The Issue with "Battles"

[excited 10833]

OOC GRANDSTANDING MINUS ROLE-PLAY = ?

 

 

I think regardless of what side people are on we can agree this is getting ridiculous. How can both sides claim victory to what is declared a stalemate? Why is it that a 5v5 can end up considered a skirmish and not a battle? How do we define our battles, skirmishes, and warclaims? How do we set parameters for objective writing about these battles on the wiki so that the writing is appropriate and not a tally/jab at the "enemy" (we're all players here).

 

(A wiki post outlining "victory" and "defeat" minus the actual details of the battle, with blown up numbers and ego satisfaction taking priority over objective numbers, goals & reasoning.)

 

What is our system for deciding what constitutes as a victory and what doesn't on paper? I think it's not bad for both factions to think they won in-character for different reasons. But the sheer amount of bullsh*t I've seen on these threads makes this server absolutely unappetizing for conflict. This "battle" that happened today had the numbers of a warclaim. The Haeseni got to have the Imperials leave (I am unsure if a Mod declared it due to raid timer or not, I wasn't there). Regardless of what the story is, the Moderators set a precedent recently that they declare the victories out-of-character rather than leaving it to the interpretation of the participants. Both sides have valid reasons for thinking they won when the rules for deciding it are so up in the air and goals don't seem to matter.

 

The Haeseni-Coalition opinion thus far seems to be that the Imperials left and that equates to a retreat and a strategic victory since none of their buildings burned and arson wasn't committed.

 

The Imperials & Friends think that because they were outnumbered and still got a proportional number of kills that they outperformed initial expectations and claimed victory by achieving one more kill than the other side.

 

Both of these are valid reasons to try and assume victory after a large fight. I think that the system for declaring victory, if it will be decided by mods from now on, will require fundamental rules to decide who was there, what strategic goals were reached & missed, etc...

 

I would honestly consider today's battle a draw, as like the Moderators declared, no goals were reached and it was just a fairly proportional bloodbath. Obviously, the in-character interpretation for these battles can be different.

 

Objectively, I feel we need more rules to help decide what the goals of a skirmish are and how to make these battles more role-play friendly. The debate here today will be whether there should be more policies, less policies, more Mod intervention, less Mod intervention. Go ham!

 

That being said, try and be polite about the other factions you're discussing, no matter what beef is happening on the server. This is a video game and we're all here to have fun. It's fine to argue; but no ad hominem.

[itdontmatta 7192]

I want to be very careful with this. The sort of RP agenda that people like to push through these propaganda posts is not something that Moderation needs to interfere with. Though, when it comes to the actual history books, we're going to make sure it is declared as a draw. Thus, no side should really be claiming victory on the wiki page (when it comes up). 

 

I am going to keep this post locked though, because I don't want RP to bleed into OOC here. At the end of the day, you are right - this is just a game and we should learn to get along and have fun.