INFwar vs ILCR Stratleague

Forgive me if this has been debated in the recent past, but Alpha and I were having a fairly lively debate on the PhD boards and I thought I might open it for general discussion. I'd be interested in seeing what that might be anyway... so here is my latest ramblings on the subject.


Prologue: I won't post alpha's exact post without his permission, but the argument was basically this: ILCR's current strat league is just the first step to test the concept, with plans for more involved features later; Infwar's participation level was rumored to be somewhere on the low to moderate side; Infwar was probably having to fix and tweak its system; and alpha couldn't really verify any of that since he wasn't following infwar that closely. (ok ok, maybe the last one wasn't fair... grin)

Not so quick editorial: As for myself, I haven't participated in infwar yet, so I can't really speak for how well things actually work in practice. However, from what I've seen of the website the infwar team has the right concept of what a strat league should be, and some substantual infrastructure already in place. I won't mention that I've always wanted someone to make a strategy-subgame based on an action game since early 1997... I always thought I'd just have to do it myself, but never had the time-- oh wait, I guess I just did mention it. But, I don't care who's doing it... I am glad to see it being done. I just want it done right, and I think Infwar has the right idea.


Ok, enough blabbering... to the debate!

(note, ICLR and all permutations thereof refer to "that infiltration league thing". I'm just masking my inability to get the C and the L in the right spots. )

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clip.... some thinly veiled threat in response to alphas not so thinly veiled threat...
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I hear what you're saying. But I think you'll agree that there's no point in having competing strategy leagues as it will only serve to dilute the player base... which isn't all that saturated at the moment.

While RLCI is busy testing the concept, infwar has gone and already created the basic infrastructure for what it would take to make something like this work. IRLC has the branding, since they were the first or whatever, so participation is better for them... but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the superior product. In fact their standard league leaves much to be desired if I interpret posts from last season correctly ( I stopped playing when matches got to the 2 hour mark... I don't know how I would cope with 5 hour games)

Its obvious (to me anyway) that creating the infrastructure for this would take a considerable amount of work, which as you said is why IRCL didn't want to jump into it. However, infwar appears on the outside to already have a good foundation for building a pretty interesting strategy subgame. For ICRL to realize that they want to go ahead and do more than play INF-risk (without the cards or country reinforcements) and then go on to basically recreate a lot of what infwar already has, would on the whole be a great waste of time and resources. I'm sure infwar isn't perfect and they're still in the process of developing it... but at least they have something to tweak.

So, in short, I think it might be beneficial for LRCI to consider giving infwar the "CRIL" branding stamp of approval, and let them (infwar) run the strategy league under their (ILCR) banner. It seems to me to be the best alternative. You would have the participation level of the current LCRI, and a strategy subgame that has some meat to it. I'm not sure the level of development that IRLC would put into it, but I think you'll agree that a collaborative effort would produce an overall better end result than competing games. Or at least thats my take on it.

I just don't want to see league egos get in the way of what could be a really good thing.

aus.

Ah, discussion...

Nice to see some bantering on the topic...

Yes, it takes real skill to combine the letters I L C and R in all the permutations without actually using the correct combination by accident. Thanks for noticing.

Just a few hopefully quick (yeah, right...) points:

Competition. I have to disagree that competition is a good in this particular situation. While I can't say that competition between ILCR strat league and INFwar is precisely a zero-sum game (since it is possible for someone to play both) I think it is approximately one. When talking about leagues of this sort, you have a finite player base and all the players are constrained by time. You will find very few squads who can compete successfully in more than 2 leagues simultaneously. Most well known squads are in the original ILCR league. So usually the choice between INFwar and ILCR stratleague will be a mutually exclusive one. One will win and one will lose. I think this is backed up somewhat by Ghost's comment about dropping from Infwar. Its just too hard to play 3 leagues at once seriously. I think you'll agree that the current player base is somewhat limited right now and having it spread over multiple leagues will result in lower participation levels in each league.

So lets say that ILCR does throw in some of the bells and whistles that INFwar is working on, as Alpha postulates. We'll have a situation where two teams have individually spent time and energy on creating what basically is the same thing. Competition between the two will divide whats left of the player base and you'll get either one league with good participation and the other one with low participation or perhaps they'll both simply split the player base.

This is bad for a couple of reasons. First, the energy spent by one team recreating what the other team has done will produce two similar products, but these two products would be substantually less impressive than if the two teams collaborated and helped each other develop one system. Its kind of like the GNOME vs KDE issue in linux. Secondly, the allure for match competition really boils down to finding out who the "best" is. Which is more appealing... being the best out of the 3 squads who participate in your league or being the best out of all the infiltration squads? The answer seems obvious to me...

Since there was some discussion on the merits of ILCR's strategy in the strategy league... here's a little something I posted on the PhD board on that topic...

2) Strategy
I never said that the ILCR stratleague had NO strategy in it. I think my analogies to INF-Risk (without reinforcements or cards) and tic-tac-toe were rather close. You basically pick who attacks where and then roll the dice. I agree that there are some interesting dynamics, such as strengths and weaknesses of clans and maps. (yes I have read the essays, incidentally) But overall, its just how can I get to the enemies capital with the least amount of pain. What separates a marginal victory from a complete stomping? The outcome is the same for both. Why is one territory more important than another? Mainly because of position... how close it is to your capital or your enemies capital or whether it cuts off some of your enemies forces. Does holding more territory offer you any benefits except more territory for your enemy to take before reaching your capital, or getting you closer to take someone elses capital (or cutting someone off, once again)?

There can be strategy in simplistic games, such as in othello, but there could be much more in an INF strategy league. I want something that allows you to move forces around on the map so that position is something other than just the territory you control. Even something that allows you to create squads of individual players and move them around (though I admit that enforcing that would be difficult... how would you verify joe blow is really joe blow.) I'd like it so that holding more territory offers you more than just positional benefits. I'd like it so that you'd have to eventually build up your arsenal instead of coming out full force with M203's, HK's and the like on the first attack/defense. I'd like to see strategical tradeoffs such as a tradeoff between how many people you have in your army and how well armed they are. I'd like to see a "player market" where the players you employ can set their wages depending on how good they think they are, and countries can compete with other countires for players depending on how good they think the players are (something like the mercenary system in INFwar).

Think of the strategical possibilities that could open up. Maybe hiring one Auspex at $15k is more effective than 3 yahwehs at 6k each. Kidding of course... I would be worth at least 4...

If you have ever played Jagged Alliance 2, then something along those lines is what I'd like to see. Its a pipe dream, but I think Infwar has the best chance of pulling it off right now.

cough. Free publicity*... you're welcome.


Man, I'm all for a larger player base... suitably large anyway. I don't want a gay cheating CS s'kiddie large player base... but yeah, I'd like more than 5 servers to be full in the server browser.
(its been a while, so if its gone up to 8 since then forgive me... I am also intentionally underexaggerating )

Still, you have to admit that compared to CS or Action Quake in its hayday, the INF player base is a fraction in comparison.

But I do hope the player base increases... who knows what will happen. Just because the player base hasn't exploded into CS proportions in 2.85... 2.81... 2.8... 2.71... 2.7... it could happen.

As much as I'd like to hope for an overnight explosion with 2.86, gentlemen, we have to admit that INF is a type of niche mod. A very good one, and one that is willing to sacrifice mass appeal for realism... which is the reason we all like it, right? CS and Action tend to throw in more of the mass appeal things, some of which, admittedly, I miss. Akimbos and jumpkicks... I wouldn't mind INF with akimbos and jumpkicks. Wait, no... BAD... GET AWAY FROM ME MASS APPEAL APPEALS!... Um, this is going nowhere. You get the point.

aus.

* If you liked this "free trial publicity" thread, then please send an email to auspex@phragdoctors.net with your bank account number, any bank passwords, along with your major credit card number, expiration, billing address, and thumbprint. An appropriate amount will be deducted for each additional non-free publicity thread.