[Raids] A Call For Change

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Hello LOTC. Recently, Cjmate made a thread criticising the current raid system we have now. It quickly gained a big following and sort of blew up, as most threads about raids do. Spurred by the thread, and a comment by iMattyz promising change if the community wished for it, I made a poll to gauge our collective opinion on raids and the current system we have in place for them.

Due to the poll, I suggest the following and will explain why further down this post.

• Raids should fulfill a political, cultural or personal purpose. No more raiding for loot. A list of what these purposes are can be made by the staff team with help from a "your view" thread. New purposes for raids can be added as the need arises in the future
• Increase cooldown times to 48 hours between raids regardless of results.

That poll has reached 100 votes, and I believe that is an adequete number to represent the whole of LOTC's community. The results of the poll are seen here:

The questions asked were what I believed to be the main issues surrounding raids. I will analyze all three, then state what I believe should change.

Question one. This one is pretty straight forward. 58% of the people polled, a clear majority, believe that there is something wrong with the current raid rules. If we discount the unopinionated people, this becomes 75%. This number should prove that action should be taken.

 

The purpose of question two was to determine whether we should continue to allow simple "banditry", i.e, raids on a settlement (not roadside/wilderness muggings) with no political, cultural or personal RP motivation other than a desire for loot. I have gone on record saying I believe these raids often contribute very little to RP, are always tense, and end with one side or another reveling in the other's discomfort. It seems most people agree with me.

If we discount people with no opinion, 63% of people believe that raids for the sake of raiding should not be allowed.

Finally, question three. The purpose of this question was to ask if there should be a greater buffer time between raids. This is to prevent people from raiding settlements with the explicit goal of killing RP in the area and driving them away. While I believe that conquest and displacement should be a part of RP, it should be done via proper warclaims and/or diplomacy, and not this method, which often promotes threadbare RP and much more OOC animosity than other methods.

Discounting people with no opinion, 60% of people want increased raid cooldown times.

------------------------

So looking at the results of this poll, it seems most people think there is an issue with our current system. They want longer raid cooldown times, and they want raids to hold an RP purpose that goes beyond "banditry", i.e loot or boredom and a desire to kill things.

This harkens back to what I said on cjmate's thread:

The reasons I wish for change goes beyond "the majority wants it". I believe that raiding should be a supplement to RP. And right now, too many people use RP as a supplement to raiding. These players develop a stigma (often rightly earned), which causes both the raiders and raidees to instantly act tense when they come in contact with one another, leading to "meta-squads" and the blacklists and bans that have become all too common from these incidents.

Our community preaches cooperation, and raiding has never resulted in cooperation or goodwill, expecting both the villain and the victim to act prim and courteous during raids and be proper gentlemen is a nice ideal, but given human nature is just unrealistic. We're never going to stop having drama around raids, that's just a fact. So why do we insist on allowing it to be the very crux of some people's time on this server? No matter how much you want to justify how necessary they are, they're inherently troublesome and always will be.

Edited October 28, 2015 by 이순신

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

I heavily disagree with question no.2, it is unfair for you to claim any reason for raiding is illegitimate. Mercenary groups and bandit groups will raid towns to get minas and other loot. There is nothing wrong with this in my eyes, and I personally believe that players shouldn't need a reason to raid a town. Take the Hunnic and Mongol invasions as examples, they had no reason to sack Europe other than for looting.

 

Also if you do it right its legitimately impossible to get raided. Don't make **** walls and have someone man a gatehouse, if you cant do that then you deserve to get raided.

"Realism" and "just build a wall" are over-used counterarguments in my opinion. Of course we can build walls, its not prevention methods that are the problem. It's the system itself.

As for realism, this isn't real life, its a game. Honestly, I've played D&D, RP'ed on SWTOR, GW2, Archeage, and 5 different MC servers. LOTC is the only one with a large following of people who insist on enforcing "REALISM!" in the face of the actual OOC discomfort of the players involved.

I know conflict drives RP, which is why I'm not caling for the removal of raids, just so they fulfill an RP purpose that isn't just "loot". I know people raid settlements for just loot IRL, but that's neither here nor there. In this community, which is a game, such raids only bring discomfort, OOC issues, blacklists, metasquads, etc.

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 15456]

So I suggest the following:

• Raids should fulfill a political, cultural or personal purpose. No more raiding for loot. A list of what these purposes are can be made by the staff team with help from a "your view" thread. New purposes for raids can be added as the need arises in the future
• Increase cooldown times to 48 hours between raids regardless of results.

I disagree with #1. Easy to bypass. Hinders the possibility of pirate groups (though I haven't seen a successful one, to be honest.) I like pirates though. As a child I always want to plunder and get scurvy. In seriousness raiding for loot isn't much of a big deal. 

I agree with #2. No settlement should be harassed everyday with PvP.

[drfate786 1690]

Add a tldr so I don't have to read through everything.

[GodEmperorFlam 3447]

B-But what will Dunamis and Oren do if they can't raid to just raid??? How will Oren keep the edgies down if they can't constantly harass them with raids?!?!?!? ohno

 

On a serious note, I agree with Shady on both points. In #1, personal reasons are included and that can easily be bended to serve the need of the raiders. We might as well not cover the reason for raiding and be upfront about it instead of BS'ing an excuse.

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Add a tldr so I don't have to read through everything.

Break the stereotype of millenials and read the whole thing you lazy git

[Birdnerdy 1539]

Add a tldr so I don't have to read through everything.

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

On a serious note, I agree with Shady on both points. In #1, personal reasons are included and that can easily be bended to serve the need of the raiders. We might as well not cover the reason for raiding and be upfront about it instead of BS'ing an excuse.

If I'm not mistaken both you and shady believe #1 is not viable because it'd be too easily bypassed. I admit that creating a server rule based around this that can't be loophole'd is hard, but not impossible. I feel like it's worth a try.

[big narstie 1701]

Raiding for loot is a personal reason

[GodEmperorFlam 3447]

On a serious note, I agree with Shady on both points. In #1, personal reasons are included and that can easily be bended to serve the need of the raiders. We might as well not cover the reason for raiding and be upfront about it instead of BS'ing an excuse.

If I'm not mistaken both you and shady believe #1 is not viable because it'd be too easily bypassed. I admit that creating a server rule based around this that can't be loophole'd is hard, but not impossible. I feel like it's worth a try.

The issue I'm seeing is Raids should fulfill a political, cultural or personal purpose. <-- the end part right there. A personal purpose can be anything from "this town tried to drive us out after we caused some issues so we're back to start more trouble in the name of revenge" to "we just want loot because we're bandits"

Raiding for loot is a personal reason

Pretty much this ^ Why sugar coat it when we can just be honest?

This is easily the dumbest thing I've heard all day

Obviously you haven't heard yourself speak.

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Raiding for loot is a personal reason

But excluded from reasons why a raid should be allowed. By personal reasons, I mean character vendettas, maybe the settlement you're raiding is holding someone your character holds dear hostage. Not even all "loot" based raids need to be banned. Maybe you're after a magical or ancient artifact you know a settlement has.

To be honest, I don't need to explain this.

You know the kind of raids I'm advocating we want banned.

I know the kind of raids I'm advocating we want banned.

Let's not nitpick

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Alternatively, we could make it so non-nation endorsed raids require a GM to evaluate and approve their IC reasoning ahead of time.

I was hesitant to suggest this at first as it gives GMs a heavier workload, but it seems a good way to go about it. GMs are rather easy to get ahold of via skype or modreqs and are online at all peak hours.

[big narstie 1701]

Raiding for loot is a personal reason

But excluded from reasons why a raid should be allowed. By personal reasons, I mean character vendettas, maybe the settlement you're raiding is holding someone your character holds dear hostage. Not even all "loot" based raids need to be banned. Maybe you're after a magical or ancient artifact you know a settlement has.

To be honest, I don't need to explain this.

You know the kind of raids I'm advocating we want banned.

I know the kind of raids I'm advocating we want banned.

Let's not nitpick

its not nitpicking, its as much an rp reason to raid as anything else???

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

I'm sure that Global Moderators are a trustworthy source of fair and unbiased decision making. And, as we saw with Aesterwald, the term "nation" is hardly definite on this server. Any independent settlement is a nation, but "nation" is usually enforced to be "the four 'main racial nations'". 

Nations actually are clearly defined by the staff. And who groups have nation status and what don't are very clear. Most people know I'm very openly critical of GMs and their professionalism, but they have improved lately and its a better alternative to what we have now.

its not nitpicking, its as much an rp reason to raid as anything else???

RP reasoning has nothing to do with the fact that raids are and always have been a source of negative drama. This will never change due to our very nature as a group of online teenagers. In some purposes, raids are a necessary evil to progress the overarching storyline of this server, but when done with shallow reasoning, simply causes too much animosity.

[big narstie 1701]

 

its not nitpicking, its as much an rp reason to raid as anything else???

RP reasoning has nothing to do with the fact that raids are and always have been a source of negative drama. This will never change due to our very nature as a group of online teenagers. In some purposes, raids are a necessary evil to progress the overarching storyline of this server, but when done with shallow reasoning, simply causes too much animosity.

it only causes negative drama when people can't deal with losing their pixels