Recently, we proposed a set of rules for Bloodlines War Dominion bases that would apply to any bases that wished to be a part of the public stats on the website. The purpose of this was to attempt to make the stats meaningful by making sure that all of the ranked bases were playing by a minimum basic set of standards. We released a poll that asked players for feedback on these rules. The rules included guidelines for using land controls (bans) for protecting a base. We had suggested a system where players would be able to mark bases as not complying with the final global rules, and then could be inspected by base inspectors that would manage which bases can be in the public stats.
The problem at the root of this effort is the conflict between the flexibility and control that Second Life offers, and the desire to have many bases meaningfully compete with each other in a global ranking. We have come to the conclusion that the level of restriction we would have to put in place in order to put ranked bases on equal footing would be too limiting of the freedom you currently have with setting up bases, and that we would not be able to adequately enforce these restrictions anyway. Also, we would not be able to investigate and resolve disputes over local bans. This means that you could defend your base using individual bans (as many people have done), and there really isn’t anything we can do about it.
What this means is that we will not be able to have a truly meaningful global ranking that compares Dominion bases to each other. So, there will be some changes with the stats displayed on war.slbloodlines.com. The global Strongholds ranking has been removed, and instead, durations that the bases were held by various armies has been moved to the individual Dominion pages. Bases will no longer be competing against each other for how long they can be held by a specific army, but instead, two armies can compete against each other to capture the same base and see how long each of them can hold it for. The system will effectively consider all bases to be privately held and managed by local rules. To put it another way, each base will have its own individual stats that you can compete for. The Strongholds list has been replaced by the ‘Battlezones’ list, representing the most popular bases. Bases that are set up to be impossible to take probably won’t be near the top of this list. As the system currently stands, it provides incentives to make your base as difficult to take as possible. We believe the new system will give armies incentives to work together to set up bases and local rules that are fair and fun to play.
If someone bans you from their land, we can do nothing to intervene, and we suggest you contact them to work it out, or just go somewhere else. There can be no such thing as an “unfair banning”, as a land owner can ban you from their land for any reason, or for no reason at all.
An additional change that some of you have noticed is that we are now throttling pylon captures to one per second. For a long time, certain people have set up bases to “game” the system to get as many pylon capture points as possible, by putting all of their pylons in a row on alternating channels, and running up and down the row, in some cases capturing five or more pylons per second.
We have seen enormous creativity and ingenuity devoted to designing interesting Dominion bases, and we are grateful to everyone who has genuinely supported the system with their efforts, and we hope you will support this effort to keep the game fun, and the stats meaningful. Thanks for everyone’s input and comments that help us continue to improve Liquid games. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share.
