PvP: Squashing the Competition

[Phoenix]

PVP: Squashing the Competition​

Welcome back to another installment of PvP: You Didn't Know this was a Series. This announcement is in large part born out of the recent site survey. One of the prevailing issues brought up repeatedly is the increasing competitiveness of PvP. The new policies in this announcement are aimed at helping drive out some of the competitive habits that have seeped into the various PvP threads on the site, and foster a sense of cooperation even in the compeititve parts of the site.

"So I'll just report..."​

This is probably the most important section of this article in terms of both length and effect on future PvPs. The report button has become... too prevalent. While the report button is intended as a last resort it has become a second resort.

As of currently, many, many of the reports coming in consist of someone making 1-2 token OOC posts followed by "So I'll just report..." There's almost never an attempt at actual compromise anymore. That isn't the intention of the report button.

So with that preface, what is going to change?

The PvP team is going to be looking much more closely at not only if there was discussion about the disagreement, but what the discussion was. Were compromises suggested? Did people reject or counter offer those? Were the compromises reasonable? Should someone have just "let it go"? The latter of these isn't always easy to do, but in many instances overlooking something where your opponent slightly pushes boundaries is the best answer, and when that's not possible find some middle ground. I can tell you that in many of the reports we receive neither side is fully correct, so work it out amongst yourselves. Have some good will in PvP again. Make a story out of it.

So what will this look like for the outcome of actually reporting?

If your "attempts at discussion" are deemed as nothing more than going through the motions, your report will likely be rejected. There should be genuine attempts to find a solution that doesn't involve a report by working together, and if that's not happening, the admins aren't going to step in on your behalf. It also means that if we do receive a report where one side was particularly stubborn and unwilling to compromise, there may be negative repercussions to the character, even if that wasn't directly what the report was about.

So when is it appropriate to report?

Despite everything I've said, there are appropriate times to report. If/when your opponent does something blatantly unreasonable and they're completely unwilling to compromise on it, that would be an appropriate time to report. There is a difference between disagreeing about someone slightly pushing the limits and someone blatantly abusing the limits. Phrases such as "I'm not sure you can do that at X level..." "I feel like you probably can't deflect all those shots..." and "I'm not sure you'd be quite quick enough to do that..." are all examples of perhaps pushing the rules, but not making a black and white mistake.

Try to compromise. Try to talk it out. Try to find your own solution like an adult. Find middle ground because more often than not, the admins are going to make a middle ground ruling anyway. But don't have an entire fight over a minor disagreement. Not every round needs to be a hit Don't sweat petty things... or pet sweaty things.

Making a Report​

So you've talked it out with your opponent and they are still determined that they can dodge 18 blaster bolts at once without taking a single hit. You tried to compromise by saying they could only take 1-2 shots, and they still aren't willing to work with you. Not only that, they're also firing two other blasters at a totally separate target and all at level 1. Oh boy! You might have a case for a report!

How do you make a report? Well, I'm going to cheat and link to myself here rather than make this post any longer. As has already been announced, there is a template for reporting here.

But... he caught a Star Destroyer!​

There are some instances where reporting does not require any OOC discussion. These instances are not as common as people think, and because there has been so much confusion about this lately, I will mention it here.

First off, I want to distinguish between an autohit report and an autohit for timeout or an attack that wasn't addressed. If your opponent misses the window to respond to an attack or simply fails to mention it at all in his/her post, you do not need to report this. You can simply write in the attack landing at wherever it was aimed. This is different than an autohit report.

When you think "autohit report" the first thing that should come to mind is the phrase "obviously inadequate defense." Autohit reports are only for when someone writes a defense that is so obviously and blatantly impossible that it can be seen from a mile away. If a 10,000kg boulder is falling on someone and they try to catch it with their bare hands to avoid being crushed, this is obviously impossible. If a Star Destroyer is crashing down on someone and they try to stop it with the Force to save themselves, this is impossible. If someone is standing next to a bomb that detonates and writes that they outrun the actual detonation (after the bomb has gone off) this is impossible. Trying to grab a saber blade with a non-Force enhanced, unarmored hand? Yeah, you guessed it... not possible. See how this works? Things that are so obviously impossible that can be seen at a glance as absurd are eligible for auohit. "I don't think he can deflect that many shots" or "this timing seems a little bit off" or similar complaints do not fall under autohits.

Level Equality, Death, and Story​

This is a final, catch-all section for a couple of things I wanted to address.

First, I'm going to address some misconceptions about levels, equal fights, and level disparity. While this could probably be its own announcement, I want to dispel a couple of the larger, more prevalent misconceptions I've seen about this this TL that somehow appeared where it wasn't last timeline (in other words, the rules haven't changed from last TL but everyone's perceptions have for some reason). Whenever possible, fights should have an equal number of levels and an equal number of bodies on each side. I understand this will not always be the case, but fights will start out OOC on much better footing if this is followed. It obviously won't always be possible, but it should be the goal. As an aside, I would highly discourage ever forcing anyone to fight a 1vX situation (1v2, 1v3, 1v4) even if the levels line up.

So what principles should you follow for balancing levels (a TL;DR if you will). If you follow these 4 rules, you'll be golden.

1. If possible put an equal number of bodies and levels in each fight
2. If 1 is impossible, equal levels is more important
3. If you are following rule 2, don't force an opponent into a 1vX situation. (Feel free to consult with me about what the most balanced way to handle this situation would be if you have questions)
4. No team should have an advantage in both bodies and levels

Please note: Not every fight will be 100% equal in every way, but this is the formula for getting as close as possible to equal. The more levels involved, the more the "gap" becomes diluted. 1vX situations are excluded from these rules because the "gap" is not diluted. When adding more levels to a fight, the "gap" becomes negligible. Skill of the writers is far more important than any "gap," and therefore can be considered equal. Again I'll reiterate that if you need help balancing levels, feel free to ask me. I can tell you how to balance a fight in under 2 minutes.


Finally, the last thing I want to say is simple, but can be easy to lose sight of in a fight: try to have fun. Don't make every fight all about going for the kill. I've noticed a huge increase in the number of people who want nothing out of a fight except a kill... this makes for a dull story and I think we're all feeling it. Try to make an interesting story arc out of a captured character (I can think of one particularly epic capture arc from 5th TL that I still enjoy reading), or create a good rivalry involving multiple fights (like Andraste vs. Wyck), or any of a number of other ways to make PvP more about a story than just racking up another kill. You might find that your storytelling experience and the site in general thrive more if you do.

Q&A​

Well this is always fun to do, yeah? I had this section last time as well, but I'm going to leave this open to questions. There was a lot more I could cover, but I can already see your eyes glazing over through your computer just reading this. Feel free to ask for clarification on things below, and I'll do my best to respond to them in a timely manner.

 

[Lucid]

I like what you're doing with this, however I think one thing was missed, @Phoenix and that is not every PvP situation needs to end in death. I think a lot of the sitewide problem with consistent PvP is that people don't want to lose their characters and/or credits. How exactly to go about this, I'm not sure since the current way of doing things--charging at people and trying to chop someone's head off) is certainly the most direct and efficient. Perhaps something as simple as more clearly defining the premise of Open/PvP threads to show a series of objectives and/or win conditions would help.

I think though, more than anything, if people strayed away from trying to kill one another so religiously (I do understand that it's a very good IC motivator, however for the health of the game as a whole, I think it actually ends up being counter-productive) then OOC threads would be much more open to compromise and cooperation. As it stands, with death always looming over people's heads as the inevitable outcome of even the most casual of pvp threads they tend to become combative and overly defensive.

Perhaps I'm way off base, but it's something that would be interesting to see addressed.

 

[Phoenix]

I like what you're doing with this, however I think one thing was missed, @Phoenix and that is not every PvP situation needs to end in death. I think a lot of the sitewide problem with consistent PvP is that people don't want to lose their characters and/or credits. How exactly to go about this, I'm not sure since the current way of doing things--charging at people and trying to chop someone's head off) is certainly the most direct and efficient. Perhaps something as simple as more clearly defining the premise of Open/PvP threads to show a series of objectives and/or win conditions would help.

I think though, more than anything, if people strayed away from trying to kill one another so religiously (I do understand that it's a very good IC motivator, however for the health of the game as a whole, I think it actually ends up being counter-productive) then OOC threads would be much more open to compromise and cooperation. As it stands, with death always looming over people's heads as the inevitable outcome of even the most casual of pvp threads they tend to become combative and overly defensive.

Perhaps I'm way off base, but it's something that would be interesting to see addressed.

Yeah, that was pretty much the topic of the final paragraph, and why I said there that people shouldn't make every fight about going for the kill. I agree not every PvP needs to end in death. There are dozens of ways to explain away why even someone who's been KOed isn't captured/killed. Victory is definitely achievable without death, and creating a good story should be more important than just expanding a kill list

 

[Panda Hermit 98]

You could just say that they went for the kill but they defied the odds and survived despite seemingly dying. People have been known to resuscitate irl at random so it's feasible if your character would go for the kill.

 

[Exploring Officer]

Yeah, that was pretty much the topic of the final paragraph, and why I said there that people shouldn't make every fight about going for the kill. I agree not every PvP needs to end in death. There are dozens of ways to explain away why even someone who's been KOed isn't captured/killed. Victory is definitely achievable without death, and creating a good story should be more important than just expanding a kill list

As somebody who stepped away from the site largely because I didn't find the idea of somebody I've written being killed off due to loopholes being picked at, I thought I'd login and share my opinion as an outsider looking in (having lurked a lot since then hoping I'd want to dip my toe back in). From what I can tell, the reason that so many people seem to be going for the kill is because the safest way to assure not so much victory, as the survival of their character. You know all those films where you shout at the screen "just kill the guy!"? By not doing your utmost to unsure they're not ten feet under (literally or not) you're potentially opening your character up to getting killed off when they realise there's a way they can write back 'into' the scene. I know I wouldn't bank on the OOC mercy of somebody else, especially as a newcomer and especially after reading most of 'death threads' I've read in the newsletter.

It doesn't help that with the limited pool of writers/characters that whether you win the thread or not, you're depriving your rival faction of an IC and OOC resource that's going to spin the narrative in your favour. Plus you get bonus IC brownie points for it, not to mention Credits. For all I see people post about death not necessarily being be-all-an-end-all it seems contradictory to the way deaths are almost celebrated on things like the newsletter. Seeing those lists didn't make me think "Wow there's tension and drama!" but "wow glad I wasn't the one sinking hundreds of hours into that character." Yeah, death comes for characters in stories all the time and often it's seemingly random and shocking, but that's the author doing it, not the editor grabbing the keyboard and telling JK Rowling to kill Dumbledore (spoiler).

From what I've witnessed there's no incentive what so ever for not doing your damnedest to kill, save maybe feeling a bit guilty for it, until you realise it was probably you or them. Or just because your OC looks like more of a 'badass' doing it. Maybe there could be some sort of Angel of Mercy bonus, or characters get locked for two weeks/month when they suffer a 'death' (not literal) whilst they recover from serious trauma.

 

[Styx]

@Rimrald @Taz were very generous with me in our ooc and gave me an out. My character didn’t have to die, but I wanted to see the fight through. Anyone else could have opted out or retreated, even before that point. If you don’t want to lose your character then don’t do pvp threads?

 

[Loco]

From what I've witnessed there's no incentive what so ever for not doing your damnedest to kill, save maybe feeling a bit guilty for it, until you realise it was probably you or them.

Thanks for the feedback! New(ish) and short term member feedback played a big role when we were discussing the overall survey results.

I recommend reading some of the other recent changes. That's exactly the sort of thing we've started trying to incentivize- a tangible reward for interacting with and even fighting against enemy factions in a manner in which no one dies. Also, the "kill list" in the newsletter changed awhile back to no longer actually track deaths and kills, but instead overall PvP victories, regardless of death or lack thereof.

Honestly, there is no getting around the fact that PvP *is* a competitive part of the site in which there are always going to be winners and losers. That said, while we can do some small things as Staff to shift the meta and encourage certain behaviors, it's ultimately up to the community collectively to encourage and enforce how they want things to be. As has been mentioned, it was obvious from the survey feedback that things have gotten somewhat out of hand to a certain degree. We're trying to find ways to help course correct things, but ultimately it's up to the player base to embrace that site-cultural shift or not.

We need people to be the change they want to see.

 

[Sakie]

(I can think of one particularly epic capture arc from 5th TL that I still enjoy reading)

What particular capture arc from the 5th TL would that be? I'd like to check it out myself to get an idea of what goes in to a good capture arc if you wouldn't mind sharing a link. Feel free to take your time, obviously this isn't a massive priority, I'm just interested :)