Not trying to drag that Drama over here, but I find the point interesting and I think it's relevant to people wanting to play the game.
If you want to offer a game with RP and political drama, Dev-intervention should not be a thing in my opinion. Roleplaying largely depends on being consequent with your role, and accepting the good with the bad. If the community just cries foul every time someone gets up a big alliance and it gets hammered afterwards, what's the point of trying to achieve something in the first place?
To give an example, in my opinion it's naive and childish to expect bigger players to willingly cripple themselves by fabricated events or handycaps, to adjust to smaller ones. The idea should be, that the smaller ones either unite against the common bigger threat, or try to survive via political means or tribute until they're big enough to compete.
Dont get me wrong, cooperation is also important. Sometimes it can be fun to create a crisis as a big player, just so it gets interesting again. And it's also cool to sometimes lend Newcomers a hand to get some more competition going. But if the Dev would come around to just nuke a Realm once it gets to a certain size, I dont see the point of even trying to go beyond a certain amount of progress.
And if stuff like that really bothers Tom, he should just implement some backdraws to larger armies. Slower moving, Supply-issues, whatever. But just forcing your Players to disband their alliances or outright nuking them himself is bullcrap.
The drama was Codex drama, not MaF drama. We can still discuss MaF. Regardless of how it feels to the player who became powerful, if people feel that one group is too dominant, they quit. That's what happened in the others games I talked about. One group became so powerful it wasn't worth playing anymore. Rathgar was more powerful than the entire rest of the game and the Empire players were quitting at a rapid rate. Even single Rathgar clans had armies more powerful than other major realms, or even multiple other major realms.
My problem is that people are selecting political solutions from real life when the game is not at all comparable to real life. There are no historical cultural conflicts within Rathgar like in real world empires. Players in the other nations can just quit, unlike in real life where there is no off button. Well there is but it doesn't let you do other fun things, you just aren't anymore. No more you. There is no death among powerful rulers which can cause various conflicts. Players are essentially immortal given the speed a browser game moves.
Real life politics is not effective in a video game. Of any kind. Because those strategies are based on parts of real life that don't exist in the simulation of MaF.
Rathgar can roleplay a united nation all it wants, even though it wasn't supposed to be one, but they can't get mad when there is push back to that. Sure they can demand that they get to roleplay their super nation until every other player in the game quits. But since Tom is trying to make a living, or part of one, on these games, do they really think he can allow that?
I know it seems like there are easy solutions to this stuff but there aren't. That's what all my references to other games are. Hundreds, if you count each universe or reset, of examples of what happens when one group gets to strong. Everyone else leaves. I've had fun roleplaying a leader on a weak side and drumming up support, both inside and out of game. But when it gets to the point where it is in MaF that's not roleplaying the underdog. That's roleplaying the person who already lost. No one has any long term desire to do that.
Rathgar, or a clan in Rathgar, started the war. Then when the enemy started to overcome said clan the entirety of Rathgar came in and stomped it. So aggressive Rathgar clans have no risk in aggressing other player states, because if they start to lose Rathgar lands they can bring down the hammer.
Major Rathgar players understand this problem and agree with it. Megalomaniacal Rathgar clan rulers don't give a crap. Part of the agreement for playing Might and Fealty was to not become overpowered. This is a common rule in many roleplay communities. You have to give other people a chance to be involved. Being much more gamey than is normal probably confused certain Rathgar leadership into not understanding this rule. Or perhaps Tom was unaware that most people cannot handle cooperative roleplaying very well. Its rather a niche activity. I personally am not the best at it.
If you disagree, perhaps you'd like to point out stable mmos which have resolved the problems of one side eventually becoming more powerful than everyone else. And I mean everything on the table MMOs. WoW or Planetside don't count. Also any MMO over 400000 active people in one universe doesn't count. Because that is not an option available to Tom, balancing by sheer game size.
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Topic: Might & Fealty (Read 9830 times)