GLing can be a thankless job. Are gambits making it doubly so?
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LonelyNeptune
- Posts: 73
- Joined: Sat Aug 19, 2017 8:02 pm
As a side note, you can not gambit somebody who is Disliked. They need to be Hated or Despised.
I agree. It seems unreasonable and inmersion breaking that a blip from neutral to hated due to someone going inactive/retiring can trigger a full hands on rebellion. A few days of buffer zone to give the GL a chance to recuperate should be implemented.
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Buzz K[ir]ill
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:42 pm
Goodness, y'all sound so certain. I don't even know if, codedly, one person can actually have that kind of impact. Support calcs are all a big mystery to me, personally. GL support calcs even moreso.
If it were just a minor blip in support due to one person, the GL wouldn't have anything to fear from a coup, would they? Because it takes: despised/hated + IC Event/inactivity + enough/the right mix of people in favor of the gambit for the gambit to actually succeed. Also, during the week the gambit is active, players can change their votes at any time for free, which means there's still time to try and salvage the situation.
What I'm really hearing is that folks don't like being vulnerable to political power plays, especially ones that come from outside their guild, and that taking advantage of a short-term vulnerability to enact a coup feels unfair. I get that, and I'm usually pretty sympathetic toward GLs, but as far as I can tell, the system is correctly operating on the cumulative effects of political actions over time. It doesn't seem immersion breaking to me, nor does it seem particularly unreasonable that the tides might shift abruptly after a long and drawn out support struggle.
That being said, given the small size of our pbase, I'm not against a 1-2 day buffer to protect against wild fluctuations...
If it were just a minor blip in support due to one person, the GL wouldn't have anything to fear from a coup, would they? Because it takes: despised/hated + IC Event/inactivity + enough/the right mix of people in favor of the gambit for the gambit to actually succeed. Also, during the week the gambit is active, players can change their votes at any time for free, which means there's still time to try and salvage the situation.
What I'm really hearing is that folks don't like being vulnerable to political power plays, especially ones that come from outside their guild, and that taking advantage of a short-term vulnerability to enact a coup feels unfair. I get that, and I'm usually pretty sympathetic toward GLs, but as far as I can tell, the system is correctly operating on the cumulative effects of political actions over time. It doesn't seem immersion breaking to me, nor does it seem particularly unreasonable that the tides might shift abruptly after a long and drawn out support struggle.
That being said, given the small size of our pbase, I'm not against a 1-2 day buffer to protect against wild fluctuations...
Part of the problem I think is that support and gambits are calculated differently. So that blip in support can mean you're vulnerable to a gambit with a high chance of succeeding as it takes more to subvert someone to despised than it does to actually win the gambit.
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Buzz K[ir]ill
- Posts: 172
- Joined: Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:42 pm
Without knowing how GL support is actually calculated, I can't even begin to objectively evaluate that argument. Maybe I'm not reading the right helpfiles...
GL support is calculated the same way as anyone else's support with a small bonus from guild members. I believe all players also get a small bonus from a person in their guild supporting them. Support's only role in a GL gambit is whether a GL is vulnerable to a gambit at all. A GL doesn't need supporters to avoid this, by default they're safe - they need to 1) do things ICly that earn subversion, and 2) fail to balance it with doing things to earn support (or be significantly inactive).
A gambit takes time to resolve, so no one is kicked out instantly, even if they become vulnerable to a gambit and someone has IC motivation to push it.
One thing staff considered was whether external people out weighing unanimous guild support to retain a GL should be mitigated, but we discussed it and felt growing their guild is part of their role. Guild member gambit votes already have a *significant* mathematical advantage over most non-GL votes (2-3x), requiring multiple externals to overcome a single guild member. But, if there are only one or two guild members, the GL will be more vulnerable than if they have just four backing them (at which case, they'd need 8 or more players against them to break even).
Power plays are appropriate to TI's theme, and with great power comes great responsibility. GLs have power over people. It's the right of the people affected by that to have their say when they don't like what they're dealing with. The consequence for losing are only a bit of embarrassment for "not winning" and landing a sweet, non-contested, high level guild role. This is not at all a bad deal, it just takes strength of character to take a lump, dust oneself off, and keep on going.
Gambits are a far better than the old system of leaving "bad" GLs in place with PK or staff noticing a GL not doing their job as the only recourse. They are intwined with IC events, and a GL looking to their support and caring for their guild has relatively little to fear.
A gambit takes time to resolve, so no one is kicked out instantly, even if they become vulnerable to a gambit and someone has IC motivation to push it.
One thing staff considered was whether external people out weighing unanimous guild support to retain a GL should be mitigated, but we discussed it and felt growing their guild is part of their role. Guild member gambit votes already have a *significant* mathematical advantage over most non-GL votes (2-3x), requiring multiple externals to overcome a single guild member. But, if there are only one or two guild members, the GL will be more vulnerable than if they have just four backing them (at which case, they'd need 8 or more players against them to break even).
Power plays are appropriate to TI's theme, and with great power comes great responsibility. GLs have power over people. It's the right of the people affected by that to have their say when they don't like what they're dealing with. The consequence for losing are only a bit of embarrassment for "not winning" and landing a sweet, non-contested, high level guild role. This is not at all a bad deal, it just takes strength of character to take a lump, dust oneself off, and keep on going.
Gambits are a far better than the old system of leaving "bad" GLs in place with PK or staff noticing a GL not doing their job as the only recourse. They are intwined with IC events, and a GL looking to their support and caring for their guild has relatively little to fear.
There is a long list of barriers before a gambit is even called into play:
1) The GL needs to have a sufficiently low support base to even have a gambit initiated. That means they are at 'Hated', 'Loathed', or 'Detested' as opposed to 'Scorned' or 'Disliked' (that is, they are at least three levels into the negative reputations). This means either the GL has many/powerful IC enemies or the GL is highly inactive.
2) Next, the gambit itself needs to pass thematic review by staff. Here, we check that whatever IC action the initiator claims is happening seems ICly reasonable and/or appropriate to the circumstances. We often review the Support History to make sure that the support/subvert trails make IC sense and are legitimate.
3) Finally, if the other two items are passed, the GL still has one week to RP influence the entire pbase, from just finding allies to changing minds, noting that their own guild members have 3x as much mathematical weight as anyone outside their guild.
By the time a GL is even in a gambit situation, there is definitely a strong IC premise for their removal, and they have plenty of time to do something about it if they want to. I've seen GLs survive gambits that I thought for certain they wouldn't. I see raising the bar from a majority to a super majority unnecessary.
There are a few improvements I would like to see, but how 'hard' it is to remove a GL who probably should be removed is not one of them. I'm more interested in fixing things like people 'timer camping' to slip in a vote that can't be responded to at the last second, for example.
1) The GL needs to have a sufficiently low support base to even have a gambit initiated. That means they are at 'Hated', 'Loathed', or 'Detested' as opposed to 'Scorned' or 'Disliked' (that is, they are at least three levels into the negative reputations). This means either the GL has many/powerful IC enemies or the GL is highly inactive.
2) Next, the gambit itself needs to pass thematic review by staff. Here, we check that whatever IC action the initiator claims is happening seems ICly reasonable and/or appropriate to the circumstances. We often review the Support History to make sure that the support/subvert trails make IC sense and are legitimate.
3) Finally, if the other two items are passed, the GL still has one week to RP influence the entire pbase, from just finding allies to changing minds, noting that their own guild members have 3x as much mathematical weight as anyone outside their guild.
By the time a GL is even in a gambit situation, there is definitely a strong IC premise for their removal, and they have plenty of time to do something about it if they want to. I've seen GLs survive gambits that I thought for certain they wouldn't. I see raising the bar from a majority to a super majority unnecessary.
There are a few improvements I would like to see, but how 'hard' it is to remove a GL who probably should be removed is not one of them. I'm more interested in fixing things like people 'timer camping' to slip in a vote that can't be responded to at the last second, for example.
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