DP has always been defile ready (often without building at all), due to the large amount of shrines from various sects in the pass, and the way current mechanics work. That could become less true (for a period of time) if there were fewer legacy shrines and/or fewer shrines from small sects. But as long as the mechanics are what they are, I think it would tend towards that.
To make real progress against a network that is NOT in an area where even the smallest sects in the game try to have a shrine or two, you generally build. That makes a lot of sense. You should generally have to build to attack.
Small/dormant sects are often (mostly, even) allowed to hold onto their shrines in DP, for several reasons, one of which is actually players being 'nice' (shocking), and I think this is one of the big oversights - which is how players actually behave. It's not all about that though. Very few sects ever want to actually fight the entire world.
The bad/good thing about DP (and DP sort of shows the full extent of what the mechanics can allow) is that literally anyone can come in and hit, and hit hard - doing lots of damage per defile, more shrines vulnerable, or more easily tipped to vulnerable. Well, all in all, I think it's bad.
So if you lost a shrine war in DP (I mean REALLY lose, network destroyed), the large amount of shrines everyone has there would probably help you wage a war of vengeance. That is partly good, at least under the current system, because of what I mentioned about not having to build (or not build much) to attack, and attack hard. It's bad because wars can drag on, and we don't want more of that.
It also means that anyone (even someone with no shrines) can also (often, not always) hit not just one shrine, but a whole network quite hard without building, or building very little. That's pretty bad.
I think they did it to try to prevent total dominance in an area that wouldn't fade even if your sect had no fighters left, and was essentially nearly dormant (Conquest), with no inroads for even a very strong, very militant new sect, but some of the things that have been discussed, or variations thereof might do a better job there.
It's not about being nice. It's about risk versus reward. For example, Unspeakable has 0 reasons to push anyone out of DP unless we don't like them or they are attacking. Well, 1 reason, but it's not really important or needed.
I absolutely prefer how DP plays out compared to the immunity blocks. If you want to tweak the formula to weigh your sect's shrines a little more heavily on the defile strength, I'd be okay with that along with my other suggestions (since immunity blocks wouldn't be possible anyway).
I don't care if the wars last forever, as long as there is a little more breathing room during it.
Yeah, for sure. I meant like, in any given circle, you're going to (often) be 'nice' to your baby sects. That, and people -mostly- don't go after the smaller sects because it's bit too much like puppy kicking - but those shrines still contribute to defiles/shrine vulnerability (or are outright in the way). Or, of course, if you're already in a war, you don't want to bring more people in. Absolutely.
First, a definitely sarcastic "are we having fun yet?" to friend and foe alike.
This being my second non-Conquest shrine war, I feel even more strongly about them than I did before.
Good things about shrine wars that we'd want to keep if we can: the shrine conflict system rewards vigilance, attention to detail, diligence, commitment, planning, team play (PK and otherwise), team coordination, resource management, and real system building. It is also probably the main system we have that caters to something other than "win a couple rounds of fights" - not to downplay the complexity and work that goes into PK itself.
Bad things about shrine wars: almost everything about them - including the darker aspects of the "upsides". Almost like when Bill Burr jokes about his wife - "all she has on me is just... my overall vibe". You know, just the essence of who shrine wars are. Worse, the more I think about it, I don't know how you manage to -truly- keep most of the meat of the good parts, and also meaningfully reduce or get rid of the huge downsides (many of which have already been discussed, and probably will be discussed some more).
Streamlining is absolutely necessary, but is going to tend to simplify the system and limit things like tactical building on the fly for both offense and defense.
If it is at all possible, once this current war comes to some sort of resolution (which if we're all lucky is going to be soonish), I would love to see the conflict aspect of the shrine system literally be "switched off" until we feel we've found something else that is worth trying. I doubt that would happen, but asking anyway.
Immunity and frequency are literally the only reasons I voted for ending it. The alternative to do any actual damage would be something we'd all like even less.
To clarify - I don't mind so much we lost shrines, although the speed of it was frequently much faster than I expected. Checking timers/keeping people ready just eats up more time than I want to spend on it. If the timers were consolidated with nuking shrine counts and the sanc timers were extended a bit, I'd consider a shrine conflict again.
My thinking on shrine wars, both from experience and mentors, has come to be: "you'd be crazy to willingly get in one most of the time, even if you think you'll 'win', but if one starts, you'd better do everything you can to finish it, and make your enemies think hard about starting another one".
To me, that alone is the sign of an absolutely horrible system. Anyway, I guess we'll see what happens.
I like how shrines were revamped in Achaea: it's less costly to put up, easier to take down, and overall, it made people more keen to engage in shrine wars.
currently tentatively active (may vanish for periods of time)
Obelisks are kind of the perfect engagement system. The fights are less common, predictable, and when people are actually using outposts the windows can be controlled around time zones.
If you had fewer shrines in an area, you could extend the window to 8-12 hours and probably make the system healthier overall. The pendulum has swung pretty heavily in the attacker's direction now, and defending shrines is a lot harder than attacking them. That momentum shift plus the increased weight of having unpredictable 5 hour response windows means that no one on the defending side is going to have a good time.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
You really like to hurt yourself saying Obelisks are perfect!!!
I am still trying to work out something with the shrinesystem to work more or less what it is but still end so much quicker. I am really keen on adding a few commands for sect leaders to help with how war is handled.
To me, I want these things to happen, frequently. It has a ton of good PK (most of the times) and the overall conflict thing is needed, just in a way shorter time.
1) Less shrines.
2) Extended windows but also more damage done / and how sanc works to shrines (2 defiles -> Nuke. 1 Yellow? Aegis add 1 defile per level?).
3) We need "win-conditions" already and I would personally still like to have something a bit more official in terms of start and stop of wars and who participate and not.
4) I still think the entire desecrate system at altar is fully pointless if you cannot hurt people who PvE and nobody likes to sit around for HOURS straight doing it. If obelisk is taken as example because Naruj loves it!!! Then people can just skip joining the fight and let the attackers sit there for almost 1 hour doing nothing. But at least they win after that hour.
Okay, feel free to tell me how poorly this would work...
A shrine system where every idol can have up to four shrines attached, adjacent rooms only, and each shrine added increases the spread of all the relics in the web across the area. So an idol by itself would give relic benefits to 20% of the area, an idol with two shrines would give 60% of the area benefits, etc. (These are ballpark numbers, maybe you need five or six adjacent shrines to have full coverage, or the idol gives a bigger/smaller area coverage than the shrines.)
Any rival sect can desecrate any shrines, regardless of whether they have any in the area, so you're more likely to get wars over strategically positioned idols, because not all rooms will have four adjacent rooms to build shrines in. Those numbers could be adjusted, obviously, and certain relic powers would need to have their effects nerfed or given an upper ceiling for effects to prevent overpowering stacks of relics in one area. It would also make strategic placement of your own idol possible, since you could use its shrines to steal spots another idol would need to be complete.
Add the functionality that any idol can be attacked if there is at least one open room, but the number of shrines in its web give it and the other shrines (at a much reduced rate) added resistance. Any shrines that are left over by this could also become "neutral", able to be claimed by the next idol built adjacent to them.
This would make it easier for small sects/cults to get a foot in the door in areas, but not have as big of benefits as the sects that got there first and took the best spots. Shrine warfare would be a much smaller and more concentrated beast. Areas with few wide-open areas, like Demon's Pass, would be hotspots, while places like the Heartlands with lots of good options wouldn't be of much concern, and would be more welcoming to the sects that don't want PvP. It would be better at giving the hunting benefits, easier to initiate, and have a more definitive end - once someone else destroys your idol and builds theirs on top of it, you have obviously lost. A cooldown could also be added to discourage extended spats - once you lose an idol, your sect cannot build any more idols for X hours.
Comments
To make real progress against a network that is NOT in an area where even the smallest sects in the game try to have a shrine or two, you generally build. That makes a lot of sense. You should generally have to build to attack.
Small/dormant sects are often (mostly, even) allowed to hold onto their shrines in DP, for several reasons, one of which is actually players being 'nice' (shocking), and I think this is one of the big oversights - which is how players actually behave. It's not all about that though. Very few sects ever want to actually fight the entire world.
The bad/good thing about DP (and DP sort of shows the full extent of what the mechanics can allow) is that literally anyone can come in and hit, and hit hard - doing lots of damage per defile, more shrines vulnerable, or more easily tipped to vulnerable. Well, all in all, I think it's bad.
So if you lost a shrine war in DP (I mean REALLY lose, network destroyed), the large amount of shrines everyone has there would probably help you wage a war of vengeance. That is partly good, at least under the current system, because of what I mentioned about not having to build (or not build much) to attack, and attack hard. It's bad because wars can drag on, and we don't want more of that.
It also means that anyone (even someone with no shrines) can also (often, not always) hit not just one shrine, but a whole network quite hard without building, or building very little. That's pretty bad.
I think they did it to try to prevent total dominance in an area that wouldn't fade even if your sect had no fighters left, and was essentially nearly dormant (Conquest), with no inroads for even a very strong, very militant new sect, but some of the things that have been discussed, or variations thereof might do a better job there.
I absolutely prefer how DP plays out compared to the immunity blocks. If you want to tweak the formula to weigh your sect's shrines a little more heavily on the defile strength, I'd be okay with that along with my other suggestions (since immunity blocks wouldn't be possible anyway).
I don't care if the wars last forever, as long as there is a little more breathing room during it.
This being my second non-Conquest shrine war, I feel even more strongly about them than I did before.
Good things about shrine wars that we'd want to keep if we can: the shrine conflict system rewards vigilance, attention to detail, diligence, commitment, planning, team play (PK and otherwise), team coordination, resource management, and real system building. It is also probably the main system we have that caters to something other than "win a couple rounds of fights" - not to downplay the complexity and work that goes into PK itself.
Bad things about shrine wars: almost everything about them - including the darker aspects of the "upsides". Almost like when Bill Burr jokes about his wife - "all she has on me is just... my overall vibe". You know, just the essence of who shrine wars are. Worse, the more I think about it, I don't know how you manage to -truly- keep most of the meat of the good parts, and also meaningfully reduce or get rid of the huge downsides (many of which have already been discussed, and probably will be discussed some more).
Streamlining is absolutely necessary, but is going to tend to simplify the system and limit things like tactical building on the fly for both offense and defense.
If it is at all possible, once this current war comes to some sort of resolution (which if we're all lucky is going to be soonish), I would love to see the conflict aspect of the shrine system literally be "switched off" until we feel we've found something else that is worth trying. I doubt that would happen, but asking anyway.
To clarify - I don't mind so much we lost shrines, although the speed of it was frequently much faster than I expected. Checking timers/keeping people ready just eats up more time than I want to spend on it. If the timers were consolidated with nuking shrine counts and the sanc timers were extended a bit, I'd consider a shrine conflict again.
To me, that alone is the sign of an absolutely horrible system. Anyway, I guess we'll see what happens.
(may vanish for periods of time)
If you had fewer shrines in an area, you could extend the window to 8-12 hours and probably make the system healthier overall. The pendulum has swung pretty heavily in the attacker's direction now, and defending shrines is a lot harder than attacking them. That momentum shift plus the increased weight of having unpredictable 5 hour response windows means that no one on the defending side is going to have a good time.
Like a daydream.. or a fever
You really like to hurt yourself saying Obelisks are perfect!!!
I am still trying to work out something with the shrinesystem to work more or less what it is but still end so much quicker. I am really keen on adding a few commands for sect leaders to help with how war is handled.
To me, I want these things to happen, frequently. It has a ton of good PK (most of the times) and the overall conflict thing is needed, just in a way shorter time.
1) Less shrines.
2) Extended windows but also more damage done / and how sanc works to shrines (2 defiles -> Nuke. 1 Yellow? Aegis add 1 defile per level?).
3) We need "win-conditions" already and I would personally still like to have something a bit more official in terms of start and stop of wars and who participate and not.
4) I still think the entire desecrate system at altar is fully pointless if you cannot hurt people who PvE and nobody likes to sit around for HOURS straight doing it. If obelisk is taken as example because Naruj loves it!!! Then people can just skip joining the fight and let the attackers sit there for almost 1 hour doing nothing. But at least they win after that hour.
A shrine system where every idol can have up to four shrines attached, adjacent rooms only, and each shrine added increases the spread of all the relics in the web across the area. So an idol by itself would give relic benefits to 20% of the area, an idol with two shrines would give 60% of the area benefits, etc. (These are ballpark numbers, maybe you need five or six adjacent shrines to have full coverage, or the idol gives a bigger/smaller area coverage than the shrines.)
Any rival sect can desecrate any shrines, regardless of whether they have any in the area, so you're more likely to get wars over strategically positioned idols, because not all rooms will have four adjacent rooms to build shrines in. Those numbers could be adjusted, obviously, and certain relic powers would need to have their effects nerfed or given an upper ceiling for effects to prevent overpowering stacks of relics in one area. It would also make strategic placement of your own idol possible, since you could use its shrines to steal spots another idol would need to be complete.
Add the functionality that any idol can be attacked if there is at least one open room, but the number of shrines in its web give it and the other shrines (at a much reduced rate) added resistance. Any shrines that are left over by this could also become "neutral", able to be claimed by the next idol built adjacent to them.
This would make it easier for small sects/cults to get a foot in the door in areas, but not have as big of benefits as the sects that got there first and took the best spots. Shrine warfare would be a much smaller and more concentrated beast. Areas with few wide-open areas, like Demon's Pass, would be hotspots, while places like the Heartlands with lots of good options wouldn't be of much concern, and would be more welcoming to the sects that don't want PvP. It would be better at giving the hunting benefits, easier to initiate, and have a more definitive end - once someone else destroys your idol and builds theirs on top of it, you have obviously lost. A cooldown could also be added to discourage extended spats - once you lose an idol, your sect cannot build any more idols for X hours.