a cost just to have one. This still goes back to having to dump power into the alliance is going to make people not want to break them because of all that is sunk into the alliance. An Alliance system should be free and without any sort of cost to it. Else we should just keep using a clan(s).
Alliance powers just adds to the headache of balancing when you get to looking at specific combat events. It assumes an org is going to have the formal Alliance up and has the best powers (because no matter how small of a buff you make, its going to make a difference between those who have it and those who don't). You have to balance around having it and those who decided to not pick something are screwed. An alliance system shouldn't powers at all but it for sure shouldn't punish people because they decided to not take Military powers (or whatever).
Another thing here is the consideration that "everything must have a cost" is an extremely dated concept. Nothing should have a cost "just because" - the cost should be designed and built for a reason. Otherwise, just slapping costs on for the sake of it will undermine your entire project because the outcome of said cost was not even a part of your planning.
What's the purpose for a cost for the alliance system? Is it intended to make organizations consider whether to just not form an alliance at all? Is it intended to make organizations not want to break an alliance so they don't lose their investment? Is it intended to make organizations want to change their alliances on a semi-regular basis? Determine the reason for the cost first, and then design the cost around that reason. And if you don't have a reason for it besides "it must cost something," then consider that... well, no. It doesn't actually have to!
Because I have a rather busy start to my work week and I want to work through this with the player base properly, I am going to take a few days and not touch the alliance system stuff at all so that I can consider things and do more research and analysis into a broad range of things for alliances, and have some more discussions with the admin team.
I will make a new post on this thread in a few days with a revised proposal.
Or you know...don't even do this proposal at all and focus on things that actually need work instead of hard coding alliances into a system basis? Why is THIS what resources are even being devoted to in the first place?
I don't think the above comment is necessary, I think it's great for people to work on passion projects, they're more likely to be finished.
I do agree with some of the others. I don't think we have a need for the proposed benefits. I do like the idea of a combined aether and newsboard for ease of communication and thus removal of the need to ensure everyone is added to clans/given permissions, as well as a toggle for the enemy and ally lists. While I can appreciate in some respects the thought behind allowing allies to influence/bombard for a nation, I still think it is not needed and potentially in the long run might mean less people bother to learn about how to do these things themselves - as in, it's less important to train new people on how to get to an aetherbubble and bombard if we have allies there who just do it half the time when we're lacking. As it is, there have been many, many instances where an org who only had one person awake at the time was still able to claim a village/bubble because there were allies there protecting/fighting off enemies/calling out shuffles etc. Jumping in to influence might speed things up, but I also think that in itself goes against the spirit of competition.
I appreciate the thought and spirit going into this but I don't think we need this sort of complexity at all. And a cost does just become a burden, when all most of us really want is an aether that doesn't take a clan slot or need someone awake to induct.
Below is going to be my new proposal. As of the time of posting the proposal, I am not going to look at the forums thread or the Discord thread for a day or two to give you time to process it and ask any questions. After the 24/48 hour period I will come back and answer any questions that may be present on either mode of communication.
Stage One.
The stage one release of alliances will set the foundation for how they are going to work in the future. The steps for forming an alliance will be the same in the original proposal, and will include the bookbinding treaty item. As a recap I've pasted it below.
Alliance Forming:
- An organization will initiate the alliance with ALLIANCE INITIATE <org>.
- The organization that has been offered the alliance must then ALLIANCE ACCEPT. This must be done within 12 IRL days or the alliance will dissolve.
- As the cap for each alliance is 3 organizations, the above two steps may be done again to add a third organization to the alliance forming process from the outset.
- Once the alliance has been accepted, a Treaty must be created and signed by all members of the Alliance. This is similar to the treaties that alliances have now, however with the alliance system it will be made into a new bookbinding replica (and accompanying skill) under AB BOOKBINDING TREATY. The treaty will be provided with ALLIANCE TREATY <item number>.
- Once the treaty has been provided, all organization members of the alliance must ALLIANCE SIGN TREATY. To sign a treaty, the signing member must be within the city/commune council chambers and possess a seal for their organization. The ‘signature’ on the treaty will be the seal’s stamp line.
- Once a treaty has been signed by all Alliance members, the leaders must then ALLIANCE CONFIRM. Once all members have confirmed the alliance, the alliance will be formed and active. Each city/commune leader will receive a copy of the treaty.
Stage one will provide:
- Two channels, as per the original proposal
- AHELPs
- Alliance Log
- Writelog Privs for CR6 of each org.
- Ability to name the alliance (This will not be subject to Admin review when it is set, however if an inappropriate name is used we will have the ability to remove or change it at will)
What is the purpose for stage one?
Stage one sets the foundation for all future alliance changes and combat balancing. Currently, the process for counting people on either 'side' of the game would involve iterating through each player in a city, followed by each clan of that player, and looking for a specific clan. This, in a sense of hard coding, would mean the code needs to be changed every time the clans change, and would use a lot more time and processing power to collect said information. By changing to a hard coded system, it makes that process a whole lot faster by being able to search for the specific alliance members.
Alliance lifetime:
Alliances under this proposal will last until they are dissolved. There are two ways for an alliance to dissolve. The CL's of the org can agree and each enter a command, and once all leaders have entered the command, then the alliance dissolves. Alliances can also be dissolved if there is one org left within the Alliance. For instance:
- Mag/Celest/Glom are in an Alliance.
- Glom leaves, and the alliance members are Mag/Celest.
- Some time passes and Celest leaves. As Mag would be the only org left, the alliance is dissolved.
Leaving an alliance will incur a power penalty of 100K power to the leaving org if they leave within 10 Lusternian years of the Alliance's creation. This is to discourage alliances being made and dropped whenever they are deemed necessary (future proofing for potential changes that could come after stage one) and to encourage longevity between member Orgs.
Future: There is currently a few circulating ideas for future stage releases of alliances, however the plan is I'll code and release stage one, do some conflict balancing, work on some other projects for a bit (such as econ) and then come back and discuss stage two.
If there are any questions or feedback on the above please make it as targeted and as detailed as possible so I can respond accurately for questions.
I am not sure if you are still planning on the ally/enemy lists, but I really like the idea of config on/off to follow alliances or work of personal lists, that is a best of both worlds solution. So I would support that also being included, or it can be kept for later if you prefer. I feel like it would be useful as we have quite a few new melders in the game, and anything to smooth out their learning of the mechanics is a good idea.
It might also be nice if some quests like soulforge or tainted broadcasting center, which hit everyone except your org, could be tied to alliances. Many of the quests are basically taboo because they'll hurt allies, but if they were integrated into the alliance system I could see them being done more often.
It might also be nice if some quests like soulforge or tainted
broadcasting center, which hit everyone except your org, could be tied
to alliances. Many of the quests are basically taboo because they'll
hurt allies, but if they were integrated into the alliance system I
could see them being done more often.
This doesn't really seem to be beneficial. Some of these quests are designed to be quite damaging, and the only thing that stops them from being done regularly is that it makes your allies mad. If it benefits your allies and yourself, it's just open season on quests that damage "the other side" - and that doesn't really seem like a great idea for player retention, does it? Especially when you're forcing your enemies to spend their time not doing what they want to be doing but instead counterquesting.
Below is going to be my new proposal. As of the time of posting the proposal, I am not going to look at the forums thread or the Discord thread for a day or two to give you time to process it and ask any questions. After the 24/48 hour period I will come back and answer any questions that may be present on either mode of communication.
Stage One.
The stage one release of alliances will set the foundation for how they are going to work in the future. The steps for forming an alliance will be the same in the original proposal, and will include the bookbinding treaty item. As a recap I've pasted it below.
Alliance Forming:
- An organization will initiate the alliance with ALLIANCE INITIATE <org>.
- The organization that has been offered the alliance must then ALLIANCE ACCEPT. This must be done within 12 IRL days or the alliance will dissolve.
- As the cap for each alliance is 3 organizations, the above two steps may be done again to add a third organization to the alliance forming process from the outset.
- Once the alliance has been accepted, a Treaty must be created and signed by all members of the Alliance. This is similar to the treaties that alliances have now, however with the alliance system it will be made into a new bookbinding replica (and accompanying skill) under AB BOOKBINDING TREATY. The treaty will be provided with ALLIANCE TREATY <item number>.
- Once the treaty has been provided, all organization members of the alliance must ALLIANCE SIGN TREATY. To sign a treaty, the signing member must be within the city/commune council chambers and possess a seal for their organization. The ‘signature’ on the treaty will be the seal’s stamp line.
- Once a treaty has been signed by all Alliance members, the leaders must then ALLIANCE CONFIRM. Once all members have confirmed the alliance, the alliance will be formed and active. Each city/commune leader will receive a copy of the treaty.
Stage one will provide:
- Two channels, as per the original proposal
- AHELPs
- Alliance Log
- Writelog Privs for CR6 of each org.
- Ability to name the alliance (This will not be subject to Admin review when it is set, however if an inappropriate name is used we will have the ability to remove or change it at will)
What is the purpose for stage one?
Stage one sets the foundation for all future alliance changes and combat balancing. Currently, the process for counting people on either 'side' of the game would involve iterating through each player in a city, followed by each clan of that player, and looking for a specific clan. This, in a sense of hard coding, would mean the code needs to be changed every time the clans change, and would use a lot more time and processing power to collect said information. By changing to a hard coded system, it makes that process a whole lot faster by being able to search for the specific alliance members.
Alliance lifetime:
Alliances under this proposal will last until they are dissolved. There are two ways for an alliance to dissolve. The CL's of the org can agree and each enter a command, and once all leaders have entered the command, then the alliance dissolves. Alliances can also be dissolved if there is one org left within the Alliance. For instance:
- Mag/Celest/Glom are in an Alliance.
- Glom leaves, and the alliance members are Mag/Celest.
- Some time passes and Celest leaves. As Mag would be the only org left, the alliance is dissolved.
Leaving an alliance will incur a power penalty of 100K power to the leaving org if they leave within 10 Lusternian years of the Alliance's creation. This is to discourage alliances being made and dropped whenever they are deemed necessary (future proofing for potential changes that could come after stage one) and to encourage longevity between member Orgs.
Future: There is currently a few circulating ideas for future stage releases of alliances, however the plan is I'll code and release stage one, do some conflict balancing, work on some other projects for a bit (such as econ) and then come back and discuss stage two.
If there are any questions or feedback on the above please make it as targeted and as detailed as possible so I can respond accurately for questions.
Imo this seems like a better framework to start. And, as you clearly note, it's intended only as a preliminary framework to build on later. Importantly I think this resolves my primary concern which is that any proposal must not give more advantage to the side doing well (I assume we'll come back to that point later once we are looking at further alliance phases!). Seems pretty neutral as far as mechanics go, and - while I might personally like alliances to be a bit more fluid at some point - the cost and rationale for it seems reasonable. An early break-up penalty that you choose to shoulder is much better. It still encourages you to be discerning up-front when you are forming an alliance and not form one that feels shaky, but doesn't lock you into it in perpetuity either which sounds like your goal.
I am not sure if you are still planning on the ally/enemy lists, but I really like the idea of config on/off to follow alliances or work of personal lists, that is a best of both worlds solution. So I would support that also being included, or it can be kept for later if you prefer. I feel like it would be useful as we have quite a few new melders in the game, and anything to smooth out their learning of the mechanics is a good idea.
- Ability to name the alliance (This will not be subject to Admin review when it is set, however if an inappropriate name is used we will have the ability to remove or change it at will)
This is great, thank you! Will you be adding news to the alliance system too?
I am not sure if you are still planning on the ally/enemy lists, but I really like the idea of config on/off to follow alliances or work of personal lists, that is a best of both worlds solution. So I would support that also being included, or it can be kept for later if you prefer. I feel like it would be useful as we have quite a few new melders in the game, and anything to smooth out their learning of the mechanics is a good idea.
- Ability to name the alliance (This will not be subject to Admin review when it is set, however if an inappropriate name is used we will have the ability to remove or change it at will)
This is great, thank you! Will you be adding news to the alliance system too?
It's probable that if we were going to roll out the config list options, that it would be a stage two roll out. Stage one will be all about setting the base framework.
We can add news to alliances in stage one if that is something that people want.
What do you think about allowing up to four organizations in an alliance so 4v2 alliances are possible?
For the moment, we are going to stick with a maximum of three. The intent here is we can balance conflict around what has been the norm in recent years, and then once we have the balancing stuff worked out, we can reconsider changing the maximum.
A thought occurs to me: would a mandatory cooldown period between alliances encourage shuffling? Like, on years that end in 0 the alliances all dissolve, and the Hall of Records starts an audit that lasts 6 months, during which time they refuse to allow new registrations.
Comments
Firstly, thank you for the input. I am not going to speak to anything outside of the Alliance system within this thread, as this is what the purpose is here. Any further comments on the thread outside of the Alliance system are not going to be responded to. I acknowledge there are other issues at play within the game, but that is not the purpose of this forums thread.
After reading through a lot of the stuff here, I took a bit of a break to think about it and come up with other things. Below are what I have thought about:
- Ally and Enemy lists – Instead of having them be automatically assigned to enemy all non-alliance members and ally all alliance members, would it be better if there was a config option? For example, CONFIG ALLIANCELISTS ON would mark all non-alliance members as enemies and all alliance members as allies. At least this way, you can toggle it on when going into conflict, and toggle it off after and your personal ally/enemy lists would remain the same.
- Power cost – This value was formulated based off the power increase I saw during the 4 month period where I collected the data. In the grand scheme of it, all orgs saw an increase of approximately 600k power over the 4 month period. 155k/600k didn’t seem like a huge number. I understand the organization gold is less easy to obtain, so I am happy to drop the gold cost. There will, however, be a power cost regardless of the outcome. If I was to propose that alliances would last until they are broken, then there would be an up front cost and that is all. I am not putting a figure on this yet, however I will do more research and calculations into the average DAILY power gain per org and find something.
- Alliance powers – It seems the consensus is that people don’t want to have any kind of mechanical benefit to alliances outside of a few channels and alliance helps. If this is the general player opinion, I’m happy to drop these things. These things can always be added in later if it is something that becomes desirable down the track.
My intention of this entire thread was to get the player opinion on what I thought up for alliances, and to work with the player base to come up with something for you. I have a completely different vision of what an alliance looks like to you. So I built the idea off of things that I would have wanted as a player (Such as cross org influencing in revolts) and it is entirely fine if my vision is not what the player base as a whole wants. Hence why we post about proposals and collect feedback before we put things out there.
We, as admin, talk a lot about remembering that the player is in fact a person behind the screen. I understand and can sympathise with the low morale and burnout that a lot of people are experiencing, however that is a factor that is at play for us as the administration as well. There is only so much we can reasonably achieve daily, and a large number of the code-side changes are not as easy to do on the fly.
With that said, again, thank you for the input. Please let me know if you have any objections or feedback on the above things I have written in this post, and please ensure that you are as specific as possible.
I would be sort be interested in more long term numbers. What does power look like over a year, for example?
As you research, it is very important to take in account active and passive power generation. If an org generates 5k power, but all of it is from things like culture, then that org basically won't be able to afford much soon. There is a huge difference from making 5k from astral nodes and 5k from just existing (culture, powerquest being up, etc)
Let's assume there is just a basic system of just channels and log/helps. Why does it need a power cost? What is having a cost trying to solve here? It seems like it is just having a cost just to have one. This still goes back to having to dump power into the alliance is going to make people not want to break them because of all that is sunk into the alliance. An Alliance system should be free and without any sort of cost to it. Else we should just keep using a clan(s).
Alliance powers just adds to the headache of balancing when you get to looking at specific combat events. It assumes an org is going to have the formal Alliance up and has the best powers (because no matter how small of a buff you make, its going to make a difference between those who have it and those who don't). You have to balance around having it and those who decided to not pick something are screwed. An alliance system shouldn't powers at all but it for sure shouldn't punish people because they decided to not take Military powers (or whatever).
Because I have a rather busy start to my work week and I want to work through this with the player base properly, I am going to take a few days and not touch the alliance system stuff at all so that I can consider things and do more research and analysis into a broad range of things for alliances, and have some more discussions with the admin team.
I will make a new post on this thread in a few days with a revised proposal.
I do agree with some of the others. I don't think we have a need for the proposed benefits. I do like the idea of a combined aether and newsboard for ease of communication and thus removal of the need to ensure everyone is added to clans/given permissions, as well as a toggle for the enemy and ally lists. While I can appreciate in some respects the thought behind allowing allies to influence/bombard for a nation, I still think it is not needed and potentially in the long run might mean less people bother to learn about how to do these things themselves - as in, it's less important to train new people on how to get to an aetherbubble and bombard if we have allies there who just do it half the time when we're lacking. As it is, there have been many, many instances where an org who only had one person awake at the time was still able to claim a village/bubble because there were allies there protecting/fighting off enemies/calling out shuffles etc. Jumping in to influence might speed things up, but I also think that in itself goes against the spirit of competition.
I appreciate the thought and spirit going into this but I don't think we need this sort of complexity at all. And a cost does just become a burden, when all most of us really want is an aether that doesn't take a clan slot or need someone awake to induct.
Future:
There is currently a few circulating ideas for future stage releases of alliances, however the plan is I'll code and release stage one, do some conflict balancing, work on some other projects for a bit (such as econ) and then come back and discuss stage two.
Thank you for your work on this.
Imo this seems like a better framework to start. And, as you clearly note, it's intended only as a preliminary framework to build on later. Importantly I think this resolves my primary concern which is that any proposal must not give more advantage to the side doing well (I assume we'll come back to that point later once we are looking at further alliance phases!). Seems pretty neutral as far as mechanics go, and - while I might personally like alliances to be a bit more fluid at some point - the cost and rationale for it seems reasonable. An early break-up penalty that you choose to shoulder is much better. It still encourages you to be discerning up-front when you are forming an alliance and not form one that feels shaky, but doesn't lock you into it in perpetuity either which sounds like your goal.
This is great, thank you! Will you be adding news to the alliance system too?
We can add news to alliances in stage one if that is something that people want.
For the moment, we are going to stick with a maximum of three. The intent here is we can balance conflict around what has been the norm in recent years, and then once we have the balancing stuff worked out, we can reconsider changing the maximum.