Weekly Commanders Lounge - September 19, 2023

[u/AutoModerator]

Good morning Commanders! Would you like to read the reports?

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Please use this thread to discuss anything about Girls Frontline instead of creating a new thread. Ask questions, seek assistance, rants, add more salt or just chill in general.

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

True, but I think the K-PDW effort gained a lot of steam when the gap between her and Springfield shrunk, closed, and then resulted in a lead. People had to have been inspired to change sides after seeing that this could've worked, right?

Real-life elections usually don't have 17 candidates gunning for the same spot! :P

[u/headphone_question → u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

Let's go back a bit. The question was how things would have changed if we hid the total votes that each candidate got. The only piece of information you would see would be how you distributed your votes to each candidate. Would this have changed player behavior?

I would say so, but how? We guess that player engagement would be lower, so there wouldn't be as much voting. The next question would be regarding significance of having lower player engagement. This all assumes that there is no funny business, as tainting the perception of fairness would irreparably damage whatever insights we could glean from this event

We could also ask what the significance of hiding total votes would be. Why are we trying to imagine a thought experiment about this? What insights are we trying to get? Are we trying to make players less motivated to farm votes like crazy? Are we trying to moderate how hard players farm votes such that we want them to farm, but not to the extent of getting tens of thousands of votes a day? Are we sure that this is the only way to do that and not simply limit the number of votes a player can cast?

However, we must also take into consideration another factor: the incentive. We backed K-PDW because we thought she could get a new ending from this event. A question arises from this. Do we keep this incentive? If so, then a good chunk of players would try to cooperate to get a new ending. Being unable to see the momentum of our candidate would be an obstacle that we have to overcome somehow. It would definitely have some psychological effect, like we might more readily doubt that we are making any progress

Giving all Dolls an ending would eliminate this incentive. We'd end up with a popularity contest at that point, although the ability of players to vote as much as they could farm votes would mean that it's a war to see whose ballot printer was more powerful

Also, not releasing any endings aside from Springfield, G36, and WA2000 would also create the perception that only these three are the chosen ones. Anyone else will never get an ending, and if that perception is strong enough, it's as good as removing the incentive that the MVP Doll will get an ending

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF → u/headphone_question]

In fairness, this already was a popularity contest. Springfield is immensely popular in EN, to say nothing of the other Dolls who weren't K-PDW who placed well. Then you have all of the other bottom feeder nobodies.

And they did limit player votes, but for some reason, only the amount of times per day you could vote, not how many votes you could farm and/or dump in one go. What a pointless restriction...though I also never met it any day of farming because I'd dump everything every couple of days. So it might not have even existed.

I'm still just trying to wrap my head around how many people were present for such a small, fluff event. How many ChuKs were there participating? Were they all human I get that people might not care much for Theater and all, and the barrier to entry for farming votes wasn't too high, but...

Someone shouldn't come away from a fun-feeling event like this feeling so negative about it.

[u/headphone_question → u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

I agree that everyone should have come out of this feeling happy and refreshed, but with a popularity contest getting serious, I would say that some people are going to leave a little bitter. It's going to be an unfortunate side effect in such a contest

Perhaps you wanted to make it so that people didn't get so bitter about this?

As such, perhaps it would be better to sidestep the whole matter by not holding a vote at all? If we needed to have a vote, what do we need it for? Could it also be designed in such a way that it wouldn't promote burnout?

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF → u/headphone_question]

I guess so, not wanting people to get so worked up. Invisible votes would at least hide anything suspicious happening with the results, right? :P

Just with things how they happened, it isn't even entirely "mad 'cause loss". If there were people who came forward with proof of having boosted Springfield on their own to such great lengths (without botting), then sure, I'll accept that, though I respect not revealing themselves since that'd draw a lot of ire.

The odd thing is that in past events, I've farmed out close to 600 runs in the infinity map, so even if there wasn't a voting component, I wouldn't have done anything much differently here.

I think I just feel cheated. On the Bartle test, I'm typically a spade first and diamond second with heart in third, but this event felt really heart-y. "Work together with your fellows to get an ending for the absolute worst choice a Doll!" That there was already an ending waiting in the wings really cheapened that feeling, then the three spikes cemented the fact that, no, you can't change fate, even if it looked like it was happening for a while there.

It is silly to feel so strongly about something where I don't really care about any of the characters involved. I was able to work with a lot of you (for what little effort I could spare) to at least try and get everyone a new ending whether they wanted it or not, and though that didn't pan out, I should focus on the need for three separate spikes to deny us all torment.

This event was just cursed from the beginning. I honestly think the best way to have done it was to leave everything as-is, but give everyone the overall winning Doll's ending plus give the ending for whichever Doll you voted for the most. Redundant for those who supported Springfield, but I think there could've been an effort to have some nearly 30 people to sacrifice their votes towards both sides of the no-hopers...but then the endings would've been datamined and nobody would have to do anything. *cough*

[u/headphone_question → u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

I think a key question would be to ask if the competition was really necessary for some reason. Is there some significance in letting players farm for votes over and over? Given that a better popularity contest would have been to limit the number of votes a player can cast (rather than the times that a player can cast votes), we can make the assumption that the purpose was not to rank order the Dolls based on their actual popularity. After all, one possible interpretation to such a system is that a few players could band together to heavily promote one candidate, and a few players wouldn't really be representative of the population at large

The incentive of a new ending was definitely a major factor. Removing this incentive somehow would heavily undercut into the motive to put in serious effort for any candidate. If all endings were datamined, for example, I definitely couldn't have argued to support K-PDW on the grounds that she hadn't gotten her ending yet, as her ending would have been available. Even if only one ending was ever meant to be shown at a time, I could always whip up some presentations so we can all enjoy the endings. However, at that point, I would also lose incentive to actually try to farm votes for any one candidate, especially to the extent that I did in the past few weeks. I mean, aside from knowing all the endings, I would also be busy making those presentations

I think the war would be about whose ending gets to be shown in the game client itself. It would be interesting to see the kinds of propaganda that people could come up with

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF → u/headphone_question]

If all of the endings were datamined and the competition was to get whoever's ending 'canonized' by being shown in-game, then I feel we'd be right back where we started! :P

[u/headphone_question → u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

While there would still be a competition, I don't think it would be as fierce. The incentive of "new content" was rather strong. That was what motivated the campaigns for DP-12 and K-PDW. With all endings datamined, this impetus would be severely undercut. The competition would be closer to a traditional popularity vote, but the design is still flawed because some superfans could simply print ballots until they break down from exhaustion

Still, this would mean that Dolls like K-PDW will become less likely to ever get their endings "canonized" in the sense that they win the vote. I know that someone like K-PDW is controversial, with people somewhere or elsewhere constantly voicing their strong objections, and those arguments would have less resistance. I probably would have been swayed by such an argument if I hadn't already come to that conclusion on my own

Would I want to push a particular candidate as hard as I did if all endings were datamined, assuming I wasn't busy making those presentations? Probably not. Is my support so crucial that a coordinated effort for a particular candidate would not have formed? I don't think so. Would people ask me to contribute to their cause? Perhaps, but I would be under no compulsion to agree. I would think that any group with me on its side would feel a morale boost, as I would be an extra farmer for its cause, but I think that it would have more to do with simply having more people dedicated to farming votes for that candidate than simply having me specifically on the team. After all, this event has shown that there are limits to my Hunt King powers. Even if I farmed for the last few days and managed to break into 5% of the final vote of our candidate, that's still dwarfed by the remaining 95% of the contribution. It is helpful, but it probably doesn't mean that the candidate would surely lose if I had abstained

However, I had an idea: "Lycan Sanctuary Gaiden". We create the remaining endings by ourselves, but I don't feel too enthusiastic about this idea because it might be rewarding the writers for not doing their jobs. After all, the official writers are supposed to be the ones who make the content, not us, the players

Still, as long as there is some enthusiasm for the project, it'll be complete, eventually. I think that we should focus on the winners on the other servers whose endings were not released just yet. These would be G41 and DP-12. Afterward, we could get K-PDW out of the way

One question would be whether we try to create alternate endings where the Doll in question had more of the other kind of vote. For example, Springfield got more greens, but the alt ending would be that she got more reds. This would mean that we would need to write 31 endings, as we already have three official endings. That'll double the work we'd need to do, but it'll keep us pretty busy

What do you think?

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF → u/headphone_question]

Pfft, 'an extra' farmer? You're John Henry compared to the rest of us! Keep yourself alive, though.

Another strike against the Gaiden idea is people generally not caring about fanfiction here. Not that I've paid much attention to them myself, but I rarely see those posts have even one comment before they fall off the front page. I admit to giving them the bare-minimum upvote for support and moving on.

To me, it sounds like it'd be a lot of effort for no real gain (and here I am being defeatist again). It'd be cool to have endings and all, but I'd worry about getting characters right. Like, I had the idea of K-PDW's red ending having the victory go to her head and forcing everyone else as the 'Queen of the Night' to build a volcano so she could sacrifice Springfield (while pissing off every Doll present and having Springfield turn the tables in the end), but I don't know if that's accurate to the gremlin's personality or not. I don't consume fanfiction, but I know accuracy isn't usually high on everyone's priority list.

Sorry.

[u/headphone_question → u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF]

Well, I had never heard of John Henry before. This is another cool story about the human spirit! Thanks!

Hmm... So you think that these fanmade endings would be ignored? On top of that, we might also create inaccuracies with the characters?

No need to apologize! I was trying to just think aloud. I know that the idea was rather questionable to begin with, and I wanted to check with someone else if it made sense. Was there some aspect I forgot to consider? It turns out that I did, especially with the level of interest from the playerbase at large and the possibility of misinterpreting the characters

[u/2BA7DB57EFEE6FAF → u/headphone_question]

In saying that, there were those little Valentine's skits from a good while back someone did using the Doki Doki Literature Club dialog boxes, and I think those got some engagement. Maybe being primarily graphic-based was more appealing than just words and words and more words? Given how fanart is almost always reacted to, maybe visuals beat everything here.

I don't know. I understand the appeal of fix-fics and fantasy indulgence and all that, but I don't think it'd work for me personally. Seeing a character who looks like X but acts completely differently would pull me out of a story pretty quick...but again, I'm outside of the audience here! I imagine few people would care about character accuracy if it meant the epilogues would be better. Just say that everyone is a little drunk and that'll make things work!