Borough Polls

[Mab]

Hello! I wanted to start some discussion about the recent change and announcement by Nova.

First of all, I am overall 90% of both the change, the note, and the intention behind it. I did not really enjoy the last week or so of this game and would hit burnout incredibly fast if that became normal. As a 20+ faction leader I think I get to see a lot of interpersonal dynamics that maybe other people aren’t privy to, and they make the necessity of this seemingly controversial change incredibly clear to me.

I do however also see some issues and think the change went just a little bit further than it needed to. Not being able to see any indication of the polls at all is going to make deciding which boroughs to pursue pretty difficult. The Hand had the experience of pursuing a borough that was completely uncontested by any other groups (Fairefield) and even though we went 100% all in, we gained nothing, due to the way the 63rd Legion mechanic works. For those unaware: you basically cannot win a borough through PvE alone. If no one else is fighting over the same borough as you, lack of competition means that the NPC faction wins by default. That’s why we subsequently ended up pursuing (and winning) a borough where competition was higher. I think that the intention behind this mechanic is actually insanely smart, as it prevents and discourages bigger/stronger factions from curbstomping smaller/weaker factions to the point where it no longer feels worth it to compete at all. It encourages healthy competition. However, this only works if everyone knows they’re competing. Going all in on a borough that turns out to be unwinnable due to poor/absent competition is a real feelsbadmoment that I don’t want to repeat.

Secondly, and this is a much smaller concern, I just think that being able to reference “polls” IC is a cool thing to do that makes the game feel more political in theme and thus more immersive.

I’d like to see the spirit of the change kept, but softened a little. Basically just some kind of vague indication when you pull up a borough’s info of the current prominence of the 63rd Legion, and which factions (sans specifics) are polling favourably. The amount of information you get could also be tied to the politics stat. I don’t want to see the numbers back, but maybe something like:

The 63rd legion is reported to be advancing/retreating throughout the borough.
(Tells you to maybe ease up a little if you’ve been getting too sweaty.)

Polls predict a close race between the Hand and the Order, with the Hollow Conclave up and coming as a strong third-party candidate.
(And maybe the second clause is only visible with higher politics.)

The Hand has been losing favour with the electorate due to [political thuggery/anti-competitive strategies/the public’s distrust in their preference for other boroughs/the Order’s relatable public message].

etc.

[Mab]

(Can’t edit my first post, but I meant to write 90% supportive.)

[Rosethorn]

I agree that this past week was pretty awful on the brain, so I am also very much in favor of the changes put in place.

I will say it’s possible to figure out what boroughs people are focusing on just by talking to people or listening to conversations that might come up. Especially with some much cross-faction/society memberships, someone is always going to know something and even if specifics aren’t known, you have an idea of where might be good to focus on.

But I do think seeing a vaguer ‘poll’ could be beneficial in general. I think it was seeing the actual numbers that really stressed everyone out that got stressed.

[Miles]

I agree with the stated intention of the change, but I do not agree with a lot of the characterization of events over the last week nor do I think the changes themselves actually accomplish the stated intention.

My ideal scenario would be a world in which people do what is fun and makes sense organically for their characters and then to allocate the ‘value’ obtained through those activities with intention and political forethought.

We’ve definitely seen that instead, the borough system made people feel pressured to engage in activities specifically for borough control, and more particularly in a specific sort of activity.

Some activities are worth substantially more than others, the calculus in the political contributions announcement seemed to imply that hunting was the most efficient and primary source of capital; that’s pretty far from true.

There are also functional incentives in how systems like the competition incentives, etc., work that steer people towards some really un-fun and twinky ways to maximize the system. For example, if you’re the first faction allocating resources to a borough, you’re actually punished for that, and if you’re the last, you’re kind of incentivized. It creates a dynamic where you don’t actually want to consistently invest in the same area, you want to surge into an area that’s already contested by two other groups at the eleventh hour and save all of your resources and energy for that last week.

Obfuscating the mechanics is great and all for making it harder for people to figure out how to twink the system and what weird behaviors are incentivized, but those incentives are still there. They’ll likely always be there in some form. The system needs a lot of overhauls and just obfuscating the underlying mechanics won’t prevent people who know where the weak points are from hitting them. For me, it’s a lipstick on a pig change. It’s throwing a tarp over a minefield and then telling people to go play in it. I probably won’t be engaging with the system in any serious capacity beyond what happens incidentally and organically going forward but I absolutely do not expect that to lead to any borough wins.

I also worry that the competition system actually, quite contrarily, incentivizes large and heavily social factions to aggressively cannibalize efforts made by smaller factions at every opportunity, using smaller groups to ‘prime’ boroughs for take-overs.

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