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New Aspect conflict mechanism.
Greetings Imperian,
I am Josiph, I am relatively new to Imperian, although I did create a character some time ago who is now 187 years old. I am a long time IRE fan and have recently been persuaded to return to Imperian by a friend. I am returned from a year long break from mudding. Prior to that I played Aetolia for many years and have had an Azudim over there for some time.
Over my years in playing the IRE muds I have toyed with an idea in my head that I thought would be pretty fun, and tonight I spent a while writing it down. One thing that I think currently is missing from combat here, and in other IREs right now, is an endgame PvP mechanic that has rapid pace, forces movement, and involves small team strategy. In team combat in every IRE, the fights are generally five or more people and the strategy boils down to who can do the most damage, or stun/offbal/offeq. The more people the merrier. I think an area that was built specifically to prevent this, and force small team combat, is an area that would allow for tactics involving movement, strategy, and team coordination.
The Idea: The Runic Moonstones
Deep beneath the ruins of Caanae, player X stumbles upon a weak spot in the ground and falls through some loose earth into a large cavern. Within this cavern he finds a series of tunnels and caves. As he explores he finds Moonstones scattered throughout a large network of tunnels, each spaced out fairly far away from the other, and embedded into the earth. After investigating one for long enough, player X invites his two buddy aspects along to check it out. When the three approach the Moonstone they sense a great power between them.
What this area would be is an aspect only area designed for small teams. Through some new mechanic, three Aspects would be able to fuse together to form a Divine Aspect or an Aspect Transfusion or Aspect Metamorphosis or whatever name we want to call it. For now I'm going to refer to it as Transfusion. Maybe someone can come up with an name that is more appealing. These three aspects would then be able to fight for control over the Moonstones.
Rules:
-There are ten Moonstones(this could change, more could be discovered, if found that there weren't enough), each Moonstone having it's own area that it inhabits. Each area is connected in a way similar to the map I drew below.
+ ------------X
| \ / \
| \ + \
| \ / \
| +--+-------+
| / / \ /
X / + /
\ / \ /
+--------X
-Each capital X is the moonstone area that would be connected to a chute that would run to near each circle's main city. This moonstone area can always be attacked by the circle that it corresponds to.
-Each plus sign is a moonstone area with no correlation to circle, these areas can be captured by any aspect transfusion.
-As you can see each circle has one moonstone area it shares with each other circle, and then a central moonstone area that then connects to three more moonstone areas. These three moonstone areas form a ring on the inside, each connecting to one another (I didn't draw those exits because it was getting to complicated) and the center moonstone area, and each one also connects to one of the "X" moonstone areas.
Moonstone Areas:
-When not being attacked, each Moonstone will have the ability to transport a member of the transfusion that controls it to their city, and if a moonstone area is attacked, any members of the transfusion that controls it can portal directly to the Moonstone room within the area.
-Each Moonstone area is anywhere from (four by four) to (six by six).
-Each Moonstone area contains three capture points (infusion paths for the moonstone? I dunno how to make this RP happy but I'm sure someone is imaginative enough to). Each of these capture points is spread evenly throughout the Moonstone area.
-Each Moonstone area contains a Moonstone, located in the center of the area.
-Aspect transfusions can only attack other Moonstone areas if they are adjacent to an area controlled by their circle. That means to attack the middle moonstone area, one must have either one of moonstone areas on the outer circle that does not specifically correspond to a circle, or one of the inner ring moonstone areas.
Aspect Rules:
-Only three aspects from any given circle are permitted within each moonstone area. Once an area has three people in it, it will refuse access to anyone else of that circle who tries to enter.
-Any three aspects can actively defend a moonstone area.
-Only an Aspect Transfusion can capture a moonstone area. The transfusion is locked to that area for the duration of the attack.
-Each aspect can be a member of two Transfusions, but cannot be transfused with the same person more than once.
-Each Transfusion can only control two Moonstones at any given time. (This number could be 1 if there are enough aspects participating. I'm not sure how many aspects there are on each circle though.) It will reject attempts to capture a third(second) moonstone if the transfusion already controls two(one). However, a person could be part of two transfusions that control four(two) different moonstone areas.
-To form a transfusion, each player must have ten blue shards. They can then "Pray to Transfuse." When all 3 aspects are in the same room, praying to transfuse, with ten blue shards each, they will form their transfusion.
-Once a transfusion is formed it cannot be undone for twelve real life hours.
-If a transfusion that controls a moonstone disbands, the moonstone goes neutral.
-An aspect can only defend one Moonstone area every hour. Upon entering a Moonstone area to defend, he or she can only enter that Moonstone area for the next hour, any attempt to enter a different moonstone area will fail.
-A transfusion can relinquish control of a Moonstone once every two hours.
Game Mechanics:
-The Moonstone room is a peace room, no one can perform aggressive actions there.
-While within the Moonstone's presence, all your curatives are preserved. (like arena, because 30 minute battles with low rez timers, people would run out of herbs far too quickly.) The Moonstone also protects you from experience loss on death, as it recovers your body before you formally perish.
-Dying while within a Moonstone's influence will add 15 seconds back onto your timer (which cannot rise above thirty minutes), and return you to the moonstone located in the center of the area, which will slowly return you back to life (I'm thinking thirty to sixty seconds). When you die: The presence of the Moonstone prevents you from dying. Your corpse floats into the air and returns to the moonstone, where it is filled with healing power.
-Each moonstone would give a circle wide buff or benefit. I would think these would be small for each one, but enough that it would be worthwhile to take. You could have the center one do something extra special, in an effort to create conflict in the center. IE: The Behemoth Moonstone, or something.
-Successfully capturing or defending a moonstone would give a Moonstone Favour, which would be a three hour favour that has some decent buffs (Double Shard Harvesting, Increased Gold Find, Stats, Protection, whatever.) Perhaps each moonstone area could have it's own variation on the favour, but there might not be enough stuff to use to make each one unique.
-It takes 30 seconds to capture a node, it can be interrupted. Once the node is captured, someone from your transfusion must be in the room for the node to be active.
-If a member of your transmutation is standing in a room with a captured node, it is activated. If one node is active, your team will begin to tick down a timer. The timer starts at 1800. With one active node, the timer ticks down 1 a second. With two active nodes, it ticks down 1.5 a second, and with three active nodes it ticks down 2 every second. This would make the game last anywhere from...15 minutes if 3 aspects controlled all three nodes the entire time, to thirty minutes if one team controls one node the entire time (I don't see that happening). These times could be adjusted based on how the encounter feels/plays.
-Once a transfusion begins an assault to capture a moonstone area, the opposing circle will be given an alert and three minutes before anyone can begin controlling nodes. The transfusion must go to the Moonstone within the Moonstone area and activate the attack.
-If there are no defenders within the moonstone area, the timer will not tick any faster than it can.
-Once a defending aspect enters a Moonstone area he cannot leave the Moonstone area for 5 minutes (this lock is to prevent people from just bouncing in and out). The reason it doesn't lock for the full thirty minutes, is so that if someone on the defending team is not a member of the aspect transfusion that controls the Moonstone area, they can leave if another aspect who is a member shows up. I would also give the ability to kick an aspect out of the area if you are a member of the transfusion that controls the moonstone area and they are not. (This would prevent someone from being locked inside while someone else on the transmutation is waiting to get in).
Why I think this would be an exciting game mode.
-This mode would have the potential for quick paced, small group strategy combat. Since joining Imperian, and in my lengthy experience playing Aetolia, I seem to rarely participate in fighting that is less than 5 people. Granted you might get the occasional teamFFA, and sometimes a little bit of smaller fighting on off hours during shard falls. But the fact is that the current system here and on most IRE's are designed around the idea: the more the better. The more people you have to go wipe their group during shard falls the better. There's no point in spreading out to try and harvest when there is a large group of Demonic coming to get you in 1 minute, so you just sit there and harvest one shard at a time, waiting to get slammed by the next group of 5+ people. Large team fights are fun, and have their place, but generally require very little movement and coordination. People/classes who can hit one alias and do 180+ damage are extremely useful. Everyone attack the same target, do as much damage as possible. People playing specific classes are punished because they get focused down every single fight. Classes end up using the same ability OVER and OVER. We see the same strategy every time. I know for AM it seems like PWhip and Impale are staples in the large team fighting.
-I also can see how some people might say that the monolith system does this, but the monolith system is boring to me. Get a group of a bunch of people and run around capping for your aspects. Wait till enemies get enough people to try and come stop you. It's constantly a battle of numbers. Even in Aetolia, it was just a battle of numbers. The war system was interesting, and capturing land was fun, but eventually it came down to getting in a big group and wiping the person/group trying to advance troops on your territory. The closer you got to the enemy territory, the more likely bi team fights were to happen.
-In a 3v3 mode, team strategy will play much more of a role. People/classes (I think we which class I am referring to by now) who hit one alias and do 180+damage suddenly can be outmatched by strategy and cunning.
-The pace of the activity will be fast. Fifteen to thirty minutes is about the time you might spend playing a match of league of legends. During that time you will be actively attempting to move and capture different nodes, forcing a pace of action, not stale sitting on the same point waiting for the enemy to come in as a group.
-Multiple capture and control points forces movement among your team. Classes with room wide abilities such as rites, vibes, and traps become more interesting because the goal of your strategy might not necessarily be to have your rites with you, or to be stacked as a group of 3 at all times. Abilities which move other players around will become more interesting (beckon, charge/impale on warrider, I'm sure there's others in the other circles).
-It would be a whole new legacy of things to talk about. Every IRE has their big names of people who are renowned, like Azefel here, or Acino from Aetolia, etc... Now people would talk about which transfusion owned the hardest. Which three v. three strategy worked the best. Which three players got a class nerfed because they figured out this.
For those of you who get competitive when you play games, like I do, this will satisfy your thirst.
A. Imperian has it's 1v1. You can request duels, or challenge people to spars and ranked spars. (Ranked spars seem weird to me here. In my opinion they should be reset once a real life month, and the top 10 people should be given small rewards whether it be gold or favours or something, but it looks like it's never been reset ever).
B. Imperian has it's capacity for large team fights. Shardfalls and Monolith battles can start off as small encounters, but tend to quickly evolve into large battles between the different circles. Monoliths don't seem to do enough to really be worth spending a lot of time on. Shardfalls are a lot of fun but happen infrequently.
C. Imperian (nor Aetolia and probably not any of the other IREs), have a mechanic that encourage small group fighting, nor a mode that encourages the small group to be strategic around a specific goal, other than solely killing the opponents.
I know this was a long post but I wanted to explain my idea as fully as possible. Hopefully some people are intrigued by it. If you have suggestions on making it even better feel free to post.
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Comments
The best place to put a 'small team or single duel' conflict system would be somewhere irrelevant to the grand scheme of the game, like, say.. a sect conflict system.
EDIT: Also, using me as a majority of your testimonial is bound to burn you within 5 posts of your initial thread start. Please don't do that.
A minority will like this system because you are putting severe restrictions on it:
a. Be an Aspect
b. Be capable of small scale warfare.
c. Have an organized three man team.
That's not even all of them. You are severely mistaken if you think this system is inclusive enough to be bigger than 'a minority'.
As for the system itself: I don't like the idea of making it a single area in Caanae. I especially don't like the idea of circle-wide buffs - look at obelisks. The actual mechanics of capture seem iffy to me too. I hate waiting games, and that is why I hate the obelisk system - it is one hour of massacre, or one hour of droll waiting, which really means that the conflict system's best winning move is 'not to engage in conflict' (i.e the Ziat Protocol). Waiting games like your node idea don't resonate with me as a 'fun' system. Monolith capturing for Aspects is already at the upper limit of my tolerance for capture/counterplay waiting. I don't think linking it to a sect is going to make that any less unappealing.
My ideal 'duel' system would be something like the monolith system's old intent - engaging in duels or small scale team warfare. I would make points of interest/objects like monoliths across the continent, who provide a benefit to controlling sects and a minor benefit to the rest of the sects (not cults) in a circle. I would ideally make these objectives only attackable by 'sect champions', who gain the status by choice of the sect leader or entity via a ~60% belief ritual. I would take the decision of when to attack these objectives out of the hands of the players - they would go up for contention during prime time periods, based on an algorithm the game checks to compare online activity, etc. Once captured, an objective would stay captured for ~2-3 IRL days, during which it would be vulnerable to attack again when the game decides to let it be.
I would make the capturing prevent any interference via range, and then I would make engaging in combat with somebody trying to capture the objective suck you both in to a themed 3x3 arena similar to etherstorm battles. All champion status players from either sect follow both parties in, with a maximum of 2-3 followers. If one side is outnumbered, they gain something similar to a tenacity buff like in World of Warcraft's Wintergrasp World PvP. Like World of Warcraft arenas, both sides would be pacified to formulate a plan and set up, before being allowed to go in shooting against each other.
Is it my ideal system? Yes.
Is it flawed? For sure, but that is what pipe dream ideas are for.
Will it ever happen? No.
@Garryn told me once that if somebody provided him a light weight concept for a sect conflict system, he would take a look at it at the very least. I don't think either of our ideas are particularly 'light weight'.
I hate numbers games too, but they are quite profitable for Iron Realms in the long run - not to mention quite conducive to a larger spread of enjoyable play experience.
Imperian has never been so much newbie-friendly, though. Which is great, and I love it.
Your idea somehow reminds me of Dota, what with the timer before you can rejoin when you die. Please no circle buffs. It is enough with obelisks for that. Limiting it to 3 aspects per side = also quite annoying. A waiting game like Obelisks = another turn off.
Flawed as it is, the current system is good enough. I would change that belonging to a circle forcefully makes you aligned to that circle's aspect, make powers purchasable individually instead of being related to your aspect, which would diminish the Aspect of the Month side, and make ranged attacks impossible on a controlling aspect (basically like it is done with shard harvesting)
Imperian has never been so much newbie-friendly, though. Which is great, and I love it.
I was only able to get into Imperian cause someone brought me in and taught me the basics all those years ago.
@Josiph I love your concepts and would probably have fun with it, but the majority of fighters and coders of this game are picky and assume the worst of the situation (which, sadly, they're right 90% of the time.)
There is no prize for being a gentleman, and the number of people that can get satisfaction of evenly matched engagements, even if they lose, is quite low. As they say, 'the second place is the first loser'.
We need LESS useless arena modes, not more. We need MORE active objectives that encourage singular players or small small groups/pairs/trios coming out of their cities OFTEN.Maybe make single drops worth more to encourage people to go after them in situations other than when they happen across one?
Singles are meant to encourage 1v1, but most people either don't know they exist or just don't give a damn about it. The rules for attacking people gathering singles is also very muddy - I doubt you can kill people for going out to grab singles unless you catch them in the literal act of harvesting, which will more often than not result in a cry for help.
Assassins are the doom-pocalypse that if you're willing to invest the coding time at the front, you'll trounce most anyone and won't have to be -that- good.
Bards come in pretty close as they just have to count to 4 or something and instakill people.
Druids kill anything that doesn't have a stupid amount of health (see: +600) and stall out anything that does (see: roots, wtf?)
Idras. Cheese. If they can manage to not die. Yeah. They have -two- time bombs.
Then, there's a lot of 1v1 classes who can stall you out and not kill you. It's boring.
3v3 is eventually going to be dominated by older characters who have amassed mountains of artifacts and will just hit one button (They'll probably be druids.) No one is going to have any fun at this point because it's going to be team titan vs team titan competing on the tattered remnants of people like Sarrius.
I liken it to the difference between arenas and BGs in WOW. You dip your feet in with shardfalls/BGs and if you really like it, shoot for the duel/3v3 system.
Imperian really comes down to this: Artifact titans who are aspect >>>>>>>>>> good aspects >>>>>>>>>aspects>>>>>>>people trying to be aspects.
In general, good aspects, aspects and people trying to be aspects can zerg down an artifact titan aspect. You're denying them that in this setting. They'll get destroyed when they walked into Khizan/Risca/Justus, Ahkan/Lionas/Juran(eldreth?)...I guess AM would be Alonzo/Kliko/Mathiaus? If you're not on those teams, you're not going to win. PK should be inclusive, which is why shard falls are amazing. I know they make people like Sarrius butthurt, but the game is better because of shardfalls. It's really helped people become more comfortable with pk and accept that dying is a fact of the game (See: The obelisk fights that occur now.) To go back and retroactively code a system that cock blocks a huge portion of the pvpers intentionally/unintentionally is silly.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I would have more fun losing to Team Magick Titan than winning against Swarm Magick Zerg.
Also, plenty new school classes have ways to kill Arti Juggernauts.
2) Irony.