What about allowing Crusading to have a reverse affect in peaced village influencing?

Crusade allows you to fight in that room, but it halves the effectiveness of influencing in it, due to the fact that you are going against the spirit of the village's current choice?

Sanctuary would then be used to keep a room from being crusaded, and maybe give a SMALL boost to influencing, because you are upholding the spirit of the village's choice.

Guys, I think you're losing the plot a bit here.

If I wanted to play rock, paper, scissors - I would play frigging rock, paper, scissors.

I want to play Lusternia, not some oversimplified copy of it. If people are so simple they need a rock, paper, scissors game in order to stand a chance, they should go play World of Warcraft or something.

Yes, we should turn away the half or more of players you don't like complex combat they need to put hours into training for.

That isn't what I meant and you know it.

I too want something a bit more complex than debating, with a little less luck and a bit more skill. But I definitely like having an option sometimes other than combat.

That's cool, I'm fine with it. As long as it -is- a decent substitute for combat, because some of us have put a lot into combat in order to make the kind of game-affecting results people get from debating.

That's actually exactly how it works.

That's why peaced villages is only a minority of the instances. (I forget the exact odds, but I think it's violent more than 75% of the times. So the norm is a bloodbath.)

If thats the case, howecome people seem to lose after only one loss, nomatter how many wins or ties existed before that?

*adds this to her "no one has a dang clue how debate realy works" theory*

there, now back to:




Edit: I think I know why people lose after doing the '10 wins then 1 loss' deal: time. Because they are realy Drawing, their strength never goes up that way. However, as time goes on, both people's strength go up naturaly. Thus eventualy it becomes so large it'll kill anyone. Given that, if they had actualy won instead of loss, they would've KOed the defender.

A tip: find out the messages that occur for each of the debate combinations (tip: it works somewhat like the weaponry attacks) and either Substitute the text or have a message show that tells whether you've Drawn or Won. If you need to, also make the text tell you what attack/defense occured, too. Just memorizing the texts works too.

The problem with debating, seems to be that hitting the wrong mindset with the wrong debate too often, has a much greater effect than hitting the right mindset with the right debate. So even if you're successfully arguing 8 times in a row, hitting the wrong mindset 2-3 times means you lose.

My own experience has shown me that it's not true anymore. If you do hit the right attack then they will suffer as much as a loss will. I havn't found a person who won't run or die after two direct wins. Meanwhile, I've always lost no less than 1k when a debate hits me. I've also seen people who will Draw against me 5+ times constantly until I switch targets to make them lose.

In fact, I ask anyone to find a friend, switch your mindset to Analytical, and have the other attack you 3 times with Pettifogery. Unless something IS wrong (i.e. Petti doesn't win vs Anal, which means I need to change my system FAST), you should lose no less than 3k ego from it.

I agree with Amaru and I think Sylphas has a good point: It isn't just about combat vs non-combat, it is about complexity. If the debate system were the focus of the game, with dozens of skillsets effecting it, and combat were a 1 skillset, rock-paper-scissors-ISH game, people would be screaming for less debate, more conflict.

It would be easier to write off the percentages of villages that are unpeaced as sufficient for those who like combat. Unfortunately, you've also made the revolts random, meaning a person can miss many in a row just by virtue of time zones, bad luck, or saturday night dates.

I'm sure this will be an unpopular view, but I don't see why we should force people to use an oversimplified 'conflict resolution' system like debating because they're unwilling to do what is needed to learn the combat system. Debating will NEVER be as good as combat in terms of vividness, strategy, differences between archetypes, etc. Why not just dumb down combat to the same level? That'd fix balance issues AND reduce people's whining that combat is hard and they don't want to do it.

I suggest:
1. Lose XP for losing debates. You lose it for losing influence battles, and right now all you get is shattered ego, which has NO lasting effect. Reduce the shattered ego time and add XP loss.
2. Allow crusades in peaced villages. Effects one room, 1/2 influence effectiveness, allows combat.
3. Roll back some of the randomness changes so people can actually plan to be around to actually see these so called villages in action.
4. Overhaul the debate system. I know you guys have put a lot of work into this, but no matter how many claims I hear about how it is zero sum, I think the evidence and examples people have posted and experienced trumps this theoretical claim.

Now, I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks.

Crusade should not halve the effect of influencing in peaced villages. It should increase it as it normally does, otherwise what would be the point of using it. Because if it was only for use in fighting, people would run as soon as it was laid.

A basic premise must always be understood about open villages. The goal is always to win the village, and the only means of doing that is influencing. Debating and Fighting are just tools to aid you in achieving victory. Crusade was designed to give you a bonus in influencing at the risk of death. While Sanctuary removes all risks without cost or further bonus. To make Crusade weaker in peaced villages would defeat the purpose of the campaign completely.