Well, magic is one thing, it's classical fantasy. But debates?

"cast a peace spell" sounds like magic to me.

I mean, it isn't logical.

If they can cast peace spells, why do they allow their whole population to get slaughtered sometimes? If they can cast peace spells which protect their entire city, and they are mere villagers, how can the far more advanced city dwellers not do the same?

Stuff like that!

First, to Corr: I've seen a few of those complaints, and from the look of it, I believe that they havn't been win/win/win/lose 'ing. Instead, they've been draw/draw/draw/lose 'ing. The fact is, the 'draw' outcomes look like you've won the debate (not that it looks the same as 'win', just that both say 'they concede to your argument'. One, I believe, actualy sounds more like a win than the actual 'win' text). Having been on both sides of a debate, a win is as painful as a loss is realy: either way, two hits and you're dead.


Sorry for focusing on you: just something I wanted to preach about.

Anyway, it's sounding like the real problem with the peace effect is the matter of Debate. While it's not realy a pure luck action (you'd be suprised how, with enough time, you can spot patterns or consistencies in people; makes me VERY glad I didn't fully automate my system) it is a very far cry from Combat. It'll do for now, but perhaps there can be work on making debate..well.. more trilling. DEFINATLY don't make it just like Combat (requiring lost of skills, items, and a full system to have half a chance in) but..well.. perhaps leave the 'oh I can't just what will happen' ideal but just add more skills like:

Counterargument:

When you have defended a debate attempt with your mindset, you may present a counter argument. You may argue AGRESSIVE or PASSIVE. The results, ranging from them losing alot of ego and you gaining some ego to the reverse, depends on their mindset.

Note that in defending counterarguments, you will not want to choose a mindset that your opponent used earlier or you risk an even greater defeat (if they blocked your Debate with Caution, do not choose Caution).

(Then have losing a Debate do half the damage it does now to the attacker in a loss and Counterarguments do the full ego loss. Sort of like a 'double or nothing' ideal)

And, while debating with a person you could:

Mudsling: no damage but leave the opponent sputtering, and slow to debate (picture a debate-only aeon)

Final Point: if your opponent has lost two points in a row you may declare your next point your final argument. Winning the next point results in winning the entire debate and shattering their ego.

Request Spokesman: If you are at full ego at any point, you may request another person to speak for you, turning the debate from you to another.


Stuff like that. No, those aren't ACTUAL ideas, but just to show the idea. The result, along with tweaks to the way ego is lost/gained, should lead to combos, an organized method of attack and defense and overall reasons for people to be very interested. You can even have the extra skills be put into Influence, just as long as:

You can still effectively debate anyone while Inept (just Trans brings faster kills, more fun, less randomness, ext) and:

You don't need any items: just yourself and your ego

Make sure a system doesn't realy help you win..unless you're naturaly very slow in typing.

Do that and I bet people will be begging for more 'peaceful' events that makes Debate useful. You'll also have the smaller players, which are flat out unable to Combat, more involved.

Honestly I loathe peaced villages, cause I feel so damn useless, I have to spend lessons on influence to be able to influence which I am realy restricted with, and I dont like talking gibberish with yuniko or yurika(can't remember which witch it was...), but won like alot (10+?) arguments, then splat, I hit 2 counters and i'm out of the game.. Just cause she had higher Ego and Charisma..

I mean I had a great win streak, but the odds versus I would fail sometime would great, (note only I was attacking, she just sat and influenced a NPC while switching mindsets). Couldn't push her Ego down, heard I took her down to 1.5k at a time but that was it.. I had around 2,000 ego.. I know shes high level, but still It realy feels like rock, paper, scissor.. except those that are higher level got huge favor cause of their higher ego amount..

Debating is the first skill in influencing and influencing mobs depends on your commune or city rank....

Not really. I've beat Melanchthon and then lost to Yuniko.

I'm aware of Debating is first skill, my point is, that I was doing no good as a attacker, Would been better off trying to influence the mob they was influencing, if I had the influence skills, cause she had the favor of just defending + she was actully doing use while it was peaced, while I was trying to disable her, without any succes.

Are you SURE it was a win streak? Remember that every win takes out at least 1k ego. No one, I believe, can take two solid wins without at least quaffing Bromide, and no one at all can take 10 in a row. Like I said in that superlong post: a draw looks ALOT like a win but does almost no damage: the defender loses more ego from influencing the mob.

Winning 10 arguments in a row? You were probably getting draws on 10 arguments in a row (only takes away about 200 ego).

I still don't see what the uproar regarding peaced villagge influencing. By my count, we've had a total of 3 peaced influencing since the option became available. And as someone has pointed out, I don't recall ever seeing you in any of those peaced influencing, Amaru, how can you give a review of something you have never encountered or experienced yourself?

I do agree that debating should be looked into, as many people have written numerous threads on this topic, but the title of this thread makes little sense since only 2 out of 10 villages are always peaced, and those that can be peaced have a very small chance of revolting during that time.

Considering every single influence except the 3 due to forced peace has involved plenty of fighting and bloodshed, I sincerely don't see peaced influencing as a major problem at all. You can always get your killings with raids on Celestia, Nil, Faethorn, villages, normal influence, or just randomly start fights.

This appears to be a problem.

You have a 2/3 chance of losing if you initiate a debate agasint someone who is able to change mindsets.

I think the best way to fix this would be to adjust the way that your influnece "strength" increases. Influence battles should only affect the influence strength of a person who themsevles engages in a debate. If I am silent the entire debate, and then at the end attack once, my attack should be the same strength as my opponants when he first debated me, and not the strength of the cumalitve debate. Similarlly, I think a loss or a tie should reduce your attack strength, not increase the amount you can lose.

I think if debating made more sense in the context that bashing and pk make sense, there would not be this feeling of "pure luck"

I can understand that in real life debating the way it currently works makes sense, however for the sake of a more interesting competition then flipping coins and seeing who is right, the mechanics might want to be looked at a bit.

Just a suggestions to keep the conversation on track.

It was an invitation to review by others. I'll treat 'you can always get your killings by...' with the contempt it deserves.

I really think debating is a bit too simplified incomparison to the combat system. Though I would think that, such is part of the appeal of the system, a simplified version of conflict that doesnt make your brain hurt or your hair fall off, is a game of rock paper scissors really what people would expect from player interaction?

About too much conflict, I dare say it's very hard to find a good fight now-a-days. Fights for mags usually are, 3:1 odds, enemy territory where either you cant meld, have no demons, have some of your skills disabled as a village feature or some other hardcoded disadvantage. Also I think that term "too much conflict" relates not just to combat but to the general stress level that this game has.

The problem is that in this case it is NOT rock paper scissors, Rock paper scissors might make more sense.

This is how rock paper scissors works.

Rock - Rock- nothing, Scissors - win, paper- lose
Scissors - Rock- lose, Scissors, nothing, paper - win
etc.
The first person to get 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 5 -wins- wins.


Here is how debating works.

The first person to lose or tie X amount of times loses. There is no known condition for winning, because even if you win twice, if there is too much time passed between those wins, you will not win.

I REALY like the idea of the influence strength being based on attacking, not the overall debate. Let your strength go up for every win. Losses act like you were successfuly attacked (based on the defender's strength) but not increase that strength.

*note: by 'strength' I mean the fact that as a debate goes on, your attacks do more ego damage.

I'm ok with the win/loss/draw matter, though perhaps the 'draw' text should sound less like wins (I like it, but it's confusing people). Well, perhaps the better statement is "I'm not sure of a better alternative".

corr you have to say that again.

you're saying rock paper scissors - first person to get 2 out of 3 wins

you're saying debating - first person to lose or tie x amount of times loses.


note -

if one person wins 2 out of 3 then the other person loses 2 out of 3 so requirement of winning 2 out of 3 to win is the same as the requirement of losing 2 out of 3 to lose.

So

if first person loses 2 out of 3 he/she loses. if you relate the 2 out of 3 to the number of times required to lose, in this case x, then if first person loses x amount of times, he then loses. Which is pretty much the same argument you have for debating.

You can do that the other way too if you're losing X amount of times means the other person is winning Y amount of times. So you losing 4 means the opponent won 4 and so winning 4 times is the requirement to win while losing 4 is the condition of losing.

As for time, it simply means theres a time limit on the engagement. Which is just another requirment for winning or losing, as it is set within the bounderies of time. If you want a rock, paper, scissor analogy its like saying hey I won twice in rock paper scissors yesterday so me winning once today means I win 3 out of 5, when our little game probably is an entirely different game already as a certain amount of time has lapsed which means it should have started at 0 for each side.

So your post made little sense (at least to me anyway, but i admit im dumb like that sometimes.)

Well, I kind of shifted debate, so no, I didnt win all in a streak, but most of them (i hope)

Understandable, I didn't explain myself very well.

In rock paper scissors, if we tie 6 times, and then I lose once, I still have a chance of winning.

In Debating, if we tie 6 times, and then I lose once, I have lost.

Also, when I was originally thinking about this, I was making a disction between loosing and winning based on who did the attack, but I realize that in reality its irrelevant save for strength of your attack. The reason for this is that a person, if they wished, could constantly change defense type at no loss, but a person who attacks has a balance time.

Debating is more like playing Rock Paper Scissors against a slotmachine.

The problem is, if the non-combat options ever become as indepth as the combat options, the same set of people who don't fight will also not use those options. It's not so much, I think, a case of people not wanting to fight, so much as not wanting to code a system or have to put hours into learning how to do something. It's simple vs complex, not fighting vs peace.