Choosing a side: Metagaming and some issues

[JonasHudson]

Starting a separate topic on this because I didn't want to go too off topic on the 4.4 thread, but this comment raised a lot of questions for me.

Leeds shouldn't be Bretonia at this point anyways. It's almost fully Gallic controlled for over 2 years with 5 out of 6 bases (the 6th being the satellite) belonging to GRN or Gallic corporations. Same goes for Edinburgh, they should both be Gallic Borderworlds instead of Bretonia rule-wise.

Am I the only one that thinks this whole confilct is going the wrong direction? Unless Gallia is going to start being pushed back, and I think the turnout at the first Deltabase battle proved many like that, I think the war should be ended within the next year so we can move on to new and more interesting conflicts. This has dragged on so long and no one has any idea of what the overall intent is behind whats going to happen, everyone has a different idea about whats appropriate on this topic. Is the point to occupy all of Bretonia eventually? Or they surrender? Is there any plan to continue the story? Do the players really contribute to that? And if so how can it be taken seriously when most of the GRN that show up likely aren't solely playing as GRN most of the time? It doesn't seem to make sense to me anymore that one house vs 2 houses (both now only at war with Gallia, as far as war with other houses go) continues to go so well for the 1 house (Gallia). The only reason SEI fell was because in the end there were more players with valors or other GRN indies that just couldn't resist the chance to shoot a base. If people had to choose between their factions and roleplay like in the past (as in, not being able to have chars from opposing factions), I think few of those players would settle with Gallia just to whip out a valor every 6 months for a base siege. I think if players want to come out in numbers to determine the fate of a battle, it should be because they actually have vested interests in it, and not because they simply have a valor indie stashed for a rainy day to get an hour or two of cheap thrills out of it at times like this.

Meaning I don't think people should be belonging (especially) to player factions that are opposed to each other. Its not crazy, population never dwindled to nothing, there's still plenty of players here, and I think people should have to choose their sides carefully, I know some think of population problems or balancing battles as good reasons for this but honestly when we form for a battle and people switch up to opposing ships just to 'balance' things out, the actual value of the RP of the activity becomes 0. When this happens, the sound of a toilet flushing can be heard in my head, and I pretty much want to go solo again. Why die in an arcade style set up battle and lose two hours on that ship when I could just do my own thing and risk an inrp battle somewhere else in that time?

As for the war, it makes no sense, and never will because of this allowance of liberty between opposing sides. It turns the event like the recent siege in Leeds into nothing more than an oorp gank squad of players looking for a cheap and easy reason to fire at a base period. You rarely see any of these ships, all of the players definitely more often play as other factions, likely ones opposed to Gallia, and yet we're supposed to accept that it now has serious RP consequences on the fate of Leeds storywise. I feel that if those players had been forced to limit and choose their sides based on diplomacy, most would not ultimately side with Gallia.

Really if we need to work behind the scenes to balance these battles we're doing it wrong. If people had to choose, their choices would determine who wins the field or not, and the balance comes from which side is preferred over all by players. If people simply choose one of their ships over another because they prefer the attacker's position over the defender's, RP here is dead and this is nothing but an arcade game with multiple arenas to choose from that have some kind of back story to them, that doesn't really matter. Also, when the same ships can come back and resume the siege only 2 hours later, there really is no way to win, ever. Its like groundhog day where you have to relive the same siege over and over again, and the attackers only have to win once, while the defenders have to win over and over and over.

My recommendation to mitigate this problem for base sieges on the short term is this: if your ship dies attacking a base and is participating in an attack that required a forum RP attack notice, you should be PVP dead to it for 7 days. That's right, 7 days before you can bring that battleship back again to continue your siege. Bases don't get respawns, a lot of work goes into them, and battleships can come back only after a few hours or a day to regroup and keep trying. If activity is supposed to have RP consequences, or be able to, I think we should see some more enforcement of RP consequences. Seeing the same ships over and over even after being destroyed makes no sense. At least with a rule like that, sieges would stretch out, and bases would last longer. I know how the game mechanics work and why, but all this does is create a huge oorp elephant in the room to have to work around when trying to roleplay around it. This is the reason why my own roleplay on the forums has remained limited after returning, since it feels like sometimes there is no point, the oorp nature of the mechanics seems to water it down for me. I think we need a total revamp in the rules concerning flying for two sides in a war, and being able to choose at the moment of battle, and not beforehand like in real conflict. There is a potential for RP that is always lost now out of a desire for convenience. I'm pretty sure there was once a time when it was called...metagaming! And well it is, its just acceptable now. I feel we need a return to the days when it was not acceptable.

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Leeds Resistance Forces | Tales of a Renegade |The Freelancer

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