Suggestion Invasion Judgment Feedback Proposal

[Aether Verd]

In the past, Chaos provided detailed invasion judgments based on categories like Teamwork, Tension, Story, and OOC Conduct. These summaries were valuable but also led to a growing meta where factions tailored their approach to match what had worked previously.

The current system removes that issue by only announcing a victor without further detail. While this avoids creating a meta, it also removes helpful feedback that factions could use to improve. As someone who has led and participated in many invasions, I believe there’s a balanced middle ground.

I propose that staff announce the victor along with a numerical score out of five in each category. No explanations, just the scores.

For example:

• The Lakers: Story 3/5, Teamwork 2/5, Tension 4/5, Drama 0/5
• The Nuggets: Story 4/5, Teamwork 3/5, Tension 5/5, Drama 5/5
• Result: Nuggets win

This format provides enough insight for faction leaders to reflect and improve without inviting a "perfect" approach. It keeps the system transparent, helpful, and focused on growth, while still protecting the integrity of creative storytelling.

What do you think, Chaos? Would this be enough for you all to work with post-invasion? Staff, do you foresee any issues arising from implementing this down the road?

 

[Vemric Keldra]

I can get behind this suggestion. I don't often agree with tampering with the current status quo of invasions on the board, but this I can support.

Just that little bit of info goes a long way for improving on story without compromising the meta like you said.

And it adds just that little bit of competitiveness/stakes back in the map game. Like "oh snap, our story is good but our teamwork is ass" kind of thing - it encourages growth within a faction.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

I dunno, I think just announcing the winner kind of prevents people from arguing. The more information given the more people are going to disagree. I'm not sure if that is an issue for staff but it seems like arguing against results may have gotten out of hand before.

 

[Tertius C. Nargath]

I dunno, I think just announcing the winner kind of prevents people from arguing.

I think that has less to do with the actual fact of having a victor known and moreso with people knowing crackdowns will happen on those who argue and bicker against staff without grounded reason or to the detriment of the overall experience on Chaos.

I however do support this idea, given it does give those participating in invasions a bit more insight. It can be considered constructive criticism and it can be productive for future stories, because it gives those participating in invasions an idea where they could improve their storytelling, their writing combinations, etc. As long as we don't require the staff team to drum up an entire essay to back their choices, I don't see any issues.

 

[Aether Verd]

I dunno, I think just announcing the winner kind of prevents people from arguing. The more information given the more people are going to disagree. I'm not sure if that is an issue for staff but it seems like arguing against results may have gotten out of hand before.

Overall I think people are always going to disagree with a losing judgment (unless they feel they're actively throwing).

But back in the day, you had the option of requesting a second judgment from a different staffer on top of sending in your lengthy invasion summary. In my experience, the DMs between the two factions and site staff were where the most vocal disagreements were had. I don't think that a little more context would cause anything remotely close to that in the present day.

 

[Amara Zambrano]

idk, there's not really a set guideline (that we're aware of in the rules) that staff need to follow on what "defines" victory, it's probably subjective to everyone in the panel of people who're supposed to be reviewing the invasion, so getting feedback is probably either a) going to be completely useless (what mattered to one person might not matter to another, or literally anyone else) or b) actively detrimental (because of A but later on down the road after seeing that following previous feedback doesn't change any results; or it does create a similar feedback loop meta of gaming the scoreboard).

 

[Vetru]

What does "improving" mean in the context of invasions?

How does it differ from "tailoring their approach towards a meta"?

 

[Iris Arani]

On one hand it's kinda a let down to write a whole lot like in Invasions, feel you did really well as a faction, then get met with "you loose" and have no idea why. It's a writing competition at the end of the day, and knowing how to improve to do better is something I enjoy as a writer. Feedback is fantastic.

On the other, simply knowing what it is even in a numbers way will have people try to write in a specific way to win, along with the other bs drama that's happened over the years over Invasion judgements. The current system keeps a lot of OOC issues down. No one's threatening judges this time around, no ones flooding their discords with 'admin favorite cheaters' and the like (at least in public). It ain't currently broken, just feels meh to those of us who are likely just spoiled by the in depth invasion summaries we had a couple years back.

I'm more curious on new folks opinions on this, those who haven't seen the summaries of old.

 

[Kinley Pryse]

What if you just got a line of feedback. No criteria. No numbers. No hints on what the judges use to judge. No hints at what you did better or worse than the other faction. Nothing that needs a justification. Just pure feedback to help you improve.

Examples:

“good job. Next time try to more evenly spread out objectives”

“better luck next time. Maybe try to work together more cohesively.”

“That lack of activity really didn’t do you any favors.”

“Great job but please proofread.”

“Overall awesome but what was with nobody interacting with the other sides npcs?”

Can’t really warp the meta with stuff like that but you get an idea of what your faction could improve upon next time.

 

[Balun Dashiell]

Like Iris Arani , I've always appreciated the inclusion of feedback for the reasons they mentioned. Encouragement, even in the face of defeat, helps soften the blow for writers who invested time and energy into an Invasion thread, while also offering constructive advice for future participation.

Regarding toxic behaviour, I feel the overall community attitude has shifted since then. Site Staff have taken stronger stances against toxic behaviour both on the forums and in the Discord, and there's far less tolerance for that kind of conduct now. I wonder if, were feedback reintroduced, any negativity would be quickly dealt with.

However, there's another aspect to consider: the burden on RPJs. Back then, Invasion judgments were already taking a while, and removing feedback may have helped speed things along. That said, with fewer Invasions happening at once nowadays, this might no longer be as significant a concern.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

Overall I think people are always going to disagree with a losing judgment (unless they feel they're actively throwing).

But back in the day, you had the option of requesting a second judgment from a different staffer on top of sending in your lengthy invasion summary. In my experience, the DMs between the two factions and site staff were where the most vocal disagreements were had. I don't think that a little more context would cause anything remotely close to that in the present day.

Having done a lot of second judgements because everyone does it because no one thinks they deserve to lose, they were not a good idea.

And so you have to have someone else read through 400 posts to see if the tiny piece of minutiae might be correct. Then you have to overturn a judgement of a group of people who've actually read the whole thread as it goes or turn it down too.

As for scores, no. Those are even more infuriating than a description. Why did I get a 3/5 and they got a 4/5?! Then we're back where we started.

Understand this very clearly no one wants to lose and will always dispute your reasons. In the end it became more honest to provide no reasons that could be picked over.

For example, when someone had a memorable death scene in an invasion and we mentioned it...well guess what, next invasion 5 characters (some created just for the invasion) had dramatic deaths to try to stir the judge's opinion.

 

[Tefka]

No.

Judge your own damn Invasions on your own website, lmao.

I gave every breadcrumb, cookie, every chance to this community. I listened, I bended, I bended backwards, I bent over, I sat naked in the rain and got lectured by MFO after MFO about their problems and I always bent.

I reduced the RPJs to Moderators and forced them to go hands off when the MFOs came up with their miraculous “preplanned invasion” meta that lasted like 8 months before we got asked back.

I created waivers to bypass RPJ involvement despite the obvious logic that if MFOs wanted a “preplanned invasion” then you could “preplan a fucking concession” without changing a single rule but nobody had the spine to concede, because it felt bad.

And where are we now? Back where we started in 2015.

Respectfully, Invasion Judgements will get what we give. And thats going to be a victor and a loser, or in rare cases, a draw. There will be no reasoning given, because sometimes, the RPJ’s reasoning suck, and sometimes, even the awesome reasoning is not enough for the MFOs. That’s life. If you want to do a review of what you could have done better, go read a self improvement novel.

Here, you’ll just get a winner, a loser, or nothing at all. We tried. I tried. I listened. All the opinions on this topic suck, frankly, there’s no beating around this bush lol. So we’re not listening anymore.

I do have my own ideas for how to expand but they’ll remain my own until they’re enforced by this now tyrannical invasion review meta that offers you nothing but who won and who lost.

 

[Tefka]

You have ONE OPPORTUNITY to control the outcome of an Invasion, MFOs. Its been like this since the beginning of the website, it’ll be like this at the end. ONE METHOD.

ONLY ONE.

YOU CAN SURRENDER.

IT IS AN OPTION.

No RPJ nor Admin will force you to win an Invasion that you concede.

If neither side concedes, the ball becomes ours, and neither you nor your opposition will have any say in what happens once it does.

 

[Tefka]

Encouragement, even in the face of defeat, helps soften the blow for writers who invested time and energy into an Invasion thread

If you lose, I want you to feel like a loser. Lmao.

I do not support this.

I support losing a war encouraging loser mentality so your writing will reflect that you are losing. Everyone being a winner is so @#$&ing boring. Lean into it. Embrace the loss. I dont want to soften the blow. I want you to feel every bit of it.

And then I want you to RP through it.

 

[Tefka]

Bro generals used to surrender when obviously beaten to save face, honor, and the lives of their troops.

None of you do that. Invasions are some of the most OOC corrupted displays of Chaos RP ever.

We have a decade of examples of just OOC driven ego posting. PAGE CLAIMS lmao. How stupid it is that people time their posts to be at the top of the next page. And yet RPJs = bad, Tef = bad, obviously Staff likes Faction A more than Faction B.

No amount of Staff feedback fixes this. Valiens is entirely correct. Feedback literally only encouraged people who wanted to see Staff say their characters name so they felt important and validated, or Faction Staff members who wanted to cherry pick our response to rationalize why they should’ve won and why our judgement was BS.

None of the feedback was ever treated as substantive critique. The community’s response was only ever “cool” or “bro i straight up hate Staff.” It got so bad that RPJs were either coming under OOC attack or betraying the confidence of Staff to leak information of the judgements (which judges got assigned, etc). Because of Invasion results. No other reason. How incredibly pathetic is that? This is the position the community was forcing me into.

It was awful, and was forcing me to become increasingly hostile and defensive, and as a result, more people were getting banned. I cannot underline this enough, we will never give feedback on another Invasion judgements so long as I breathe air. This community cannot handle it, and I can’t handle you when you can’t handle it.

 

[Tefka]

Twice now in the history of Chaos have the MFOs asked to judge themselves.

Twice the RPJs have been asked back because the MFOs couldn’t figure out how to stop the infighting or the stress incurred from negotiating.

I offer a way to free this community of the burden of judgement, so you dont get gassed by the petty OOC nuances. I have always offered it. I am the best person to offer it. It will not always be perfect, and you may not always like it, but I can and will do it.

But it will be done my way.

And my way is no feedback, ever.

 

[Soundwave]

Who actually cares about what you did well in regards to categories? 90% of the time it was maybe 2-3 notable characters out of the dozens that participated that were mentioned, so what exactly did that promote in terms of telling/informing people writing the next invasion? Win or lose, you should focus on just writing a story that appeals to yourself and your own development and what you find best for your own character. Invasions while a hefty part of the map game should really be more used to focus on character development/growth.

You win? Cool you won. You lose? Well, at least you got something you enjoyed writing out of it, now you got something to roll with for the next.

People have gotten too far into their own heads and egos that winning is everything. Everyone thinks they're the unstoppable force till they meet an immovable object, and to be honest it gets tiring and boring reading/writing like you're the main character that never takes an L in their life. Roll with it, make it fun and interesting, it's the whole point of roleplay.

And if losing discourages you, whether on an individual/faction level, perhaps don't write invasions and stick to your private threads if you're going to take a loss that badly.

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

I personally feel like MFOs are already in a position to ask the question, 'why did we lose' and then look to see where their faction needs improvement and what areas could have been better (and sometimes it's just plainly that the other faction had a better story). You can see if there is cohesion/teamwork, you can see if people are following the story, or if everyone is doing their own thing with no rhyme or reason, etc. You can tell if the stakes were high enough for your faction and if the drama/tension was actually there or not. Read through the invasions and critique yourselves, then help your writers be more prepared for the next invasion. Work on things like story tension, teamwork, etc. through stories like junctions, or other types of PVP threads.