Rerolling

[Phailak]

Some sims give penalties, some games don't allow it.

In v5, rerolled character was useless, so far behind that some players felt it was not worth pursuing the game.

In v6 I think it was better, but still felt players were too far behind.

This version, some feel it's too generous. Danger of rerolling every turn, sabotaging other players.

Share thoughts here. My own are that I like the current mode of operation, knowing that if there's abuse, we'd address it with the player.

Suggestions, comments, concerns.

[Suicide Fox]

I think we trust in the system. The good thing about the tools is staff can see exactly what is being done. If a player is trying to abuse this system, we will all know it.

If you lose a battle against Lubu and reroll then attack him again next turn because you're pissed you lost, that's a no no. We will nip that in the bud


Basically a reroll can not and should not be used for revenge purposes or to gain advantages. Don't be a dick people. That is all

[Choso]

I dunno I say let it play out. This might be v7 but it feels much like a test.

Somethings obviously broken need immediate fixing. Other things like this need to see how it plays out.
I do foresee problems can arise if someone suicides a target them rerolls and go after the same target. 100 of a resource might prove to be a little too generous. Especially since camps sometimes produce less.

But it encourages new players to jump in which is nice. Once youre wrecked to can jump back in. Which might prove to make what looks to be a grindy game more grindy.

Solutions?
Progressive reroll penalties.
Maybe see how it plays out for now.

[BJR]

Rerolling if fine the way it is. A player can still contribute in the game if he's knocked out, but it would take a small miracle for them to compete for winning.

[Yuki-Onna]

I have multiple issues with rerolling. I think it's stupid from the perspective of roleplaying, it's stupid from the perspective of the game and the specific numbers involved are incredibly stupid. Even if you don't agree with my philosophy regarding rerolling being metagaming, I'm going to make my case for why the numbers involved and the mechanics involved are stupid.

If somebody rerolls and they go and attack an NPC, I think it's cheap, but whatever I guess. Everybody seems on board with this rerolling system even though I personally think it's cheesy metagaming to recover lost resources when you lose. It seems incredibly retarded to me that the NPC lost troops in response to a phantom player, and doesn't recover them after the battle, while the reroller recovers a significant portion of their forces. It means that somebody can have an effect on the game without penalty equivalent to the effect. I don't want to die on this hill, though. If you are attacking an NPC, it is not as bad as if you were to attack a player. I'm not going to convince anybody of why I think rerolling to attack NPCs is stupid because you guys have all made up your minds that rerolling is fine in this case. Let's move on to rerolling and then attacking PCs.

My issue has to do with mathematics. I started this turn with just a few hundred troops. If I rerolled right now, I would have 800 to 900 iirc, not to mention large amounts of other resources. Additionally, I would have these resources upfront. Playing the game normally, it makes a lot less sense to dump points on an expensive NPCs because you would fall behind players who generate jobbers. When you reroll, however, you get all the npc points up front and can thus freely splurge on a powerful npc without falling behind other players who are trying to generate resources to keep up the pace. The same is true to some extent of skill points. The main issue, though, is with the soldiers. If I don't reroll, it would take many turns to get to the point where I generate enough troops to keep up with a reroll. This is true even if I managed to keep my village and nobody attacked me. I feel that the current system for rerolling is far too generous.

The counterargument is that it scales badly, but I think it's stupid to have a system in place that scales so ridiculously early on and then scales poorly later on. It's not exactly clear when rerolling stops being relevant in terms of numbers. We're already 9 turns into the game and as far as I can tell, it still provides a massive benefit that offsets the cost. A reroller right now would be roughly on par with many major players. Let me give a few examples:

I started this turn with a few hundred troops. Let's say I rerolled and then immediately attacked another player. I think everybody agrees that's stupid as I turned a few hundred into an army of 800 to 900 comparable to other armies currently in the game. It wouldn't be impossible for me to take over a player territory with this and eliminate them from the game. Any player who was even somewhat weakened or was attacking somewhere else would be vulnerable to an unanticipated and unexpected threat. I think most people would be against the concept of a 1 turn rerolling player bomb. However, I personally would go even further than that. Let's say I didn't attack anybody on turn 1. Instead I attacked somebody on turn 2 after a reroll. Maybe the person was vulnerable for some reason after a loss one to two turns earlier. In this instance, I would still have much more troops attacking the other player from my reroll than I would have had if I just played the game normally and generated troops on my own. Turn 3, same thing. It will take much longer to catch up to the point of a fresh reroll if I played the game normally, so by rerolling it gives me an unfair numerical advantage that I would not otherwise possess in the case of attacking another player.

So here's the question: What's the limit? Is Phailak going to axe any attempt to attack any player after rerolling? In that case, why have rerolling at all beyond attacking NPCs? It's clearly cheap and game breaking because it allows you to have more troops than you normally would have by generating them after taking losses. The early game generation is too slow, assuming you take any losses (even if you win battles but take casualties), to keep up with the number of troops you get from a fresh reroll. With the current number of troops I have, it would take a huge amount of time before I caught up to where I would be if I rerolled. The balance point takes a long time to achieve because rerollers will also be generating troops from their camps.

I also think it's stupid for a player who is nearly wiped out to even have an influence on the outcome of the game later on. They were nearly wiped out because of actions that they took and actions that other players took against them. The actions other players took against them had a cost. The other players took casualties to wipe that player out, but it becomes stupid when a nearly wiped out player can just regenerate their losses while the player who doesn't reroll has to live with the damage they incurred. Rerolling erases or mitigates the effect of the actions of a game. In any single instance where somebody rerolls and then uses the resources they got to attack another player later on, I think it's cheap. In consideration of this logic, rerolling basically becomes cheap in most instances because eventually there won't be npc villages left.

[Phailak]

Hmm, the easy answer is to adjust reroll benefits, but as we have seen in v5 and v6, it's a fine line between too weak to too strong. I know some want it scaled, but that is even more difficult to balance. So we have identified what the issue is from both sides, some want to be able to reroll and still be relevant while others rather people be more careful and not run around and die since they have a safety net in rerolling. The trick is finding something that is somewhat good for both situations because no way everyone can be happy. I won't address the whole rerolling is bad and metagaming because that is not debatable here, rerolling is part of the culture and keeps players active.

I think in terms of character progression, we should be good or close to it. Rerolling does allow you to tweak stuff as you see the game and I think it's fine for now, so I guess we should concentrate on resources. I don't want to because it'd be a pain to code I think BUT we could break it down in 3:

A) New player, I assume current of even better resources should be available to new players, I doubt anyone would argue that.

B) Reroll because of a 'true' death (no suicide RPs, no obvious plot deaths), can this player benefit from same resources as situation A or maybe a bit less?

C) Simple reroll because fate was not kind. What numbers are we looking at here.

I think C was the most common. MAYBE, we make it so first reroll = A or B and drops from there? Let's concentrate on solutions instead of how the system is flawed.

[Yuki-Onna]

A) New player, I assume current of even better resources should be available to new players, I doubt anyone would argue that.

B) Reroll because of a 'true' death (no suicide RPs, no obvious plot deaths), can this player benefit from same resources as situation A or maybe a bit less?

C) Simple reroll because fate was not kind. What numbers are we looking at here.

I think a new player should have an average of resources compared to current players in the game. I don't mind new players so much as I'm against old players getting more resources from a reroll than what they currently have. Maybe if the reroll only gave at most 50 to 100 more troops than what they presently have, and no bonuses in terms of the other resources (they inherited exactly what they had before), it would be ok. I think B and C should get less than A.

I think if somebody wants to remake their character into something more viable, that's one thing, but it shouldn't come with ample significant bonus resources.

[Suicide Fox]

I can say after you have a village for a turn or two, the reroll will never catch up to your resources regen. So I think the reroll is fair. It only becomes unfair when abused, but let's face it, if we cut it too bad a reroller has no chance of affecting the game so ... why bother playing? We want to keep the base active. And a good reroll does that. Speaking for myself, if I lost decisively like I did a few versions ago and there was no good reroll system in place, which there wasn't, I would quit. And I did! Because there was no longer any point in playing