Re-fertilizing Soil

[Andrea Anderson]

ROH is dueling. RDI is RP.

No. Both sites at the very core are about roleplay. The duels themselves are just a game mechanic to better support fighting outside of the old "I teleport behind you and stab you in the back." "I don't accept that." "Nuh-uh, accept it."

If your attack isn't 25+ words, I refuse to allow it to hit my character! AND I'M COUNTING!

TBOP 5+ posts to start, 2+ posts required to counter attack.

Or we can speed sim.

[Sabine]

Not to mention, how many of your active duelers like to write forum posts for RP?

Incentivizing this with dueling rewards as a way to draw new blood in only creates a new problem.

You've now given your current pool of players a possible palpable reason to feel irked and robbed of their hard work in the dueling rings losing often and winning little to chip away at gaining rank.

I write forum posts, but live RP is my jam. Baroness Beauty would have never happened if Sabine hadn't started dueling. I'd like to think a lot of people have enjoyed that SL. I try my best to include everyone and it's open to anyone who wants to join (PM ME!)

Cory's interviews and newspaper articles and featured duelists is brilliant.

The parties and events that are thrown, board and live based get tons of traction and spawn other RP and writing ideas.

I don't think anyone was saying this would be used to draw new blood only. It sounds to me like everyone COULD use this as a way to get some duel perks. Not everyone will.

Lastly, the perks are not going to be life changing. Like say... the Halloween Tournament. Now that would have me feeling irked and robbed of hard work. (but that's another cat to skin)

The perks would be little things and it doesn't sound like an endless grab bag of perks. It sounds like "This month, write a post and get a loss wiped." Not... "for EVERY post you write, you get to challenge someone" or something insane.

[Andrea Anderson]

I don't think anyone was saying this would be used to draw new blood only. It sounds to me like everyone COULD use this as a way to get some duel perks. Not everyone will.

That's why I enjoy the idea. It's something anyone - new, old, inbetween, whatever; if you can write you can gain something from the event. Even if it's something small as an icon, a loss forgiveness, or even just recognition.

The forums are a ghost town. I've said this to people in private in the past. I would write posts just because these forums had little to no activity outside of challenges, so I wanted to do something to try and help that. I think Hope's idea could give it a shot in the arm. Would it be a perminant fix? No. But it'd give players something to do. And isn't that the main focus of this site? To give players something to do?

Are you an old player who doesn't have time to duel but sometimes thinks "What is <character name> up to right now? Maybe I could write something."

Are you a new player who wants to go into detail about your characters interactions at the duels or training to become the next star of the spot light?

Hell. It doesn't even need to be dueling related. Writing is writing. A short story about gazing into the night sky and wondering of the moon really is made of cheese could work.

There's ample opportunity. And while these things can be done without prompting, I'm sure there are some who would like to have some sort of recognition or praise for something they post up.

The perks would be little things and it doesn't sound like an endless grab bag of perks. It sounds like "This month, write a post and get a loss wiped." Not... "for EVERY post you write, you get to challenge someone" or something insane.

DearGodno.

[JewellRavenlock]

Speed simmimg is my jam

[Ammy Spiritor]

Details. Okay then.

1. Major road block for new duelists. Loss. Yes, loss is part of learning but it is a very blunt, in the face tool that can be at times extremely difficult to dig out of. Granted each type has zeroing out losses, but still, if you are a new duelists going at something for months, all zeroing does is show 0/0. New duelist struggle to get to those hard fought Wins, to learn the systems in place. Loss is as easy as tripping in Duels. The ratio of 1 Loss erasing 1 Win can be tweaked to easy enough to a ratio 2 Losses erasing 1 Win. This both gives a morale boost to learning duelists as well as those just reaching the Ranks they want without a blink and they are back to square 1.

2. Exceptions to rules when Rare Tournaments show up. Yes, there are black and white rules with Universal Challenging. However when there are events that drive people to flood in to duel to earn a chance to challenge the top people in their venues: DOS/DOF/DOM, what happens? It bottle necks back to 'Oh, well this can't happen because this target is this, that or the other due to the rules or someone already had a challenge or you need tested. Rare Tournaments or Events that just give out challenges should indicate that, oh hey, we are passing out free passes to all ranks to challenge and it'll give everyone a work out. Instead it bottle necks as the rules kick for normal events. Conflicting, confusing and discouraging.

3. DOS in particular could use an update and expansion to its Matrix to allow more options for movements and less, coin toss and bottle necking into heavy defense or attack. Real sword dueling has more move sets than on the Matrix. DOF and DOM show the wide variety to it.

4. Fancy's on DOS could be opened up to being applied to Attack and Defense moves. DOF allows advantages for both and DOM is universal on attack/defense with their Focus. Opening up Fancy's to be applied to Attack and Defense would actually help speed up dueling a bit as attacks would gain a 1.5 instead of a flat 1 thus opening up more Que time for Callers to call more duels.

5. Make a 3rd option for Barons. Neutral. Neither for or Against the Baron. Make barons that really do need some coercion that can go one way or the other. By saying you need to work a lot at getting past a whole line back of Barons to get to an Overlord just shows a system of get to top dog and ride it out for a long while.

6. Duel Callers. This, is not a sleight. I'll get that out there up front. This is just what is being told to me by many that don't duel. RDI/ROH is connected, yes. Therefore, OCC can carry over from one to the other and vice versa. That said, some feel trusting Callers that are also duelists is a far stretch in faith, and some of the players that have left RDI or remain on RDI and wont duel will not deal with ROH or Duels as the troubles born in RDI carried into ROH with the players that duel. I'm not saying names, pointing fingers, etc. just putting out this single, underlying murmur that has come to me when I try to get people into dueling. I have tried. And no, I do not believe we have bad callers but the PR is out there still.

7. Protecting each others backs in a large OL/Baron Monopoly creates a stagnation if you are not careful. High Prestige in Dueling is as useful as Prestige in being a Government official in RhyDin. Many ignore it and continue on with their regularly scheduled Role Play. That is why there needs to be more tangible rewards to use in RP for a character other than you're good at violence and fighting your way to the top of other people trying to lay waste to others. The Baronies are great for that, yes. The politics falls into the same din the rest of RhyDin hears every day and that it tunes out.

8. Alt characters really do unsettle new players as they feel the potential openings for them to reach for is now taken up by someone who has already played the game. This loops back up to the faith/trust issue in Number 6.

9. If ROH is about RP, then why is the focus so heavy on Dueling? Why is it not laid out more like RDI. This stark contrast is what lends more to the believably that ROH is all about the Dueling, the Rules, and the Fights and not about Role Play or writing.

10. I mentioned what I did about standing with Coralanthis on not giving duel rewards for RP Posts primarily because several active duelers were mentioning to me that they don't write. Again, no names are going to be mentioned. I'm putting my neck out, not theirs.

I think this is all the details that come to mind. Look, I'm putting this out there as from the eyes of a new duelist. I was new when I started here, and this is what I left with. These obvious facts that rub the wrong way. Whether they get addressed, I don't know. I know what it's like to have RP systems. Used to write and make them myself and have people enjoy them, but I ran into the same issues I'm seeing here. The players start leaving do to issues that aren't fixed or worked on and instead the other players, wanting more company start asking for draws or pulls to get new people in without addressing why people left.

I had to learn my lessons the hard way and close down everything cause no one wanted to fix things and new players kept getting frustrated with broken RP mechanics.

I'm just hoping that I could at least put out here some points to maybe help ROH not learn the same lesson I had to learn. I've already stepped away from the duels and I put some effort into learning things as a new player.

[Claire Gallows]

I feel like you've put out a whole lot of opinion in your post, Ammy, and while I don't want to seem like I'm discounting any of it, I do feel like a very, very large portion of the issues you feel are there (i.e. the matrix, the alts, the callers, losing, game mechanics like fancies and cyclical tourneys) have very little to do with the subject of this thread: Should we reward writing with dueling rewards and barring that, how can we drive the writing side of things once more.

Not trying to discount things, just want to make sure that your concerns are in the proper place to be discussed and elaborated upon.


I'm going to come back to the individual points after I'm off work and can go through them one at a time.

[Andrea Anderson]

Details. Okay then.

1. Major road block for new duelists. Loss. Yes, loss is part of learning but it is a very blunt, in the face tool that can be at times extremely difficult to dig out of. Granted each type has zeroing out losses, but still, if you are a new duelists going at something for months, all zeroing does is show 0/0. New duelist struggle to get to those hard fought Wins, to learn the systems in place. Loss is as easy as tripping in Duels. The ratio of 1 Loss erasing 1 Win can be tweaked to easy enough to a ratio 2 Losses erasing 1 Win. This both gives a morale boost to learning duelists as well as those just reaching the Ranks they want without a blink and they are back to square 1.

2. Exceptions to rules when Rare Tournaments show up. Yes, there are black and white rules with Universal Challenging. However when there are events that drive people to flood in to duel to earn a chance to challenge the top people in their venues: DOS/DOF/DOM, what happens? It bottle necks back to 'Oh, well this can't happen because this target is this, that or the other due to the rules or someone already had a challenge or you need tested. Rare Tournaments or Events that just give out challenges should indicate that, oh hey, we are passing out free passes to all ranks to challenge and it'll give everyone a work out. Instead it bottle necks as the rules kick for normal events. Conflicting, confusing and discouraging.

I will speak on the recent Halloween event. It was 2 duels. Not two won duels. Two duels. Sure it's a step up over being gifted a Overlord Challenge grant without winning a tournament of sorts, but that's not as much effort as grinding 15 duels and then challenging for a Barony while making sure you STAY above 15 WoLs. DoS staff put it out there for everyone to see -- the competition was about first come first serve. Not everyone was going to get a shot at a barony. This was not a hidden fact.

Anyone can call me an elitist for pointing this out if they like, but there are going to be winners and there are going to be losers. End Game content is not meant to be for everyone. It's just not. The concept of winning/losing does not allow for it. If we look at MMOs, only a small % of the playerbase will see the HARDEST content the game can give out. Or we go with real world examples: the Superbowl. Not every team will step out on that field on Superbowl Sunday.

This mentality of wanting to be given something for little effort is as toxic as wanting to keep new players down and not give them opportunities.

Long story short. Someday, if you work really hard, you can be the Cubs and go to the World Series.

3. DOS in particular could use an update and expansion to its Matrix to allow more options for movements and less, coin toss and bottle necking into heavy defense or attack. Real sword dueling has more move sets than on the Matrix. DOF and DOM show the wide variety to it.

If you like wide variety then DoF and DoM are for you. I'm sure there are some players who dislike the wide choices and would rather a smaller matrix. This is why we have three sports. All of the sports should not be carbon copies of one another. The moves you see in the matrix are OOC mechanics and are only limited ICly by our imagination.

4. Fancy's on DOS could be opened up to being applied to Attack and Defense moves. DOF allows advantages for both and DOM is universal on attack/defense with their Focus. Opening up Fancy's to be applied to Attack and Defense would actually help speed up dueling a bit as attacks would gain a 1.5 instead of a flat 1 thus opening up more Que time for Callers to call more duels.

Can be replied to with above. These are different games. If one of the games does not offer something you like, there are two others.

5. Make a 3rd option for Barons. Neutral. Neither for or Against the Baron. Make barons that really do need some coercion that can go one way or the other. By saying you need to work a lot at getting past a whole line back of Barons to get to an Overlord just shows a system of get to top dog and ride it out for a long while.

They have 7 days to choose. They can be loyal in name only and not accept the test of the Overlord, or can choose to go renegade at the drop of a hat to defend a Warlord / Baron who wishes to challenge the title. See the two answers above if politics are not to your liking, as DoM and DoF are without these flairs and offer a more direct / non-political challenging process.

6. Duel Callers. This, is not a sleight. I'll get that out there up front. This is just what is being told to me by many that don't duel. RDI/ROH is connected, yes. Therefore, OCC can carry over from one to the other and vice versa. That said, some feel trusting Callers that are also duelists is a far stretch in faith, and some of the players that have left RDI or remain on RDI and wont duel will not deal with ROH or Duels as the troubles born in RDI carried into ROH with the players that duel. I'm not saying names, pointing fingers, etc. just putting out this single, underlying murmur that has come to me when I try to get people into dueling. I have tried. And no, I do not believe we have bad callers but the PR is out there still.

I won't touch this because it's questioning caller integrity. If you believe there is an issue with a caller then not participating during said night is your best bet, as they are still helping promote the duels and these feelings may be completely one sided.

7. Protecting each others backs in a large OL/Baron Monopoly creates a stagnation if you are not careful. High Prestige in Dueling is as useful as Prestige in being a Government official in RhyDin. Many ignore it and continue on with their regularly scheduled Role Play. That is why there needs to be more tangible rewards to use in RP for a character other than you're good at violence and fighting your way to the top of other people trying to lay waste to others. The Baronies are great for that, yes. The politics falls into the same din the rest of RhyDin hears every day and that it tunes out.

I'm not sure how this creates stagnation. Barons win a manor to roleplay / write with. That is the reward. The manor, the ring, and your name being in the histories. If someones imagination is limited in a way that they cannot think of a way to play off this, then that is the problem of the person and not the system.

8. Alt characters really do unsettle new players as they feel the potential openings for them to reach for is now taken up by someone who has already played the game. This loops back up to the faith/trust issue in Number 6.

I will agree that alts are unsettling if one is not free with who and what they play, but we cannot sit here and say long time players should not be allowed to play the game as they see fit. Alts is not an issue on game mechanics or the rules, this is more a community issue than the system itself.

9. If ROH is about RP, then why is the focus so heavy on Dueling? Why is it not laid out more like RDI. This stark contrast is what lends more to the believably that ROH is all about the Dueling, the Rules, and the Fights and not about Role Play or writing.

A majority of the playerbase on ROH also play on RDI and do events on both sides. It's time to stop thinking of RDI/ROH in an us/them mentality.

10. I mentioned what I did about standing with Coralanthis on not giving duel rewards for RP Posts primarily because several active duelers were mentioning to me that they don't write. Again, no names are going to be mentioned. I'm putting my neck out, not theirs.

This isn't really about the dueling system. There are several duelists who spoken openly about disliking regulation and only come around for tournaments. Should we instead cut away regulation and replace it with only tournaments? It's different strokes for different folks.

[Goldglo]

Thank you Ammy, for sharing your thoughts.

I'm going to address some of them briefly (sorry, at work) as I'm not sure how much historical background everyone has when reading:

Losses - The loss-system used to be a cyclical reset (every 3 months for DoS/DoF; every 2 months for DoM). If you went 0-5 on night 1 of Cycle X, you might not dig out for 3 months. This was a turnoff to some of the newer players a few years back. If I remember right, DoF was the first to implement a weekly reset back in 2013. This wasn't a popular decision with everyone at the time but we've run under the system for nearly 4 years and the world hasn't ended.

Neutral Barons - Back in the day (16 years ago), this was an option for Barons. There's background on the change here and a more recent discussion (2015) here.

Matrices - Matrices have changed over time for all the sports. Perhaps the most drastic change was the DoM4 matrix reboot 5 years ago. There've also been hefty changes to the DoF feint system (multiple times) as well as more minor changes to DoF & DoS regarding which moves beat what (ex. Spinkick used to beat Duck back in the day).

DoS has the most basic matrix as far as # of moves are concerned; this works quite well for some folks and less well for others. Similarly, while the more complicated matrices of DoF/DoM work quite well for some and less for others. It's more a matter of personal comfort and what makes the most sense to a given brain. Overall, with the 3 different matrices, I think (personal opinion) there's a decent balance overall.

Fancies - Jake/Kal, please correct me if I'm wrong here - Fancies used to auto-score a .5 in DoS. I can't find the historical links for when that changed (~20 years ago). As I recall, in a Fancy Lowcut/Highcut combo, the score would be 1.5/1 under the old system.

RoH = Duels & RDI = RP - This is an age-old debate. TL;DR version: The duels exist (in large part) to foster role-play. Without role-play, the duels are just a more complicated rock-paper-scissors with no flavor and no real purpose. Personal opinion: it's not fair to RoH, the RDI or any of the players who frequent one or both sites to categorize them as solely role-players or gamers. The dueling games are a vitally important piece of RoH and the role-play & story-telling that comes out of those games is the fruit they bear.

Ammy, I again appreciate your taking the time to share your experiences and thoughts; I am sorry things weren't more positive for you. I do hope, though, that even if you don't duel again, you still come by to share in the play.

--Matt

[Sylus Kurgen]

As others have said, thank you for sharing your thoughts Ammy.

I agree with Claire that a lot of your points aren't really suited to the topic of this thread, but understand you're responding to questions from others.

As the current DoS Coordinator, I'll speak on those points.

DoS, and RoH with it has been around for 20+ years, that's a PROUD RP history. The sport as it exists now is the result of a steady evolution in players, rules, and collaboration.

Stories cannot exist without conflict, either external or internal. The Arena is only one part of the Rhy'Din setting, the conflict between fighters is meant to encourage rivalries and stories. I'll break it down...

Yes, DoS is a big game of King of the Hill. The Overlord has to care about their Loyal Barons because they keep them on top of the hill. Renegades want to be King and scheme to topple the tower. This is rich soil for stories, it comes down the PLAYERS having the imagination to use it. It's not the systems fault if players don't make use of the tools available to them.

[Ammy Spiritor]

Nods. Thank you to all that responded. I'll get out of everyone hair now and leave you all in peace. And yes, the 10 points mentioned was specifically to give Apple the details as she had asked.

All things said, best of luck on this endeavor. I apologize for being a pain in the rear.

[Kalamere]

Fancies - Jake/Kal, please correct me if I'm wrong here - Fancies used to auto-score a .5 in DoS. I can't find the historical links for when that changed (~20 years ago). As I recall, in a Fancy Lowcut/Highcut combo, the score would be 1.5/1 under the old system.

Close.

A fancy would convert a miss to an advantage and an advantage to a hit. Since a hit is a hit and always scores 1 point, there was no benefit to tacking a fancy onto a move that already earned your a point. So in your example, both duelists would score 1 point just like they do today. A better example might be something like a Fancy Lowcut/Lowcut or a FancyDuck / SideStep combinations. Where today that would be a null round, back then it would have been 0.5/0.0.

~Kal

[Jake]

Fancies - Jake/Kal, please correct me if I'm wrong here - Fancies used to auto-score a .5 in DoS. I can't find the historical links for when that changed (~20 years ago). As I recall, in a Fancy Lowcut/Highcut combo, the score would be 1.5/1 under the old system.

Close.

A fancy would convert a miss to an advantage and an advantage to a hit. Since a hit is a hit and always scores 1 point, there was no benefit to tacking a fancy onto a move that already earned your a point. So in your example, both duelists would score 1 point just like they do today. A better example might be something like a Fancy Lowcut/Lowcut or a FancyDuck / SideStep combinations. Where today that would be a null round, back then it would have been 0.5/0.0.

~Kal

Kal's got the right of it. To add to his explanation, there was still a limit of 1 point as the max score from a round. So, you could use a Fancy, but it wouldn't get you past 1.

That option (scoring more than a point) didn't become a thing until the variant Slugfest rules in DoF (my creation), and then DoM's inclusion of Foci into regular dueling.

[Jake]

RoH = Duels & RDI = RP - This is an age-old debate. TL;DR version: The duels exist (in large part) to foster role-play. Without role-play, the duels are just a more complicated rock-paper-scissors with no flavor and no real purpose. Personal opinion: it's not fair to RoH, the RDI or any of the players who frequent one or both sites to categorize them as solely role-players or gamers. The dueling games are a vitally important piece of RoH and the role-play & story-telling that comes out of those games is the fruit they bear.

The addendum to this, RoH isn't just about the game. However, the game *is* what makes RoH unique. Therefore, yes, the game *is* integral to what RoH is. Without the duels, RoH is just another roleplay site.

In the best of circumstances, RoH is about the fusion of game, role-play, and storytelling. The most interesting challenges tend to be those that involve RP/storytelling. Like MadMadMax (allegedly) kidnapping Valmion's kin. Those are the ones people remember *because* of the story.

Without the duels, we aren't unique. Without the stories and the RP, we aren't as memorable. The stories are what make us a shared experience.

Both are necessary for RoH to be what it is.

[Mason]

So....getting back to the subject. (I know talking about the history of the rules is like crack to some of you guys.)

Honestly I was skeptical when I first read the idea. That being said, no one can say for sure how well it will work or fail until we try it. If there is any chance it will help the site thrive we should give it a serious try.

Trying this brings up some questions.

How many Loss Forgiveness can be attained by posting?

How long do those LF's remain valid?

What constitutes a qualifying post?

Who will keep track of this?

Are any of the leaders of the sports willing to give this a try?

My opinions:

First, I think it shouldn't be a one for one exchange (1 post= 1LF). I think if people have to write a few posts to get it they might find themselves weaving a story that keeps them telling it. Maybe it could be one post per week of the event to get it. (Not saying you have to post weekly, but if the event last four weeks then four posts in that month gets you the reward.)

I think there should be a cap of the number of LF's each character can earn.

I think they should have a limited time in which they can be used.

Obviously I think the posts that qualify for the reward should be IC posts only. But this brings me into a touchy area. I abhor those sites that have word count rules and stuff. But does a one line post of "I challenge soandso for thatthingamabob" count towards this reward?

As for keeping track of this I have no clue how it's done for other events that give a LF, perhaps the same method can be used.

[Kalamere]

In a lot of way's I fall to Cor's way of thinking, more or less, that dueling rewards for posting strike me as somehow wrong. Add on the questions as Mason just pointed out like: What constitutes a qualifying post and things like that, it's even harder to sync in my mind. That said, I also agree with his sentiment (paraphrased) that it is probably worth a shot.

Could we begin a step lower than loss forgiveness?

DoM has the fury gems it gives out. What if we used something like that? You earn a single shot fancy to be used at your discretion. Maybe offer a tradein option: If you turn in 5 of these you get a loss forgiveness.

I have mild concerns around it overall as to what we really want in the postings, how many people might find the bare minimum to game the system, etc. I think if we went with a smaller level of reward as such it might assuage that sense some.

As to the keeping track: As long as someone is known to a given sport (meaning, has dueled in it at least once and been listed on the standings) I can figure out the rest. I would want to make that a requirement though. These things couldn't be used or even earned for a given sport until you are known to that sport.