Suggestion Replacing PVP with CRP for Big Groups

Ambrose

Member
Heya been thinking and talking with friends who shared similar thoughts to the whole Combat defaults to PVP if there are 12 or over people and wanted to gather some thoughts on a potential idea that would be true to the style of Stats and the characters who have those stats.

So how it currently stands in the rules for Combat on F&F Combat is normally CRP unless there are 12+ people present then it defaults to PVP

This alone is not very true of the player's characters who are in the fight and who have their lives at stake. To add on from that, PVP is very very unfair to do as it relies not on the character you've built or their own abilities but on you (The Player), the Player's own skill in pvp, their connection to the server, the limitations of their hardware and the weight system.

So what I propose and want feedback on is a system in place or a general set of rules that are easy to follow and to read so we can just leave fighting in big groups to chance. I know fighting can take forever and one of the major if not the only reason PVP is used for big groups is because of time.

Here is how it would work as a general concept:

If there are 12+ people involved in the fight, the parties would be split into 2 groups (Attackers and Defenders like normal) but each group would only have a cap of 6 people per Attackers and Defenders. Those who wished to join out of the two groups would roll d100 much like the Initiative to determine who would fill those 6 slots. Once slots are filled, combat would just be like any other combat.

In conclusion, the finer details don't very well matter as of right now and can be more defined if this is something that can be possible but I just wanted to try and suggest the basic conception of this possibility as I wholeheartedly believe while this may be slower, this would make things relatively fair and honest compared to defaulting to PVP.

I await all of your feedback.

*****If people all agree to settle in PVP then you can and if you want to raise the cap on the number of people in the CRP then you could if everyone agreed but it would be the new default.
 
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I definitely like the ideas, though I would propose a system of elective participation, so that the two groups can choose their "champions" to represent them in the fight. It's as you said though, the finer details aren't the point, the point is the broader idea of more fair rules of engagement and outcomes.
 
The suggestion doesn't change anything we have already established in the rules, it simply states that PvP won't be default with 12+ but instead opts to do a 12 player max - leaving plenty of participants to not be able to take part in the fighting. Plus, forcing CRP could just aswell be seen as unfair to players who have less CRP focussed characters, or lack the time to act in massive CRP battles, same as that you see PvP as unfair since people lack the OOC skill or hardware to do that sometimes.
 
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Nice idea, 10 hour RPbattle lets go! I have nothing else to do anyways.
"Oh no,. Franky has to eat lets all wait a hour till he is back. Oh shit my laptop is overheating bec this thrilling battle. Wait 5 min my mother is calling me. Oi Billy it's your turn just do something already. Someone passed out cuz he was nearly killed by a combat roll, call the medics fast. Where is staff i have a complaint for this battle, see you on the forums scrub. Wouw they are so lucky we will get them next time boys. Pause the battle someone is stealing my horse get him! Rody stop thinking so much nust roll ffs!"
Lets be honest rp group battle will be a big shot show. Its okay to suck in pvp just join orcs and become my meat shield. Ill shit on the scrubs for you!
 
The suggestion doesn't change anything we have already established in the rules, it simply states that PvP won't be default with 12+ but instead opts to do a 12 player max - leaving plenty of participants to not be able to take part in the fighting. Plus, forcing CRP could just aswell be seen as unfair to players who have less CRP focussed characters, or lack the time to act in massive CRP battles, same as that you see PvP as unfair since people lack the OOC skill or hardware to do that sometimes.

For the unfairness section, I agree that both PVP and CRP pose different problems and it is difficult to try and find a middle ground or the perfect solution to make it equally fair and balanced but I do honestly believe CRP has more fairness to it rather than PVP. Try considering some of the following which I'll address in more detail.

Big Issues making PVP just one-sided:
1. The Weight System
With how the weight is done on F&F not everyone can comfortably carry weapons and full armor without suffering from debuffs which makes it impossible to deal any sort of PVP damage and makes you very slow. It would be unreasonable to have every single person just have a PVP kit on hand at all times especially when other items take up weight as well such as Minecraft potions or 'rp drinks'. There are also things you can very much do currently to abuse such a system as it is known if you go past your weight limit you gain two debuffs, slowness and like weakness or something which makes you unable to do any PVP or PVE damage. You can imagine how well that would go.

2. Bigger Group Wins
While I know it could be argued the same for CRP but the biggest difference is that if you were to say have 11 people vs about 6 or 7 there would be little to no chance to even be able to win not taking into account the OOC influences with PVP that greatly decides who wins and loses. When you compare it to CRP it is much more likely to have the smaller group has a shot at winning or even being able to escape. With this in mind, you can very easily strongarm the situation to your favor by having a way bigger amount of people and always getting your way. At least with CRP, you can't as easily do it since there are stats and even magic at play which doesn't play into account in PVP one bit. While people's characters might not be geared toward CRP as you have mentioned, at the end of the day it is better to let RNG decide the outcome since no one has any control over what you roll regardless if your character isn't focused towards CRP. Your characters all have stats witch don't massively play a part aside from giving you a +3 at most to see if your defense or your attacks land more often.

3. OOC influences
With PVP, these influences have a much greater effect and weight than anything CRP could offer. You can change CRP to make it more fair and balanced and PVP well... you don't really have much in ways of changing it to be more balanced, you can't make someone's connection/hardware better. The effect OOC influences have on PVP will always make it unbalanced.

For the main elephant in the room:
CRP battles take a good amount of time to do, it is one of the biggest points against this but I'm sure there are ways to make it shorter. However that being said, with the current rules you can have a CRP battle with up to 11 people which I would imagine still takes a sizeable chunk of time.

Suggestions to help with CRP Time in general:

For making CRP shorter in large battles we could try lowering a set amount of health each player has for example which would certainly still provide a fair engagement and outcome.

Another less desirable but doable way to make CRP fights quicker with large groups, we could potentially break up into smaller groups that are as even as they could be which would be deciding on the number of people present, while there are obvious flaws with this suggestion I'm sure there is a reasonable way to resolve them. For example, you could have the two remaining people on both sides engage in a final brawl as it would make sense.

There could also be a rule or stipulation for big battles where a emote and roll has to be done within a reasonable/certain amount of time before you are essentially skipped. I can understand when people don't have enough time to fight things out and you should focus IRL more than a video game but you can just as easily have to go AFK in the middle of a PVP fight due to circumstances outside of your control.

One last thing I can think of personally is to just have a majority vote on either CRP or PVP but even that has its own issues.

Thank you for providing some feedback and thoughts.
 
Nice idea, 10 hour RPbattle lets go! I have nothing else to do anyways.
"Oh no,. Franky has to eat lets all wait a hour till he is back. Oh shit my laptop is overheating bec this thrilling battle. Wait 5 min my mother is calling me. Oi Billy it's your turn just do something already. Someone passed out cuz he was nearly killed by a combat roll, call the medics fast. Where is staff i have a complaint for this battle, see you on the forums scrub. Wouw they are so lucky we will get them next time boys. Pause the battle someone is stealing my horse get him! Rody stop thinking so much nust roll ffs!"
Lets be honest rp group battle will be a big shot show. Its okay to suck in pvp just join orcs and become my meat shield. Ill shit on the scrubs for you!
"It's okay to suck in pvp just join orcs and become my meat shield. I'll shit on the scrubs for you!"

1. I don't wanna be forced to make a character I don't wanna play and 2. That mentality is exactly why I hate and view PVP as unfair as it stands out to be.

Regardless thank you for your feedback.
 
I personally like pvp precisely because it requires skill and you actually have true influence over the outcome, unlike CRP where quite literally you're just rolling a dice on whether you die or not.

With CRP, ignoring stats for a moment, the bigger group will win, plain and simple. There will be instances of bigger groups losing due to bad luck, but mathematically speaking eventually the bigger group will simply be more victorious than the smaller one. This is in stark constrast to pvp where a skilled yet small group can fend off a much larger but badly trained army.

Now as for stats, they're merely dependent on who you are (race) and what choices you made when creating the character. For combat just get an orc and max out strength, then you will be victorious. Stats do not truly reflect who your character is, nor do they reflect any kind of training.

A mechanic that requires player skill is for me much more engaging than anything else.
 
I personally like pvp precisely because it requires skill and you actually have true influence over the outcome, unlike CRP where quite literally you're just rolling a dice on whether you die or not.
I am of the opposite belief, regardless if I'm good at PVP or not I think overall it ruins the flow of rp and any events I might be apart of with PVP because I enjoy the DND style more. I value RP more than I do PVP which I consider 100% to be OOCLY driven as stated above.

With CRP, ignoring stats for a moment, the bigger group will win, plain and simple. There will be instances of bigger groups losing due to bad luck, but mathmatically speaking eventually the bigger group will simply be more victorious than the smaller one. This is in stark constrast to pvp where a skilled yet small group can fend off a much larger but badly trained army.
While I can understand and agree to an extent from my experiences of PVP with CRP it could be on a more even playing field in my mind as it's more out of your control in a sense and at least it doesn't mess, interrupt, and disregard any RP flow. You have the chance to get away much easier in CRP than in PVP IMO


Now as for stats, they're merely dependent on who you are (race) and what choices you made when creating the character. For combat just get an orc and max out strength, then you will be victorious. Stats do not truly reflect who your character is, nor do they reflect any kind of training.
If stats don't truly reflect who your character is then what's the main point in really having them? I don't really know about other people but I consider my stats for my character and apply them accordingly regardless of what would be better to do combat with.

A mechanic that requires player skill is for me much more engaging than anything else.
Understandable, why can't we just have wars, raids, and such alike be PVP but character combat be CRP default but you are able to turn it to PVP if everyone wants it?
 
I think the rule we have right now is fine. All it may need is some additional rules to ensure the PVP default cannot be abused to deny a fight by coming in PVP default numbers when causing trouble.
Agree to disagree but it is good to hear that is at least being changed. I honestly think the rp that transpired beforehand shouldn't be valid since you are actually adding rules for it as a result but I'm not gonna argue with you on it, just gonna express my feelings.
 
Honestly, I'm also fine with the current ruling. The chaos that pvp brings perfectly represents what would happen on an ic battlefield of that scale. All the things a character learned in battle are in regards to one versus one or just in general focused battles. While these massive battles don't offer that environment but a much more chaotic and fast paced environment, befitting the pvp style. I am personally of opinion that any battle with 10+ people already calls for pvp but I digress on that point.
 
The way the server has things is a great way to handle it for the sake of speed and speed alone (as it does suck you can't do magic in pvp), and Arkhun's solution may be the simplest in order to avoid that rule being abused.

I am also going to play a little bit of devil's advocate here just to put all ideas on the table.

How could large scale CRP fights be done in a quick and effective manner?

I would suggest a method I call "Rapid Combat". Here is an example of the rules I'd suggest around such, and how a scenario might play out.

When conflict is initiated between larger groups (6+ people total), combat switches from normal CRP to Rapid Combat.

- The fighting groups are split into fighting segments of 2 vs 2 each, or 2 vs 1 in the event a fight is not even in population on both sides.
- Initiative is rolled between all parties, and combat starts, following the order that each player falls in.
- Emotes are to be shortened to "X attacks Z" or "Billy attacks Sarah" style emotes so that logs remain clear and the time combat takes is minimized.
- When combat is concluded in a group, the winner gets 1 point. This applies to the total that is gathered at the end of the group combat.
- If there are more on one side than another, any victories gained by the side with less individuals then goes through another fight on the same HP until all individuals have been involved and all points are tallied.
- Once someone reaches 0HP, they are out of the fight. If no one is left to fight, then any who have not yet fought gain a victory point.
- If one side has more points than the other at the end of the combat, they "win" and can decide what they do with the side that lost.
- If both sides have the same amount of points, it is considered a tie and both sides are required to retreat.

Scenario:
11 orcs attack a caravan of 6 humans. The fight breaks up into these groups:

A] 2v2
B] 2v2
C] 2v2
D] 2v0
E] 2v0
F] 1v0

Let's say that 2 groups of humans won with 6hp each vs the orcs in 2 out of 3 fights. The humans have 2 points, and the orcs 1 point.

A] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
B] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
C] 2v2 = Orcs 1 Point
D] 2v0
E] 2v0
F] 1v0

The humans still standing now go to fight the next two 2v2s in line. They still have 6hp at the start of this fight, and do not heal anything. In this fight, the humans lose one, but one human narrowly survives and beats the second group while on 3hp left, resulting in the below:

A] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
B] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
C] 2v2 = Orcs 1 Point

D] 2v2 = Orcs 1 Point
E] 2v2 = Humans 1 Point
F] 1v0

The Humans now have a total of 3 points and the Orcs have 2. The fight continues with the last combat; a 1v1 between the remaining human who has 3hp, and the last full hp orc. The human loses finally after being on such a hard lucky streak (yall know this happens lol), and the Orcs get 3 points total.

A] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
B] 2v2 = Human 1 Point
C] 2v2 = Orcs 1 Point

D] 2v2 = Orcs 1 Point
E] 2v2 = Humans 1 Point
F] 1v1 = Orcs 1 Point

Total: 3 Points Human, 3 Points Orc

Due to both sides having the same number of points, it counts as a tie, and they both withdraw. Nothing happens to either side, and players can have scars and the like as they wish.
 
If you look at it, as previously said by few others;
A bigger group, would mathematically win in a CRP situation. Yet in a PVP situation, depending on the skills of the smaller group, their chances would heighten drastically for a victory.

I think the current ruling is fine. It’s also a very ‘standard’ rule for a few other MCRPs, and they’ve had no issues so far, so why change something that works.
 
I suppose I'm fairly opposed to PVP on principle since it can become an accessibility issue in its own right. I had a pc that used to get 10 fps lowest settings for most of my life, and anything pvp occurred id basically just be dead weight. It also heavily benefits people that have lower ping- some people consistently get 250 ping, while others get 11. So they just don't get to decide things in large-scale conflicts at all? That's not even mentioning places like Aedelsburg that melt FPS, or people who might have physical disabilities. I can see an argument for it in /wars/, but when it comes to just random fights that occur, there would be nothing more frustrating to me in the world than losing my character because my Minecraft stopped responding for 5 seconds in a pvp fight. And while you can't directly PK from that- you could have your character imprisoned and then PK'd by execution afterwards. While it may be /faster/ it does legitimately exclude some people that /can't/ do pvp due to a variety of factors OOCly. I mean we /are/ an rp server, I think it would be best to minimize PVP wherever possible.

I think the group system would be a good proposal by keitara could be a good way of doing it, or other possible alternatives, but I think reducing PVP wherever possible is usually for the best.
 
I think on top of the class consciousness (underpriveleged people without the resources to have a pc that can run minecraft optimally during a 30 person pvp encounter on a highly detailed map) people also fail to consider OOCly disabled people being involved in important deciding events, i don't think CRP is ideal, but I think that's largely because I feel that the system is underdeveloped rather than because PVP is a better system
 
Plus, forcing CRP could just aswell be seen as unfair to players who have less CRP focussed characters.
This argument would work if the server made use of honor combat.
It doesn't.

Talbot, who has won tournaments against royal bodyguards and his own brother, a tournament champion fighter himself; has a roughly equal chance in a fight against a 16 year old halfling girl. Because the server uses rolls and only rolls.
 
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