PVP question (CACHES)

n1nj4

I have been playing about a month now maybe a month and a half. Given the number of people in CA we are totally outnumbered currently in caches. Coming from a similar MUD where numbers where heavily outnumbers (Aetolia Life and leylines) I know the pain. It is heavy here and makes me either want to QQ until numbers are even or leave CA for a faction that has more numbers. In this MUD, given its beta status it is super evident even just having an extra member (3 v 2) is enough to make things unfavorable. I am wondering if this is being discussed by the admin or if it is really just a 'feature' of the game?

Nykara

Well in equal skill, more people will always mean more likely to win. That being said a number of systems have been tossed around relating to this. One that I think caught some traction was reducing the damage taken by some function of the number of people who had hit you in the last x seconds so that being mobbed upon isn't such a drastic situation. Additionally however I have put a lot of work into creating roleplay opportunities to help solve this problem. My character formed and maintains a mercenary group.... Talk to me IG. 

Cubey

I've been in PvP situations where one side can reliably disintegrate the other if they are equal in numbers (3v3) but if just one member from that side is missing and it's 2v3 then the trio wins easily instead. So yes, even an extra member makes a big difference.

As Nykara said this is discussed with the devs and they expressed interest in the idea to reduce effectiveness of several attacks all targetted on one person. That should make disadvantage in numbers less of a problem.

Other than that, the solution is to focus on cohesion as a team. The faction with most combatants right now (Song) is letting those numbers work to their advantage not because everyone in the team is an amazing solo PvPer, but because they know how to maintain that cohesion - group up in one room, reposition if forcibly moved, switch targets if the priority is unavailable, crowd control, and so on - all reliably and quickly.

I'm working on a set of triggers and aliases to help with that. Nexus only, sorry mudlet users.

RocketCat

I generally enjoy pvp content regardless if its a win or loss. When caches first were released, the small but elite model was kind of working for CA. But Song has been improving their tactics and building their team cohesion, as Cubey mentioned, to the extent that this model is now less effective. 

The advantage SM has over a game like Aetolia, though, is that since it's a three-way fight with fuzzy boundaries, it's perfectly viable for the other two to "beat up the leader". Yeah so maybe Song has North America, most of Europe, and is now expanding into Asia. But SH has South America and Africa and CA is obvs in Australia. Also, CA has a killer hand. Maybe the factionless have Japan. Idk tho, theyre probably just playing Pictionary instead.

Group combat is awesome and complex with so many potential interactions. I've only scratched the surface in terms of reflexing for it. Plenty of room for learning and growth, and that applies to everyone.

But I hear you. CA pop is a negative feedback loop, demoralizing and difficult to climb out of. CA has always been the least popular, given that our faction mechanics are the least novel among IREs. Player-driven drama last year did not help the situation and resulted in a mass exodus. Those who stuck around largely did so to prevent the faction from completely dying.

Perhaps it's worth considering, in the long-term, a rework of CA's faction mechanics to make it more unique in the IRE ecosystem and attractive. Perhaps CA becomes a megacorp state, for instance, with governance driven by a marketplace of ideas, spacers being unequal shareholders in the state, lorded over by a Board of Directors appointed by shareholder majority. Okay now I'm just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks...

Vega

I mean I like the idea, since it would be viable and would only need someone to push the idea that CA's current efforts and moralistic direction against Song has been prohibitively expensive, etc. We can reference the lore that we do have available to attest to that. CA/SD beef is the only reason SH is even a contender due to how we drained our resources to the point of them showing up on the charts. 

I'm not saying you should bribe the staff. But cookies can't hurt!

Cubey

RocketCat said:

Perhaps it's worth considering, in the long-term, a rework of CA's faction mechanics to make it more unique in the IRE ecosystem and attractive. Perhaps CA becomes a megacorp state, for instance, with governance driven by a marketplace of ideas, spacers being unequal shareholders in the state, lorded over by a Board of Directors appointed by shareholder majority. Okay now I'm just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks...

I dislike this idea. Or rather, the idea of clarifying the faction's focus is good, but I don't agree with your idea of what that focus should be.

CA is the most complicated of the three factions lore-wise and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it brings a lot of nuance and I like that nuance, it's what drew me into the faction: I like that it's not just a simple greed-driven capitalist megacorp, I like that it has pro-social policies written as part of its core identity thanks to the Angel, but also that its problems run deep and aren't easily fixed: even if your intentions are the best, you just can't solve side effects of massive overpopulation and wealth disparity in a decade, or even several. Turning the faction back into a megacorp state would be tossing all that nuance and sophistication out of the window.

But this is also a curse because it's hard to describe what CA is, as a faction, all about. Let's say I'm a new player looking for a faction to join - Song and Scatterhome have an advantage here because you can describe both in just a few words, and yes that will be a bit of a simplification because every starmourn faction has nuance to it, but that description will still be mostly accurate. Song is tight-fisted and militaristic, Scatterhome is a lawless frontier in space - you tell the new player that and they'll more or less know what they're getting into.

How do you describe CA though?

Saying anything about money, wealth, or a capitalistic focus instantly conjures an image of decadent corporation CEOs who abuse the little guy for personal gain. The best description I got from people on the discord server is "corporate renaissance", but that also conjures that CEO image. And that's a problem because:

1. As I wrote above, CA isn't that. CA used to be like that - in the backstory, but then the Angel's revolution happened.

2. This image is just very unappealing for players in general. Many folks want to play a soldier or a space cowboy, or their character ideas are compatible with the soldier/space cowboy faction. Very few people want to play a corrupt corporate CEO. Almost no one wants to play a CEO's corporate drone.

To reiterate, what I think is the problem is that CA is complicated and that complication makes it hard to describe, while simplified descriptions create an image that is both inaccurate and unappealing to new players. It's not just new players either: from talking with people on the discord server I realized that quite a number of players who're already in Starmourn for a long time still had an inaccurate view of what CA is: perceiving it as just that, the rich corrupt CEO faction.

Now, from overly tl;dr descriptions of the problem, to the solution:

CA needs a clarified focus, but this focus also needs to be attractive to potential players. Keeping that in mind, what do you think that focus should be? I don't mean you as in Ata. I mean you - the person reading this thread right now. What is your opinion here?

Actually let's ask the devs as well: when you designed each faction, what did you plan on being CA's factional focus? Or, for those of you who had no hands in the game's early design but are still involved in it, being devs and all - what do you think CA's factional focus should be?

Oh and by the way, while waving a magic wand to fix all of CA's social struggles, poverty, corruption, etc, and turning it into a generic good faction would make my character very happy ICly, I'm sure we can all agree that it'd make CA boring as hell. Possibly even more boring than the corrupt rich guy faction.

Jerom

If I were to describe each faction with one concept, I'd say SD is 'Order', CA is 'Law' and SH would be 'Anarchy'.

That still leaves CA with the most boring concept though...

Eukelade

I'm not a PVP expert by any means, but I CAN comment on the theme of the Celestine Ascendancy, since I was mostly the one who developed and wrote it.

When I did a pass on the three player factions in Starmourn, I wanted each one to be a cluster of various tropes found in science fiction so players could gravitate towards the sci fi "flavor" they liked the best. I knew, of course, that any initial foundation I created would very possibly be warped or even erased by player actions, and I was fine with that.

Scatterhome was meant to embody the space western. Your Cowboy Bebop, your Firefly, your Deep Space Nine, even bits of Star Wars to some extent.  Scatterhome is all that is dusty and dirty and falling apart, Scatterhome is far away from anything convenient, Scatterhome has no atmosphere, Scatterhome is a frontier town built in the stars.

The Song Dominion centered around what I guess I think of as "shining spires" or "hopeful" science fiction. This is Asimov and Niven, all about big structures, big concepts, and high, lofty ideas carried out and made real by the ingenuity of agile minds. I always felt there would be a little dystopia in there, too. And a little bit of, "if you don't fall in line, we'll band together and stop at nothing to destroy you" which is probably something a faction with such a war-torn and tragic background would naturally drift towards.

The Celestine Ascendancy is, tbh, pretty dear to my heart. I wanted it to be all that is cyberpunk, which is my favorite genre. Dirty, but TECH dirty. Neon grime and hackers. Urban density at its densest. Snowcrash and Neuromancer and Serial Experiments Lain and Blade Runner and Coruscant. Where Scatterhome is a dusty frontier and Song is a velvet glove of optimism over a ruthless fist of steel, the Celestine Ascendancy is venerable. It is established, and it is old, and it has been rebuilt on the corpse of itself a dozen times over. The level of decay and corruption that has eaten through it has made it unstable - but it has also made anything possible. 

I get that maybe people don't pick up on that totally or feel it as strongly as I do - and I hear that! I think that part of the reason for this might be because it is a lot larger in scope than the other two factions. Song is pretty contained on their perfect and shining sky island, Scatterhome is, well, it's a bunch of rocks floating around in space and it's not hard to make asteroids feel cramped and crowded.  But the Celestine Ascendancy's capital could swallow about twenty New York Cities. It's just real big! Maybe this is what feels limiting to some, because it isn't a box you can step into and feel at home in immediately. I'm open to ideas on how to give it more of a direction, but I'm honestly pretty happy with what people have managed to do with it so far. 

Cubey

Great response, and one that reaffirms what I suspected - mainly that CA is heavily cyberpunk inspired. This also tells me that CA can be more popular as a faction without significant changes to the lore.

Before I write another tl;dr post I'd like to ask another question: was it the devs' idea to have nationalized corporations as part of the player-run government in CA? Or is it something the players decided on their own? The lore pages only say Guardians can create whatever support organizations they require, so I've been wondering.

Jerom

Cubey said:

Great response, and one that reaffirms what I suspected - mainly that CA is heavily cyberpunk inspired. This also tells me that CA can be more popular as a faction without significant changes to the lore.

Before I write another tl;dr post I'd like to ask another question: was it the devs' idea to have nationalized corporations as part of the player-run government in CA? Or is it something the players decided on their own? The lore pages only say Guardians can create whatever support organizations they require, so I've been wondering.

EDIT: Nevermind, I misread what you asked.

Lindhrive

Say, do we suppose 'Victorious cyberpunks learning that reforming a corporate dystopia is actually very hard' works as an elevator pitch?

Squeakums

Cubey said:

Keeping that in mind, what do you think that focus should be? I don't mean you as in Ata. I mean you - the person reading this thread right now. What is your opinion here?

I'm thinking that the Cyberpunk theme is pretty central to the idea. I'm currently living in a big city that does crazy light things with its buildings at night, and even when I wasn't playing Starmourn my first thought was always "wow this looks like Celestine". 

I think the corporate pyramid style of it might be a bit off-putting to many. Most, even? I grew up in a textbook banana republic and nobody would want to be anywhere but the top in such a setting. But if there's nobody at the bottom, it makes the whole structure feel incomplete (even with implied NPCs at the bottom--it's not the same). CA strikes me as home, but with more bright lights. 

What if it kept that core Cyberpunk flair, but became more of a cyberpunk utopia instead? Still a lower city and an undercity, just not as defined by them. More of an inverted pyramid. Functionally the same, I'm imagining, but treating the lower players more as potential investors and up-and-coming businessmen rather than lowly dregs fresh outta the sewers.

Am I way off? I've never made a Celestine Character so I don't know if I'm completely wrong in my assumptions with respect to their internal workings. But that's my impression as an outsider, and it might be shared by others. 

Cubey

Squeakums said:

What if it kept that core Cyberpunk flair, but became more of a cyberpunk utopia instead? Still a lower city and an undercity, just not as defined by them. More of an inverted pyramid. Functionally the same, I'm imagining, but treating the lower players more as potential investors and up-and-coming businessmen rather than lowly dregs fresh outta the sewers.

Am I way off? I've never made a Celestine Character so I don't know if I'm completely wrong in my assumptions with respect to their internal workings. But that's my impression as an outsider, and it might be shared by others. 

You're off because CA is already trying to be that - new players aren't treated as dregs and looked down on but someone who can grow powerful and influential, they just need help getting there. But this is part of my point: the fact that corporations are part of the player-run government, with high ranking players being corporate CEOs, already colors players' impressions regardless of the actual or intended state of affairs.

I honestly think the best thing CA can do right now is remove corporations from their power structure: the corporations are still there fluff-wise, they are still powerful and influential AND they're nationalized - but they are not literally part of the government. Instead they should be replaced by some other structure (I proposed "Agencies" on the discord chat) that serves virtually the same function from a gameplay perspective, but has different, more appealing fluff attached.

gravithicc

Pretty much everyone is treated like a visitor while in Litharge, CA people included. The area's NPCs, quests, and general programming treat us like passing adventurers/spacers. This makes sense because a new player basically lives out their ship after showing up at the faction station out of nowhere. We're all transients until we can buy property in a faction zone (playerhomes in the subnet would suuuper cheap).

Maybe you're thinking that when you join CA you become a citizen of Litharge, working your way up from the bottom rung. That's not really the case...

Squeakums

gravithicc said:

Maybe you're thinking that when you join CA you become a citizen of Litharge, working your way up from the bottom rung. That's not really the case...

Exactly this, actually. I appreciate the clarification! So is the Celestine leadership just implied to have been inducted as citizens of Litharge at some point? 

Cubey

Squeakums said:

gravithicc said:

Maybe you're thinking that when you join CA you become a citizen of Litharge, working your way up from the bottom rung. That's not really the case...

Exactly this, actually. I appreciate the clarification! So is the Celestine leadership just implied to have been inducted as citizens of Litharge at some point? 

Not necessarily. Litharge is just the capital, one of many cities on Glisal. Not everyone on the planet lives in the capital and not everyone from the faction lives on the home planet - though it makes sense that the Guardians spend a lot of time there because of their work.