New Guidelines & Changes: Discussion Area!

[Heiko Alkema]

I'd also like to add

1. The New Player Experience.

Probably the most problematic aspect of IO was how hard it became to even get started on the site. The sign up process was demanding and long, the start up cost to begin taking part in battles was high, and the help section was almost completely useless with outdated and disorganized information. All of this added up to create a massive barrier to entry and no doubt turned away many potentially great players.

[PuNk! ™]

Thank you Heiko.
I'm glad you agree with most of what I've outlined and you've made some valid points which I completely agree with in return; I think the site has reached a pinnacle - in my eyes - where we don't need to be so... What's the word... Breaking our own legs? In other words, trying so hard to impress everyone here with mahoosive (that's totally a word) updates and trying to run the show on every aspect, from moderation posts, to governing the shop and yadda yadda.

I know I've come a long way from Obeying Orders (Issuing Orders predecessor)and I've grown a lot in those eight to nine years this RPG franchise has grown. I've been a tyrant in the early days, trying to run the show by myself, to recruiting a strong staff team and expecting to turn this place into a wizzbang (totally another word that exists) emporium of fancy things that would entice people to play our amazing game - when I lost sight of the true grit to this forum; it's an RPG and it's the community that make this place, not us, not our fancy attempts at skill trees and shop items.

So yeah.
I say, give people the chance to moderate their own battles. Give people the chance to outfit their characters (with those higher tier limitations in place, so we don't have ten bazooka wielding new guys) and let's just enjoy this place without all the drudgery of thinking "oh poop, I've got battle mods to make, coding in the shop to do and ten threads to write about this fancy new skill system we want to make".

Pah!
Looks like the majority of everyone is on board with this entire new revamp. Like I've said to Mac and Friedrich - you can still have good old staff hosted battles with mod posts if you wish, but it's no longer a necessity and I think it's worth giving everyone the chance the freedom of using this forum to their own will. It's the community that make this place after-all.

/Post-a-lot-Danny.

[Heiko Alkema]

Some proposals:

Application Process:
I'm thinking we should dump the approval hurdle entirely, and allow players, new and old, to create new accounts as they wish If we get some spambots, oh well, we can ban as needed like with the CBox. I'm a little unsure about whether or not to keep an actual application in the mix, but new players would definitely need to be in a kind of probationary period for 30 days or so in which they can only have one character. After that, have at it.

Keep the limit of new characters only being able to be up to Captain in rank, other than that new characters can be any rank the player chooses.

Player units/divisions/whatnot:
Instead of requiring players to purchase a formation (squad/platoon/etc), they would be instead just have a basic command of whatever there rank would afford them in their respective armies; eg American Cpls lead fireteams, Sgts - squads, Lts - Platoons, etc. I have a good source for all the major nations organizations that we can just stick in the appropriate player units sub-boards.

[Christopher J. D'Dario]

I agree that giving people a force equal to what their ranks can properly command is a good idea.
Same with their weapons, preventing CoD level load outs will help keep a balance in the games.
Plus with each player self modding, I think there should be a template or check list to refer to containing a set of criteria that can help outline the success or failure of actions. Nothing stupidly complex, just something like if it's well writien, well though out with sufficient detail and the outcome of the action is rather obvious, then it should go though.
Otherwise people could suddenly start dodging bullets like Neo.

[PuNk! ™]

Right okay, let's take it slowly here. We've already spoken about abolishing our CP system, made it creed that people get outfitted with whatever they choose from the shop's armoury (within reason) and allowed a free reign on public made moderations during battle (or no moderations at all if they don't feel they need it).

Applicaton Process - counter proposal:
Application process, I feel, should be one thing that stands however.
If a member can't be bothered to write an application for their character or isn't of an intermediate level of writing, I don't think the people of this forum will endure too long with having to put up with single-line role players.

We can make the application process a lot more simple however. How about, they can sign-up without needing staff approval (account activation), but will need to write an application in order to role play. So they can roam the site, talk to the members and get help from everyone here if need be during their introductory; but they must write an application to qualify for role play.

Does that sound fair enough?

Rank Handout - agreement:
I also agree that the highest rank we hand out is most probably Captain. Thereafter, like the old scheme, promotions can be given to characters who either request it or have been a member on the forum for a decent amount of time and warrants it. That way we can entrust they aren't about to lead a battalion of men to the slaughter - so to speak.

Divisional Rosters:
I say we abolish the divisional rosters completely. There is no need for them now, technically. I think - as you mentioned - all members should acquire the standard manpower fitted to their ranks. SO let's take a Sergeant for example. They have a squad/platoon, use that manpower in battle, several die and yadda yadda. The next battle they'll get the exact same amount of manpower again, but they can dictate different names if they wish, incorporate the losses into their story arch (like Jeff is a platoon hero for jumping on a live grenade) and such forth.

So technically, there would be no need to keep track of all the unit names - like we have done in the past. No need to list them. No need to buy them. No need to replace them. You get a standard amount of men you can command for any given situation, no less, no more. You go up a rank, it increases and vice versa.

Does that sound good?

Public Moderations:
Yeah I agree Seejay. We'll take all the necessary precautions to inform members here the rules to moderating, provide a template maybe, information and advice. It's up to all members in a battle to agree amongst themselves how the rules will go; do they want old-school moderating by a staff member who's willing to help? Do they want to moderate themselves? Will they appoint another member to help moderate? Or do they simply not want any moderating to take place at all and just work around things as and when they happen?

It's their choice. Not ours anymore. However, it is up to all party members to AGREE how they want things to be conducted to avoid arguments or issues arising. Staff will always be around to remedy any conflicting interests, even if that means shutting the thread down and moving them on.

I expect everyone here to be mature about how we're going to try and do things from now on. I know people get competitive, but then that's up to the members to choose mature worthy people to battle with and to do it properly. Hence why everyone needs to agree at the start on how things are going to run - again, this is all stuff we can provide help on and will outline in the new amendments.

[Mac Bargett]

In regards of Division rosters, I know of a few people here who apparently found great joy in researching and creating them, so I think we should still have them, but keep the units nameless, aside from players. It could be used as a template, so people have the general idea of where they are in the unit, for RP purposes.

I pretty much agree with everything else everyone else is saying. I feel that for right now, to give the site a shot in the arm, we should let players have battles with whatever weapons and equipment they want, although decided on before the battle, don't want people pulling bigger and bigger tanks out of their asses in the middle of a fight. Once we start getting new players again, that's when we should start to implement some kind of rationing system of the higher tier material.

[Heiko Alkema]

Jul 9, 2015 0:36:11 GMT Mac Bargett said:

In regards of Division rosters, I know of a few people here who apparently found great joy in researching and creating them, so I think we should still have them, but keep the units nameless, aside from players. It could be used as a template, so people have the general idea of where they are in the unit, for RP purposes.

I pretty much agree with everything else everyone else is saying. I feel that for right now, to give the site a shot in the arm, we should let players have battles with whatever weapons and equipment they want, although decided on before the battle, don't want people pulling bigger and bigger tanks out of their asses in the middle of a fight. Once we start getting new players again, that's when we should start to implement some kind of rationing system of the higher tier material.

I was about to write up the same thing. While having the rosters for storage and record keeping is now defunct, player run units will still serve a very important roleplay purpose, eg Cpt Merhoff runs a company within the 21. Panzer; 1LT Steinbeck is his company XO; 2LTs Neal, Veight, and Hinrichs each run one if the company's three platoons, etcetc. For roleplay purposes Merhoff owns the whole thing, but for battle purposes each holds an appropriately-sized independent formation.

So there can still be a roster and a heirarchy of sorts that players can plug their characters into, but will be purely for roleplay fodder. Yeah?

[PuNk! ™]

Yeah that's fine!
We can keep the divisional rosters, does make sense in terms of building a story-arch with NPCs.

[Stephen Colly]

Yo. Can't wait to see this site active again!!

Liking all what has been said.

I may have missed it but what are people's thoughts on post length and tenses? I always write in the third person and with a decent of post. Do we put a minimum post limit? Say 200 words or more?

I was never much of a battle-fighter so I really loved the storylines and character developments and how the characters' storylines all interlinked with each other - so more of those I think!!

[Deleted]

*Friedrich Hautt saunters in, removing his Napoleonic shako awkwardly*

Just giving my two bits, but I always disliked the idea of restricting historical content in an unhistorical way. Technically, a Lieutenant commanding a platoon of infantry is the same rank as a Lieutenant commanding a platoon of heavy tanks.

Why not just divide each nation into their branches of service, then put simple restrictions on their equipment? Such as having MP40s when you're new, and making StG44s available after X condition is met? The same with vehicles. You can be a heavy tank commander, but with early equipment such as the KV-1 or Tiger, as opposed to the IS-2 and Tiger II. The TYPES of equipment will be open, for the most part, but the MODEL depends on veterancy of the commander. I can draw up a complete list of WW2 equipment, everything from tanks and armored cars to rifles and pistols.

Self-modded battles would be a welcome relief. I'd like to try it as well. We could have a strike system. You're considered mod-capable until you are totally unfair or continually bollocks mods up. That way, in a 1v1, you can either have the players moderate each other, or bring in a mod-capable from the community to do it instead.

I had a little idea last night. We seem to have a lack of variety in our units. Why not let players make their own independent one-man commands? They'd post the thread, they'd manage the roster. If several players join together, give them a unit subboard.

Anyhoo.. I'm just damned glad to be back.

[PuNk! ™]

It looks like I've got everyone's gears going, which is fantastic, but let's try and keep this as plain and simple as we can; we all know how easy we get carried away and that's when the issues begin...

So let's knock these out one at a time, yeah? But least we know the path we're going down with everything now though.

The Shop!
Are we all in agreement that the shop is staying and we're going to make some "conditions" to the higher tier weaponry being accessible by longer serving and more experienced members, yes?

If so, then this is what needs to be done:
1. A brief list of what we're going to consider higher tier weaponry needs to be made. So I'm assuming anything from bazookas, later model heavy machine-guns to the mean machine models of armoured vehicles.

2. We remove the CP boundaries for all "free accessible" weaponry and restrict the higher tier components in the shop and perhaps mark them in the descriptions as "Higher Tier" weaponry.

3. A helpful thread is created about this new change and why.

That's the "appropriate" way to do things. Again, it's making a ton of work for us, but once it's done, it's done and it's currently the biggest job on our list of things to do. Once it's completed, we can tackle the next hurdle.

But as long as we're all in agreement with the aforementioned agreement above in regards to outfitting characters and the shop's change in state, we can carry on, so we all happy?

[Deleted]

Okay, just to get it straight:

Items are free, but those designated as high-tier will be restricted, right? I agree with the concept, but I'll point out that it's easy to make starting off unnecessarily hard.

It'd save a lot of time just marking what starters can rather than can't use. Have all three branches open with starter gear. Infantry? You start in a rifleman unit. Armor? You get basic light and medium models. Artillery? You can do up to 75mm field/pack pieces.

When you've been around awhile, THEN all the extra-goody goodies open up. The infantryman can switch to being a mortarman. The tanker can pop off to start a tank-killer unit. The artilleryman can branch off into anti-air or anti-tank artillery.

Plausible?

Something I forgot to ask yesterday was if people could make their own units easier. Instead of having two units locked in a comic-book style feud, always those same two fighting, why not allow single-person unit threads? If several people join together, their threads are placed in a subboard.

Anyhoo, throwing stuff out there that's been on my mind.

[Heiko Alkema]

I've gone ahead and removed all prices from the shop so that characters can be outfitted however players feel fit.

Stephen Colly

I don't see any reason to change anything to do with non-combat roleplay, with maybe the exception of the old "15-line" limit, instead making it a more easily tracked word or character count.

So third person, past-tense would continue to be the norm.

@friedrich700

I think that's where the thought was already heading on the equipment front?

As for the unit thing, the only thing holding me back from just agreeing carte-blanche is I really want there to be some kind of incentive to work together closely. While I don't necessarily want the existing player-created units to reign supreme forever, I want to see multi-player units always be a centerpiece with interesting rivalries within and without themselves instead of just single character rivalries.

[PuNk! ™]

@friedrich700 <-- I like this linky-mah-bob Heiko!

Pretty much going to be bouncing off what Heiko just mentioned, but yeah, I think it's probably fair to keep most assets in the shop accessible straight away. Rather than restricting players to a set load-out or set pieces of equipment, because in hindsight, that wouldn't be much better than having the CP restrictions we once had... I'm looking to end that and give members here the chance to do things they weren't once before able to do.

But yeah, the deadlier and more complex pieces of armoury and equipment will remain quarantined to those whom we deem both experienced and capable of using it wisely. Plus it's an incentive to work hard, play hard on this site and earn the right to use the better equipment on offer. Y'know.

Heiko Alkema
Awesome dude, glad you've dealt with the CP side of things.
We just need to know what pieces we're definitely going to "tier-up" and refrain from accessibility. I'm yet to look at the shop in great detail since I left, so I'm a little unfamiliar with what we have in stock precisely since you revamped the shop, but if you think we need more than one tier, we could have two or three tiers.

So for instance; someone earns the right to use an MG42 Machinegun for example - yet the King Tiger is unlocked in the same tier. Could cause problems? So we could have different tiers if deems necessary or category tiers if that's any better. Either way, I'm sure the list won't be long in regards to what's restricted.

As soon as the list is compiled between us, I can write up a detailed (and simple) thread outlining the changes and the tier system. Then! We can move on to the easier tasks, which shouldn't be too difficult. As always, the shop is the meanest part of any change on this bloody site.

[Mac Bargett]

Perhaps instead of a tier, we could give each weapon a score based on how common and lethal it is, standard issue rifles would be like a 1 and Jet fighters would be at the top. And then when a battle is opened, it gets it's own score, and each side tries to match it. One side brings a tank, the other side brings a bazooka and a handful of anti tank grenades. One side is an officer, so gets more men, the other gets an MG. And so on.