[Guide] Jay's Arena Style PvP

[Jsc]

A Guide to Arena Style PvP

Recently, objective based PvP has become super-duper popular and I'm not all about it. So I'd like to create this guide for posterity. Warning. This text is heavily biased towards JSC's unique perspective. Here we go.


What is Arena Style PvP?

Arena Style PvP involves playing in a setting, or an Arena, rather than moving pieces like a board game. Here are the steps:

• Step 1:
  Faction Admins meet together to create the setting, or the Arena, where the melee will take place. Unlike building a Colosseum, they will build a story first. Defining the status of the war at present, leaving almost all of it's intricacies and manipulations outside of their sphere of player influence. The battle is become 'Background Noise'. The board is now set and locked to players.
  An OOC conclusion date is set for when a judging must take place to determine victors and territory exchanges.
• Faction Admins can invite their dedicated Warmongers and Fleeters to assist them is setting the board before it is locked, to account for nuance and technical detail.

[*]Step 2:

• Faction Admins agree that no matter the current state of the NPC battle, anybody can still win. No matter how numerically outmatched either NPC army is, it's anyone's game. And winning that game will involve the RPJ's favoring the best content, substance, and style from the players thusly engaged in playing it. In short, the tide or statistics of the battle does not pick the winner. The players must earn it themselves through RP and storytelling.
  Surprisingly. Losing a duel can still net you a victory point. All you must do is be a more cordial player, avoid power-gaming, and write a more proficient story. The RPJ's may reward your faction positively for your excellent behavior, superb storytelling, and not for your loss of a single combet.

[*]Step 3:

• Players enter the Setting and begin engaging in duels and storytelling. Ship-v-Ship, Soldier-v-Soldier, Adept-v-Adept, etc. In unlimited amounts of combinations. Some may even engage in telling a story against the limited NPC environment in an attempt to tell a even greater tale and gain the RPJ's favor through literature and awe. Though, resistance is sure to be expected as players will gravitate to your awesomeness like moths to a flame.

[*]Step 4:

• Alas, now the Setting has reached it's OOC conclusion date and must now be judged for a victor. The players may continue writing and finishing their tales and duels. However, these later entries will not be judged according to victory.

[*]Step 5:

• A winner is announced and the Faction's Admins must respond the Setting and their lore accordingly. Examples: Despite a tactical and numerical advantage, Faction One was beaten back into Hyperspace by the efforts of a few empowered heroes. Or:/ Being overwhelmed by the enemy forces and despite a gallant sacrifice by it's many heroes, Faction One retreated into Hyperspace to fight another day. You need not be more specific or grandiose than that either. It's Star Wars after all. Get too detailed and the plot-holes mire the fun.

How is this different than Objective Based PvP?

In a number of reasons,

• 1. You are not playing a board game. You are playing mostly inside and around it.
• 2. There are no rules. The setting is your melee whilst the fleets, armies, and vehicles are simply the accompaniment to your literal symphony. Background noise.
• 3. No Faction can declare a win via numbers, counter tech, command maneuvers, or industrial leverage. The RPJ's aim is to reward storytelling, nerf powergaming, and create an absence of godmoding.
• 4. You as a writer are not focused solely on winning. You can lose a combat and still be awarded kudos for your excellent sportsmanship.

How is this a bad idea?

Good question,

• 1. Some players would rather play a Board Game than write a book. Winning is much easier the more closely you define it. Fleeters beware.
• 2. RPJ's have a lot more to read and judge. Rather than just seeing who took 2/3 objectives and calling it a day.
• 3. Participation still matters heavily, as combat is easier the more allies you have assisting you.
• 4. Nerfs the Factory by eliminating the escalation of counter-&-parry technologies that effect of the Setting as a whole. Individual duels can still be leveraged by superior tech and tactics. Especially powerful technologies may in fact leverage the RPJ's against you via powergaming concerns.
• 5. Having characters on both sides of the Melee can leave you gaining, or losing, points for either side. This can be done on purpose as well as on accident.
• 6. Unlike a Galactic Event. Someone stills wins and someone still loses.

Would you recommend this idea to a friend or a Faction Admin?

Yes. I would recommend they at least understand they have options.

 

[Jsc]

Discussion and commentaries welcome. This guide is not given as an example of perfect PvP play. This guide was built for posterity.

 

[Lief]

Always preferred this style of PVP. It makes people work to do their best as opposed to gmodding everything in order to win a patch of meaningless land.

 

[Darth Ferus]

My main issue and reason as to why I stay away from invasions is the board style of play. Too little story telling and too much of ( x has y amount of troops going to z." Which is normally followed by some sort of opposition like "x can't do that because A has done b and c, making y ded."

I like story telling more than the above.

 

[Hailyn]

I blatantly ignore the objectives for invasions while trying to do things that progress character development. Case and point example would be my current "duel" with [member="Graxin Rade"] on Kashyyk, I believe we've only just begun our actual fight after several posts of talking and flirting and what-not, even if he did take a girlish push a bit harshly and tried to tear away my feet.

 

[Placeholder 0123]

[member="Darth Vitium"] found my trigger yo. Girlish pushing just puts me over the edge.

As for the rule setup, less NPCs and more slaughterhouse. I love it.

 

[Nikolas Faselli]

Invasions are war. When does war develop you into a different person? We have some realistic types of writers here who seriously want to have a battle-like invasion, and thus -- objectives. A real war is never decided by people having duels. No. A real war is decided by the overall success of each side. Storytelling is awesome, but reaching a goal is more realistic.

Yeah, sure. This kind of PvP is awesome, too, and sometimes people should have these (that's why I liked the post). But not too often, because then it would take away the definitions of war and warring.

 

[Rain]

I'm not sure why "Realistic" should necessarily be a measure. I wouldn't call what I've been seeing in Objective-based PvP realistic. It tends to hint at the complexity of War, without actually trying to execute it. There's just too few people to represent it in actuality. There's just too many people to actualize it in symbol.

Sure, a real war isn't ever settled with people having duels, but it isn't settled with arbitrarily spawning troop masses, either. Invading forces launch their attack from across the galaxy, landing whereever on-planet they'd like, having a full knowledge of the land and its capabilities without even so much as an IC brief, nevermind actual intelligence synthesized, recon conducted, troops trained, staging ground setup, etc. What we're seeing really is just the same duel system, only with a lot of extra, nonsensical moving parts where Character A can duel Character B while Character A's long phantom unkillable arm does all the work behind B's back.

(Obviously, there are exceptional RPers who can portray an expert story while commanding armies. Obviously, there are many who can't -- hence the grievance. It is at this point that I name names and cause a Flame War)

With the way being proposed, there is at least an emphasis on what we all came here to do (tell stories), rather than post fluff once every 24 hours so your faceless, baseless army doesn't get overtaken by your opponent's faceless, baseless army, while trying to hide your increasing disdain for the practice behind PMs and emoticons.

Naturally, the effectiveness of both systems comes down to the players and their willingness to cooperate, but even the stating of that lately just tends to amount to little more than finger-pointing slogans. I make that statement and I absolve myself from being the jerk who undermines Fair Play.

And even as I make this argument, I recognize the cycle coming back around. The next step is direct Roleplay Judge involvement to police up the bumps in the road to efficiency. Then what follows is the direct disregard for the Roleplay Judge's order due to perception of corruption. And then the Invasion fatigue, the hiatus, the reminder of why we like Invasions, a few good invasions, then the sickness, then this argument. Forever.

 

[Reverance]

Invasions should meet the desires of those involved. People, at one time, wanted a heavier load of NPCs and more objective based invasions. Now that the market is flush with such notions (and people appreciate the depth at which they can occur) , people are tired of it and want more pvp based invasions. That's good, things changing and evolving is a good thing and FAs should and will respond to it.

I don't see a change in scenery as a bad thing. I think it's a testament to the waxing and waning of interests. It's a natural prospect of writing. We experience something, we grow tired, and we move on. Potentially for that very thing to resurface in the future when we grow nostalgic for it.

Anywhoo, [member="Jay Scott Clark"] - As always, solid write up my man. I will look back to this guide in the future when helping to develop terms for invasions/interactions.

 

[Jsc]

PvP will always be what we the players incentivise it to be. However, PvP and war are very different things. War can be represented in literature by an unlimited number of imaginary compositions. War can be a poem. War can be nature. War can be a kid playing with his food. (Die broccoli, die.) Lol. In fact, war can be a game developer like Blizzard or Riot trying desperately with every new game patch to build a more balanced PvP. Haha. ...No. Oh no. I'm not here to tell you how to visionary war. This generation has got that down to a fine science.

This post was built for posterity so they could envision what would happen when you built with incentive. This guide was about PvP.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Closed for Archival.