I realize I'm not entirely familiar with how rituals & cults/sects work nor the entities but from what I've read is the same I've garnered from the post above. It sounds like there needs to be more ways to gather 'ritual points'(?) besides just the constant grind. Something which breaks the hack/slash routine so people who do not like doing it can still be helpful. Possibly introduce a string of quests (Maybe in townes or cities) which allows people to earn these faith points, where you can place them in something akin to the city generators to fuel said cults.
The quest could have like, a cool down and perhaps it should not generate as much as bashing does - or should vary on difficulty. Perhaps my idea can be a baseline but at least its something besides bashing. This is a mud, after all, so you're either bashing, RPing, idling, PvPing or Questing. Quests though always have the best potential for RPly gaining something vs. breaking F1 (Or whatever your bashing alias/loop is).
There's a lot of ways that they could allow for people to generate a (singular) ritual point that would put the work load in something other than "I sat in front of my computer and hit f1 for 4 hours." Sects should be one of those blended activities that you can do well at without being a bash/pk/rp bot. Rituals should reflect that. It would let sects be more accessible.
Why not give a touch of experience for a successful parry? Why not compound that experience on successive parries? Why not reward someone who stops an insta-kill? Similarly, are there no other ideas for faith generation
Cause I'm gonna set triggers with Azefel somewhere and we're gonna AFK. The thing here is, really, that there's a fine and fuzzy line with things like that in Imperian. Things is gonna be abused and farmed, that's just how it is. You need to decide which things are important enough to accept that, and which things aren't.
This is one of those things, I would argue, that isn't. It's too impossible to track. All I need to do is lock myself in a bedroom with Aulani and we can just stab each other in the legs endlessly. You'll never see it on deathsight or anything. Anything you did to make it less abusable would be too much trouble for something so small.
The reward for intelligent play, frankly, is winning the fight.
"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 always thought that having to rely on bashing to get rituals will turn out bad. I even offered at some place to have corpses offered as sacrifice and have them only give a small faith/belief, so that those who prefer to PK can eventually reach that height. I started the cult with rituals in my mind, because I personally have lost the touch for roleplay. Since Svorai is awesome and does so much for the sect, Celidon and game in general, it has really gotten me into sect RP.
Though if we didn't have Svorai, I'm pretty sure all I'd care about is ritual. Having an active entity is such a big plus. I really hope we can get more active volunteers for other sects so we can actually generate some hardcore conflict between sects.
Just saying that things are pretty different if you don't have an active entity. Sects just become a boring bashing fest without them.
They should just tie killing those world bosses to unlocking rituals or something.
I'd just be happy if they made bosses worth a truckload of belief. Multiple percentage points per. This would encourage groups like ours to get together and coordinate and do cult boss runs and such. and provide some alternative to mindless hours of grinding.
"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."
So, quick thought. Sect Conflict system: Design your own fortress with bosses and stuff. Getting your boss killed is bad and loses you belief, gives belief for opposing sect. Can activate some kind of defence system(mob waves?) at the cost of belief or something.
So you want the cult PvP system... to involve PvE bosses and mob waves.
Goddamnit, Gurn-chan.
"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."
The idea is that there's a boss there as an objective, and if the boss starts getting hit, the sect knows and musters a PvP defence. The boss can get scaled depending on defenders-- Backs off if there's close to an even amount or something.
The current PvP doesn't have an objective, and its objective is stupid and focused around bashing anyway. The funnest part of Chivalry is killing peasants and burning villages, which is your objective besides killing the other players. Why not have something similar in the sect system? Burn and kill things if they don't defend.
Give temporary buffs to bosses with things, creating an active gold sink, too, and create a dynamic management system to play with meanwhile.
Bashing is a snore. Nothing is worth bashing. People who enjoy bashing probably also enjoy watching grass grow. I had a few sect rituals at one point, but after changing circles and losing them I don't care at all about getting them back. You should be able to offer player corpses or something, for far higher value to faith. That, I could get behind.
@Azefel@Kryss - Scale it like XP in player-killing... subsequent deaths lead to negligible faith gain?
@Gurn - I like aspects of your idea, sans the mob - I see only stupidity where that lies... basically in getting hit by a boss mob and players is just silly... and also something something bashing sucks something something... BUT you could make it an item that is an icon of the sect/cult. Have a fort around the sec's altar with a shield system on a slightly variable 24 hour period or something. If a cult brings an icon of an opposing circle's sect back to their own altar, they get a substantial belief boost. (Yes, I just requested a semi-permanent CTF) ... have it lower the sect's belief gain for an hour or two before the icon is restored and then give them a 24 hour-ish shield (make this variable by a bit so an opposing sect/cult can't just keep ninja'ing the icon during low play times of the defending sect/cult.)
The boss/CTF idea doesn't really work because it'll get off-hours gamed, and it sucks to have a major thing like that be the subject of a smash-and-grab when you're not online.
You also can't tie it to online players, because then you'll put people in a situation where their best course of action is "log off to deny the enemy the ability to capture", which is also dumb.
"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 think if you balance the penalty-reward correctly (maybe give defenders a carrot for playing defense too). I still think it could fly well? I think there is something to be said for the fact that AM will still turn up at shardfalls in spite of having all the shard research... Or you could make the shield timer small - like every 3ish hours or something like that? And instead make it a minor belief loss for the losing sect instead of a no-belief gain period. I dunno, I'm just trying to throw out some brainstorming options to fuel the sect conflict system.
This thread has calmed down, but the earlier debate (bashing does or does not suck) was getting out of control. Keep it civil or I will be suspending people.
We are aware that some people like bashing and some people don't and we are working on ways to address this.
We just removed the sacrificing limit for people and we will probably increase what people earn for boss mobs. (deciding the best way to do that one.
Mind you, those are still bashing side things and very simple for us to do. As soon as we start talking about other systems, we starting talking about weeks of coding. We are still debating the best way to add to the system for the PvP side of cults/sect.
A lot of points I hear from people in favor of PvE-centric **** for cults and sects are boiling down to 'this system is indefensible, but I already dumped all this time in and I don't want to have egg on my face!'
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
- You can now sacrifice even if your faith and the sect belief are both maxed out, allowing you to continue gaining ritual points
- The cap on the faith worth of mobs has been lifted, making bosses worth substantially more than before
- An important change: the faith gain and loss from PK kills/deaths now applies world-wide, not only at the altars. This means that you'll gain faith (and progress towards ritual points) whenever you kill another player who is in a sect/cult, and lose faith (but not said progress) upon dying to one
- Don't try to kill the same player repeatedly, there's a per-killer-and-target cooldown on this
Garryn
As for kill on altars, could it be worth a teensie bit more? Aka: 5% bonus? It's actually rather difficult to line up a kill on your altar or on an opposing sect's altar. I think I've killed maybe 3 people on an altar since cults/sects were released?
So we have been debating for days the best way to improve upon the cult conflict system. I prefer to do something at the cult level so that more people can participate.
The problem is not the mechanics, we have been able to come up with tons of ideas, the problem come down to the prize. Why should anyone want to compete against other cults?
For example, what if players could lay down shrines (working name) in a web forming outward from their altar? Players could build up their own shrines and tear down other shrines. What is the point though? What is the prize for having shrines, or for having the most shrines?
Prizes for things like this have to be really cool, but they can also not make the "winning" side stupid powerful either. Pkers will not want bashing rewards, just as nonPkers will not want PK rewards.
In short, we have been able to come up with tons of cool ideas for cult wars, but nothing that would really make the competition worth it.
Just from player experience, the shrines thing is going to get weird. First off, if you let it be global, I'm going to put a shrine to Olanre in my house, lock the door, city lock the door and I'm going to roll in fortune and glory and you really can't stop me. Once you block me from that, it's going to become a troll fest on the level of monoliths.
Combat progression in Imperian follows the zerg swarm mentality and we're all guilty of it. If at first you don't succeed, bring more dudes. Are you going to limit it to sect on sect or is it going to be universal participation? Either way, most people aren't going to attack if they think they're going to lose. If there's no 'cost' associated with losing they're just going to afk and fix the damage later. There needs to be a mechanic to 'win' something and a 'loss' mechanic where you lose something that's not game changing. What I'm aiming for here is a reason to stroll out into the battlefield short handed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
1) Ritual power perks. Areas controlled --> reduction in power usage? increase in sacrifice worth?
1.5) Ritual duration augments. #of areas controlled = increase in duration of powers used (limited list)
2) Sect specific items: Mythical Mounts, weapon effects (the magickal ones, Ahkan's sword is on fiya), clothes/packs that don't decay, customizable enter/exit messages, shout customization, portal customization. Unique 'room types' to customize emotes, effects to buy for houses/temples for sect members. Base this on a resource mechanic that is generated by area control and participation.
3) Man, this is going to be old school. Sect bashing areas (only the order can enter, but everyone else has to sneak in). Do you remember Lupus' hunting grounds? This would open a whole new level of combat and infiltration. Lionas buys access to the sect-designed bashing area. Brishi and co. infilitrate it to kill Lionas -and- steal the area's boss dude for an achievement. You can even diplomacy access to these bashing areas and boss mobs. Achievements, gotta catch em all.
4) Unique powers. First idea: mimic the gaze mechanic but have it return to the temple. Longer channel, minor faith cost. Gaze at sub level 100. Second idea: An ability that insta-rezzes you at 0% faith loss at the temple to your next non-guard npc death.
o Perhaps introducing something like a pet that can follow the 'winners' of the 'winning' cult that helps in PvP OR Bashing (perhaps with minor attacks or damage so its not imbalanced for PvP) like a mini-ent but it follows
o "Winning" cult can pick between a buff to the members or a new ritual that grants their 'shrines' protection for x amount of time
o Passive exp gain (minimal, based on current level) once a day for each IG day said cult is 'winning'
I realize i'm not in a cult and new. Still things that might make cults more interesting. I was going to suggest also something to promote RP but.. That's dangerous.
2) Sect specific items: Mythical Mounts, weapon effects (the magickal ones, Ahkan's sword is on fiya), clothes/packs that don't decay, customizable enter/exit messages, shout customization, portal customization. Unique 'room types' to customize emotes, effects to buy for houses/temples for sect members. Base this on a resource mechanic that is generated by area control and participation.
4) Unique powers. First idea: mimic the gaze mechanic but have it return to the temple. Longer channel, minor faith cost. Gaze at sub level 100. Second idea: An ability that insta-rezzes you at 0% faith loss at the temple to your next non-guard npc death.
Did you really just suggest a bashing area as a reward?
Yep. I did. For a few reasons.
1) The sect would create it. Every sect has a 'world builder' persona in it. Imagine how much fun the entity/sect would have building their own bashing area based on their mythos.
2) Working off of that, good sects could use those bashing mobs as 'roleplay'. Imagine the great hunt leading a safari through their own bashing area to take down an epic monster? Leechwood could showcase how the unnatural warping of nature made it stronger. Conquest could fight epic battles and detail why they do what they do. It's what everyone has wanted...bashing areas with a story behind it.
3) People crave achievements. Achievements motivate people. You put a boss mob with a name and an achievement attach to him, we're going to fight to get to it. We're going to fight each other to get the ribbon.
4) The illusion of safety. This is why sewers were the bomb for 6 years. If I think I'm safe, I'm going to bash more. People are going to think that since they're the only ones capable of accessing a sect bashing area, they're safe. They're going to leave their cities more and go play in the new fun houses.
5) The game needs more bashing areas anyways.
6) Gives something Gurn to do.
I hate bashing as much as the next guy, but I also understand what different players 'want' out of the game. My suggestion gives them that.
I don't see an issue with a bashing area that ties into the theme and role of a sect. It's not a bad idea, and frankly, we need more areas to bash. Quests would be good too. Many players are likely willing to help write and give ideas. You have a wealth of creative players that can be tapped on.
The issue isn't bashing per say. It's how much mind numbing bashing you have to do, such that it doesn't feel worth the reward of rituals.
I was going to suggest buffing rituals effect and time, but Ahkan covered that and then some more gold for ideas. So, mostly I'm just writing this to say Agreed in a more firm fashion than hitting the agree button.
Make a separate area where annointed sect champions can battle one another. Cults can annoint one champion. Sects can annoint up to three. These people battle other sect champions in this area for control of certain rooms or portions of the area, which bestow a boon to your sect. The area could have 6~ boons, with control being involuntarily ceded after 48hrs. This creates a reliable period when one can call on their annointed champions to battle other sects for big prizes. Limiting the annointed champion number prevents massive zergling sects like Hunt or Rashirmir from dominating, and also prevents nonsense like Conquest vs. Flame But Really Just Khizan and Aulani.
Annointing a champion costs X belief and drains X. A second champion costs X+Y to annoint, with a daily drain rising. Etc.
Shrines are dumb. A pet is dumb and creates the Guardian Champion mob syndrome from Lusternia. Passive EXP gain is useless after 100, for sheer lack of things to realistically do with it. A sect specific area feels like a portion of my proposed idea, which would be pretty cool.
Just stay away from viciously broken stuff like Aryana Obelisk.
Re: cults being included: cults are stupid to include. IC, they are powerless groups of people based around an idea with no pseudo-immortal influence or agency. They shouldn't be included in any conflict system because it makes sect status irrelevant. A sect should have benefits over a cult. I know you want to include more people, but treating sects as a sidegrade undermines the entire point of you going through with the choice to delete Gods anyways - and if you aren't going to commit entirely to that choice, why commit at all?
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Cults will be included in a lesser fashion, sects will have more benefits.
You suggested something that did not have a reward with the champion battle thing. What are the boons? What boon is worth fighting over, but does not cause a massive imbalance in PvP? Like I said, we have no problem coming up with cool ideas like that, the problem is the reward.
Comments
The quest could have like, a cool down and perhaps it should not generate as much as bashing does - or should vary on difficulty. Perhaps my idea can be a baseline but at least its something besides bashing. This is a mud, after all, so you're either bashing, RPing, idling, PvPing or Questing. Quests though always have the best potential for RPly gaining something vs. breaking F1 (Or whatever your bashing alias/loop is).
Cause I'm gonna set triggers with Azefel somewhere and we're gonna AFK. The thing here is, really, that there's a fine and fuzzy line with things like that in Imperian. Things is gonna be abused and farmed, that's just how it is. You need to decide which things are important enough to accept that, and which things aren't.
This is one of those things, I would argue, that isn't. It's too impossible to track. All I need to do is lock myself in a bedroom with Aulani and we can just stab each other in the legs endlessly. You'll never see it on deathsight or anything. Anything you did to make it less abusable would be too much trouble for something so small.
The reward for intelligent play, frankly, is winning the fight.
"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."
"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."
So you want the cult PvP system... to involve PvE bosses and mob waves.
Goddamnit, Gurn-chan.
"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."
Give temporary buffs to bosses with things, creating an active gold sink, too, and create a dynamic management system to play with meanwhile.
Just like the focus/purge change, I'd like to see at least some small things given in at first and bigger things after investing into it.
The boss/CTF idea doesn't really work because it'll get off-hours gamed, and it sucks to have a major thing like that be the subject of a smash-and-grab when you're not online.
You also can't tie it to online players, because then you'll put people in a situation where their best course of action is "log off to deny the enemy the ability to capture", which is also dumb.
"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."
Combat progression in Imperian follows the zerg swarm mentality and we're all guilty of it. If at first you don't succeed, bring more dudes. Are you going to limit it to sect on sect or is it going to be universal participation? Either way, most people aren't going to attack if they think they're going to lose. If there's no 'cost' associated with losing they're just going to afk and fix the damage later. There needs to be a mechanic to 'win' something and a 'loss' mechanic where you lose something that's not game changing. What I'm aiming for here is a reason to stroll out into the battlefield short handed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
o "Winning" cult can pick between a buff to the members or a new ritual that grants their 'shrines' protection for x amount of time
o Passive exp gain (minimal, based on current level) once a day for each IG day said cult is 'winning'
I realize i'm not in a cult and new. Still things that might make cults more interesting. I was going to suggest also something to promote RP but.. That's dangerous.
The issue isn't bashing per say. It's how much mind numbing bashing you have to do, such that it doesn't feel worth the reward of rituals.
Annointing a champion costs X belief and drains X. A second champion costs X+Y to annoint, with a daily drain rising. Etc.
Shrines are dumb.
A pet is dumb and creates the Guardian Champion mob syndrome from Lusternia.
Passive EXP gain is useless after 100, for sheer lack of things to realistically do with it.
A sect specific area feels like a portion of my proposed idea, which would be pretty cool.
Just stay away from viciously broken stuff like Aryana Obelisk.
Re: cults being included: cults are stupid to include. IC, they are powerless groups of people based around an idea with no pseudo-immortal influence or agency. They shouldn't be included in any conflict system because it makes sect status irrelevant. A sect should have benefits over a cult. I know you want to include more people, but treating sects as a sidegrade undermines the entire point of you going through with the choice to delete Gods anyways - and if you aren't going to commit entirely to that choice, why commit at all?