McWetPaper
Member
Prologue
Before reading this post, I know it's a text wall and has some length, but I have had a lot of thoughts and conversations with various players on this subject and felt like sharing my ideas and thoughts to all in the post below.
If you do take the time to read this, let it be known that my opinion is solely mine, everyone will have different thoughts and that is okay, having open discussion is important and I hope that any comments made will be complementary to the subject
Win Trading
Win Trading is the concept or practice in competitive games or environments where teams/players will purposefully lose matches for the gain of another entity. This is with the benefit of a team gaining positions on either a leaderboard or ELO based system in order to boost their stats and placement. In the sense of Loka, win trading is used to boost other Alliances to a victory that they hence would not have gotten or to ease a victory.
To take a deep dive into this from a player perspective (mine), I would like to start from the beginning.
8 Months Ago, a change in the rules were made that allowed for win trading to be permitted, and that no fights would be moderated for it. What does this mean you may ask? Well essentially there was no expense to a team helping another team win a month by purposefully losing or placing on them, making months a lot more about how many people side with you vs skill in alliance v alliance combat. We have had 8 conquest cycles since this change, and I for one can confidently say that this rule change has not accomplished anything, and for a matter of fact makes the system for winning a lot less enjoyable, as the win matters SIGNIFICANTLY less.
The original message is attached below of the initial removal of the Win Trading Rule. (Original Update Thread)
Analysis of the Current State of Win Trading
Today, win trading is still a significant problem, happening nearly every month and often of the time resulting in a team winning that would have had a lot harder time doing so without it. What is commonly not understood is that there's many factors to win trading besides strength that can result in issues. One that I personally experienced was the concept of creating tile cooldowns. How this is performed is an alliance, typically with an opposite vuln to yours will get a 3rd party alliance or town to place on your tiles, not only feeding you strength but also putting a tile cooldown on the territories. What this does is create essentially an extension to their vuln on the tiles, forcing players to essentially place deep into their vuln and preventing the use of the full vulnerability window. This is a problem as it is far worse than the strength gained by the top alliance as it creates a problem that only can really be solved by placing outside of your vuln window, which can be done but an alliance should not be punished as a result of another ally utilizing cheeky methods in order to win.
Below I have a few quoted messages that I will go over, some of these opinions from these messages may have changed but they represent initial thoughts to the need for this rule to be reversed and of course there will always be downsides to both outcomes.
I understand the staff point of view in the sense that it is very hard to judge and define a ruleset behind win trading, and at the end of the day its player nature to find ways around the rules to get advantages where they can. However, this does not mean that the solution should be to allow it long-term. As stated in the first paragraph of the Cryptite message, the removal was a result of too many players abusing a underdefined ruleset and taking up too much time in the process of banning or punishing offenders. Of course, there are likely other reasons, but this realistically should not be a reason to not maintain the rule.
Conquest itself is the main competitive aspect of Loka, and what point is there to compete and encourage others to play a server where people can just abuse a system for their own gain. In most games and even in general win trading is always banned, and of course you will have bad apples that do it regardless but that does not mean the companies remove the rule because it's "easier" to manage. The competitive sense is lost, and the reversal and reintroduction of the rule may be a proper first step to make it valuable and important again.
And to focus on the second quote, it is a very good idea to implement a system that prevents it and makes the rule far less used cause it would discourage players to do so. This of course did not pan out how the message said and to this day players still win trade and still produce effective methods of boosting allies to victory. If a proper system can't be found within 8 months of its change I don't see how confident players should be that it will be found later on.
Suggestions and Closure
My goal with this post is not immediate change, but more of a reopening of a discussion that should still be ongoing. Win trading cannot simply be allowed long term if the server is to have active Conquest cycles and encourage players to compete. As I stated previously, everyone has a difference insight into this system. Whether you're a pvper, leader, staff member, third party, or even a fisherman, everyone has an opinion to give. I hope that with this post some suggestions can be attributed to maybe make alterations with the goal of solving this problem.
My overall suggestion, if not clear, is to review the last cycles for the problem and analyze if it's fixable. If not I do recommend reintroducing the Win Trading rule, even if it causes more time from staff to be taken up, it creates a more competitive and fun environment for all who partake in Loka's territorial pvp.
I appreciate all who read my analysis and to those who partake in bringing attention to this problem!
Before reading this post, I know it's a text wall and has some length, but I have had a lot of thoughts and conversations with various players on this subject and felt like sharing my ideas and thoughts to all in the post below.
If you do take the time to read this, let it be known that my opinion is solely mine, everyone will have different thoughts and that is okay, having open discussion is important and I hope that any comments made will be complementary to the subject
Win Trading
Win Trading is the concept or practice in competitive games or environments where teams/players will purposefully lose matches for the gain of another entity. This is with the benefit of a team gaining positions on either a leaderboard or ELO based system in order to boost their stats and placement. In the sense of Loka, win trading is used to boost other Alliances to a victory that they hence would not have gotten or to ease a victory.
To take a deep dive into this from a player perspective (mine), I would like to start from the beginning.
8 Months Ago, a change in the rules were made that allowed for win trading to be permitted, and that no fights would be moderated for it. What does this mean you may ask? Well essentially there was no expense to a team helping another team win a month by purposefully losing or placing on them, making months a lot more about how many people side with you vs skill in alliance v alliance combat. We have had 8 conquest cycles since this change, and I for one can confidently say that this rule change has not accomplished anything, and for a matter of fact makes the system for winning a lot less enjoyable, as the win matters SIGNIFICANTLY less.
The original message is attached below of the initial removal of the Win Trading Rule. (Original Update Thread)
Analysis of the Current State of Win Trading
Today, win trading is still a significant problem, happening nearly every month and often of the time resulting in a team winning that would have had a lot harder time doing so without it. What is commonly not understood is that there's many factors to win trading besides strength that can result in issues. One that I personally experienced was the concept of creating tile cooldowns. How this is performed is an alliance, typically with an opposite vuln to yours will get a 3rd party alliance or town to place on your tiles, not only feeding you strength but also putting a tile cooldown on the territories. What this does is create essentially an extension to their vuln on the tiles, forcing players to essentially place deep into their vuln and preventing the use of the full vulnerability window. This is a problem as it is far worse than the strength gained by the top alliance as it creates a problem that only can really be solved by placing outside of your vuln window, which can be done but an alliance should not be punished as a result of another ally utilizing cheeky methods in order to win.
Below I have a few quoted messages that I will go over, some of these opinions from these messages may have changed but they represent initial thoughts to the need for this rule to be reversed and of course there will always be downsides to both outcomes.
I understand the staff point of view in the sense that it is very hard to judge and define a ruleset behind win trading, and at the end of the day its player nature to find ways around the rules to get advantages where they can. However, this does not mean that the solution should be to allow it long-term. As stated in the first paragraph of the Cryptite message, the removal was a result of too many players abusing a underdefined ruleset and taking up too much time in the process of banning or punishing offenders. Of course, there are likely other reasons, but this realistically should not be a reason to not maintain the rule.
Conquest itself is the main competitive aspect of Loka, and what point is there to compete and encourage others to play a server where people can just abuse a system for their own gain. In most games and even in general win trading is always banned, and of course you will have bad apples that do it regardless but that does not mean the companies remove the rule because it's "easier" to manage. The competitive sense is lost, and the reversal and reintroduction of the rule may be a proper first step to make it valuable and important again.
And to focus on the second quote, it is a very good idea to implement a system that prevents it and makes the rule far less used cause it would discourage players to do so. This of course did not pan out how the message said and to this day players still win trade and still produce effective methods of boosting allies to victory. If a proper system can't be found within 8 months of its change I don't see how confident players should be that it will be found later on.
Suggestions and Closure
My goal with this post is not immediate change, but more of a reopening of a discussion that should still be ongoing. Win trading cannot simply be allowed long term if the server is to have active Conquest cycles and encourage players to compete. As I stated previously, everyone has a difference insight into this system. Whether you're a pvper, leader, staff member, third party, or even a fisherman, everyone has an opinion to give. I hope that with this post some suggestions can be attributed to maybe make alterations with the goal of solving this problem.
My overall suggestion, if not clear, is to review the last cycles for the problem and analyze if it's fixable. If not I do recommend reintroducing the Win Trading rule, even if it causes more time from staff to be taken up, it creates a more competitive and fun environment for all who partake in Loka's territorial pvp.
I appreciate all who read my analysis and to those who partake in bringing attention to this problem!
)
