Player above server rules?

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by xdrcfrx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

if it were just about the competition, people would have found more interesting ways to compete for things than zerging through trash in ToV, or footracing for FTE for every.single.mob. There's lots of stuff where, with just a little bit of thought, some actual creative competition could be undertaken. Key to this would be, like the golem race agreement, the winner taking most but not all of the winnings. Lots of things people could try that would be fun, that would allow for a variety of different modes of competition, that would open content up for more players, and yes that would distribute pixels differently than under the current status quo.

I don't think you'd see a ton of interest in such a change in dynamic from many because they'd rather take a chance at winning everything in a zero-sum game, than risk losing out on potential pixels that would to to a runner up. And/or many prefer the thrill of denying their rivals accomplishing anything (which, in fairness, would cut against the argument that it's really about the pixels!)

The guys who harp so hard on competition don't actually care strictly just about loot, its true. When they say competition a lot of readers don't realize (and some of them might not be conveying it) that the important part is who the loser is as much as who won.

So like if FR/AG gets a Vulak its true that for many of the old timers/ex-AM the loot from Vulak takes a backseat to making Riot the losers. That's the real end goal of the competition.

If they can beat their arch enemy Riot then those people on the other side that Twochain was just describing, they waited all week, then all the NToV windows in the cycle, just to watch their chances of a Vulak drop snatched away for another week. AND...if their competition is strong enough, they have no actual assurance that their guild will prevail again next week.

So those things create real stakes in the game and real emotions over the limited endgame resources. It creates an environment where, as we've famously heard so much on RnF, you can deny your enemies pixels. The denial in a high stakes world is more important than the racing or who won it or even the coveted loots. Although yes of course they are also quite loot hungry too.

While I personally agree with you about the golem agreement, simply slapping a race onto a soft rotation like that doesn't provide that high stakes game of "deny the enemy" anymore so those dudes are never going to go for it on a larger scale. It only made it to reality because of the low overall value you get from golem loots most of the time vs. time invested in tracking and racing for them. It was an easy choice for every guild, but even so we now see Freedom would rather pull out of it and play spoiler. Because they don't do that zero-sum game.

The more you make agreements and rotations the more your enemy can shrug it off and say well better luck next time. Aegis is never going to win the first golem racing AG or Riot on a random Saturday at noon. But the next slot is a different opponent, maybe the spawn lines up better, maybe you have more people, and if nothing else maybe you get better loot if you got no epic off this one. You leave feeling like you at least you did win something and have more to look forward to instead of leaving feeling like a loser, and that its not what the guys insisting on competition are interested in seeing happen.