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Thread: Honor overhaul

  1. #1
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    Honor overhaul

    I'm typing this up from my phone so apologies if the formatting is less than appealing

    The problem : honor is a broken, useless (at least in what I consider it's purpose to be) mechanic. The fact that it's a resource that is generated exclusively in war, but easier farmed outside of war, is a slap in the face to every war kingdom.

    And before you say "ok, top kingdoms bottomfeeding honor to top the charts is bad, just nerf the OoW gains. No need to overhaul things." No. Even before the gains got messed up, honor was not a respected mechanic. It's problems far exceed the current gains issue.

    The solution:
    Turn the honor system into a sort of "achievement" list. The more achievements you knock off, the higher honor rank your province achieves. Some of these achievements can be attainable outside of war, some of these achievements could be war-only. Ideally I think the balance should be such that if you never enter war, you could theoretically reach a respectable honor level (think baron/viscount), but the only way to achieve the higher levels would be to war and war frequently.

    Further explaination:
    Just a few further points to make or clarify...

    1. It's being explained as a province mechanic, but you can very easily give the ranks a numeric value and use the kingdom totals for a kingdom chart/ranking.

    2. A major complaint of the honor system is how hard it is to climb the ranks vs how quickly you can lose those ranks and especially considering how much of that isn't in your hands. This would make honor much more stable but you could still have conditional achievements which make it possible to still lose your ranks.

    3. By no longer considering honor as a resource that needs to be generated and thrown into the game, it makes it much easier to put in things like aid and dragon contributions, which previously were incredibly abusable and therefore unable to be incorporated. It doesn't have to stop at those either. You could get really creative with the categories and achievements.

    4. I think such a change would generate some really interesting strategies for kingdoms trying to honor whore, while keeping the incentive for provinces to be rewarded for their activity and contributions to the kingdoms efforts

    Thoughts? Opinions? Criticisms?

  2. #2
    Forum Addict RattleHead's Avatar
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    Generally, I find 'achievements' pretty lame, in most games they symbolize either weak gameplay that requires filler, or a gimmick to attract people who aren't actually interested in the core aspects of the game in the first place.

    That said, honor needs work. Viability of this idea would depend on whether you can get a large, diverse enough list of things for provinces to do, such that all the current playing types will feel like they have something to gain from this. (hit a province x% bigger NW than you, x% bigger acre than you, gain x% acres from 1 hit, gain x# sciguys from single abduct some examples?)

    Would you be able to perform the same task more than once per Age, or YR or something like that?

    I think under a system like this, rather than having achievements that could be lost resulting in lost rank, that your rank could be determined relative to the rest of the provinces on the server. For example; at the start everyone is at Knight, once achievements start to accumulate, provinces receive some sort of points, and once the gap between highest and lowest # points reaches a certain threshold, initially that one province becomes the first Lord, and others who pass that threshold will join him/her in their Lordliness... once the gap between highest and lowest get to the next threshold the same thing happens with Barons. So, if somehow every province on the Server did every achievement they wouldn't be Princes, they would still all be Knights because they have 0 achievements relative to each other.

    In this way you could still have people moving up and down honor ranks, but it would be much more stable. Might hog the server though I guess constantly updating that

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by RattleHead View Post
    Viability of this idea would depend on whether you can get a large, diverse enough list of things for provinces to do, such that all the current playing types will feel like they have something to gain from this. (hit a province x% bigger NW than you, x% bigger acre than you, gain x% acres from 1 hit, gain x# sciguys from single abduct some examples?)
    Yea something like those types of things were the idea. The idea is that the list would be pretty large. For instance, for the magic category, you'd have at least 1 achievement for each spell (definitely more for some spells). You'd probably want the 3 cores of the game to have around the same number of achiements, plus some other possible areas you could explore to and work achievements into.

    Would you be able to perform the same task more than once per Age, or YR or something like that?
    I figured they'd track through the age and reset with everything else. Seems clunky to have it reset every YR. You'd just have achiements that it might take 10 weeks to be able to do.


    I think under a system like this, rather than having achievements that could be lost resulting in lost rank, that your rank could be determined relative to the rest of the provinces on the server. For example; at the start everyone is at Knight, once achievements start to accumulate, provinces receive some sort of points, and once the gap between highest and lowest # points reaches a certain threshold, initially that one province becomes the first Lord, and others who pass that threshold will join him/her in their Lordliness... once the gap between highest and lowest get to the next threshold the same thing happens with Barons. So, if somehow every province on the Server did every achievement they wouldn't be Princes, they would still all be Knights because they have 0 achievements relative to each other.

    In this way you could still have people moving up and down honor ranks, but it would be much more stable.
    I'll just say I'm not a big fan of this, as it goes a bit against what I feel the value in this system is, which is rewarding players/kingdoms for exploring and using the mechanics of the game. If a province is able to get up to prince (or whatever the highest ranking would be) they should be super proud of themselves and rewarded for their efforts.

    Might hog the server though I guess constantly updating that
    That was my primary concern about this suggestion. It might not even be feasible on our servers.

  4. #4
    Forum Fanatic octobrev's Avatar
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    Award provinces 25 honor points for each tick they are logged in. Remove 5 points for every tick they are not logged in. Everyone starts at zero and it cannot go below zero. The more they're logged in, the more they are experiencing the game and the underlying mechanics.
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  5. #5
    Sir Postalot Pillz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by octobrev View Post
    Award provinces 25 honor points for each tick they are logged in. Remove 5 points for every tick they are not logged in. Everyone starts at zero and it cannot go below zero. The more they're logged in, the more they are experiencing the game and the underlying mechanics.
    This is better than the idea proposed in the OP, which adds literally nothing to gameplay from what I can see and simply rewards people for every action (on the unspecified list of actions).

    Honor is not broken in the least by being easily gathered OOW and farmed by top kingdoms. Honor was not traditionally a resource that top kingdoms had a lot of compared to warring kingdoms because of a number of factors, such as different explore and paradise mechanics as well as the fact that kingdoms used to have (and I might be wrong) more wars on average than the 5-6 I am seeing now.

    Additionally - the idea that honor can be lost easily but is hard to accumulate isn't true just of honor, but land as well, unless you think being deep chained and losing 90% of your land is radically different from losing the same amount of honor at the same time? You get hit, you lose land and honor. But I agree that honor is more difficult to acquire and the variety of actions that can destroy/take honor make it harder to maintain.

    If anything the fact that the honor charts are no longer dominated by war KDs is a good thing, because if top KDs can gain honor OOW so easily from their minimal # of wars then why can't other kingdoms? (oh right, because they're **** but still want a medal)

    I maintain that this suggestion of mine which Palem apparently stole the title and spirit of the first line from, is a better suggestion. It doesn't alter the mechanics of how honor is gained, generated, or lost, but it does calcify the rank & bonuses attained through honor so as to minimize whining about 'losing' it and makes honor a mechanic that can be counted on rather consistently instead of something that is comparatively fleeting/temporary and largely dis-associated from land making it hard to reacquire.

    Stop advocating for participation charts and bull**** achievements, none of which encourage people to play the game and instead encourage them to isolate themselves in highly constrictive no-progress zones (both in terms of size and in terms of skill).
    Last edited by Pillz; 07-06-2017 at 23:33.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pillz View Post
    which adds literally nothing to gameplay from what I can see and simply rewards people for every action (on the unspecified list of actions).
    Incorrect

    Honor is not broken in the least by being easily gathered OOW and farmed by top kingdoms.
    Incorrect

    Additionally - the idea that honor can be lost easily but is hard to accumulate isn't true just of honor, but land as well, unless you think being deep chained and losing 90% of your land is radically different from losing the same amount of honor at the same time? You get hit, you lose land and honor. But I agree that honor is more difficult to acquire and the variety of actions that can destroy/take honor make it harder to maintain.
    I don't remember saying land wasn't as easy to lose as honor. Thanks for putting completely asinine words in my mouth.

    Since you've pointed out that honor is harder to acquire and made your own suggestion regarding the issue of honor bonus instability, I'm assuming you understand, more or less, the actual impacts of losing most of your land and how it's very different than losing all your honor.

    If anything the fact that the honor charts are no longer dominated by war KDs is a good thing
    I don't disagree. I don't think the charts should be mutually exclusive

    because if top KDs can gain honor OOW so easily from their minimal # of wars then why can't other kingdoms? (oh right, because they're **** but still want a medal)
    Incorrect. It's because they have leverage over every other kingdom, in that they'll win a war against anyone else, regardless of their skill (assuming they can at least operate as well as a monkey sitting in their seat), by sheer size alone.

    I maintain that this suggestion of mine which Palem apparently stole the title and spirit of the first line from, is a better suggestion. It doesn't alter the mechanics of how honor is gained, generated, or lost, but it does calcify the rank & bonuses attained through honor so as to minimize whining about 'losing' it and makes honor a mechanic that can be counted on rather consistently instead of something that is comparatively fleeting/temporary and largely dis-associated from land making it hard to reacquire.
    That's amusing, however I fail to see how something that "doesn't alter the mechanics of how honor is gained, generated, or lost" can be considered an "overhaul". Also, I didn't see the need to clarify that the thing I'm posting in the suggestion forum is a suggestion.

    There are some forums that I try to make sure I have every thread at least skimmed through, and the suggestion forum isn't one of them. Had I realized there was such a similar thread, I would have likely gone for a title with a little more pizzazz.

    Stop advocating for participation charts and bull**** achievements, none of which encourage people to play the game and instead encourage them to isolate themselves in highly constrictive no-progress zones (both in terms of size and in terms of skill).
    I'm not really sure how a suggestion that rewards people for using as many of the games mechanics as they can rather than rewarding people for using the same spells, ops, and tactics over and over and over again for every single war isn't encouraging people to play the game. However I'm even less sure how your suggestion to pin honor titles and rewarding people with bonuses they shouldn't have because they couldn't hold on to the right amount of honor isn't a participation trophy.

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  7. #7
    Sir Postalot Pillz's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Palem View Post
    Incorrect


    Incorrect



    I don't remember saying land wasn't as easy to lose as honor. Thanks for putting completely asinine words in my mouth.

    Since you've pointed out that honor is harder to acquire and made your own suggestion regarding the issue of honor bonus instability, I'm assuming you understand, more or less, the actual impacts of losing most of your land and how it's very different than losing all your honor.


    I don't disagree. I don't think the charts should be mutually exclusive



    Incorrect. It's because they have leverage over every other kingdom, in that they'll win a war against anyone else, regardless of their skill (assuming they can at least operate as well as a monkey sitting in their seat), by sheer size alone.


    That's amusing, however I fail to see how something that "doesn't alter the mechanics of how honor is gained, generated, or lost" can be considered an "overhaul". Also, I didn't see the need to clarify that the thing I'm posting in the suggestion forum is a suggestion.

    There are some forums that I try to make sure I have every thread at least skimmed through, and the suggestion forum isn't one of them. Had I realized there was such a similar thread, I would have likely gone for a title with a little more pizzazz.



    I'm not really sure how a suggestion that rewards people for using as many of the games mechanics as they can rather than rewarding people for using the same spells, ops, and tactics over and over and over again for every single war isn't encouraging people to play the game. However I'm even less sure how your suggestion to pin honor titles and rewarding people with bonuses they shouldn't have because they couldn't hold on to the right amount of honor isn't a participation trophy.

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    "Incorrect"

    That is exactly the impression your suggestion gives.

    "Incorrect"

    Then it was always broken. It has been common for years for whoring kingdoms to be ahead in whore early on because of all the hits they make. Warring KDs would overtake them eventually but mostly due to the sheer volume of wars, or due to honor farming (Grace vs. Seasons) or farming out (Playboys vs. ED), and always because they intentionally kept themselves small (FREE) via landdrops and intra hits.

    Additionally, the server had enough kingdoms and provinces that size / positioning was really entirely up to you based on whether you opted to grow or not grow and for how long and to what size, there were always kingdoms at every size in plenty.

    It makes perfect sense that with fewer and fewer kingdoms having fewer and fewer wars and there being less and less manipulation of size/honor that whoring kingdoms would be able to compete for honor by volume of hits. And of course when two whoring KDs then war, there is loads of honor involved.

    Does it sort of suck? Not really. Everybody agrees that warring KDs are scummy about how they win anyways, and it never really proved anything because their wars are largely worthless.

    "Since you've pointed out that honor is harder to acquire and made your own suggestion regarding the issue of honor bonus instability, I'm assuming you understand, more or less, the actual impacts of losing most of your land and how it's very different than losing all your honor."

    Sure, and I don't see what the **** achievements have to do with it.

    "Incorrect. It's because they have leverage over every other kingdom, in that they'll win a war against anyone else, regardless of their skill (assuming they can at least operate as well as a monkey sitting in their seat), by sheer size alone."

    Nothing stopping other KDs from being that size except for skill (which both makes it impossible for them to reach it and impossible to win wars once there).

    Bad kingdoms need to accept they are bad kingdoms and get by. I mean I have literally played in ghettos for 18 1/2 of the 20 ages I've been back, minus the few I forget to create a province. I have none of the complaints about top KDs that others seem to voice to loudly and on repeat. If a KD is good it will compete, if it isn't, why is it crying it can't get a crown?

    "Also, I didn't see the need to clarify that the thing I'm posting in the suggestion forum is a suggestion."

    There is a lot of **** posted here I was hestitate to call suggestions.

    "I'm not really sure how a suggestion that rewards people for using as many of the games mechanics as they can rather than rewarding people for using the same spells, ops, and tactics over and over and over again for every single war isn't encouraging people to play the game."

    Because theyre already carrying out those actions?

    "However I'm even less sure how your suggestion to pin honor titles and rewarding people with bonuses they shouldn't have because they couldn't hold on to the right amount of honor isn't a participation trophy."

    I think of it more like amnesia or nightmares applied to honor? Not exactly but as the post said it wasn't by no means methodically planned. The idea behind it is more to increase buffs, which I said I am a fan of in another thread recently. I think that as the age progresses everybody who does manage to achieve X rank should get that bonus, to distinguish players and introduce incentive to hit for max honor or keep provinces in war from attaining X rank, etc.

    I wouldn't call it a participation trophy in juxaposition to yours because I'm not incentivizing new actions (funding dragons and slaying dragons?) with an achievement system and honor is still a resource you can lose & gain like it is now, just under new parameters so as to diversify gameplay choices and buff.

    Additionally, I think the biggest issue with land vs. honor is that honor is an immediate reward whereas land is, barring WS, delayed. So you can be hit down severely and receive land, but not honor, and the new honor you gain from attacking again is going to be lost when your fresh acres are stripped.

    Our suggestions are similar enough that I think you may have plagiarized badly.

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