WAR SEASON II: Discussion

[Ash K.]

However the same thing be said for URPG Teams. Each time you guys assemble a team no matter what no other team even comes close to earning those points.

I have to respectfully disagree with this point. Looking at the breakdown from last year, here's all points earned for URPG (other than judging):

Awesome: 12
Yoga Bears: 5
Trainer: 4
Pilates: 4

URPG-centric teams are in bold.

[PV]

Meanwhile at the JMC, we're planning Alligator Aerial Assaults.

[Felly]

@Felly, I certainly get that I don't need to be on the same team as the people I like in order to do fun WAR things with them. This is also my 15th or so WAR, so I've had a lot of time to develop that wisdom. Not everyone is that patient or understanding. People generally treat their team as their secret club. Historically, people who have been forced into a team other than the one they wanted (through a draft or other means) usually didn't participate or really have any fun and have cited either a lack of friends on their team or a lack of caring about the team itself as a reason.

I can kind of understand this, but I'm mostly not wrapping my head around this. No offense to you or anyone, but I feel like that's a really stupid reason to have so much emphasis on having your friends on your team. I get people really want to play with their friends, but aren't they also playing with their friends by not being on the same team as people too? Can't you make new friends by not playing on the same team as your old ones? I get friendship is important, but you should be able to make new friends too, not create small cliques and play with the same people over and over again.

It is and has ALWAYS been a popularity contest.

Okay, this. This right here makes me feel really excluded. I'm going to be upfront and say that I'm not that active on PXR. I'll come here once every few months and binge post, but other than that, the extent of my PXR activity is the URPG and WAR, and occasionally I'll say something in the PXR Skype chats I'm in. If there's one thing I really loathe about anything, it's popularity contests. To say that WAR is a popularity contest makes me not want to participate because now I feel as if I'm going to be excluded. I'm not exactly well known on here except by the URPG members, so I wouldn't easily be recruited by any of the other teams that are out there. I don't really have any friends on PXR because I'm not really here. My only source of being asked to join a team would be URPG members because they're the only ones that really know my skills and really know me. Maybe if I'm lucky, a non-URPG member will contact me and say "hey, join my team!!!" but I wouldn't hold out for it unless I posted in the Free Agent thread. I told myself that if Yoga Bears didn't come back for this year's WAR, I was going to look at my options closer to the start of the event and pick a team then; I had a few teams I was set on not choosing for my own reasons, which I won't list here so as not to offend anyone or upset anyone, but I was going to join a team and probably one with few URPG people. In URPG, we can't all be lumped onto one team or it doesn't work with our system.

Carrying on from that fact, if you throw all of the graphic artists on Team Trainer and all of the writers onto Team Magma, then only Team Trainer can score those points for graphic art and only Team Magma can score points for writing. This doesn't seem to be the case, but the scenario fits here because when you have a large concentration of a specific skill on a team, say a bunch of graphic artists or a bunch of writers, you're excluding other teams from earning those points.

WAR should not be a popularity contest. The fact that it is and has been turns me off completely and makes me feel extremely excluded, and it just sounds disgusting. Just because I'm not in the "in crowd" doesn't mean I should be excluded. I'm not in grade school anymore, I shouldn't have to be trying to fit in on a Pokemon forum and the fact that WAR is and has been a popularity contest makes it seem like I have to fit in or I'm just crap out of luck. This shouldn't be about recruitment or who can get the most people on a team and how many people you can get or how popular you are on a Pokemon forum, it should be about having fun and being able to play with your friends while also having some sort of balance to the system so that every team and every member has a fair shot at earning points and leading their team to victory.

[Fawkes.]

can't we just leave this imbalance issue at the door for this war and sort it out for next war.

I WANNA SEE SMACK TALK NOT FLAK TALK

ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF YOGA BEAR TACTICS VS MAGMA AND PHOENIX BATTALION

[PV]

It's good, but there's no flying alligators.

Note to JMC members: You must provide your own alligator

[Dash]

Okay, so even though this is could be two posts, i'm gonna clump it together. I'm not trying to start any arguments here, I just want to try and settle the problems arisen from here, or explain out some parts and hopefully have it make sense. First though, I would really like to talk to you about the issues you've posted @Felly.

First things first, I just want to say my views on the friends part. I'm neutral on the opinion for this, and I can understand where you get upset, but teams are built on friendships, and are made to make friendships I believe also. So, if one person joins a team, and they invite a friend, it's up to that friend to join. If they do, they might ask another friend, and the path continues. We can't fix this, and we can't limit either. But for those of you who go out and join other teams to try and meet new people, you're the ones that want to for competition or to meet new people, and that's fine. And if you want to be with your friends, that's fine too. We shouldn't have huge conflicts where our friendships are to the point of breaking our necks practically. You just can't change people in that manner.

Now, moving on from that tidbit, I can say that you wanting to be active in one rpg is fine even if you are mainly around for WAR. We aren't -completely- asking you to be permanently active and expect it out of you completely in my opinion, the way I see it is "Wow, I enjoyed this a lot, maybe I should stick around / possibly tell some friends!" That's what I'm personally looking for, and I can't say so for the other admins or WAR leaders, it's just my view on it. However, I can say that it's not a popularity contest. That's like saying that a hammer is a screwdriver and the same way around. There's just nothing that we can really compare. As brought up before, yes, large teams are a very bad thing, but we're trying to fix it. We brought up the terms on the team's being their veteran and new members and the such, so I'm sure the jist of it has been taken care of for anything I could say. You have your own rights to choose your team, and you choosing Yoga Bears is your choice, and if you're glad with that you should be. The rest of us will be glad too. And it's completely understandable for URPG to have their own teams, as you're pretty much a living forum on it's own that's being taken care of us by PXR and others. The system does not work like that, and yes you guys participate in those things. We brought up friendships before, and if most of them are in URPG, you should be allowed to be with your friends, and no one wants to limit that if possible.

Moving onto the next fact, carrying from that point, I have noticed this problem before and I know it's been fixed before, but honestly, the thing about that is it counteracts itself. If a team doesn't get all the points from graphics arts but the other team does, and instead they get all the points from writing, it's still a fairly even trade-off, which is why having your talents be spread out is encouraged and should be brought up. However, if a team is too much of a dominating force for one competition where every week it's controlling a competition, I can assure you that'll we do our best to take care of it, whether it be writing, art, URPG, or anything of the sort.

To address all of these issues, I can say that we are doing our complete best to make sure it's not a complete popularity contest, and trying to figure out an incentives for you guys who aren't in that range of 15+ people, and we want to fix it. We're going over many situations that could work and not work at the fastest pace to assure everyone can enjoy WAR, because as you said, WAR is for enjoyment. And nobody should ever have to be turned away from enjoyment. Which is why we're changing the system to be as balanced as possible for all.

Don't take this as attacking or arguing at all Felly, because I agree with you, and I plus others working on this event want to make it what everyone wants. It's just hard to do without flames spitting out sometimes, and that's really just how I suppose you could see things go in life. We're trying our damn hardest, I assure you ^~^

---

Phew, now that that's over, I have something else to post.

To go along with Harry, I'm going to come over here and apologize for everything that'sgone on for the year. We know the concerns for team sizes, and we've seen everybody go on about it and bring up ideas, which we like. The negativity though, between all, is something we have to apologize to, whether from us or others. We don't want to insult anyone based on what they say or do, and we don't want it to seem as we never took any of this seriously. When issues like this arise in a time where any confusion is like a spreading wildfire, it's hard to find the best way to proceed with this. Through a lack of communication and overall misunderstanding, it's been a rough patch. I can say that we're human beings, we screw up, we do mishaps, and it's natural. But we have to apologize for our misgrievances too.

Drama is not something we tried to cause. Drama is not something we wanted at all during this time. The WAR is supposed to be a fun, active time, where we can show off the skills off our members and meet new ones too, and learn the best out of us all. We want you to participate in WAR if you have the interest in so, and no one should be alienated out for what we say or just how others go along with this. Although we can't fix all the mistakes we've already made this year, we already have a plan next year to get an open discussion so we can know EVERYONE'S opinion beforehand, and build the best framework for this even that to better the experience.

In response to the smaller teams, we hear you, and we want you to be successful. We're taking the liberty now, from the staff and war leaders, to try and recruit members for YOUR team, no matter what the theme is. We don't want you to lose on numbers, and we want you to have as much people as the other teams. We will be assigning certain members to help you with your recruitment aid, which will be done as soon as possible.

For one last hoorah, please continue your discussion all, and please keep making suggestions. We can't do what others want if we don't know, so that's why we ask. If you have any ideas you've seen you want to expand on and help us get a better touch with, please feel free to do so so we can assimilate it better.

Just keep going everyone, and we hope you can accept any miscommunication and hope you all do enjoy this time of year. Hope to see the great ideas again too :)

-Lightning Dash and the other PXR Staff

[Neo Emolga]

Eh, I'd like to apologize for the "handout" comment I said earlier, I didn't think people would take offense to that. I deleted that post and didn't mean for it to cause more trouble, but if it caused anyone to be upset about it, I didn't mean for that to happen.

But yeah, please guys, let's just put this to rest, it's been hard on too many people. This thing's supposed to be fun, not something to fight like this over.

[Caite-chan]

How about we just quit worry about everything and just HAVE FUN! We are all making this WAY harder than it really needs to be. We never had this much problem that I can recall with any of our other WAR's. New people joining are going to see this and get discouraged and not want to participate. Quit worrying about every little detail and just go with it. The most you'll get out of this is a badge for your profile nothing more. You people act like we're playing for money and we're not. Who cares how many people a teams have or one team getting all the points in a section. JUST PLAY AND HAVE FUN!

[SassySnivy]

Calm down, calm down. I was only offering a quick-fix suggestion for WAR this year. =_=

[Neo Emolga]

Thank you, Caite, because I really don't think overcomplicating this is going to help.

It's just a forum game, guys, there's not even cash or prizes involved (and even if there were, I still would try to just keep it simple and casual). Have fun, be relaxed and chill, and just enjoy it, no worries. If we impose too many rules, regulations, parameters, and conditions, it's way more work than fun.

So yeah, let's switch gears and focus on another discussion topic. Would people be interested in WAR special events that last for only one week but would still count for points? We could do something like trivia or some scavenger hunt thing similar to that egg hunt that was done for Easter. I think little extras like that would be neat.