[OOC] The War of the Three

[TheWendil]

@thewizardguy

He shrugged off Saef's attack. As a Demon, he should be weak to holy based attacks.

[KoL]

Ok, I've read the comments from last night and this is what I have to say about them.

I'll admit that I may have been antagonistic for some time, perhaps abusively in the eyes of some. However, let me say that I've been holding out on a lot of the aggression back. You all know I've been worse in the past, after all. I'll also admit that a part of what I've been doing is because of the issues that happened on this RP in the past few months that made me grow weary of it, and almost everyone playing it.

The most important factor in this discontentment was the treatment some of my characters received, especially Victoire and Juno. That's a sore point for me and will always be; my enjoyment of War was damaged ways that are hard to fix, even after all these months.

I won't negate that seeing people get out of problems for this much time, or behaving in ways that would certainly earn lots of flak if I were the one doing them, getting off trouble with a slap on the wrist because they aren't GMing and that we need any players willing to stay, annoyed me a great deal.

My behavior was certainly bad, but it wasn't as bad as it could be.

That said, I'm not the only one at fault here, under any circumstances.

Banana himself, used almost any possible chance to poke me that he could find. Look at Bonesword's new skills (including blatant anti-Victoire attacks and copies of Victoire's abilities for no reason other than trigger me, are the biggest offenders) and all that OOC bragging he does regarding them then you'll see why I dislike that character so much.

Plus, let us not forget that it was because of players commenting about this RP's internal matters to others that have nothing to do with it (which is a tremendous lack of ethical conduct from you guys) that drew people from outside to challenge me.

That was when the last drop of my patience to almost all of you ran away. Yet, I have been controlling myself as much as I can for this long.

There are some other nitpickings on my part but they too many to enumerate and hardly have any weight on this issue compared to what I described above.

War is an RP that I liked very much but will never again be able to enjoy the same. That said, it doesn't mean that I have to ruin your enjoyment of it (you got pretty much all that you wanted, after all, haven't you?), or of anyone that joins the new thread whenever it's ready.

I'll make a compromise to tone down the open aggression even more. However, I don't know if I can promise anything half as enthusiastic as I did in the past ever again. Nevertheless, I ask just one small thing out of you all. If you already know what kind of actions get me in a bad mood, please avoid triggering me. It's not hard to show the very least of respect.

If you still want to go, that's your choice, but if you stay for what's to come, I'll try to make it better.

[The 42nd Gecko]

While I appreciate your efforts, I don't think your efforts will solve any of the problems I have with combat in general.

I actually have to repeat your complaint of "it's always one of two options you never think of compromise between the two" to you. When we ask for an objective battle, we get an objective that disincentives fighting of any sort. When we ask for fighting to be meaningful, we get a battle where literally the only objective is fighting.

As someone who doesn't seem to be good enough at this sort of this thing to figure out the puzzles in appreciable time, I'm not good at the objective battles. As someone who is willing (perhaps too willing after I've gotten sick of arguing) to have my characters die, I usually don't participate in the fighty battles for very long either.

I also feel like the Triangle, now that it's being enforced more stringently, is encouraging people to avoid fighting each other. Any matchup is always a severe disadvantage for at least one person, meaning at least one person wants to avoid the fight. A person who didn't realize how strong the Triangle was the one of two people to actually start a fight this battle (Wizard). The other person was using Utada who Flood is trying to kill of harder than I try to kill off Miyu.

As interesting as the Triangle may be from a meta perspective, from an in the moment perspective, most people don't like seeing their characters try their best and just get mercilessly crushed anyway because they're at a type disadvantage. Watching the last battle's demon vs angel ambush was painful for pretty much everybody. And, given how large swaths of a team can disappear whether from player attrition or just getting separated on the battlefield (Like Cass and Jubilee did by pursuing a reasonable guess for the objective, albeit, they got it wrong), you can end up with situations where one group of players is doomed, not because of their own fault at the out of combat picking characters strategy, but because the team that counters the team they're weak to just up and disappeared.

But ultimately, I have to ask myself "What fights developed characters for me?" And I can answer: Miyu vs Henry. Ira vs Alexi. Miyu vs Henry 2, electric boogaloo. That's significantly less fights than there have been battles, and each battle is a multi-month investment. Getting one decent scene every 4-8 months on average is just not a great use of time.

I'm going to keep to my stance on dropping combat unless I really see a ton of change in action, not just words.

[TheWendil]

@The 42nd Gecko

Isn't this an issue of other people not wanting to let their characters die. The entire point of the Triangle system was to avoid people from prolonging battles and for them to take a loss for once. How is it discouraging people from fighting each other? There's supposed to be disadvantages because it's a rock, paper, scissors system. Are people complaining they can't win because of that? I don't really understand what you're trying to say in regards to this. Without the type disadvantages, we would have outrageous battles akin to an Arena RP.

As for the types of battles, anything new seems to be wasted upon people's actions anyway. Would you like to suggest creative ideas for battle plans? Since the current ones are disappointing for you.

[The 42nd Gecko]

@TheWindel Well, here's a simple concept for "Objective + Fighting".

Battlefield covered with magic altars. Once you step in one, you're locked in, and cannot be damaged by anyone not in the altar, nor damage anyone not in the altar. Once two people are in, no more may enter. When one dies, that victorious team gets a point, the winner personally gets a temporary boon for the rest of the battle, and the winner is free to move again. The winning team at the end when all the altars are used up gets yada yada magic boon. Blood for the blood god.

This means you're incentivized not to turtle and avoid fights so that you can en mass gang up on the last survivors of everyone else fighting, which is a problem with last man standing style fights. No one enjoys a top tier strategy of Battle Royale being "hide in a bush". This means there are lots of fights, with a clear purpose beyond "last man standing gets this blasted heap of worthless land". There's strategy of picking your fights, but the strategic level doesn't overshadow the personal fights, merely grant an advantage. It also gives tons of ground for unusual mix ups to prevent everything from being deterministic. This is the "anti-gravity altar", this is the "no magic altar", so on.

Another important feature is that you can fight without figuring out the strategy, and still be somewhat meaningful. In the current battle, if you don't figure out the secret behind the monster, you can do literally nothing to hurt it. Your options are "be a weapon in the monster's arsenal, do nothing, or figure it out". If you're not smart enough to figure it out, your remaining options aren't that enticing. In a battle like I proposed above, even if you don't figure out the optimal strategy, you can still fight your hardest and try to help your team. Even if you get a disadvantageous matchup because your lack of strategy, you still get to try and win that matchup.

If my options are "figure it out or be completely worthless" or "figure it out or be at a disadvantage", given my track record with figuring things out, I'd much prefer the later. This whole battle has felt like "You're an idiot for not figuring it out, so you're less than worthless, actually just another weapon in the monster's arsenal". Well, sorry. But I didn't. My bad. I was actually really looking forward to Cydone, Anteaus, and Unit-T maybe, vs giant monster. But none of us passed the Int check, so, it doesn't get to happen.

[Lonewolf685]

By your own logic, that kind of set up motivates people to not enter the altars and just fight outside of them, or just push in the powerful people, kill off everyone else, and leave them there till they are good and ready to fight.

[The 42nd Gecko]

@Lonewolf685 You don't get points for kills outside of the altars. The optimal strategy would be to kill the enemy strongest outside the altars, force their weakest in, and then throw your strongest at them. Which would require aggressive team coordination and overwhelming victories to enforce. At which point you kinda deserve the win.

[Gardevoiran]

@KoL
Just wanna say that Bonesword's new skills were scrapped entirely aside from the ones I already had put on his CS. At that point you are pretty much limited to Mockrose being a creation solely from Victoire's influence, and it was a shit copy of it because it was a good power and it kind of made sense in universe (BS had met Victoire and had a conversation in addition to being exposed to the roses first hand).

The only other power that you could reference would be Plantera, which was something I wanted to use before I even knew about the Blood Dragon she summoned in the Graveyard battle. Hell, I even referenced it way in advance. I think immediately after Arcadia I hinted at it being an idea of mine.

As for the other powers to trump Victoire, I said it in the Discord that they were scrapped when I found out Victoire was being nerfed.

As for the bragging, everyone does it, and I was just glad I would finally be able to matter in War as being a trump for one of the strongest characters.

Am I still at some fault? Absolutely. I let a personal grudge against Victoire (and indirectly, you) cause me to become so adverse to fighting her that I explicitly went out of my way to come up with abilities that trumped her. Additionally, it wasn't fair to you and I was blinded by my own aggression and hatred of a character that I didn't even realize that it removed the fun for you until it was too late.

I apologize sincerely for all of that.

If I stick around for the new thread, I will be scrapping characters and drastically redoing them so this won't happen again.

[KoL]

@Silvan Haven

Just remembering that Saef is the next one in their fight scene.

[Silvan Haven]

@KoL

Yeeeeeep, I know. Trying to find the energy to get around to it.

[TheWendil]

The longer this battle is drawn out, the longer the new thread is placed on hold.

[GamerXZ]

So, what's the max power level generally expected or encouraged here?

[TheWendil]

@GamerXZ

At the moment, one of our highest contenders has the Gates of Babylon as well as eyes that allow him to bend reality to a minimal agree. Thinking of joining, Gamer?

[GamerXZ]

@GamerXZ

At the moment, one of our highest contenders has the Gates of Babylon as well as eyes that allow him to bend reality to a minimal agree. Thinking of joining, Gamer?

@TheWindel

You know what? Sure, why not. I can use a bit of mindless fun. Just give me a bit of time to retool a character I got on another forum site for this.

[TheWendil]

@GamerXZ

I see. Keep in mind then, that we are going to be moving into a new thread as soon as this current battle is over. You can work on your character, but it's probably best to wait and post them in the new thread.

[GamerXZ]

@GamerXZ

I see. Keep in mind then, that we are going to be moving into a new thread as soon as this current battle is over. You can work on your character, but it's probably best to wait and post them in the new thread.

@TheWindel

Fair enough. At the very least, it'll give me some time to work on my character XD

[GamerXZ]

So, any rough ideas when this latest fight maybe over?

[Lonewolf685]

That's a question we'd all like answered, and it comes down to how fast people can post to move things along. Really hard to gauge that.