Coming attractions.

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Coming attractions.

Post by Sylus Kurgen »

Before listing the ideas Kalamere and I have worked up to further enhance the Duel of Swords as well as address some of the issues that have cropped up in recent discussions, I want to take a moment to tell you, the players, a little bit about myself, my personal history with the Duels, and what I hope to accomplish as the new Duel of Swords Coordinator. Plenty of the older players all ready know most of this, but the newer men and women might be curious.

First, Off-Line I'm a trained and certified culinarian/chef and can talk about food for hours. It's what I love and am most passionate about. Within this online community I've played Sylus for so many years, I answer to it as if it were my real name. He's the first character I EVER created spanning back to 2003. That's 13 years. I've been a member of RoH for 12 years. A lot of my dueling firsts came with Sylus, and using him as the In-character lens for coming on board as the DoS Coordinator just felt natural.

Because of all the cosmetic changes that have been applied to the Arena and Annex in recent years, I feel that this opens up ground for me to focus more on the actual game and world that Swords takes place in. Throughout the Arena's history, there have been hundreds of ideas talked about, but ultimately most simply were not feasible. Others were tried, liked for their novelty and then fell out of practice. And more still were put into practice and then later removed to try something else entirely. Some of these ideas are/were:

1. The Talon of Redwin holder being granted a place in the WLT of that same cycle.

This was in practice for a time, and then was removed from the rules, I'm not entirely sure why. However this does limit Talon entrance to a 16 participant cap.

2. A Warlord Rankings System.

This is something that has gone in and out of use among Swords. It's a fun aspect to the sport in general, my personal reservations are that the sport just doesn't have the numbers to justify implementation.

3. A Squire for the Overlord.

This last is going to take a lot of work on our part, hopefully with feedback from all of you.

Item 1 is likely to go into affect in the next cycle. The other two being more involved will take longer to work through.

There are other things being tossed back and forth, and I'm always open to new ideas from all of you. I feel that part of my job is to be open to listen to the players and discuss ways to make the game more engaging without negatively impacting the current base, "nerfing" the duels to make things too easy, and to look at ideas that benefit everyone not just a small few.
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Re: Coming attractions.

Post by Spell »

Sylus Kurgen wrote:3. A Squire for the Overlord.
Make it double!
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Post by Rakeesh »

I like all of the things above. Warlord rankings might create some small improvements in Warlord activity, even if there is a current lack of warlord regulation activity. Some thoughts.

- Are qualifiers for title challenges (SOA/etc) worth considering again? The upside to not having qualifiers is that it makes the barrier for challenging lower, which I understand. The downside is that it probably decreases overall Warlord regulation activity and (maybe?) causes a slight devaluation of challenges as events of high import within the community?

- In general, promotion to other communities to draw in new players is something that we've not really fully tapped. It's not a technical thing, or a rules thing, but it's definitely something that could help with activity.

- The politics of titleholders in DoS has always been a great platform for writing and roleplay. How can new events, or rules, or focus increase the fun political interactions between ranks without accidentally creating systems that can be abused?

- Supporting team play has always proven effective. How can teams be encouraged to remain relevant, important, and self-motivating in the off-seasons of team sports (Hydra, IFL, etc)? Regular team-based events? Political incentives/rules to working in a team?

Thinking outside of the box while still remaining true to the spirit of tradition is something that I think you understand. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
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Post by JewellRavenlock »

Rakeesh wrote: - Supporting team play has always proven effective. How can teams be encouraged to remain relevant, important, and self-motivating in the off-seasons of team sports (Hydra, IFL, etc)? Regular team-based events? Political incentives/rules to working in a team?
This! I don't know how to make this work, but the part I bolded is something I have been super interested in and wanting to figure out.
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Post by DUEL Sylus »

JewellRavenlock wrote:
Rakeesh wrote: - Supporting team play has always proven effective. How can teams be encouraged to remain relevant, important, and self-motivating in the off-seasons of team sports (Hydra, IFL, etc)? Regular team-based events? Political incentives/rules to working in a team?
This! I don't know how to make this work, but the part I bolded is something I have been super interested in and wanting to figure out.
Apologies first for posting on this name, I was just looking through other folders and am too lazy to switch SNs.

That too is something we're working on and I hope to have a new facet more fleshed out by the fall.
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Post by G »

JewellRavenlock wrote:
Rakeesh wrote: - Supporting team play has always proven effective. How can teams be encouraged to remain relevant, important, and self-motivating in the off-seasons of team sports (Hydra, IFL, etc)? Regular team-based events? Political incentives/rules to working in a team?
This! I don't know how to make this work, but the part I bolded is something I have been super interested in and wanting to figure out.
Complicating the rules further by adding special incentives should not be something that is done. Let alone adding IC incentives that can potentially affect the standings by rewarding cliquish behavior which would penalize those who don't want to be on a team.

Example: Why should a commoner not get something like fancies(if that were an incentive) because that commoner doesn't have enough friends to create a team?

I personally, do not feel that teams/houses/groups should benefit in the rules in any way. Those sorts of benefits should come on your own, not supplied by the administration.

You want to have fun in a team? Get your team, have self made tournaments, ladder matches between your teammates, get togethers, etc. No reason to bring the DoS rules into the mix.
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Post by JewellRavenlock »

Apologies. Maybe I misunderstood the point of the discussion, but I didn't think it was limited to new rules.

Incentives/playables/events can all be done without rules.
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Post by Sylus Kurgen »

JewellRavenlock wrote:Apologies. Maybe I misunderstood the point of the discussion, but I didn't think it was limited to new rules.

Incentives/playables/events can all be done without rules.
In part of his post, Rakeesh had a mention of rules to encourage team relevancy in the off-seasons. Yes teams do not need rules to continue to come out and duel, and engage the community; however there has been a history of teams forming to compete and then that group isn't seen together again during the off-season. However I haven't noticed this trend with the recent team sporting events.
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Post by G »

JewellRavenlock wrote:Apologies. Maybe I misunderstood the point of the discussion, but I didn't think it was limited to new rules.

Incentives/playables/events can all be done without rules.
They can be done. But in quoting the below
Rakeesh wrote:- Supporting team play has always proven effective. How can teams be encouraged to remain relevant, important, and self-motivating in the off-seasons of team sports (Hydra, IFL, etc)? Regular team-based events? Political incentives/rules to working in a team?!
Political incentives or rules for working in a team would refer, at least to me, to trying to get incentives in the current, official rules for being in a team.

That's why I ended with:
I personally, do not feel that teams/houses/groups should benefit in the rules in any way. Those sorts of benefits should come on your own, not supplied by the administration.

You want to have fun in a team? Get your team, have self made tournaments, ladder matches between your teammates, get togethers, etc. No reason to bring the DoS rules into the mix.
Teams/Houses/Cliques have always come up in the past numerous times. The official duel rules should just NOT give any benefit to teams. Teams should Always do stuff on their own, it's always been encouraged, you could search through the OOC boards for as far back as I can remember and you'll see things about bringing back Dueling Houses. I say bring them back, that's more fun.

Problem that happens, is no matter what, it doesn't stick. The Houses or Teams just kinda do whatever and nothing great continues. They don't do team activities among themselves, they don't do team benefits for the duels. Most times, the teams only hang out during team dueling events, which is fine.

So, I took the original suggestion to mean that the official rules should have some additional benefits for teams. It shouldn't. The Duel of Swords have only a few things they can give. Wins over Losses, rank increases, fancy increases and title shots. There's absolutely no other IC incentive that can be given from the Administration. And frankly, the Administration should not be responsible for awarding anyone for being in a team. It would not be fair to those who either don't want to be on a team, or don't have the friends to form a team or house.

I'm not saying that's what you're suggesting, Jewell. I'm giving my viewpoint on the only things that can be considered incentives from a staff standpoint. There's already Achievements for being on a team. Anyone can do Icons. The only things that people will care about are game mechanic incentives. Any other kind of incentive does -not- need administration to create rules for them, which is how the original quote appeared to indicate.

Hopefully that makes sense, I tend to get distracted during posting that may make me sound off. :)

In a nutshell, incentives for team participation should be left to the players, not the administration to create actual rules for them.
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Post by G »

Sylus Kurgen wrote:
JewellRavenlock wrote:Apologies. Maybe I misunderstood the point of the discussion, but I didn't think it was limited to new rules.

Incentives/playables/events can all be done without rules.
In part of his post, Rakeesh had a mention of rules to encourage team relevancy in the off-seasons. Yes teams do not need rules to continue to come out and duel, and engage the community; however there has been a history of teams forming to compete and then that group isn't seen together again during the off-season. However I haven't noticed this trend with the recent team sporting events.
I have. How many teams over the last two years are still playing as a team after Hydra and IFL go away? I mean *really* playing as a team, not just two players mentioning that they're a team. And out of how many teams?
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Post by Spell »

Perks for teams? That's easy.

Step 1: You and your team win all the titles in DoS and claim to be the champions of the sport.

Step 2: All titles held by your team? Move onto step two. Take over the Arena. Show up nightly and be as rowdy, nice, etc as you want. Your team runs all the titles in the sport, so by God it's your right to shove it in everyone's faces.

Step 3: Go onto the Arena forum. Begin promoting your teams accomplishments on the forum folder, because we all know that ghost town needs some activity outside of challenge and tournament posts. Make t-shirts, mugs, who knows -- whatever items you want.

Simple, easy, and no need for any new rules or regulations. Completely homegrown RP that requires no help from coordinators or staff. Teams as an RP device and nothing more.
Last edited by Spell on Mon Jul 04, 2016 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JewellRavenlock »

Nope :) I get what you mean!

I just got excited about the idea of dueling houses!
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Post by G »

Historical context.

https://duelingzone.org/duelarchives/vi ... hp?p=44#44

The old Team Dueling League began because a couple of Houses decided to get together and have a match between houses. As you can see in the thread, more and more people came out with their houses to have the league be born. There was no need to involve the rules of the Duel of Swords in this, and the league was fantastic.

So, how about it. You got teams out there, if you wanna do it, let's see an exhibition match and see where it goes from there!
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Post by Sylus Kurgen »

JewellRavenlock wrote:Nope :) I get what you mean!

I just got excited about the idea of dueling houses!
Then make one! With the emergence of Royal Pain, I'd love to see Daughters of Decadence come back and watch them fight over Rena, or you know...get along famously and merge into a super group.
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Post by Rakeesh »

I don't think that I was suggesting any crazy benefits to challenge rights/etc based on team orientation. Moreover, I was thinking (in a general way) of things maybe like ...

- Seasonal (meaning one per season cycle) team-based tournaments with specific titles/bragging rights to the winners. Possibly a challenge grant of some sort to the winning team's MVP, something reasonable and balanced.

- A year (or most of a year, perhaps) long swords team "season" with accumulation of wins (not wins-vs-losses) or a point system that includes things like challenging for titles or gaining ranks and all forms of activity. Perhaps some sort of championship match at the end of the year to cap it all off.

So I'm talking about the addition of events that would encourage ongoing team play in DoS without needing to further complicate the current challenge system. The key would be to design events that encourage players to encourage their friends to be active, to roleplay, to duel, but without being so demanding that it wouldn't be sustainable.

Sure. People can just go make something happen and make it their own thing, and that's cool and often valuable. But reward-based, structured systems work to encourage activity engagement for a reason. Totally worth thinking about. And I'm glad that it seems like Sylus/Kalamere seem to be already thinking about it.
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