Aryana - the only obelisk that matters

Juran

When two teams collide, there are going to be casualties. Sometimes a side is wiped out entirely, sometimes a few people die from each team - but regardless of how the outcome of the fight is decided, the one with the greater strength holds the field. In a shardfall, this means that they have a short opportunity to gather shards and consolidate their position before the next go around.

Aryana greatly shrinks that victory window to as short as 45 seconds in some cases - and in a close encounter will give a losing team greater numbers for a counterattack before the winning team can regroup. Time out of Dis is such an enormous advantage that entire shardfalls are decided purely by the side holding the obelisk. One side doesn't have to wait on the boat, isn't constrained by the limited amount of quests available that give coins, and have a much quicker trip back to life. In many fights, the first fighters to die are back and involved in the fight again before the outcome is even decided.

When one obelisk determines the outcome of a fight more than the other five combine, it needs to change. There is plenty of reasons in the game to fight without rewarding one faction with their reinforcements in less than half the time. Close fights become blowouts, because the three people I lost are still dead when the three people they lost are redeffed and attacking again.

Khizan

Right now, the Aryana Obelisk is the single most overpowering factor in team combat. Shardfalls, obelisks, random raids, it doesn't matter. The Aryana obelisk gives one side the ability to effectively corpserush the opposition out of play. All you have to do is hit the enemy and take out a few of them, regardless of your losses. Then you hit Dis, focus out, and swarm the reduced enemy down. Unless you're horribly outclassed, there's no effective way to prevent this from working. I regularly get focused down first in fights and end up back out of Dis in time to portal back in and help clean up. Something about it needs to change.

I'd also like to see some major Dis reforms, too. The current one is so horribly designed for a game like this. Shardfalls can be decided by the fact that somebody who was bashing clear across the world died at a bad time and forced your entire team to wait on a ferry recycle, which bought us extra minutes to harvest freely. Hell, right now, the best way for me to win shardfalls and group fights in general would be to send a suicide squad to Dis with instructions to monopolize coin quests, break the breakable ones, take the ferry ahead of incoming enemy members, and generally do everything humanly possible to stall their dead out to buy harvesting time.

Dis shouldn't be such a major determinant in who wins shardfalls, obelisks, CTFs, and other such things. Even with the coinmob from events, my optimal CTF strategy should involve a non-combatant sitting in Dis to take the ferry ~20 seconds after they see a large batch of enemy fights hit deathsight. This is horrible, and it's been horrible for years. The nature of shardfalls and the fact that they've become the primary conflict generator just highlights this. It needs a change.

Sarciossis

On another note, and a question: Does the obelisk of Sukhder have any use anymore? I remember it being useful for raids, but with most city conflicts being between shardfalls or obelisk capturing is it still relevant?

Sarrius

I feel like Aryana Obelisk's current benefit is too powerful - but not for a reason you might think. I sincerely just believe Dis is poorly designed, and escaping the underworld should be a faster process. The raft bottleneck is really irritating and causes some of the grief - coupled with the limited supply of coins, you have an underworld poorly equipped to handle the mass deaths of shardfalls and obelisk fights.

I'd have preferred an Egyptian-esque escape from the underworld, where you do a few good deeds, weigh your heart against a feather, and pop up in the living world.

Alarick

With Thanatos being dead, it *does* lend an opportunity to redo Dis and death.

Ohm

Kill tireth, please

Kryss

When you are slain you still endure the usual text as you fall down to Dis, whereupon you then simply either choose to kick back and relax down there or focus Aryana and come back out. No more Charon. Focusing Aryana would be the standard and only way out of Dis, functioning exactly as the Obelisk power does now.

Bathan

Aryana 2 OP pls gib nerfz

Bathan

No but seriously, this is just stupid as all get out

Jorachim

Kryss said:

When you are slain you still endure the usual text as you fall down to Dis, whereupon you then simply either choose to kick back and relax down there or focus Aryana and come back out. No more Charon. Focusing Aryana would be the standard and only way out of Dis, functioning exactly as the Obelisk power does now.

With a longer delay, otherwise the zerg horde would never end.

Kryss

Yesum. Maybe for each consecutive time you're slain in a set period the delay to focus out of Dis is increased.

Draekor

A command or just a waiting time is what I'd go with for getting back to life and into action again.

Just to brainstorm a bit, the Aryana obelisk could give you a bigger reserves pool or perhaps some kind of passive regen since the overall theme of Aryana seem to be healing or something resource related (health, endurance etc).

Khizan

Jorachim said:

Kryss said:

When you are slain you still endure the usual text as you fall down to Dis, whereupon you then simply either choose to kick back and relax down there or focus Aryana and come back out. No more Charon. Focusing Aryana would be the standard and only way out of Dis, functioning exactly as the Obelisk power does now.

With a longer delay, otherwise the zerg horde would never end.

If it were possible to zerg just by spamming an un-obelisked focus, everybody would do it already.

Juran

1. Remove the benefit for holding the Aryana obelisk
2. Remove the need for coins when taking the raft out
3. Speed up generic focusing such that it's only slightly longer than the raft

The first people to Dis would have the fastest way out, but the next wave would only be slightly longer. Counterattacks would be easier unless the victors could rez, which is a reasonable point of balance.

I also like the idea of Aryana giving more reserves, it could be a really powerful benefit in combat.

Khizan

See, I mind the raft a lot more then the coins. I'd be okay with having to get coins as long as a few things happen:

• Simplify and increase the amount of coin quests to the point where monopolizing them all is not likely, unlike now, where a novice who puts a rock on a "get lockpick" macro can effectively lock down Dis.
• Implement an easier way for new players to get out of Dis. Maybe Charon gives free rides till they've got 12 hours played, and half-price rides till they've got 24 hours played. 
• Charon puts you on a small raft and has a minion/worker/whatever take you back, so that each person gets an individual raft when they leave, preventing the most irritating thing of all, the "Goddamnit, the raft just left, I get to sit here another handful of minutes doing nothing."

Juran

Like any superweapon, capturing Aryana is of course an alternative. There is an argument to be made about the strongest side having the greatest advantages, and Aryana certainly gives out a tremendous advantage. A circle should, after all, maintain some reward for winning.

In this particular situation, there's an interesting dynamic at work though where holding Aryana makes keeping Aryana much easier too. The longer a side is in Dis, the more an obelisk battle ticks toward the other side's favor. Pulling your dead out of Dis and regrouping twice a quickly as your opponent is a massive advantage when calculating time of possession of the islands.

It's just a bad mechanic in general and needs to be replaced.

Jorachim

Khizan said:

Jorachim said:

Kryss said:

When you are slain you still endure the usual text as you fall down to Dis, whereupon you then simply either choose to kick back and relax down there or focus Aryana and come back out. No more Charon. Focusing Aryana would be the standard and only way out of Dis, functioning exactly as the Obelisk power does now.

With a longer delay, otherwise the zerg horde would never end.

If it were possible to zerg just by spamming an un-obelisked focus, everybody would do it already.

Kryss said functioning exactly as the Obelisk power does now. Which is why I said we need to stop the zerg.

Because you don't need to obelisk to focus out. It just takes 5 minutes or something if you do.

Apoloc

Here's a new idea 'Pray for Salvation'.  Why hasn't this been done anywhere else before?????

Juran

Maybe you could speedwalk to a flame.. somewhere near Thera perhaps, and then immolate yourself in it.

Sarciossis

Reform body. :>

Ahkan

I remember the last time this topic was mentioned. Most of this band wagon was on the other side of the argument.

Ziat

With Aryana and Anchor, the time out of dis is 40-45 seconds. Without Aryana, its 1 minute and 30-45 seconds for me assuming I get all the quest coins and the raft. This could improve a lot with just there being more rafts and an easier way to get coins. Changing Aryana's functionality seems a bit too much. Its one of the obelisk that keeps people active in this conflict system. Changing its functionality might just eliminate the small amount of interest people have. 

Changing the whole obelisk conflict system is a different topic. I'm not talking about that. We all know it needs some changing, but keeping in mind the current situation, the most easiest solution would be too have more rafts and more coin quest

Khizan

The Obelisk keeps people involved, yes, but it keeps people involved because it's such an amazingly powerful advantage that it can be literally impossible to compete against the side that holds it.

That's... not a good thing.

Sarrius

Ziat said:

With Aryana and Anchor, the time out of dis is 40-45 seconds. Without Aryana, its 1 minute and 30-45 seconds for me assuming I get all the quest coins and the raft. This could improve a lot with just there being more rafts and an easier way to get coins. Changing Aryana's functionality seems a bit too much. Its one of the obelisk that keeps people active in this conflict system. Changing its functionality might just eliminate the small amount of interest people have. 

Changing the whole obelisk conflict system is a different topic. I'm not talking about that. We all know it needs some changing, but keeping in mind the current situation, the most easiest solution would be too have more rafts and more coin quest

What you really just said is that Aryana Obelisk is really overpowered and shouldn't be changed because compared to the other obelisks, it is super awesome.

I guess we could just go the 'Lusternia route' and make everything furiously overpowered. I wouldn't want to, but hey, we could do that.

.. I'd rather just delete Aryana's current benefit. Make the new one a 'gain back 5% of your reserves every day change'. That means you end up netting double reserves if you use all of your reserves every day.

Ziat

I'm targeting more of the root cause, that Aryana is overpowered because Dis sucks. Will it remain overpowered if dis is more faster and flexible then usual? I don't think. That depends on how they change it but if dis is fixed, it'll fix the obelisk's overpowered nature in return 

Sarrius

Any amount of time that allows an army to mobilize faster than another provides a distinct advantage.

Katarsh

Yes, and the point of the obelisks is... to provide a distinct advantage. Thus, if Dis were fixed, the 'distinct advantage' provided by Aryana would no longer be overpowered.

Khizan

No, it would be. Anything that lets you reliably graveyard zerg is overpowered.

Katarsh

And yet, if Dis were fixed as has been proposed by numerous people, this 'graveyard zerg' would be only slightly quicker than the 'graveyard zerg' available to others who get out of a much more efficient Dis. Thus making it not really a graveyard zerg, but a slight distinct advantage.

Sarrius

'Slight distinct advantage' is an oxymoron. Any advantage on this topic is too good. Coming back to a fight faster is a powerful advantage unless it was shaved down to something like a half second.

Bathan

Yah, imagine if in 300 the Persians had access to the Obelisk of Aryana. That's basically AM v Magick right now.